I agree with everything you said except the indie scene. The indie scene is stronger than ever, and imo is pushing gaming forward in the right direction with awesome games and original ideas. The best games I have played in the last couple of years have almost all been indie games.
Amen to indie developers and original ideas or new takes on old ones.
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It's nothing to do with devs or publishers. It's the customers.
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I have felt this way for a long time for everything in the entertainment media. You have video games bringing nothing new to the table, just playing it safe and recycling ideas they remembered working before. This is why indie gaming has such a huge fanbase, because indie game devs have little to lose and are not motivated solely from money. This happens with movies too, though. The newest Pirates of the Caribbean was a money grab and they should feel bad for ruining characters like Jack Sparrow by giving him a love interest when his character was never a one woman man before just for the sake of following previously over done movie patterns that involved romance. I also was slightly annoyed they included zombies and intentionally bragged about it in the teasers like it was their highest selling point, but I'm sure they believed that since zombies were so damn popular then. They were clearly jumping a band wagon and didn't have independent motivation for including zombies. I'm surprised they didn't reveal that Barbarossa was secretly a vampire.
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Although there are a few points to which I agree with buried beneath all the hyperbole, generalizations, and false facts, I can't really take this thread too seriously as it seems you're more worried about making a favorable impression to the community, striking yourself as a glorified nostalgia knight/hardcore gaming messiah than you are about making an open discussion about the issue.
Also when I see lines like "Unfortunately I have to agree, and even more unfortunately that's not going to change with anything short of a mass-extermination of anybody under a certain IQ, which I cannot condone." I picture a big neon sign flashing "PRETENTIOUS DOUCHEBAG" in my head.
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Pretentious: Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
I don't care what people think of me, or my opinions, and especially not yours. I agree with their counter-arguments because when I wrote the OP I was beyond frustrated with many personal things and so I wrote without thinking. With that said, I did use hyperbole and certain generalisations to illustrate my overarching argument that the gaming industry is in a state of disarray. Any "false facts" were clarified in the comments.
I don't share the same nostalgia for the old days of gaming as others do. I simply know how to appreciate what they did well and why those games were successful in their era. I'm not a "hardcore" gamer by any definition.
This comment thread has been an open discussion. People come, give their thoughts, and then I rebuttal or agree where I feel I should. That's how civilised conversations work. If you wanted to me to just outright tell people to fuck themselves and their opinions, too bad. I'm not here to get into massive arguments, I simply wanted to throw out my opinion and find out what others think.
The certain IQ line was due to lack of better words, because I was in a rush to leave so I can go do what my father wants as it's Father's Day. The fair majority of people I refer to are usually younger gamers, 13 or under, who have not completed their education and thus don't have the IQ of an average adult yet.
Let me make this clear: I'm not here to impress, I'm here to talk. If I wanted to impress, I'd be out right now in a number of job interviews. I don't need the approval of people on the internet to validate my opinions, and I don't let comments from people on the internet affect me, because at the end of the day they're just words.
I'm glad you came so I could get that out as well as vent some other frustrations.
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Yes, pretentious. The word I meant and did use. Your point was that it's the consumer's fault that the industry is where it is with the implication that consumers like you who like the games that you like are somehow better consumers and the games you like are better than the games the average gamer likes. I have no clue how old you are, but unless you're in your late twenties or beyond, you were just as old as these 13 year olds you're ripping when you were forming favorable impression on these old games you hold so highly, but let me guess. What more, you say it's the consumer's fault and act like we should be rid of all these scum who are pushing the industry towards linear corridor shooters with nice graphics, yet looking through your library you've purchased many such titles yourself... so yes, pretentious... and a little hypocritical.
But I regress, if you truly want to discuss the issue, let's discuss it.
So yeah, I too will say that I'm not content with the [AAA] industry right now. My dislike isn't as extreme as yours, but I will admit AAA games could be better and more original. That's not to say I can't enjoy them, because I generally do enjoy all games I play (I'm rather easy to please, but hard to impress), although I don't think every AAA game falls into this category. I think Portal 2 and Borderlands 2 are great counterexamples to the "all AAA games are unoriginal and bland."
