I do not hope for a crash, and I don't think anyone should. This is the main reason why; do you know what the first casualty of an untenable financial situation will be? Innovation. In a market where video games struggle for profitability, great stuff like Shadow of the Colossus would not be made. Studios would focus on cranking out stuff that's fast and cheap. It's a mistake to think that a crash of some kind would benefit the industry. Quite the opposite really, as the majority of publishers would quickly fall back to cranking out the safe bets.
Do you hope for an industry crash?
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Why would I want a crash? Some people expect it will make it a better place, and only good games will raise from it, as if the end of V for Vendetta involved a lot of people and flowers singing humbaya; when the truth is far more grim than that. Imagine dozens of small studios closing monthly, imagine monopolies getting ticker and even less risk involved, imagine even more ways for games to monetize. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
You thing the 80s crisis make a dent on Atari? Think of all the other developers/publishers that were not Atari. What happened to them? They didn't blossom in a more free environment, they simply vanished from memory.
Even small, indie games costs thousands of dollars that people debt in hopes of recouping later; those will disappear. Games that are not familiar franchises are too risky (things like Bioshock Infinite or Spec Ops); those will disappear too. In the end, we will be left with even less publishers making the same franchises over and over, and the occasional licensed property game; so, expect a lot of Iron man and FIFA games in the future, because that is all you will get.
You thing the 80s crisis make a dent on Atari? Think of all the other developers/publishers that were not Atari. What happened to them? They didn't blossom in a more free environment, they simply vanished from memory.
Even small, indie games costs thousands of dollars that people debt in hopes of recouping later; those will disappear. Games that are not familiar franchises are too risky (things like Bioshock Infinite or Spec Ops); those will disappear too. In the end, we will be left with even less publishers making the same franchises over and over, and the occasional licensed property game; so, expect a lot of Iron man and FIFA games in the future, because that is all you will get.
I don't want the industry to crash, but it just might be what it needs for it to reorganize its priorities. I'd much rather have games with smaller budgets that don't feel like samey clones of one another than the yearly crop of titles that lives under the "Five million copies sold or more" Sword of Damocles. The only way to guarantee these numbers nowadays is to ape Call of Duty, and I think I can safely say most of us are getting sick of generic brown shooters.
The biggest problem I have with the current industry is that it's more a business than a creative endeavour. Everything is planned on projected revenue instead of how inspiring or thought-provoking a given project might be, because project costs continuously increase. The only reason publishers are revising their expectations of good game sales on the rise is because they feel they need more money to funnel into more technical research.
It's the Graphics Race that's choking the industry, essentially. Things tend to calm down once a particularly long-lived generation is well established (i.e. the current-gen systems, especially in the PS3's case), and then the stakes are upped once a new generation shows up.
A crash would allow graphics tech to potentially remain at a standstill, which would allow for games produced for less, and by entities that wouldn't entirely be in it for the sake of pleasing a set of shareholders. I really don't care if my games don't ooze HD, SSAO and other whatsits out their wazoos - all I care about is the quality of the game mechanics and storyline. Those are things that don't require a masters in software engineering, or technical pioneers along the lines of John Carmack.
The biggest problem I have with the current industry is that it's more a business than a creative endeavour. Everything is planned on projected revenue instead of how inspiring or thought-provoking a given project might be, because project costs continuously increase. The only reason publishers are revising their expectations of good game sales on the rise is because they feel they need more money to funnel into more technical research.
It's the Graphics Race that's choking the industry, essentially. Things tend to calm down once a particularly long-lived generation is well established (i.e. the current-gen systems, especially in the PS3's case), and then the stakes are upped once a new generation shows up.
A crash would allow graphics tech to potentially remain at a standstill, which would allow for games produced for less, and by entities that wouldn't entirely be in it for the sake of pleasing a set of shareholders. I really don't care if my games don't ooze HD, SSAO and other whatsits out their wazoos - all I care about is the quality of the game mechanics and storyline. Those are things that don't require a masters in software engineering, or technical pioneers along the lines of John Carmack.
I'm not so much hoping for a crash as I am a shift in the paradigm. It may mean an industry recession of a sort, but I feel that the AAA market is stagnating, becoming too bloated and awful to sustain itself. It could be good for everyone if things got shaken up a little, though I will of course pity the poor folks who will inevitably lose their jobs in the wake.
Did you went through the trouble of making an account just so you can quote me? XDEA Games said:
I can't really imagine a worse fate for the games industry. Steam would shrivel up as only indie games and (probably) old games remain. So there goes much of PC gaming. Origin would probably cease to exist. Microsoft and Sony would leave the market to Nintendo, who, without the competition, would once again be left as "King of the Mountain" while completely killing any drive to innovate within the company, out of fear that further innovation could lead to backlash.
I do see the big budget games decreasing in number, because games like SWOTOR, Dead Space 3, and oh... some other game shouldn't NEED to break records in order to survive. SWOTOR was only feasible if they bear Blizzard in a genre they have come to define. Dead Space 3 needed millions of copies to be sold to even have a chance to continue the franchise. It's ridiculous.
I do see the big budget games decreasing in number, because games like SWOTOR, Dead Space 3, and oh... some other game shouldn't NEED to break records in order to survive. SWOTOR was only feasible if they bear Blizzard in a genre they have come to define. Dead Space 3 needed millions of copies to be sold to even have a chance to continue the franchise. It's ridiculous.