Riobux said:
It's not so much an industry that is in decline, it's people being more cautious. Back in the PS1 days, most games were good. Well, at least good enough to keep you entertained for a while. However, while EA is right in saying that games are lasting longer, I don't think they've recognised that fewer games are being created now than back ten years ago because of longer development time. Which, in turn, means less games.
As well as this, our standards have risen; or has quality lowered? Either way, we're a lot more cautious in what games to get. About five years ago, I'd pre-order a game which I had heard very little about and I was satisfied (mostly). Now, I'm ducking and weaving and only pre-ordering games which I can guarantee will be good and come free with extra stuff.
I will also add fan boy-ism has contributed to this. There's Call Of Duty players refusing to touch World Of Warcraft, there's the X-Box 360 owners refusing to touch PS3 and there's the gamers which are older then 13 refusing to play a game out of fears it's too childish. No one wants to take any risks and try something new, so they don't. Which means less sales generally.
In non-gaming news, we've also just been through a large economic mess. So that's probably effected it a lot
Is this a good thing or bad thing? Well, who knows really? It's good that games are being quality controlled more, but at the same time, they're being discriminated against for irrelevant reasons. So who's to say?
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The economic mess is still going on.
Also your wrong about development times to an extent. Simply because if you looked at old disc based games like say the original "Starflight" they used to hype them by pointing out that they took years to develop. Sure there WERE a number of relatively successful games that were created fairly quickly, but this was not always the case. For the best titles you were always looking at a multi-year effort. Heck, for some companies it was something of a tradition for a good portion of the design team to dress up in game-inspired costumes and pose for photos. Again "Starflight" comes to mind (the photo was printed on the inside of the cardboard sleeve), I believe they did it for the original "Wasteland", and then another one that sticks in mind is the Origin Systems crew dressed up as a lost expedition for the "World Of Ultima: Savage Empire" game (inside the faux pulp magazine inside). The point being that it was a major event.
I think one of the big problems is that the game industry has simply gotten too greedy. Development times are extended doubtlessly due to the developers wanting to keep them going so they have a job. On top of this, while it has created arguements here in the past, I am still not sure how someone can justify spending some of these budgets on game development. Oh sure, you look at the sheer number of games scrolling past in game credits and it's impressive, but by the same token I oftentimes wonder how many of these people are wasted, even if they aren't how the heck they can still justify development budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases. All criticisms aside, I've noticed few people even want to touch the subject of what Infinity Ward could possibly have spent half a billion dollars on (between game development and advertising) to create "Modern Warfare 2". I mean it was good, but it wasn't all that.
Looking at guys like Itigaki and his fight with Team Ninja over sums I remember being in the tens of millions, all I can do is sit there and go "WTF" in thinking that anyone feels they are justified in demanding *THAT* much money for game development. Not to mention of course the fact that even overlooking a tiny handfull of people like that, just going by the numbers some of these line coders must be being paid ridiculous amounts of money. Either that or someone is heating the offices by burning currency.
The bottom line is that I think the industry is getting greedy, and the greed of developers is of course raising the overall cost to produce games, which reduces the number of games being made overall. At the same time, having been ignored by the law (at least in the US) they have gotten a god complex about engaging in cartel behavior like price fixing and simply not competing with each other. Those things are hard to prove of course (as you can see by the endless battles with gas companies over pump prices) but are still illegal. Nobody has even bothered to really cast their gaze in this direction.
I also feel that as time has gone on games have also gotten if anything, easier to design. Back in the "old days" a game company pretty much had to design everything including the engine from scratch. Today companies buy the right to use existing engines for differant things and primarily just tweak them and add in their own artwork. This is why so many games are similar to others. Third Person Shooters, First Person Shooters, and other generes play so similarly because in the end they are simply variations of the same exact game engine. Liscence fees considered, if anything game development should have actually gotten CHEAPER, especially when looking at highly derivitive titles like... pretty much anything considered to be a shooter or brawler nowadays.
I've said all of this before (and better) in other posts, but I'd figure I'd say it here.
Truthfully I think we're in kind of a "rough spot" as far as games go, both in the way the industry has defined itself for the moment, and also because of the economy.
At times I actually think an industry collapse would be the best thing that could happen for video gaming as a whole. The destruction of these massive gaming corperations would of course kill gaming for a few years, but from the ashes would rise smaller companies more interested in their visions rather than "design by committee" yet again, and of course with the big companies and big pay days gone, you will also see less greedy developers who are simply happy to be able to make a living in the field, rather than acting like rock stars.
Oh sure with time it would all go corperate again, but we'd get a really good era out of it, and then have to wait for the next collapse for the cycle to start again. I honestly do not think there would be a great reduction in quality either. Things only cost as much as they do right now (service wise) because there are people willing to pay them that. It's sort of like pro-sports (though not exactly), and the whole reason why they decided to cap player's salaries so the richest owners couldn't get all the superstars, and leave all the other teams with winos rounded up from under bridges and in ditches, and dressed in uniforms.