One thing I can't stand is when people act like the way games are built and monetized is only a sign of the developer and publishers themselves and not the times. List out every game that you hold so dear that you're comparing today's games to. I bet you almost every single one was made for profit. I also bet you that the majority of the games you would list, also tried to package the game with the best possible graphics available to them. Back then digital distribution for DLC didn't really exists. That's not to say extra content for games didn't exist, there were expansion packs. Of course, all nostalgia knights will then yell "but at least they contained lots of content!" which is true, although a lot of the ones I'm thinking of used mostly rehashed graphics and considering the cost to distribute physical copies of games, it was impractical to distribute smaller amounts of content. So it isn't so much that we've moved out of a "golden era" of game developers who care, but more or less we've moved into a new age where technology allows developers/publishers to monetize their games in a different way.
Also the most of the popular F2P games I can think of make money either mostly or only on cosmetic items only and aren't missing any important content that they sell to gamers, and even the ones that don't (from what I've experienced) are very playable as they are and extra content is the equivalent to DLC in any other game with a pricetag on it. I also want to mention that series like CoD get flak (and rightfully so) for releasing essentially the same game every year. However, that practice isn't exactly new. There has been a Madden football game every year since 1990, I couldn't tell that big of a difference between '95 and '97 when I had them as a kid. Most older franchises released new games every year with very similar graphics, very little changes in controls, etc. yet everyone remembers them fondly. Case in point, Tomb Raider released something like 8 games in 8 years, and even discounting some of the handheld releases the first four years saw 4 major releases. I've beat the first two very recently and I'm halfway through #3 and I can say that very little has changed from each game, just a different premise, a few new weapons, maybe one new movement control (like crouching) and that's it. The controls suck, there really isn't much of a story, definitely not a strong one like we see in today's games, even the puzzles aren't all that logical, more or less "run back and forth until you find the right key and/or lever." I didn't play them as a kid, but I bet that the series main selling point was graphics at the time. Yet people who played Tomb Raider as a kid hold it dear to their hearts even though I'd personally say it doesn't compare to games today. But back to my point, that's a great example of milking a franchise for what it's worth. They had a game that people liked, did they try to change it from game to game? Nope, they just released a very similar game year after year, where only the premise/setting really changed.
As for the indie market, although there are lots of mediocre games with very little polish on them, you act like there are no filters in place which makes me laugh since we're on a Steam related forum and Steam is one of the better filters for indie games (sometimes too good), at least prior to Greenlight. Of course some games slipped through the cracks (Bad Rats, I'm looking at you) but for the most part I think most of the games are good for their age/genres. Greenlight for the most part seems to be working alright... a lot of the games I've voted for and played seem just as good as any other game released through Steam. I think it allows for some more questionable games to slip through the cracks (Towns, Miner Wars, etc.) but overall the point stands that Steam is a great filter for indie games and there are far more indie games already on Steam and constantly being released than any one person could ever hope to play. As much as I hate Let's Play videos, for all the harm they do, they are still a tool for people to use to at least help filter out the worst in the indie scene. Even so, I think you're being rather cynical (both in general and on this specific point), yes there is a lot more garbage in the mix, but there are a lot more good games being made than ever before in the indie scene. It's not going to change unless a crash really did happen. More and more people are learning to program and making games is becoming more and more accessible (and with tools like UDK and some of the other development kits including gameplay scripting tools the need for programming is almost completely erased). So yeah, more and more games are being made in the indie scene and although many might suck, it's definitely worth the price with all the new titles that are exceptionally good being made. In fact my biggest hope is that more and more indie developers start up or migrate to the PC (my fear being that the bulk of developers move to social gaming devices).
For the most part I agree with you about Kotaku (although I've never really like any game journalism, even back in the day, although that's more because I like to play games rather than read about them lol) and I definitely agree with you about reviews...user reviews are the worse in that regard. As for PewDiePie, I don't like him personally, but I don't think he's a bad thing for the gaming industry at large, if anything he attracts people who don't game much and get them interested in indie games. Right now many of the younger ones who follow PewDie may be impressionable sheeple who only like what he likes, but I think it's a step in the right direction and maybe as they mature they will start to get into more indie games on their own.
If your point is the gaming industry sucks now, I don't know why you bring up PC/Console wars, if anything it's the best it has ever been with many games that used to be exclusives now going multi-platform, and a lot of the popular indie games can be found on many of the platforms. The casual vs hardcore debate has picked up in recent years admittedly due to an influx in casual/social games, but it's nothing new. Gamers have always been passionate about their opinions, the only thing that changes is what the topic at hand is.
