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An interesting article was published today on Cracked: http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-reasons-video-game-industry-about-to-crash.html

Many of you are probably well aware of what is discussed in that article. To summarize the 5 points it covers, talented artists and developers are being driven out of the industry by profit-focused businessmen with no video game experience. This is corrupting not only the process of how games are created and reviewed, but the constantly inflating budgets and imposed deadlines are degrading the quality of new work and suffocating innovation.

The article does not definitively predict what the outcome of this will be, but it does point out that the current trend is unsustainable. What are your thoughts on the future of the gaming industry, and where do you see it in 5 or 10 years from now? What, if anything could save it? I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter.

The Industry could use a good culling. Any change to towards Cowadooky: Black Plops not being the industry standard, is good for me at least.If we have to take a few steps backwards on the tech train for a while, whatever. I'm not sure I really buy into their predictions though.

Oh nothing really new in this, we're heading straight for a video game crash a la '83.

I don't think it will crash per se. My worries are that it will become impossible for any developers to get their games published by anyone except the very largest companies, like EA. It's a gradual monopolization of the industry.

That's obviously already started to happen of course, but how far will it go I wonder? One of the most telling examples of how publishers are in such a competitive market was the rushed release of Rome Total War 2. The game could hardly be called finished and Creative Assembly knew it, but SEGA had to have their way with its release date and certainly swayed the initial reviewers for a positive rating. It has taken weeks of scrambling by CA to try to fix that game.

Between Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, I don't think the industry will crash, but I do think that the large publishers (EA, etc.) will collapse.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Between Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, I don't think the industry will crash, but I do think that the large publishers (EA, etc.) will collapse.

I don't think greenlight is helping, it's actively hurting indy developers and has received a gak ton of criticism.

Well on the flip side of that, Valves servers are a limited resource, and a lot of the games that do end up on greenlight aren't anything 95% of the people who use Steam would bother with, so really (IMO) its just a quality control system that makes it easier for people such as myself, who don't spend endless hours looking up random indy games, to find and play them.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Well on the flip side of that, Valves servers are a limited resource, and a lot of the games that do end up on greenlight aren't anything 95% of the people who use Steam would bother with, so really (IMO) its just a quality control system that makes it easier for people such as myself, who don't spend endless hours looking up random indy games, to find and play them.

Except that the "quality control" side of it is completely flawed. gak games still make it through and good games with enough votes still get locked in limbo while the company bleeds out.

I haven't really followed greenlight that closely so I wouldn't know. Is it really that bad?

Greenlight was a waste of Valve's time. Greenlight is a golden plated diamond hidden in a building full of crap. You'll find some cool stuff there, good luck actually finding it though

 Reckoner wrote:
I don't think it will crash per se. My worries are that it will become impossible for any developers to get their games published by anyone except the very largest companies, like EA. It's a gradual monopolization of the industry.

That's not a bad thing necessarily.

The problem simply put is that companies are not likely to take a risk on things that do not sell well. It is not an unreasonable stance to take all things considered, but let's not pretend that the big publishers(and the developers under their umbrella) have not taken chances.

What is a problem however is when the heads of the companies get sacked to appease the public hate machine like we saw with John Ritticello from EA.
The free DLCs for Mass Effect 3's multiplayer? He was a very strong proponent of that. He insisted that the game's multiplayer component would suffer from paid DLC packages as it would "gate" off access to game content. He was a strong proponent of the "Fan appreciation boxes" that BioWare still have set up where if you are a new player to the game or install a new DLC for ME3's multiplayer and have not gotten one, you can receive a loot box with characters and weapons from that DLC.
Sure you can argue that they made more money from people buying the loot boxes, but past a certain point people wised up and did not buy them as a regular way to fill out their inventory. The boxes quickly became a way for players to show appreciation to the devs who worked on the projects, with many players opting to spend anywhere from $5 to $15 on the loot boxes depending on their enjoyment of the DLC.

And Ritticello got sacked for a profit slip and as the focus of "ruined games".

We can always trust Kan to rush to EA's defense.

