"the games industry is dead" - seemingly

uberpixie

"I really can't imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there."

Read and be amazed by the stupidy.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784989,00.asp

KdjaCL

Cos a 5 billion a year industry just disappears....right....



kdjac

-oRnein9-

uberpixie wrote:

"I really can't imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there."

Read and be amazed by the stupidy.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784989,00.asp

pure manure

Ciaran500

And nearly everyone that replies in the forum agrees with him.

FFS :rolleyes:

Horsefumbler

Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play

aye like those fps games on the PC where you have to use your mouse and keyboard

Illuvatar

Spider Solitaire sucks!

D

Oh please as long as good games come out then there will be a market. The writer seems to be ranting about having to buy a new games console/accessory every few years. It was never about the hardware it's about the software.

grimloch

Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play—unless gaming is your so-called life

i cannot think of one such game, apart from cs 1.6 or the likes which take a while to get into, hardly "ridicoulsy hard" unless your an uncoordinated oaf

TerrorFirmer

While the kids who are used to this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be repulsed and skip these new generations of machines altogether.

I cant believe its someones job to write this muck. :rolleyes:

Games have been steadily progressing since the days of the NES, and although the level of complaints rise with more violent and graphically superior games, the fan rate practically triples.

Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play—unless gaming is your so-called life—and so daunting to casual players that they will quickly reject them. Who needs to devote themselves to a game just to play it once in a while? I'll take Spider Solitaire instead.

Hey - this article just HAS to be written by an elderly man. There is no other logical explanation....

angelofdeath

i think he meant rediculously hard if you want to play against other gamers ala counter strike, but utter tripe other than that, the games industry has tonnes of scope left for invention

grimloch

when i started cs i found it quite hard, but thats because i was a beginner at it, his logic seems to say if its too hard just dont bother

uberpixie

Ciaran500 wrote:

And nearly everyone that replies in the forum agrees with him.

FFS :rolleyes:

Did you see the guy who was giving out about GT4 being too hard for his 4 yr old son to play?

And why do you have to unlock cars and tracks? Why can't you have instant access to them all at the start?

A lot of those guys seem to be after games that offer instant gratification.

hal9000

ahh hes just b!tchin because his four yr old can kick his a$$ in every game! sore loser. He naturally cant blame himself, hes got to blame the games industry

ObeyGiant

Most of these tech pundits get paid on a page-view basis, so by writing something controversial like this, he gets a lot of clicks very quickly as it spreads across the internet. I'm doubtful that he actually believes any of this nonsense - his reasoning is ridiculous and smacks of luddism, something strange for an otherwise smart tech guy.

However, he's not as far off as you'd thing. Even games developers have started predicting the end of the industry, at least as we know it. Most recently, Greg Costikyan delivered a speech at the Game Developer's Conference which included the fantastic line My friends, we are fucked. We are well and truly fucked. I suggest everyone read what he has to say instead of Dvorak's trolling/whoring.

angelofdeath

good read, but maybe a bit sensationalist, for years now mediocre titles have been rolling out by the bucketload, it's the few innovative titles that come along every now and again that keep the industry going and give it a base to work off of, personally i don't see anything changing in the near future

BloodBath

I'd say we are 15-20 years off true photo realism in pc's and consoles on a mass scale. Fair enough we won't need as much hardware upgrades as we do now but most companies at least in the console market make all their money from the games, not the hardware. That's like saying the film industry is dead because everyone has dvd players. Truely truely stupid. Big games are making more money than big movies these days. The scale of it can be seen by the likes of xtra-vision having almost half it's store dedicated to games. I can never see it happening tbh. As games become more realistic they will only attract larger audiences. That article is utter tripe and the writer should be completely discredited for writing it.


BloodBath

Dinner

Ciaran500 wrote:

And nearly everyone that replies in the forum agrees with him.

FFS :rolleyes:

Thats the saddest bit about it.


I think I'm right in saying that the author is "older" than the average age of people who play most games. So, just because he cant see the huge jumps between mario cart and GT4 doesnt mean the games industry is dying.

BlitzKrieg

anyone notice similarities between the games industry and the late studio system in hollywood (1940s)?


similarities include

-self censorship.

-owning the product and hardware (nintendo).

-mass production of medicore titles.

-little control of creators over their product.


The studio system fell apart and the games industy is looking to go the same way. Wont mean the end, will just mean a rethinking of the industry.

projectmayhem

-self censorship

i thought PEGI was industry-funded, but indipendant?

-mass production of mediocre titles

the same could be said of movies, music, tv shows, and so on... that is happening in every industry.

BlitzKrieg

the censorship is not by a governing body though (despite both industries were threatened by government censorship)


hmm on your second point you could be right. but the game industry has a much more laziness to it that can be seen in a similar fashion to the studio system. You stick whatever selling icon that is available and you tag the game on to it later.

Sand

The studio system fell apart and the games industy is looking to go the same way. Wont mean the end, will just mean a rethinking of the industry.