As for your final paragraph, this is why I assert that you are a nostalgia knight, you glorify the olden days without realizing how much you are unaware of about the industry then. So what are the most popular games at the end of the last century...Half-Life, Unreal, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Red Faction... most of those are very similar games, story based FPS games, fairly linear with the same basic mechanics. Seems like they're all following a popular formula, no different to how games are made today. Also, the reason the industry crashed in the 80s was due to so many subpar games flooding the market, hell, even after it stabilized if you look at 8 out of 10 NES titles you'd probably wonder why anyone would bother making a game about that. Game stores had just as many crappy games back then as they do today, the only that has changed is your perception of this fact.
Also a note in closing, I thought I noticed somewhere you said you can only buy one AAA game each year, yet you seem pretty damn certain of all the opinions you formed on games today despite admitting to having such a small exposure to AAA games... It seems to me you rely on the opinions of others who are likeminded (I got that impression more than once)
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Because ultimately it is the consumer's fault, and in a manner of speaking, yes that is true. Informed consumers know what they're getting, know what potential problems the product has and can make a proper judgement. Ill-informed consumers buy things based on previous experience of a franchise (assuming that because it's the exact same, it's good) and on cover art on the box. I'll give you this; I'm 19 and I didn't have an online connection until I was around 15, so I was limited to single-player experiences for that period of time. What I find weird is how you assume I only like "linear corridor shooters with nice graphics", when clearly in other threads (since you seem to have been following me into those) I said I love platformers, point and click adventures, role playing games and open-world games, and I also enjoy my Garry's Mod. Just because I'm known to like Bioshock doesn't instantly mean every game I like hs to be a linear shooter.
I never said all AAA titles are unorginal and bland. I said that the fair majority are becoming unoriginal and bland. Games like Portal 2 and Borderlands 2 do offer some kind of respite from the copy-paste brown shooters we get on average (even though these are both franchise titles).
American McGee's Alice and its sequel. Psychonauts. Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (I got Chris Avellone in an email to say that LucasArts wanted it for profit, but he wanted to do the story out of personal enjoyment). Sam & Max: Hit the Road. The Sims. My favourites, not made for a quick buck but because the developers actually wanted to (as I've read from various interviews). If you think any of those are "realistic graphics", you're fooling yourself. I don't need realistic graphics to be content, and I MUCH greatly prefer a unique artstyle, even if it's using models that look they came from the Daikatana-era. On The Sims and expansion packs (and I know you'll start up about it), yes, I know those were pumped out for money. But compared to EA now, those expansion packs contained every element created for The Sims games by the developers, except for a licensed Ford. Now, EA actually holds back content from the expansions and wants you to buy it all separately through the store. Even worse, they don't QA how the content all interacts with each other, so if you own everything, you likely need a super computer to run the game due to poor memory management, a problem neither of the original Sims games had.
I don't know if you're aware, but I'm not a fan of multiplayer at all, and especially not of F2P games. Now, I don't reference either of these in my OP because that's personal preference, not a serious argument against those. CoD was definately not the only thing I was refering to, and Madden makes it case in point, but I honestly think the newer Madden games are the worst offenders because originals did get upgraded engines to advance features in the game, whereas newer EA Sport titles in general use the same engine and simply change the rooster. I haven't played Tomb Raider, so all I'll say is I remember an article in a gaming magazine and that talked about the evolution of the Tomb Raider franchise which seemed to put everything in a good light. But, we'll get to how I form my opinions in a moment.
You assume that the only place with indie games have filters, and that filters are going to automatically stop you from finding the bad stuff. You assume I even thought of Greenlight (which also has several older AAA titles) when I talked about indie games. Places like Desura and in a giant amount of wikis and homemade websites (with links distributed everywhere) you'll find a lot of unrated indie games. I don't hate Let's Plays, I simply dislike the character of one Let's Player, and I've come across several informative Let's Players who do go out of their way to offer some voice on indie titles, but they can't cover everything. I'll point out that Unity appeals more to younger designers due to its easy of use, better licensing (how you get paid) and the fact it can be played in browser. Whereever you're finding these games, point them out to me, because all I can see if a large pile of goop overshadowing the amazing ones.
I brought up PC/Console wars specifically so I could pull up the process of porting between consoles in AAA titles which is usually done haphazadly.