Seriously, doing the right thing in one game doesn't excuse ruining a LOT of other stuff. I could go over the list but I really CBA to look up the details.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I haven't really followed greenlight that closely so I wouldn't know. Is it really that bad?

It can be.

How The War Z got greenlighted is anyone's guess.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Reckoner wrote:
I don't think it will crash per se. My worries are that it will become impossible for any developers to get their games published by anyone except the very largest companies, like EA. It's a gradual monopolization of the industry.

That's not a bad thing necessarily.

The problem simply put is that companies are not likely to take a risk on things that do not sell well. It is not an unreasonable stance to take all things considered, but let's not pretend that the big publishers(and the developers under their umbrella) have not taken chances.

What is a problem however is when the heads of the companies get sacked to appease the public hate machine like we saw with John Ritticello from EA.
The free DLCs for Mass Effect 3's multiplayer? He was a very strong proponent of that. He insisted that the game's multiplayer component would suffer from paid DLC packages as it would "gate" off access to game content. He was a strong proponent of the "Fan appreciation boxes" that BioWare still have set up where if you are a new player to the game or install a new DLC for ME3's multiplayer and have not gotten one, you can receive a loot box with characters and weapons from that DLC.
Sure you can argue that they made more money from people buying the loot boxes, but past a certain point people wised up and did not buy them as a regular way to fill out their inventory. The boxes quickly became a way for players to show appreciation to the devs who worked on the projects, with many players opting to spend anywhere from $5 to $15 on the loot boxes depending on their enjoyment of the DLC.

And Ritticello got sacked for a profit slip and as the focus of "ruined games".

Yeah, but innovation is not necessarily synonymous with high risk. Any company (not just the big ones) with a mind to stay in business will probably be averse to taking a risk on something that will not sell well. And yes, big companies have been innovative in some ways too especially with the scale on which games are made now. What I dislike about the big publishers is that they force the smaller developers into compliance with their financial demands and compromise the integrity and quality of the games those people are working on. I have to use Mass Effect as an example. The original Bioware vision of ME's ending was what we all wanted, multiple endings that reflected more specifically the choices we made during our 3-game playthrough. This is what CD Projekt Red has done with the Witcher so far, and it's what they will do in the third installation of the trilogy. Hell, I'm pretty sure there were 16 different endings in the Witcher 2 and it was an AWESOME game. If Bioware hadn't been forced to waste time creating a multiplayer component for ME3 at the demand of EA, we would all have a much different opinion on how that trilogy ended.

That's what I hate, that kind of manipulative abuse of developers and customers alike that leaves people feeling cheated. If the only way a game can get published in the future is by a massive company like EA, it's going to mean that they will have their fingers in all the pies and pressuring the studios to meet unrealistic deadlines and to populate their games with more micro-transactions and pay-to-play content that really could have just been released with the game or in a more fleshed out expansion pack.

Sorry, I was very proud to be from the same city that Bioware was founded in and went to the same school as the founders, and it crushed me when they sold out. So I'm unreasonably sensitive about the topic.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

How The War Z got greenlighted is anyone's guess.

It was consistently in the top 10 best sellers on Steam for a good while after its release so people obviously bought it even after its many flaws were public knowledge. Its pitch did sound interesting (I know it was very similar to DayZs) and that is what gets games greenlit.

Gaming isn't going to crash, if anything it is flourishing. All 5 items that are listed in that article are true but they are most prevalent in AAA publishers such as EA and Activision. Innovation will never come from AAA games as they have far, far too much spent on them (although I'm not sure where all that money goes given the 'quality' of the end product) and they are designed purely to appeal to people who 'buy these kinds of games'. In many respects the gaming industry has become like the film industry, a few vacuous big name 'blockbusters' with massive budgets and thriving indie film industry which is where the majority of good films actually come from.

The interesting games are those that come from the margins; developers who have become burnt out by the AAA grind, people with good ideas who would never have been given a penny by big name publishers or games that don't fit a particular 'demographic'.

