I think Gaming is slowly dying.

[SpartanBlackman]

So yeah, gaming is dying. In my opinion it has been since around 07/08. And I think I know what gaming needs in order to survive & evolve.
Gaming is my favourite interactive medium, and no doubt yours too. But there has been a worrying trend. Call it nostalgia, but the general quality of games are going down. The industry is stagnating, but tehre are a lot of ways that the big companies can do in order to help gaming go on. Unfortunatly, soon, only the biggest game companies will survive (imagine every game as a DA2) or quality won't matter any more. You can see the trends of this now. But this is what I think is killing the game industry.


1. Pirates and Consolisation
Pirates are going to ruin PC gaming. This is a fact. The problem lies that because PC games are some of the best pieces of work out there (Witcher franchise), when they get ported to the current gen, they tend to get somewhat dumbed down. A prime example of this would be Crysis 2. But why would a company switch from making great games on the PC to console games? It's because of pirates. Gears of War 2 and 3 will not be on the PC due to large amounts of pirates. And what annoys me the most is what some people think that they can justify pirating a game because it is not "perfect" or that it's "Consolised garbage". The thing is, people pirate, devs switch to more platforms to get enough money to fund future projects, so more people pirate. It's a circle. Consolistation is not always a bad thing, but when it is used just to make money due to pirates, it's a shame. But when it's used to just make more money, it's bad.


2. Premium fees and DLC's.
I'm looking at you, Activision, EA and Capcom. If people want to play games currently, they have to spend £400 on a decent gaming pc, or £150 on a new-ish console, pay online in some cases, pay a subscription fee, pay £40 for the game, and then pay more for bonus content locked on the Disk or for just more items. Lots of the "Great" companies do this. Bad Company 3 has day one DLC with guns not availiable in the full game. MvC3 has Jill and Shumagorath locked onto the Disk. Resident evil 5's online. Call of Duty Premium service? WoW premium service? What most companies don't realise is that it harms their repuatation to charge even more than what we already do for the lulz. Look at Film. It costs me $10 to go out and watch a film with friends. I pay that for the content locked onto a disk in half of EA or Capcoms games. Related to this, Bobby Kotick can go die. By no means should games be free, but locking content and charging extra on top of subscriptions is cheap, and would probably lead to a loss of primary fanbase. You'd be pissed off if you watched a movie with 20 scenes, and you had to pay an extra $10 on scenes 13,14,15 and 16. Gaming should be no different.


3. Follow the Leader and lack of innovation.
Regenerating health. Done in one game then COPYPASTA'd over every shooter since '08. Even in game that's been in development for over half my lifespan. 99% of MMO's are WoW clones that get DESTROYED due to lack of innovation. Most best selling games are "Boring brown shooters". Some games just disregard their primary fanbase, and do whats popular, because screw innovation, it's all about the money, right? Dragon age 2 is an actionized sequel that is best summed up as ME2 not IN SPACE. There is still some amazing innovation to be found, the biggest being Portal, L.A. Noire and Minecraft+Terraria. But video games risk falling into a trend of nothing but Brown shooters if people ignore the indie developers and devs keep up with the whole Cackadoody 8 and Gears of war 7. Lets just see what the cod games have added- CoD4: Amazing multiplayer, GOTY, the best CoD game. WaW: More browness. Zombies. Worse online. MW2: Worse online. Nukes. Blops: An attempt to balance the game. More zombies. I don't want to have a world of follow the leader gaming.


4. Cash cows and not doing it for the art.
Cash cows are bad. When a franchise is going to die, let it die rather than go on forever. Don't keep selling spin offs of questionable quality and prequels. Also, would it kill devs to do anything for the art? "Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines" is regarded as one of the best RPG's of all time. But damn, on release it had so many bugs it made New Vegas seem bug free. Want to know what the developers, who were going bankrupt, did? They stayed on, without pay, and patched the game. THEIR game. If companies did stuff like this now, then they would have more supporters, and we would support them. Overall, Devs need to balance morality and money.

If all of these are gone, then gaming would evolve rather than stay in the sorry state it's been in for a few years now. Already have we seen some franchises die (Metroid, Sonic) and some of the blandest continue.
So what do you think? Should gaming continue as it is, and be there just for the money and mass markets, or do you think that gaming needs to stop being less about the money and more about the art? Or is your opinion somewhere in between? I'd love to see your opinions ^_^

 

[LobsterFeng]

This year's line up looks nice, and there's a couple of games I'm excited for next year. As long as developers keep making games, I'll keep playing them. I don't think it's dieing at all.

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

For me what's messing up gaming is DLC. I haven't gotten Fallout New Vegas yet, and i'm a hardcore fallout fan all the way back to 1, because i'm waiting for all the DLC to be released so I can buy it all together.

PS. People are lazy and won't want to read all of that, but they will take the time to criticize it, so you might want to add some cliff notes at the end, even though reading the sentence after the number is pretty much self explanatory.

 

[Zhukov]

Yep. Gaming is doomed.

Doomed, I say.

[HEADING=2]Doomed![/HEADING]

Incedentally, anyone see that new Alice trailer? Lookin' pretty darn good.

 

[Windcaler]

If you look at it only from a AAA standpoint yes the industry is stagnating and dying as it produces worse games then it has in the past. Problem is that the AAA is never a good way to gauge such a diverse industry. There will always be deveopers from AAA, to indy, to labors of love made by unknowns.

I firmly believe that there will always be something in gaming to love for everyone.

