Has gaming passed it's peak?

[thejboy88]

It's a thought that's been on my mind a lot recently. With the latest console generation already out, it can't have escaped anyone's notice that there isn't really as much hype or excitement for the new generation as there was for the old.

That, and it seems that there isn't really as many "big" things going on with gaming as there used to be. With the past generation, with the Wii, 360 and PS3, there was a slew of mainstream attention, both good and bad, as well as massive titles that are still held as great games today.

But now? I can't help but feel that the gaming community doesn't really seem as into our current generation, and that all the steam seems to have gone out of all the innovations and discussions about it.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense or if this will be in any way coherent to my reader, but it's just a thought I wanted to get out there.

 

[Majinash]

I think you're just putting too much weight behind people loving a new console release. Gaming is getting stronger and stronger, more people have access to computers, more people are playing silly games on smartphones. Hell even the mainstream media is reporting on DOTA2's $10,000,000 prize pool for TI4.

Maybe gaming is just changing. It isn't about getting the SNES or N64 before your friends. But all the change I've seen is simply growth.

 

[Savagezion]

It has passed a peak, but it will have its ups and downs is my guess. This whole generation was really unfriendly to consumers. Even outside of Microsoft's huge blunder, you have a PSN requirement for online play and the Wii-U just sitting there saying "buy me Nintendo made me." All 3 launches had little wind behind their sails. Xbone had Titanfall if you like shooters but that died out fast for whatever reason. There is attempted hype trains for stuff like Destiny or whatnot but none of it really took hold on the community from what I can tell. I would say the new Zelda title + Hyrule Warriors has the largest actual grip on the community. As in people choosing to talk about it and psych themselves up over it. (However, that console has been out a full year ahead of the competition) You have that Splatoon that I see people mention and say "looks cool" but then it gets dropped. I am personally "meh" on Splatoon.

Last gen had motion controls going up against a pretty large graphical leap. Last gen was a peak and to expect a peak after a peak may be asking too much. My guess is that it will take a few years for this gen to really shine. Every game I see coming out on PS4 is using 30 FPS to compensate for the power they are trying to push. Which will probably improve as devs get more familiar with the systems. All 3 consoles expected to sell their consoles on brand recognition instead of a strong launch. Now we are watching them all stumble their way out of the gate to 2015.

Last gen 360 had a strong launch but it seems like it lost steam as the gen went on. (Especially upon trying to push Kinect thanks to Wii sales) PS3 launched weak but picked up steam as the gen went on. Then the Wii just never quite made it up to par with the others.

As for the innovation of next gen, 30 FPS kinda covers it. Devs need time with these new machines before we will see much in the way of innovation. Right now, they can't even give us a standard 60 FPS with the graphics upgrade they promised.

 

[Shpongled]

The current "gaming community" - that is, gaming forums where gamers come to dicuss games, is in a pretty horrific state imo. All large parts of the community seem to want to do anymore is whine about things. Whether it's sexism, DRM, Steam selling the wrong type of game, characters with exagerated features, whatever new controversy of the month takes over and the community has become almost toxic imo. Why would anyone bother to try and be excited about the new consoles on this forum for example? Any discussion about them just dissolves into PC vs console dick waving contests or circlejerking about how Microsoft is literally the Fourth Reich.

That said, gaming itself is coming along in leaps and bounds. The AAA genre is finally starting to divert from the spunkgargleweewee formula, solid indie games are finally getting the attention they deserve, we've just had new consoles releases that, if nothing else, will spur on technological progress for both PC and consoles, and Oculus Rift is just around the corner. Personally i think asking whether gaming is passed its peak now is kinda like asking if the automotive industry was passed it's peak in the 60's or medicine was passed it's peak in the early 30's. No, technological progress marches on. Gaming is here to stay.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I wouldn't worry. After all, gaming has been "past its prime" before. Just ask anyone old enough to remember 1982.

Spoiler: Pac Man Fever... I saw this the night it aired. ;)

Spoiler: There was nowhere else to be

 

[stroopwafel]

I think we'll see fewer and fewer games, that's for sure. I mean the new consoles have been out since november last year and there is hardly anything worthwhile out for it yet(I had a lot of fun with Watch Dogs and NFS Rivals on PS4 but they are hardly what I would call 'system sellers'). Then again I remember when PS3 was released there was not much to play on than Resistance and a list of (often shoddy) PC ports. As time went on though(probably in its third year or so) it became the platform of some of my most favorite games with the PS3 probably becoming my most played console to date. So hopefully history will repeat itself.

What was apparent back then, and is even more prominent now, is that games become too expensive to make. We already(more or less) saw the middle market disappearing last gen, with new titles often being such huge investments they become make or break situations for the companies that make/release them. Obviously this stifles creativity leading to companies either trying to copy eachother's success(behold brown military shooter) or resorting to low cost/low risk alternatives like smartphone/tablet/browser games.