As I've said before, I don't generally like many of the old games, but I appreciate why they're important and what they did. I like Half-Life as an example of a game that knows how to apply a lot of careful timing and show, not tell. I'm yet to start on Deus Ex and System Shock, but they're in my library so I'll reserve judgement on them. I've never even seen what the first Red Faction game looked like, and I've never played Unreal. As I said above, the titles I most value are from the 94-04 era, with one title from 11 but that's a different story. Psychonauts, Ratchet and Alice are Linear, but I never said I wanted more linearty, and that is nowhere near the reason I love those games. You might argue Sam & Max is linear, but as a point and click you're free to choose which order you complete each room in, and so I find to be more like an open-world game, in that there's a linear story progression, but you're free to travel as you please. I know that there was a lot of bad games back then, but now it's come to a head where anybody can developer, whereas the majority shouldn't.
That's incorrect, in that my opinions are not based on what others think, because that'd be stupid and then I would love bad movies like "Master of Disguise" or games like Call of Duty. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by people who do have some of the older AAA releases, and thus I can borrow it from them and give them a try, and sometimes I'm able to pick things cheap at various storefronts. Newers games like Halo 4, Black Ops II, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon and so on I always tend to find at my friends parties, and I can usually get most of the game complete in one late-night session (as I attested when I compleleted Black Ops on Veteran in 5-8 hours). Some games I do have to stand back, see what others have said, and then try to find a demo if possible and if they indicate its a good game (the friends who do this are all online, so not borrowing, I trust their opinions more than the people I know in real life and I'm not wasting bandwidth on a bad game). I try as much as I can, when I can.
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"What I find weird is how you assume I only like "linear corridor shooters with nice graphics"" =/= "yet looking through your library you've purchased many such titles yourself"
"I never said all AAA titles are unorginal and bland." I never said you did, I wasn't quoting you, just the general consensus of people with similar opinions of you, my bad on that one, I could have been more clear.
"If you think any of those are "realistic graphics"" I never said anything about realistic graphics in my post, I did however say 'good graphics', some people think they are synonymous but I would wager many other people agree with me that a game's graphics don't need to be realistic to be considered good. Point in case, one of the first two games you mention is Alice: Madness Returns and that game has fabulous graphics, if not realistic. Also, I'm sure just about any developer will say they loved to make the game they created and they were glad to be making the game, etc. I think you assume that developers have the same perspective as you do about games in general and you never stop to consider that maybe the people making games like Call of Duty are big fans of the genres themselves. In turn I think you assume, for example, (or at least based on some of the things you say) that a developer on the team to make the new Call of Duty (could be any game that you would deem to be part of the problem with gaming today) is consciously there just to make money and has no interest in making the game fun (fun as they consider it). I'm not saying that's always the case, but to assume that everyone in these big (developing) companies are only doing it for the money is a bit presumptuous, to say the least. (Of course the "higher up" decisions (i.e. publisher) are almost always made on the basis of "what will make us money" but unlike you I think that has always been the case for most publishers) But anyways, you saw some interviews where the developers of the games you like wanted to make the game just to make the game, the same is true for plenty of games that you would label as the games you think reflect the problematic side of the industry, I can absolutely guarantee it.
"and especially not of F2P games. Now, I don't reference either of these in my OP because that's personal preference," & "and the push to have more "free" (Read: Missing content designed to fool the non-informed consumer) online games." ... err.. what DID you mean then by free online games? ... if not free online games...or maybe I misunderstood the first sentence? Could use some clarification here xD
"You assume that the only place with indie games have filters, and that filters are going to automatically stop you from finding the bad stuff. You assume I even thought of Greenlight (which also has several older AAA titles) when I talked about indie games." No.... I did not.... I said that there ARE places with filters, not that every place with indie games has filters, I know there are tons of platforms with very few/to no filters as well as stores that sell all kind of DRM-free games that are for the most part very subpar. I also didn't assume you thought of Greenlight, I just mentioned Greenlight when I was discussing why Steam is a great place for filtering indie games (again I never said it was the only place with indie games, nor did I say it's the only place with indie games that has filters, it just seemed like the most obvious to mention since we're on a Steam related forum...which I said...). I also said that some bad games fall through the cracks, but honestly, the Steam's filter on indie games is amazing. For someone who is so aware of all the crappy titles out there you should be aware of this. Please show me where I said any of things you said I stated.
"Whereever you're finding these games, point them out to me, because all I can see if a large pile of goop overshadowing the amazing ones." I spent most of my time on Steam and the only time I feel like I'm sifting through crap is when I'm voting on items on Greenlight. If you don't think the majority of indie games on Steam are good (keeping their age and genre in mind) then we simply have very different taste.