 

[Fooz]

i agree with pretty much all that you have said, except the dying part, yes all of what you said is true in some way, but the same goes for all mediums, lots of stuff has been done

what i mean is, all action films follow the same kind of premise, hero, bad guy, explosions and ladies in tight tops etc (not 100% accurate i know but for the most part it's correct)

All music is starting to sound the same (in my opinion), Bieber wannabe's, indie bands, metal

but people still watch and listen to them because it's what they like

Points 1 (pirating part),3 and 4 can be applied to all mediums, it's just the way each industry is

but they are all thriving, as is gaming

So in conclusion, yes your points are correct, but Gaming is not, by any means Dying

 

[Friendly Viking]

I'm with you. Thing is, I don't really see a way out of it. Why would devs want to stop making piles of money? What's the incentive? It used to be that you could get some brilliant individuals who made games for the joy of it rather than the cash, but that's becoming less and less viable now that games cost so much to make - even if the writers have the best intentions, their financial backers are looking over their shoulders and demanding that they make the game to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Of course, this would stop if people stopped buying rubbish games and refused to pay for DLCs, but again, that won't happen: you'd have to convince millions of people to play the long game. Now I'm depressed.

The only way out I can see, which occurred to me as I was writing this, is for a huge group of dedicated gamers to get together and start their own company. If you were really, really lucky. you might get something worthwhile.

Anyway, thanks for an interesting and well thought-out post.

 

[VanillaBean]

I think someone needs to watch Extra Credits.

 

[ScoopMeister]

Of course there are things that need changing, but gaming isn't dying. That's just overly pessimistic of you. And don't just assume that DA2 was bad just becaue you think it was.

 

[Woodsey]

I imagine Gears 2 and 3 not being on PC is much more to do with MS shifting 360s then it has to do with pirating. You shouldn't make wild assumptions, and its difficult to form an argument when you're often referencing personal opinions.

Anyway, its not dying.

 

[Serving UpSmiles]

If Nintendo's alive, Gaming's Alive.

 

[Stilkon]

I felt like this about the music industry. Then I found a lot of really good underground bands. I think a similar course of action will help you.

 

[ZiggyE]

1. Pirates and Consolisation
Pirates are going to ruin PC gaming. This is a fact.

I disagree. While pirating is a bad thing, it isn't killing the industry. The statistics show this, the cash that comes in every year is still massive. In fact, statistics show that pirates are more likely to spend more money on things they like. Not that I'm condoning piracy, but it isn't killing the industry.

2. Premium fees and DLC's.

Agreed.

3. Follow the Leader and lack of innovation.

No. Gaming has ALWAYS had this problem of 'follow the leader'. They do what is safe. In the 90's, it was side scroller games and in today's day, it's brown, realistic FPS. It doesn't mean it will kill the industry, it didn't back then it won't now. Gaming is just following a routine pattern, one that it has always followed. Eventually, the games that are bad will flop and it will force innovation, as it has always done. If anything, more innovation and more risk taking is more harmful than follow the leader for the industry, if done poorly.

4. Cash cows and not doing it for the art.

This ties in with what I said above, but the term 'cash cow' completely negates what you're arguing. For the gaming industry to die, it would need to lose money. If people are producing cash cows, however bad, they are making money. While I'm not a fan of cash cows and I could say a lot that is negative about them, killing the video game industry isn't one of them.

 

[William MacKay]

i think Extra Credits has touched on a few points here, mainly innovation and DLC for a tiny bit. you make a good point though. i wouldnt say the industry is dying but think of it this way: if we get a year like this one every two years and in that time the devs work on the next game and fill the gap with the brown-shooter mindless popular games to get a bit more money for the big badass games they spend all that time perfecting, nobody will complain. and even Brink, a fairly standard FPS showed some innovation by adding parkour. Mirrors Edge did it first, but Brink added it to the FPS-style.

 

[PatrickXD]

"Pirates are going to ruin PC gaming. This is a fact."
I'm sorry, but who the hell are you, Doctor Who?
Have you not heard of the many millions of people who log into Steam every fucking day.
PC gamers one and all, it will live on.
And who exactly is ignoring the indie dev crowd here? You say specifically that it's all going to hell if we ignore those indie dev's. What do you want AAA title publishers to do, copy those indie games?
I'm not claiming any facts here, but neither am I going gun-ho on unfounded opinions.
My belief, gaming may change to an extent, with a much larger gap between AAA and Indie, but it certainly isn't going anywhere.

 

[OptimisticPessimist]

Oh, do so ever shut up. Look, I don't want this to seem more inflammatory than it is, but I'm getting really sick of these "WE'RE DOOOOOOOMED! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMEDDD!!" Threads. Gaming is not dying. It's changing, sure; and we can't know yet whether the change will ultimately be good or bad. That's beside the point, though. The point is that this kind of thread is no better than this tripe http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/outreach/tracts/may21/ so knock it off.

 

[SpartanBlackman]

Hmm, perhaps instead of saying that it was dying, I should have used the word stagnating. Or specified that the creativity is dying. And by dying I mean everything getting streamlined, AAA games being the only things that get anywhere, everyone following the leader and getting samey-samey games that have been oversimplified. 2011 seems to be one of the best years for unique games, but my point still stands

Oh, and Cliffy B said Gears 2 was not ported because of Pirates. http://kotaku.com/5056532/why-no-gears-of-war-2-for-pc-well-piracy-for-one

 

[Ashcrexl]

So pessimistic. 90% of EVERYTHING is shit. gaming included. a lot of NES games were shit too, just in different ways, but we still have games that absolutely brilliant and we always will. cheer up a bit.

 

[Ekonk]

I can do nothing but laugh heartily at this.

 

[Amphoteric]

Gaming isn't going anywhere ever. I can safely say that it will be here tomorrow and it will be there when I die. There are only 2 games I intend to buy this year however...