Another additional complication is that new high-profile games are nearing 5-year development cycles b/c of the resource heavy/time intensive labor that goes into making them. So we have high costs, long development time and little incentive for creative risk as the penalty for 'failure' could be banktruptcy(eg. THQ, Radical).

Now obviously we will still see really good games coming out for sure, with hopefully the industry finding ways to manage some of the financial risks in an environment that stimulates creativity and original ideas. Maybe in existing franchises(Metal Gear, Batman) or with new IPs in niche markets(eg. Bloodborne). In business the market ultimately decides, so I'm personally really glad games like the Arkham and Souls series have done so well.

Sequels, a handful of new IPs and long software droughts. With new titles you have to wait years and years for before they are released. I think this is what will typify most of the gaming landscape for the coming years.

 

[stroopwafel]

I also disagree that the last generation was a peak. It brought us many issues: Always online, DRM, bad DLC policies, decline in certain standards (fps, fov), decline of certain genres. By all means, the 360 and PS3 brought more bad to gaming than good.

It was at its peak with games that used the strength of the hardware to full effect and created experiences that weren't possible before(either artistically or technically). Think Souls, Batman and Human Revolution. All these games pushed the medium forward in one way or another. The issues you mention can mostly be ascribed to EA, Activision, M$ and(to a lesser extent) Ubisoft.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

I think we can't say with certainty that gaming reached its peak,we really aren't fortune tellers and can't predict the future.
What I see though,at least to myself and a few others is that there some lack of excitement with this 'new' console generation in comparison to previous generations.
And I can track down reasons and factors that contribute to that,and boy they are many.

One thing is how the generation started. With Nintendo taking a unique different way than the other companies proclaiming early on that they don't want to compete with the other console makers full of arrogance because they believed they will be making enough money to keep them alive if only they kept making Mario and Zelda even if they didn't conformed to any standards the 'competition' had. From that early point when Nintendo showcased its new console,we the players were told that Nintendo wasn't going to be making games for 'us' but for the 'others' the so called 'casual' crowd. So there you have it,very early,one of the 3 companies letting down many people who wished Nintendo would try to catch up with the other 2 after Wii.
Then of course we had the Xbox One story,with Microsoft terrorizing players around the globe,that their system will have a camera always connected to the internet to spy on people,telling people that they won't be allowed to sell a game after they bought it,etc... Perhaps Microsoft took these 'police state measures' back,but the stain they left is still here. The idea of gamers for Microsoft is still worsened than it was before,and some are still cautious,and think that perhaps Microsoft will bring back these 'measures' once the 360 owners have migrated on Xbox One.
Thus the only company and console that didn't left a bad taste to gamers was SONY's Playstation 4,but still its only one console of the 3,and the industry have got enough bad rep because of the aforementioned.

The other thing is that there wasn't any of those big new games that used to surprise people positively on E3s making everyone excited. You know,that kind of game that either have remarkable visuals considerably better than last gen,or did something else in a new way. Well the only game at the unveil of this round of consoles that had somewhat of that special something was Watch Dogs,and look how that turned out. After people got excited with the cool visual stuff they were seeing, Ubisoft took away the magic by downgrading the game's visual leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth,and when the game was finally released,people found out that it has repetitive missions and was a less detailed game than other older games like GTA4 in some aspects,with its world being less interactive and not responding to your actions as games that have come years ago. So there is definitely a lack of 'wow' titles that would be classified as 'system sellers',the kind of games that positively surprise you and excite you and make you anxiously wait to play them.

The fact that some games that came early in these platforms that while they wasn't as much exciting but still had people wanted to play them,turned up to have important flaws and be somewhat letdowns, like Battlefield 4 and Thief is also bad.


This recent console generation surely doesn't pack the amount of freshness and excitement others have had. But perhaps this might be only the begginning and things will change. Its up to developers in the end (I think) to make well worked,not rushed,fresh,exciting games that will make people wanna buy the new consoles and drive their sales.

 

[josemlopes]

Hell no, can you really say that games havent evolved this past few years?

Shit, only recently did Far Cry 3 manage to give that feeling of actually being out there in an island, free to escape to anywhere, something that was promised since Far Cry 1 (and it still has a lot that it can get better, there still arent dense forests and a more natural sense of prey and predator).

