I think Gaming is slowly dying.

[Hamish Durie]

sir i find your argument flawed case in point shadow of the colossus

 

[noodles loves you]

hold on, the medium that keeps growing is dying? What backwards ass world are you from?

I mean fuck, try being a fan of the comics medium. THERE'S dying.

 

[Sharalon]

I'd say that gaming has never been stronger than today and I have seen some really good games and promising projects this year. Even games like DA2 was far from bad you're all just pissed because it's not like your beloved original. I think that the indie developers are doing better than ever thanks to steam and such services.

DLC is a great way for developers to earn a few extra dollars on the game if people enjoy playing it enough to pay for it.

Gaming has ALWAYS been about money, just like TV, movies and even most books and it always will be just get over it. It's not killing the medium, it's what keeps it going.

 

[legendp]

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 ^_^

Console games get pirated to and are just as easy. DLC is not for all games. yes many of the AAA titles are getting dug up and worsened but there is now so much opportunity out there for indy developers. I think many people overlook how much work go into these games. you can not look at a game like halo reach or mass effect 2 and say there was no art or effort. Most games before 2001 are not as good as the fans have made them out to be. N64 and PS1 were great but looking back it is clear that games are developing and moving forward.

 

[WaffleCopters]

"blops: an attempt to balance the game"

you must have alteration detection of the gods man, the guns are FUCKING MASSIVELY less balanced then they were in the other ones. which ultimately affects the whole experience.

 

[Cat of Doom]

why does everyone seem to belive that the gears of war games are stagnating re-hashes. " we dont want anymore gray-brown relistic Gears of war 7" they say...

You do relise there has been 2 gears games. Just 2. with a third comeing. They each get 3 year developement time. Also, gears may not have a bright colour scheme, but the gray brown is needed in gears as it matches the atmosphere of the game. I find that the colour scheme and use of lighting really add to the game.

Also, to people who think gears is boring because it tries to be realistic, on one stage of a mission you are fighting stomach monsters in the intestines of a 2 mile long worm.

 

[Stako]

I believe you have mistaken this so called death of gaming with repetitevness... Gaming isn't dying. For every 2 or 3 bad games there is one good. Nothing can be perfect. If you state this for gaming the statement should be equally true for music, because the industry now is full of absolutely stupid and needless bands and what-nots... so it's not dying. That's just how change works. Someday you'll get it and you'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of - someday we'll have more good games than bad, that's what I like to believe. Untill then play something classic and listen to something classic and just wait. ^^

 

[E-Penguin]

Bad Company 3 has day one DLC with guns not availiable in the full game.

But Bad Company hasn't even been announced yet! How can you know that?

Oh, wait, you're talking about Battlefield 3.

My bad.

 

[Booze Zombie]

There will always be generic rubbish in all genres in all forms of entertainment, some fans will claim these generic money-makers are the end; they never are.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

The movie industry has been collectively out of ideas for the past 10 years at least and they're still kicking. With the death of physical medium, indies will have a better chance at selling their product and we'll get some more diversity.

 

[Keava]

Am I the only one who actually likes regenerating health? I mean, I think it's one of the best mechanics ever devised (And not just for FPSes).

Not terribly realistic by any means, but then, video games aren't exactly all about the realism, yanno?

It suits some games. At no point i'd consider it bad concept, but sometimes it's just not right. Problem with regenerating health means you force players to wait out between getting shot. You need to play more careful, which while works in "realistic" shooters also limits the "mindless fun" factor.
Suddenly you are no longer to charge and hope for the best, knowing that just past that group you will find med pack that will patch you up, no sir, now you have to carefully pick them out, one by one.