AAA industry on the brink.

[Fonejackerjon]

Seriously, has the AAA industry ever been this bad?

Broken game, after broken game, patches, DLC, microtranactions Season passes. We have had bad practices in the past, but its all coming together at once now it seems.

Question? Do you think the industry will crash or repair itself? If so how?

Discuss, please.

 

[Rozalia1]

People love to be dramatic. This has been going on for many years and there are no signs we're approaching any sort of crash.

 

[Fonejackerjon]

People are always so dramatic. This has been going on for many years and there are no signs we're approaching any sort of crash.

Remember the 83 crash? gaming had never been more popular then it was a sudden act People will only take so much shit.

Gamers are like abused dogs take it for ages then they will eventually bite back.

 

[Morgoth780]

Until people stop preordering broken games, I doubt there will be a crash.

 

[Fonejackerjon]

Until people stop preordering broken games, I doubt there will be a crash.

Maybe but I think most would agree that the industry is certainly in a bad way at the moment.

I echo AAA only though! not indie.

 

[leberkaese]

Gaming is too diversified nowadays to even compare it to the 1980s.

If AAA market crashes you still have Indie gaming with millions of people buying games.
If that crashes you got Facebook games with millions of people (that not even have heard of some gaming crash) playing games.
If western gaming market crashes you got (unlike 1983) the Japanese market that probably won't even care about that.

Maybe some big studios will go down... EA and Ubisoft. But who cares?
The good developers they still have will become unemployed and start to develop their own small Indie games.

 

[Fonejackerjon]

Gaming is too diversified nowadays to even compare it to the 1980s.

If AAA market crashes you still have Indie gaming with millions of people buying games.
If that crashes you got Facebook games with millions of people (that not even have heard of some gaming crash) playing games.
If western gaming market crashes you got (unlike 1983) the Japanese market that probably won't even care about that.

Maybe some big studios will go down... EA and Ubisoft. But who cares?
The good developers they still have will become unemployed and start to develop their own small Indie games.

I did mean AAA only, Gaming as a whole is fine, indie and mobile will survive as they are ubiquitous

 

[Rozalia1]

Remember the 83 crash? gaming had never been more popular then it was a sudden act People will only take so much shit.

Gamers are like abused dogs take it for ages then they will eventually bite back.

People love to compare it to that, no there is no comparison to be made. Ubisoft pushing doing a couple of bad jobs does not compare to what was going on in those days.

I did mean AAA only, Gaming as a whole is fine, indie and mobile will survive as they are ubiquitous

EA and Ubisoft down to their last fiver?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Gamers are like abused dogs take it for ages then they will eventually bite back.

Are you sure this prose is purple enough? What about adding some historical analogy, like Rosa Parks or the "First they came" poem? That'll get the natives restless!

Gaming is fine. A few developers and publishers will go belly up, but developers and publishers go belly up all the time. In the 90's everything worth playing came from Origin or Microprose or Looking Glass Studios. Didn't require a "gaming crash" for that to change.

 

[leberkaese]

I did mean AAA only, Gaming as a whole is fine, indie and mobile will survive as they are ubiquitous

Well, but you asked how it's gonna repair itself. Indie games are the answer.

Obsidian: Used to develope games for Bethesda (New Vegas), Bioware (kotor2) and lately THQ/Ubisoft (South Park: Stick of Truth). Now they're doing their own thing with Project Eternity.
Larian: Formerly developed Divinity titles for big publishers but then did a RPG the way they wanted to. And it was a bigger success than any of their previous titles
Slightly Mad Studios: Used to develop some of the Need for Speed titles, now they're working on Project Cars. And that game already has an insanely huge fanbase, probably bigger than most of the Need for Speed games.
Roberts Space Industries: Star Citizen has more funding than most games from big publishers.

What I want to say with these examples: Even if we had a big crash where all big publishers die... would there be that huge change?

The publishers will maybe be gone. But the heads behind their games won't go away. And as these examples are showing: Nowadays even Indie games have the money and scale of most 'big titles'.
Those guys behind Halo, Mass Effect, Total War... they will simply make their own gaming studio after 'their boss' is gone. And with big publishers (that get most of the money in the gaming industry) gone, people will have a lot more money to spend into these small projects and studios.

The market crashed in the 80's because those developers behind the games had nowhere to go. Now we have the internet. Internet hooray!
Also diversified gaming!

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

I have not pre-ordered a single game nor have I bought one with any online activation required.
I'm still waiting.. 9 years later.

No, I don't think a crash will happen.
I can only hope that it doesn't go so far as renting/streaming games per hour before people take a stand.
AAA does deserve some hand-slapping for all the consumer unfriendly things they do.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm guessing that this is inspired by Assassin's Creed Unity. Well, I'm not too worried. With Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Alien Isolation also having released recently (or releasing soon), it's hard to really get worked up just because Unity underperformed.

Really, it is just way too easy to look at one failure and get all nervous about a crash, but when you consider that that we have seem to be having more success stories, not to mention the fact that that failure was actually not that horrible, saying that we're on the brink of a crash seems melodramatic.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Ah yes, one game was shit so the AAA market is doomed.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

I'd hope not, as whilst the AAA is doing some dodgy things, it's these things they're copying from the Mobile Industry who are copying what bloody Casinos do. So if the AAA falls it most likely won't be the renaissance of the Indies and more of a Mobile Dark Ages, If anything EA, Activision, etc will just axe all their AAA studios and invest wholesale in cheapo Mobile Games.

Pretty surprised they haven't done that already.

 

[Fonejackerjon]

Ah yes, one game was shit so the AAA market is doomed.

Mate, almost Every news story at the moment is about a broken game, or a season pass announced before the game is even released. Ass Creed is only one of many fucks up lately.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

There won't be another market crash like the '83 one. Studios and publishers may kill themselves by alienating their fans with too many crap games or underhanded tactics but as a whole the AAA industry is a juggernaut compared to the 80's market.
The current state of some publishers is unsustainable for those particular publishers, if and only if they don't pay attentiont to the damage they're causing themselves.
Since gaming isn't a niche market like it was in the 80's, its not as susceptible to a crash even remotely similar to the big one.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Not really, I can't see it happening like the 80's crash did and even then it won't all collapse in one go, a studio or 3 will close down at best but now the whole AAA gaming sector.

I have seen quite a lot of fuck ups in the indie gaming dept, especially the ones that threaten Gabe, deliver extremely hollow copy cat games, it's not just the AAA sector that has it's shit, all other sectors have their own shit too.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Of course it isn't.

And just because Unity is broken doesn't mean the last several big releases have been. In any case, smaller releases have been doing quite well and...well, the amount of available content is vast.

Nobody's hurting for gameage.

 

[Teoes]

It won't crash, but I'm not convinced it'll repair itself. Some nonsense will cease, only to be replaced by all-new nonsense.

People love to be dramatic. This has been going on for many years and there are no signs we're approaching any sort of crash.

Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It just makes me want to set myself on fire!

 

[MHR]

The 80's game crash was like a bunch of kids playing stick ball, a couple of kids fall down and skin their knees playing it, and now suddenly the great neighborhood stickball prohibition kills what little life there was in it.

Now gaming is like the NFL. People are getting brain damage by ramming each other's skulls together like crash-test dummies, but people are still paying them millions to do it, and you'd be laughed at for suggesting that it will ever be different.

/point
/laugh