"I brought up PC/Console wars specifically so I could pull up the process of porting between consoles in AAA titles which is usually done haphazadly." Okay...but considering 10 years ago there were very few multi-platform games, at least compared to the % we see today, I don't see how that's aiding your point that only now does the industry suck. And honestly, now that more and more development kits are adding support for different platforms we're starting to see more/better ports especially in the indie scene (and it seems like the next generation of consoles will be even better for that, but we'll have to wait and see).
I realize you probably haven't played some of the games I've mentioned or that they are even the ones you have in mind, I was just trying to make a point by selecting some of the more popular titles from the late 90s. My point isn't (necessarily) that games that are linear corridor shooters are bad, just that hey, games 10 years ago that are glorified today are pretty much the same. There may be been a bit more open-ness in some of those older titles (at least of the ones mentioned), but nothing like there is in games like Borderlands (as one random example). I will also say that your OP was a bit on the vague side, you could have come out with more details on why you think games aren't great today, taking a few AAA examples and pointing out the flaws they have, you stuck to rather ambiguous wording which really makes it hard for me to come in and either agree or disagree and have an actual discussion, so if you feel like I'm making any wrong assumptions about what you think is bad in video games today, forgive me for that...it wasn't intentional.
"I know that there was a lot of bad games back then, but now it's come to a head where anybody can developer, whereas the majority shouldn't." that makes like no sense, I'm sorry. So it's okay that there were tons of bad developers back then who shouldn't have been making games (I mean, someone had to make all the bad games back then), but only NOW it's not okay? No one can be 100% certain but I personally think the good game to bad game ratio today is pretty similar to what it was 20 years ago (if you clump both AAA and indie games together anyways, since I'm not entirely sure what would be classified as indie/AAA on a console like the NES, or if such distinctions were even made then.) Mind you, that doesn't mean some developers shouldn't get out of the market, because there are definitely some that should...
"That's incorrect, in that my opinions are not based on what others think, because that'd be stupid and then I would love bad movies like "Master of Disguise" or games like Call of Duty." keep in mind I said "likeminded", it's just that you seem to have extensive knowledge of games old and new to be making such grand claims yet you're only 19 (I don't mean this as an insult, I'm 24 and I would say to any other 24 year old making such bold claims that they are "only 24," and on that note, as someone who has been a "full-time" gamer since I was old enough to pick up a controller I wouldn't feel comfortable citing a lot of the things you do in this thread).
So yeah, please don't respond if you're just going to twist my statements all around, at least the ones that were explicitly stated and not left to implications and assumptions... >.>
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Admittadely that's true, but I never indicated I purchased all those titles and enjoyed them. Many were gifts, there are a number of free games I bought for certain gaming parties and then some I bought on recommendation from my friends. This is not my entire gaming library.
Ah, I should have picked that up. Sorry.
Point taken, but I still don't have a problem with old graphics. Models with hundreds of polygons are great, but ultimately not a required thing. Point taken on the second thing, but I still have the feeling that many of the Creative Directors/Lead Designers in charge of the projects, as well as Studio Heads and people inside the publishing firm (not everyone, just people higher up) don't really care for what games they make so long as they think it'll sell well, which admittadely is something they need to do if they want to stay in business, but I think it also means we don't have a lot of the visonaries such as Warren Spector, Tim Schafer or (to a lesser degree since Obsidian is stuck making sequels for eternity) Chris Avellone with very clear design theories that try and advance the way designers make games for experiences over cash-in.
:| I forgot I wrote that, sorry. My bad. To be fair, I don't neccesarrily think all F2P games are designed with the "missing content" in mind, but I certainly think that any dedicated player will end up spending more on items than they would if the game was a retail purchase.
You have me beat there, but I've barely looked into Greenlight and the traditional process of getting games into the Steam market, so I can't really speak on how well the filter works as I really don't know, but I'll presume your right for now and check myself later when I have the time.
I think there-in lies the problem, as I don't spend much time on Steam at all, outside of keeping my library up in case I need to check something or want to keep my games updated. The only times I actually head to the store is when I have money, and usually I already have a backlog of titles I've listed that I want to purchase, as well as what's on my wishlist, so I spend little-to-no time browsing.