Kickstarter has quite literally kickstarted indie games. There have been indie games for years of course but they tended to have tiny budgets and development teams which really limited their potential, nowadays however you have games like Star Citizen (which as rasied $30 million and counting from crowdfunding alone) rubbing shoulders with games like Confederate Express or FTL which probably wont have even existed without crowdfunding. From a personal perspective the games that I am looking forward to are almost universally from, at most, medium sized developers and these days AAA games hold absolutely nothing new or of interest to me.

TL: DR AAA games are in trouble for the reasons mentioned in this article but gaming as a whole hasn't been as healthy for years, probably not since the days of the bedroom coders in the late 80's.

You are aware that it was two entirely separate teams doing the story and MP on ME3, right?

EA might have insisted on the multiplayer but the multiplayer actually was a saving grace of the game. It kept people playing in between the DLCs rather than trading/selling the game and then picking it back up with DLCs.

Not to mention EA footed the bill for founding a second team to do the multiplayer component.

EA also saved an orphanage from burning down by putting it out with their own precious life fluids...
They also keep the moon from escaping and they stop rainbows from killing us all.

 purplefood wrote:
They also keep the moon from escaping and they stop rainbows from killing us all.

I get you think Kan is whiteknighting EA but if BioWare did not develop ME3's multiplayer component then no one can legitimately say EA forced BioWare to "waste time on the multiplayer," which was in fact a claim posted ITT.

The big video game producers might crash, but the small ones like Chucklefish look to be doing pretty good.

Manchu wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
They also keep the moon from escaping and they stop rainbows from killing us all.

I get you think Kan is whiteknighting EA but if BioWare did not develop ME3's multiplayer component then no one can legitimately say EA forced BioWare to "waste time on the multiplayer," which was in fact a claim posted ITT.

We've known him long enough, he's always been whiteknighting EA.

Let's be honest, this is the publisher that ruined some of the best studio's in the business, westwood, bullfrog etc. Hell, they turned C&C into a fething browser game. No amount of whiteknighting will get me to respect them.

Also, a fun little bit of trivia.

EA was named Electronic Arts because the company was formed by developers who wanted more recognition for devs. I like how they have done worse things to studio's then what they tried to escape from.

Manchu wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
They also keep the moon from escaping and they stop rainbows from killing us all.

I get you think Kan is whiteknighting EA but if BioWare did not develop ME3's multiplayer component then no one can legitimately say EA forced BioWare to "waste time on the multiplayer," which was in fact a claim posted ITT.

It doesn't matter if he was whiteknighting.
There are plenty of other reasons to hate EA.

 Kanluwen wrote:
You are aware that it was two entirely separate teams doing the story and MP on ME3, right?

EA might have insisted on the multiplayer but the multiplayer actually was a saving grace of the game. It kept people playing in between the DLCs rather than trading/selling the game and then picking it back up with DLCs.

Not to mention EA footed the bill for founding a second team to do the multiplayer component.

Then they should have dedicated the resources put into the multiplayer component into finishing the story. My point was, why should multiplayer and DLC have to save a game? The franchise did fine in 1 and 2 without it. In fact, 2 did amazingly well. So the third game in a single-player RPG franchise just happened to "need" multiplayer? That's what its "saving grace" was? I don't agree.

The multiplayer may have bolstered revenue for the continuation of DLC purchases, or maybe it helped the dedicated players of the franchise feel like they were not totally cheated by the resolution of the series. That entire conundrum could have been avoided if they had put everything they had into finishing it off right, but that wouldn't be lucrative enough now would it?

 Reckoner wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You are aware that it was two entirely separate teams doing the story and MP on ME3, right?

EA might have insisted on the multiplayer but the multiplayer actually was a saving grace of the game. It kept people playing in between the DLCs rather than trading/selling the game and then picking it back up with DLCs.

Not to mention EA footed the bill for founding a second team to do the multiplayer component.

Then they should have dedicated the resources put into the multiplayer component into finishing the story. My point was, why should multiplayer and DLC have to save a game? The franchise did fine in 1 and 2 without it. In fact, 2 did amazingly well. So the third game in a single-player RPG franchise just happened to "need" multiplayer? That's what its "saving grace" was? I don't agree.