Not all games evolve, there are always some that just try to be good at what was already done and tried, but every now and again a game comes out that does push thing forward.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Nope. I think it has more potential than ever. The Witcher 3, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, Arkham Knight, GTA V etc. And some of the games in the last couple of years have proven to be among the best games ever made. On top of that the indue games craze is getting bigger every day. Gaming these days is kind of awesome if you ignore all the greedy corporate shit. And you can do that by waiting for Steam sales where you can spend $100 and get all the last year's hits and then some.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I think what you have in mind OP is the previous reliance on PR hype for all your gaming information, because very few people had the internets and forums such as these were not around, you also didn't get to see independent game footage unless you actually bought the game. Yes at that time it was all mind blowing smoke and mirrors... until you got your hands on things and realized that magic snake oil is actually the same oil you always had.

And now that we can get information from anywhere at any time, well let's just say Xbone "always on" plans were busted wide open months before the official reveal and any pretence of their innovation dissolved before they even got a PR team to control what anyone was saying. That shit just would not happen back in 360 era, hell their internet hostage situation was only mentioned in hush whispers and only after everyone was so deeply ingrained with the concept to pay extra for internet the audience would no longer consider it a downside, they got drilled into believing these are great extra features.
Yet the new consoles are breaking sales records by the minute, people are buying more and more consoles each day... so I'll say we aren't even getting close to the peak.

 

[Raikas]

But now? I can't help but feel that the gaming community doesn't really seem as into our current generation, and that all the steam seems to have gone out of all the innovations and discussions about it.

I don't think looking at any current "gaming community" is going to give you an accurate idea of where gaming as a whole is heading - audiences are expanding, and that standard "gaming community" is maturing as well. Tastes shift, and that means the "hype" takes on different forms.

If there's enough offerings out there to support a boarder market, it may well be that the discussions are going to be more fragmented just by virtue of those larger numbers of people focusing on a wider variety of games - so instead of a few hyped-up AAA titles (or a handful of slow-building indies), there's less overlap between what the different parts of the market are playing, so even though there may be more people talking about a greater number of titles, the buzz around any single title might be less than it would have been when a larger percentage of the market was focused on the same narrow group of offerings.

 

[Casual Shinji]

With the past generation, with the Wii, 360 and PS3, there was a slew of mainstream attention, both good and bad, as well as massive titles that are still held as great games today.

But now? I can't help but feel that the gaming community doesn't really seem as into our current generation, and that all the steam seems to have gone out of all the innovations and discussions about it.

Well that there is the issue... The previous generation has past, and we can look back on all the good and the bad. We have gotten the most out of it.

The current generation is barely a year old, so obviously it hasn't shown us everything it has to offer.

 

[gargantual]

Yeah revolution in gaming happens on a gaming level. In the big budget zones, there can be innovation, but its jut investors trying to gamble on the next sensation, and deciding at the end of the day, screw it we just want to make money.

I keep coming back to the story of how Id Software got started they were revolutionary in their debut. When Nintendo held the crown with side scrollers, and Carmack and Tom Hall reverse engineered Super Mario Bros 3 and realized all that needed to be shown or cut out to run the game on a PC. They tried to convince Nintendo to release on PC because it would become the future bastion of game development, with their proposals obviously rejected.

They unhitched first person from in-vehicle games, and learned how to cleverly depict 2.5d and three dimensional actions, then scaling in Quake tricks and traps and did all this as an independent company.

Steam came at an awkward early time but (all problems considered) it proved its worth as a type of distribution model over time. Few big budget companies IMO would've thought it a saleable idea in its inception. Nor would they have jumped at the idea of popular programmed games that were so moddable to encourage a culture of consumer customization, user generated content and tweaking, rather than just playing games vanilla.

It reminds me of that new TV show Halt and Catch Fire's episode last night. The importance of games in communication and all. But anyways the lead programming woman Cameron picked her top coders by having them play a game. The ones who played by the rules weren't chosen for her new dept, the ones who looked for workarounds and exploits kept their employment. I see that as a level of perception and communication that some folks and the suits don't understand.


So its mostly dead to people who can't see the little things that make games as engaging as they are. Gaming began common and underground. Discovery is gonna thrive there first. Folks who understand those fundamentals and look for where they're still being practiced can see the future even if its not as much of a billion dollar cultural phenomenon. It still makes money when 'pop culture' isn't paying attention.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

What would you identify as its peak in the first place?

 

[MHR]

Console hype isn't all of gaming. More and more games are coming out, more people than ever are playing them, and then there's PC. Complain about the quality of games and consoles all you want, there are always better options.

PC ftw

 

[AmberSword]

We are simply climbing at a slow place in my opinion, this is far from the peak.
Yes games are improving at a slow pace, mechanics haven't changed much, and I don't even need to talk about graphic difference. (Jump from PS2/Xbox >>>> Jump from PS3/X360)

To me we simply hit a steep wall that we'll eventually surmount, we just need a big boost in science. First we'll move towards 100% photo realistic graphics and robust game engines, when that's done with (it still won't be enough), then its virtual reality time!