Video Games are Dead

[Felipe]

Interesting topic.

 

Personally I don't care if the game industry suddenly collapses. I'll probably still get a job doing something else. At the end for me is not about the money but mostly for the creative process.

 

Reading, Video games are dead, sound very sensationalist. It's like saying: Movies are dead, just because everyone is downloading them from some website.

 

The game industry is currently in a transformation process trying to adapt and finding a way of making money. That's why you can see companies and developers trying to implement new business models. That doesn't mean it's going to die. There will be games as long as there are players and developers.

 

I can also add that making a couple of thousand dollars per month for a single person operation is pretty damn good, you don't need to be earning 1m to be successful. 

[Antriel]

I think Witcher 2 sold remarkably well (google it, they are satisfied from what they said), without DRM. The Witcher 3 will also not have any DRM and I predict it will sell very well.

[Midnight]

Meh... Is it Armageddon already?

[fatalfluff]

Phil, with all due respect, I think it's time you retired.

 

The world has changed since that golden age you use as your reference point in time, when all people were happily paying money and there was no internet to bitch about products.

A lot of things have changed. Gas stations don't make money from selling gas anymore, they make their money from the candy, cigarettes and booze they sell in the shop (at least where I live). Musicians live off merchandise and concert tickets, since there's legal streaming. Internet dealers, ebay powersellers don't make their money with the products they sell, they add an extra buck to the shipping charges and that's what they live off. Car dealerships don't make a dime on new cars they sell, what they get out of it is a potential customer to sell overpriced oil changes to and the commissions they get from the banks for the leasing contracts.

 

"Welcome to the real world, Neo."

[philhark]

Phil, with all due respect, I think it's time you retired.

 

 

Yeah, what's the cut-off these days?  28?  The day you sign a mortgage?  Management starts looking for excuses to fire you as soon as you have too many responsibilities to work weekends? 

 

 

The world has changed since that golden age you use as your reference point in time

 

 

The failing, stagnant, anti-progress video game business makes $93 billion a year and there are five million unemployed technology workers.  Hmm.  Seems those two things might be related, but I'm not sure how...

[fatalfluff]

While I find a lot of your points basically valid ( I too was socialized in an era when people would pay 60 bucks for a PC game), I don't agree with the conclusion that it's all gone to shit. 

I think one must be agnostic about where the money comes from, as long as there is money flowing in (and there is).

 

People like to nag? Let them. People don't pay anymore? Get your money from the portals instead, who themselves bombarde the users with ads.

 

In the 90s you would get 10% net out of a classical publishing deal. I'm making (in absolute numbers) more today than I ever did back then. You just have to let go of that "an honest person pays an honest amount of dough for an host product", in my opinion anyways.

[LoneWolf]

you come to this conclusion due you not understanding the industry.

 

html 5 mobile web industry is a low entry point for non game developers and some real game developers, to make game clones of some mobile games for a quick buck. While it requires a wide skill set if you dont have a budget, in the end we make shlocky small games, clones, and sometimes interesting concepts by a few creative people. But the target are casuals non gamers, so you will rarely make a serious challenging game concept, since the market demands poor games. Now i entered this industry temporarily because of the low entry barrier since i am solo developer...but my aim and others is not to make this forever ( sell games for casuals and "buy my ebook" shlock ) but to develop a production flow and a budget to make better games for real platforms like PC or consoles if you really want(its dead end tho) moving on...this industry is not dead yet, since its not satured as app stores, but slowly it will be and all this forums will turn into buy my ebook nonsense, but we are not there yet.

 

now since you were talking about triple AAA companies, in the last 14 years these companies turned into corporations and while they still have talented people they are run by idiots in suits, so they want only money and take old IPs which are niche based and turn them into shlock for the widest audience to make money which in turn destroy the game design concept and we get the mess we have today.

 

while you might be frustrated i understand, the html 5 market its horrible, filled with clones, exploitation of the publishers and buy my ebook crap advices, but its low entry and still works. Sell a few games, get some experience and move to bigger, safer platforms like PC or Mobile if you learn the marketing ropes and have some budget.

 

Video games are not dead, triple AAA will always sell because of marketing and niche indie games will always sell, since triple AAA developers abandoned them since they want to sell to wider audience by making them dumber and dumber each year.

 

At least, thats my opinion anyway.

 

Good luck.

[Neoprofessor]

Did he even ever make a game? Sounds like all the reasons he failed and this is his on-line suicide rant before he kills his 6th grade teacher.

Why is thread even being aloud to continue?

[ZestyCube]

Hey Phil, I have read through your posts and you raise valid points regarding the dire issues plaguing the video games industry. However, I must say that perhaps what you are trying to say is that 'Video gamers have failed to emulate the mature audiences of other entertainment: art, literature, film, sport', 'Video games are you knew them are dead' or more so that 'Video game development as you knew it is dead'.

 

It may be that the profit-centric operations of game publishers and producers has ruined most of the industry and the magic of video games that we as children had experienced - the wonders of old classics like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Diablo, The Elder Scrolls, Prince of Persia, NFS etc.

 

Moreover, I will admit being subject to repeated disappointments due to game hype/advertising producing false hopes and the innumerous reasons that games can fail to satisfy. Notwithstanding those very true and valid points that you have raised I cannot say that good games are not being developed today - Mass Effect, Braid, Limbo, Fallout, XCOM and the list goes on for a while (plus the incoming titles from lesser known Indies). Many put a spin on older mechanics and can certainly be called derivative but, the experiences are worthwhile, enjoyable and novel; they are unique within themselves.

 

The industry may be exploiting its employees and they may be an awful lot of things that may be going wrong but, to insinuate that good developers and boldness of ideas have ceased to exist is going too far. The burst of pulp fiction during the advent of the paperback did not ruin books and the painting factories in China have not destroyed art.

 

The situation may be precarious right now and in your opinion it may even be irreparable (the permanency of the damage is debatable); however I say that video games cannot be dead. The market may be filled with tripe and me-toos but, video games are a medium and one good game reminds us where the pinnacle of its experiences lie; in my opinion the medium has to be more than what its lowest echelon embodies. Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but I won't speak for what the future may hold 10 or 20 years down the line.

 

I have enjoyed reading your insightful posts and would like to leave you with one last thought I have:

 

The number of games now available to us today have exploded beyond what a reasonable person can experience for themselves in their lifetime. I think that no matter the genre, medium, industry, profession, Sturgeon's Law always applies: 90% of everything is usually crap. More games? More crap. More gamers? More whining. No wonder it is impossible to locate the Marios and Contras of this generation.

[Cless]

So basically: Video games are dead. Long live video games.

[ozdy]

One thing that should be dead is this thread, please lock or at least don't bump

[keenblaze]

Wrong forum for this discussion, coz html5 games generally is free "fast-food" entertainment. Entertainment in different forms will be forever.