Actually, if anything it might get a lot worse. As games reach photo realism you need armies of artists, animators, programmers and so and so forth. Economies of scale mean the smaller developers are either bought out or squeezed out by the likes of EA. Independant developers stand relatively little chance - they need to develop an outstanding game in absolutley every respect to beat the big boys. And even then, they lose - Sega bought out Creative Assembly, makers of Total War. Now theyre making some ****e Total Warrior crap - some beat em up or rubbish for the console market using name recognition to sell- instead of devoting their time to the best RTS ever.

hmm on your second point you could be right. but the game industry has a much more laziness to it that can be seen in a similar fashion to the studio system. You stick whatever selling icon that is available and you tag the game on to it later.

Agreed, If a game has a film or book licence then 99% of the time its ****e. Developers just dont bother. Dave Perry got the Matrix licence and said "grand, if we packed dog **** into the boxes they'd still buy it - we can relax and not bother here". Last decent movie tie-in I can think of is AvP2, and that wasnt even tied to the movie at all really.

Retr0gamer

Sand wrote:

And even then, they lose - Sega bought out Creative Assembly, makers of Total War. Now theyre making some ****e Total Warrior crap - some beat em up or rubbish for the console market using name recognition to sell- instead of devoting their time to the best RTS ever.

Well it's not even out yet and was in developement long before Sega bought them out.

BloodBath

Actually, if anything it might get a lot worse. As games reach photo realism you need armies of artists, animators, programmers and so and so forth. Economies of scale mean the smaller developers are either bought out or squeezed out by the likes of EA. Independant developers stand relatively little chance - they need to develop an outstanding game in absolutley every respect to beat the big boys. And even then, they lose - Sega bought out Creative Assembly, makers of Total War. Now theyre making some ****e Total Warrior crap - some beat em up or rubbish for the console market using name recognition to sell- instead of devoting their time to the best RTS ever.

That's not true. Modern development software makes it easier and easier to achieve outstanding results and this will continue into the future.

Agreed, If a game has a film or book licence then 99% of the time its ****e. Developers just dont bother. Dave Perry got the Matrix licence and said "grand, if we packed dog **** into the boxes they'd still buy it - we can relax and not bother here". Last decent movie tie-in I can think of is AvP2, and that wasnt even tied to the movie at all really.

This is usually true but I can think of a couple more good tie ins Star wars galaxies, lotr -battle for middle earth to name 2. This has always been the case though, right from the start of consoles, et on thee atari 2600 anyone? Anyone that buys a game without reading some reviews deserves to be stung.


BloodBath

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

That's not true. Modern development software makes it easier and easier to achieve outstanding results and this will continue into the future

Are you kidding, or just really, really naive?

I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that (commercially successful) games are getting anything but insanely difficult to make.

BlitzKrieg

do you think we might get a blockbuster system? Less games during the year but 5-6 huge titles (with insane number of people working on it) at peak moments during the year?

Illuvatar

I'm sure we'll run out of console technology before we run out of idea's for games. They can keep making trilogies and most likely sell. Most people are idiots lacking common sense to see this. And Sony, Microsoft, ect. will keep adding things to consoles because they can't improve graphics, ect.
Who even knows? I could be talking out of my a$$. I can't tell the future and I haven't met anyone who can. This is all my best guess.

BloodBath

Are you kidding, or just really, really naive?

I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that (commercially successful) games are getting anything but insanely difficult to make.

There is no doubt they are getting more difficult but it's not exactly at epidemic proportions. Sure the likes of HL2 took a long time to make. Implementing the havok pyhsics into a game engine i'm sure took a hell of a lot of work but this will get easier. 3d models will get more complex. Textures will be of higher quality but it's not exactly a whole lot different from what they are doing now.I haven' heard any games companys moaning about how hard it is to make new games. If anything they are technology limited. They could release games of much higher graphical quality if the technology was there.


BloodBath

Gizzard

american press are retards

monument

BloodBath wrote:

There is no doubt they are getting more difficult but it's not exactly at epidemic proportions. Sure the likes of HL2 took a long time to make. Implementing the havok pyhsics into a game engine i'm sure took a hell of a lot of work but this will get easier.

I've been told that Havok (v2?) was built on the back of feedback from Valve... pretty much Valve saying 'can you make it do that', and the Havok team doing so.

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

I haven' heard any games companys moaning about how hard it is to make new games.

Well, obviously you haven't been listening. Recently, Oddworld Inhabitants quit the games industry completely, heading off to pastures new (Hollywood), claiming that the unrealistic demands on developers in a risk-averse environment drove them from games.

Similarly, Elixir shut down last week because they couldn't afford to keep making 'innovative' games - the high cost of development meant that no publisher would back their original IP.

Hell, I even posted Greg Costikyan's speech at GDC, which also explained how hard it is to make new games. From that same GDC talk, Warren Spector also talks about how hard it is to make new games. There are hundreds of examples of games developers moaning about how hard it is to make new games. I don't know how you haven't heard any.

BlitzKrieg

got a linky for the oddworld one please?