5 Reasons the Video Game Industry Is About to Crash

[gorfias]

Nice work sourcing Cracked bro. I don't even think I need to explain further why you are incorrect.

You got ninjad. I wrote back, "As for Cracked, I love their site. They often mix humor with real facts (such as history: example, last words of amazing tough people... they may be funny, but they're true)."

I'd rename the article "6 Reasons the Video Game Industry Is Going to Have To Change". A complete crash is unlikely, but it's very likely some of the big players will have to drop out.


I would also add reason 6: Idiotic sale expectations

That may be in association with their item number about crazy budgets. You put $0.5 billion into a game, it has to be a smash or you lose. Movies tried to get their budgets in order with movies like "The Rocketeer" and what they ended up with was a meh movie that made meh bucks. If its worth their time, developers would rather swing for the bleachers. As you write, it is costing them and leaving a vacuum where certain games should be (someone really said there's no market for Sci Fi in gaming!?!?)

 

[lapan]

That may be in association with their item number about crazy budgets. You put $0.5 billion into a game, it has to be a smash or you lose. Movies tried to get their budgets in order with movies like "The Rocketeer" and what they ended up with was a meh movie that made meh bucks. If its worth their time, developers would rather swing for the bleachers. As you write, it is costing them and leaving a vacuum where certain games should be (someone really said there's no market for Sci Fi in gaming!?!?)

Absolutely. But if your budget is so high you can't make a profit with several millions of sales you really have heavy mismanaging going on. Games that sell tens of millions of copies are really rare even in the AAA market, yet it seems to be their default sales-goal

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Cracked is dodgy as shit. Stick to writing articles about Roosevelt or whatever, guys.

I remember I stopped reading them for some reason... I forget why. but I actually don't miss it at al..

A few months ago Cracked published PETA pseudoscience as fact. I knew they were full of shit, but I had no idea just how full of shit Cracked was until they went and did that.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

They understand their product well enough that they're profitting from it.

Oh, I see you studied business studies.

Any company trying to achieve short-term goals can easily make a profit via exploitation. What they're going isn't good business.

Here's another opinion from another guy who didn't study business studies.

Yes, I'm sure richest-man-on-Earth Bill Gates's Microsoft will take a severe blow because of that dastardly CoD dog and his non-gamer devs. And Nintendo's 10 billion dollar bank account won't keep 'em going for another 40 years even if they lose money every year.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't remember the last flop that killed a studio. Worst case scenario, a producer cuts a studio off for producing said flop. Or a bigger studio absorbes devs. Big deal.

38 Games (The people who made Kingdom's of Amalur), big huge games (same issue as 38 Games), innumerable smaller studios, an entire publisher (THQ). All told, at least 2 dozen in the last 2 years.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't remember the last flop that killed a studio. Worst case scenario, a producer cuts a studio off for producing said flop. Or a bigger studio absorbes devs. Big deal.

38 Games (The people who made Kingdom's of Amalur), big huge games (same issue as 38 Games), innumerable smaller studios, an entire publisher (THQ). All told, at least 2 dozen in the last 2 years.

To quote AssCreed2, just because I heard this yesterday, "Power never dies, it's passed on". Most of those studios were simply merged or absorbed. So a few jobs were lost, some companies shut down. Happens all the time. Hardly the signs of gaming apocalypse.

 

[ThreeName]

A few months ago Cracked published PETA pseudoscience as fact. I knew they were full of shit, but I had no idea just how full of shit Cracked was until they went and did that.

Wow, I know the one I read wasn't that one, but that's just all the more reason to avoid them.