The indie scene is generally a lot of people being crafty and actually having a passion for what they do so they put a lot of love into every game they make so that they don't screw anybody and end up losing potential customers down the road. Meanwhile, if you've played any recent Ubisoft games on the PC, you'd know that some companies feel their reputation is high and that any gamers who argue about their anti-PC stance are in the minority. That's just one specific example though. Granted, you're right that multi-platform titles are a newer thing (and one only needs to see how they handled Pac-Man when it got ported), but I still feel that the older generation of game developers who did have to port games didn't (for lack of a better word) ruin them because they simply were too lazy to QA them, even when many ports of this day and age get delayed for months on end.
Don't worry, I probably come off sounding like someone who would play the kind of games your assuming. As far as bad games go, things like Call of Duty are obvious, but I dislike Assassin's Creed 3 due to the collosial amount of mistakes they made, I dislike Halo 4 mainly since they're relying on you purchasing a lot of the extra content outside of the games (books, comics, movies etc) if you want to understand anything in the game, a lot of what Nintendo does (unfortunately I haven't played those games and thus I'm way out of line here) because they do seem like they try to run their amazing franchises into the dirt with the amount of unoriginality, the new SimCity (we don't even need to go into that) and many more I don't really have the time to list.
I worded it badly. What I meant was that, back in that era, we didn't have the large amount of tools and knowledge that is currently avaliable. You needed to have a very specific skill set before you could do anything. The reason, as I see it, games were bad back then was either because people who didn't possess those skills attempted to regardless, or because there was a lack of proper design theory giving them certain "boundaries" to what they were actually creating. Now it's a lot easy to posses the knowledge and tools, which have been created with the intention of the wider public being able to create games with a lot more ease, and so anybody who feels as though they have some good idea can grab a bunch of assets and throw something together. Case-in-point, every single LEGO Universe remake that's spawned in the past couple of months.
I understand where you're coming from and you're probably right; I think because I want to become a "good" game design, I feel entitled a lot of the time to be above the knowledge of other games, and having talked to people in the industry, watched developer commentaries, read their articles, and currently am studiying design theories, it's made me a little more obnoxious and hot-headed over the entire thing, especially after this game design document I made which has currently made a lot of people interested, and that may have caused me to jump the gun on how "great" I am when in fact I haven't done much yet and there's still a long path to climb. Ultimately though, I didn't say what I said here because it was a 100% serious argument or because I hate everyone in gaming and I wanted to start some kind of war on "stupidity". I posted the OP at the peak of one of my stressful moments based on some pretty bad observations of the industry, just to see what the larger gaming community, made up of people I don't know, truely think about the state we are in. I like the fact there's opposition as well as people who agree. Being wrong lets me learn so in the future I can be better, and everyone in this thread has given me a new perspective on gaming.
I apologise for doing that; I wrote the reply when I first woke up this morning after a particuarly bad night of sleep and I let emotions take over logic.
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The problem isn't with games, it's with people not enough distinction in the media between games aimed at different populations. Gaming has become successful enough that most people do it, and this naturally leads to many games aimed at the larger population. There's nothing bad about this. Blockbuster movies, soap operas, they don't destroy their industries. They're aimed at specific audiences and do their job there. People can find the type of media which interests them.
Games do exist for most audiences, and Kickstarter has helped spark some more "old school" development. I feel that the problem is more with finding the right games that that they don't exist, and this comes from the gaming media bundling pretty much all games together. There's no "literary review" for games. There may be sites which dedicate themselves to specific sub-genres, but they to don't really focus on certain style of games, and rather adapt to the current definition. If there were such distinctions, it would have been easier to find the games people want, and not only that, it would have been an incentive for people to create these games more.
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There are still gaming gems waiting to be found, like these ones:
Beam.NG Drive
Next Car Game
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Yeahh lets let thousands of people lose their jobs in order for games to be good again YEAHH even though it wont solve anything hurray!!! And might even kill the indie games industry YIPPEE.
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The gaming industry will never crash, but the bigger companies will most likely implode soon, just like with movies. They only care about making it bigger and better, and will spend so much on a single project that the company might even just depend on it. The audience will either get tired of it or it will just be impossible to make profit.
But still, the indie industry will save both industries. They are made by people that have more original ideas, and can take risks since the costs are not that expensive. Their creativity will keep it alive.