You do understand that designers for a multiplayer component of a game are not necessarily going to be experienced in designing for the single player element, right?

The multiplayer may have bolstered revenue for the continuation of DLC purchases, or maybe it helped the dedicated players of the franchise feel like they were not totally cheated by the resolution of the series. That entire conundrum could have been avoided if they had put everything they had into finishing it off right, but that wouldn't be lucrative enough now would it?

This suggests to me that you did not play the multiplayer component of ME3. You did not have to spend anything to play the multiplayer component, provided you bought the game new. The only thing you had to pay for is the Online Pass if you bought the game used.

The "saving grace" of the multiplayer is that it was fun and encouraged cooperative shenanigans. It was not a multiplayer where you "competed" against another team of people. It was you and your friends (or three strangers), playing as a group of "unknown soldiers" in the midst of the Reaper War fighting against waves of AI enemies until you extracted.

 Reckoner wrote:

Then they should have dedicated the resources put into the multiplayer component into finishing the story. My point was, why should multiplayer and DLC have to save a game? The franchise did fine in 1 and 2 without it. In fact, 2 did amazingly well. So the third game in a single-player RPG franchise just happened to "need" multiplayer? That's what its "saving grace" was? I don't agree.

I'm a big fan of ME3, but any questions relating to why or why not the main story was deemed poor in many folks eyes and thus the game needed saving via multiplayer at all, comes down to the simple fact the lead writer for 1+2 was no longer the lead writer, he was boxed off to help Old Republic.

In my mind it really has nothing to do with resources or what they should have done, it is the simple fact the supporting writers for the first two games where not enough for the third on their own.


Also in defense of it, the multiplayer was a hell a lot of fun. Its still the online game I've played the most outside of MMO's in the past three years.

Are we seriously going to devolve this from "the whole of the industry is in danger" to "let's whine about EA" to "let's whine about ME3"?

 Melissia wrote:
Are we seriously going to devolve this from "the whole of the industry is in danger" to "let's whine about EA" to "let's whine about ME3"?

No.We're going to devolve it to 'lets while about ME3's ending'

But nah. Really people. I'm a cynic of the industry, especially AAA publishing, but the situation isn't that dire. There's already a shift where companies are moving away from AAA games to producing more smaller projects of varying size. The industry is diversifying. It's not dying anytime soon despite my continued whining about DRM shenanigans and over use of DLC.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Are we seriously going to devolve this from "the whole of the industry is in danger" to "let's whine about EA" to "let's whine about ME3"?

No.We're going to devolve it to 'lets while about ME3's ending'

But nah. Really people. I'm a cynic of the industry, especially AAA publishing, but the situation isn't that dire. There's already a shift where companies are moving away from AAA games to producing more smaller projects of varying size. The industry is diversifying. It's not dying anytime soon despite my continued whining about DRM shenanigans and over use of DLC.

Even if it does, it'll really be only the big ones that die, the smaller devs and producers are doing fine.

Even the big ones have more than enough money to survive. As inept as non-gamer CEO's are are their jobs, there aren't that many problems facing games that don't face other industires (namely film and television) so harking on them as the doom of the industry is melodramatic.

Game publishers follow the money. Once people get fed up with the hijinks and move away from things like day one DLC, preorders with no demos, and all that, they'll probably stop doing them. Budgets will solve themselves especially after the Square Sleeping Dogs/Tomb Raider debacle and I don't know any dedicated game player who actually trusts review mills for anything (this is what user reviews are for).

Really the biggest problem they list is the flight of talent from the industry due to work conditions. Hell look at what Acti-Blizz did to West and Zampella. Yeah, they stick around because they're masochists, but that happens to people all the time in the industry. They get treated like crap and they leave. Except they don't leave the industry. They go indie.

I can't really even trust user reviews these days. I just ask someone on my friends list instead.

 Reckoner wrote:
An interesting article was published today on Cracked: http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-reasons-video-game-industry-about-to-crash.html

Sounds a lot like the been-dying-for-years movie industry.