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This is a common "problem" with many gamers, They reminisce about the older games they used to play, how simple they were. Nostalgia sets in and all you can remember is great times. They have since matured, maybe even going off games a bit, and they miss the ones they used to play. I miss many things from when I was younger, school, easy living, massive load of friends, but time has changed and I moved on. You should to.
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op is hecking right
« Meanwhile, "casual" gamers spend money on buying new items for Farmville or Angry Birds, items that take no more than 5 minutes to make and rake in hundreds of thousands of kilos worth of cocaine every day, »
love that part
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Wouldn't an industry crash make games a much riskier proposition to fund, so the only ones that EVER get made are the yearly updates EA quietly shoves out the door? And as there is no competition anymore, they don't need quality control of any kind. It'd be like trying to make your house nicer by burning it down.
Also "This industry used to be about put players into places they've never been before, to experience things they've never felt before. The people who worked in it did so with passion for what they did, not so they could make it rich."
This was never true and will never be true. It's a business. Just because when you were younger you were easier to impress and had a more idealized view of the industry does not make that the case.
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I don't like the gaming industry as it is. Everything sucks. AAA is less about trying to take chances on making something incredible and more about pleasing the lowest common denominator, of which many screech from the tops of mountains, belittling those who actually have a valid opinion. Publishers no longer are PUBLISHERS but instead feel as though they are the ultimate gods of gaming, purchasing out the licenses to the best gaming franchises and milking them for all their worth. DLC practices are getting worse and worse, and the push to have more "free" (Read: Missing content designed to fool the non-informed consumer) online games. Hell, the industry is pushing more and more towards complete digital, online services, believing everyone in the world to already live in the future under the benevolent rule of Skynet.
The Indie market too is not doing so well, and it's oversaturated by mediocre titles by developers who don't have a passion for gaming but simply want to make a quick buck. The last console not to be produced by one of the three "mighty" titans was absolutely bollocks and showed that its creators were just as evil as the people making the other consoles. Games as good as Minecraft (in terms of what it did for indie gaming) are few and far between, and typically spawn a bazillion clones because these clone-developers believe that "if ain't broke, don't fix it" actually was supposed to be "if it ain't broke, remake the entire thing in Unity but miss everything that made the original good because we're unoriginal and we don't understand the golden era of video games."
Let's Plays by Pewdiepie apparently somehow are able to warrant millions of spoiled brats supremacy of YouTube, and Kotaku can write whatever random garbage spews from their mind and there will always be people who won't bat an eyelash. Some developers are leaving the industry because they receive enough hate over tiny decisions to match the Sun, whereas other developers are complete degenerates and it takes only a tiny realisation that nobody is laughing with them for a shitstorm to start. People review games by comparing them, not based on the games own merits, and people believe that all manner of "technical issues" (LEIK GUIZE ITZ LOCK'D 2 30FPS DIS R SHITE) should detract from the game's overall score, when it's clear they're the only one with their problems.
Console and PC wars continuing to rage on, and yet no developer wants to properly merge the gap out of fear they might actually convince gamers its okay to choose what works best for them. Ubisoft fucks PC games daily, Bethesda (generally) gives console players the cold shoulder, and Microsoft loves to screw with everybody equally. People still have it in their minds that console-exclusives are a good thing, and there are still "hardcore" gamers convinced that because a game has no more than the occasional button-click here and there, it shouldn't classify as a game. Meanwhile, "casual" gamers spend money on buying new items for Farmville or Angry Birds, items that take no more than 5 minutes to make and rake in hundreds of thousands of kilos worth of cocaine every day, giving the big publishers the incentive that suddenly all gamers are like that, so they can begin to push DLC right down the unwilling gaming public's throat.
I'm not done with gaming, but I'm pissed off that we've come to this. Only a few years ago, we were still in the warm and fuzzy period of gaming where things weren't as bad. YES. Some of these problems have been a constant. But they were nowhere near as drastic as they are now. This industry used to be about put players into places they've never been before, to experience things they've never felt before. The people who worked in it did so with passion for what they did, not so they could make it rich. Publishers weren't obsessed with licenses or DLC, they just wanted to rake in some profit off the side for distributing the games, as they rightfully should. Back then, you could look inside a game store and find a huge library of amazing games, not just a few awesome titles scattered through a lot of waste. Mario changed the industry forever. We need a new Mario (NOT A SEQUEL LIKE YOU'VE BEEN DOING FOR YEARS, NINTENDO).
Hate me if you will, but that's my perspective. Your move, gaming industry.
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