I think Gaming is slowly dying.
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That time of the month already? For people keeping track: how many times has gaming been in danger of "dying"?
Look, pirates and DLC do set some unsettling trends, but not enough to spell doom for the industry. And there will always be games that copy something that became insanely popular. This happens in every medium. Note all of the crappy "child trap" movies in the 90's came after Home Alone.
And the last point: blame the consumer. "Arty" games don't sell. Shooters and explosions do.
Look, pirates and DLC do set some unsettling trends, but not enough to spell doom for the industry. And there will always be games that copy something that became insanely popular. This happens in every medium. Note all of the crappy "child trap" movies in the 90's came after Home Alone.
And the last point: blame the consumer. "Arty" games don't sell. Shooters and explosions do.
Are you sure you aren't talking about the movie industry?
1. Pirates are torrenting movies.
2. 3D Galsses are the new "DLC"
3. Follow the leader? Why do all movies seem the same?
4. Cash cows, did we really need a 4th Pirate movie? 10,000,000 Saw movies?
Every industry has the same problem, too many money men sticking there heads in and ruinning the artist work.
Get use to it.
1. Pirates are torrenting movies.
2. 3D Galsses are the new "DLC"
3. Follow the leader? Why do all movies seem the same?
4. Cash cows, did we really need a 4th Pirate movie? 10,000,000 Saw movies?
Every industry has the same problem, too many money men sticking there heads in and ruinning the artist work.
Get use to it.
True that. Everyone needs to watch it. All of it. But yeah, that episode in particular.VanillaBean said:
I'm gonna go watch it right now to stop being depressed.
Gaming is doing better than it ever has been, it's certainly in no danger of dying. Sure, there's lots of copying going on in mainstream titles, but that has always happened, and happens in pretty much every medium. If you want innovation go for indie games, if you want production values go for AA stuff. Not much has changed.
Gaming AS YOU WANT IT is dying.
Gaming, the big ball of development and community involving people interacting with situations via monitor or screen for pleasure, is not.
Gaming, the big ball of development and community involving people interacting with situations via monitor or screen for pleasure, is not.
Go look at some of the trailers that are coming out for E3 this year.
This is one of the most impressive lineups I've seen.
I'm a two or three games a year kinda guy. But not this year.
Your points are moot.
Edit: With the DLC thing, people will stop buying them if they don't want them. I refuse to pay for a subscription, and I refuse to pay for DLC maps that I don't think are worth it.
I have a good feeling that not as many people are gonna buy the next CoD game.
This is one of the most impressive lineups I've seen.
I'm a two or three games a year kinda guy. But not this year.
Your points are moot.
Edit: With the DLC thing, people will stop buying them if they don't want them. I refuse to pay for a subscription, and I refuse to pay for DLC maps that I don't think are worth it.
I have a good feeling that not as many people are gonna buy the next CoD game.
I wouldn't say that gaming is dying, it's changing i wouldn't say for the best but it IS changing (the games that are coming out this year are pretty cool compared to the last 2 years). I agree with most of what you said though. Personnally, i think that gaming was better 10 years ago. When not everybody played video games and there was much more variety and those who were making games were as i call it "The Thinking Heads". Hideo Kojima, Tim Schaffer, Kenji Eno, Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molineux and many many more. These people had an idea and a goal of what gaming should be (Art) but they got COMPLETELY ran over by the big companies who had a different idea of what gaming should be ($$$).
I will continue to play games because i like it since im 4 years old. I don't think that what the companies have going on right now will change but sometimes there's a game that comes out that i like and that reminds me why i play games in the first place.
I will continue to play games because i like it since im 4 years old. I don't think that what the companies have going on right now will change but sometimes there's a game that comes out that i like and that reminds me why i play games in the first place.
That and videos by the Angry Video Game Nerd.VanillaBean said:
Seriously, watch this guy's videos. Not only are they pretty funny, but they show you the truth. The truth is that the majority of the games you "remember fondly" as a kid sucked bad.
Well, piracy has been around since the dawn of gaming and it's gone from being a garage industry to a multi-billion dollar industry despite it's prescence. I think we're in more danger from DRM and all this forced digital distribution stuff ruining it than the pirates.
As far as the rest goes, well the mainstream has gotten online, and as a result things like gaming are becoming much more mainstream, and like anything that started with a smaller, more intellectual following, it's quality is going to become lower as it increasingly dumbs itself down for the lowest human denominator.
When it comes to art, well that's the old conundrum, the starving artist starts out following his vision and not carying what anyone thinks, until he starts to sell stuff and become known. Then he gradually starts to work around what other people want and what will see his work the most widely circulated, until eventually he's a mere shadow of what he started out as, and just another producer of bubblegum trash.
This is why you have so many arguements about how painters, sculptors, artists, etc... should not be allowed to make any money off their work, ever... that way financial concerns won't interfere with their visions. A point countered by "hey, your saying we should work ourselves to the bone to produce these things of beauty and give you joy and we don't deserve to get anything out of it?". It's circular and can get nasty on both sides, and it's where the statement "support the art, not the artist" comes from.
I think video gaming is best compared to the music industry at the moment, right now we're seeing a situation where gaming companies are indie bands who saw the potential to make a lot of money, and using the money they earned from the fans who supported them decide to launch a bubblegum pop career, to produce music for the masses, regardless of the fans who got them to the position of being able to do that feeling that their work that is raking in the dough is utter, soulless, garbage. A situation where the original fans who supported an artist will say they sold out, and the artist will say "hey, I don't owe you guys anything" which is of course a lie, because they never would have been anywhere without the initial fans they betrayed, however it's easy to soothe that conscience with tons and tons of money. Sadly, it's a rare case when there is any justice in situations like this, with say a band that crapped all over it's initial fans falling on hard times, trying to re-capture some of it's old glory from it's "loyalists" and instead getting laughed at since they don't have any anymore.
The game industry won't die, but it's not going to be anything like it was before. Sad, because it had some unique oppertunities here. It could have been one of the few mediums that encourage people to rise to it's level, as opposed to stooping down to their level to grab their money and never bothering to try and rise beyond wallowing in that muck.
As far as the rest goes, well the mainstream has gotten online, and as a result things like gaming are becoming much more mainstream, and like anything that started with a smaller, more intellectual following, it's quality is going to become lower as it increasingly dumbs itself down for the lowest human denominator.
When it comes to art, well that's the old conundrum, the starving artist starts out following his vision and not carying what anyone thinks, until he starts to sell stuff and become known. Then he gradually starts to work around what other people want and what will see his work the most widely circulated, until eventually he's a mere shadow of what he started out as, and just another producer of bubblegum trash.
This is why you have so many arguements about how painters, sculptors, artists, etc... should not be allowed to make any money off their work, ever... that way financial concerns won't interfere with their visions. A point countered by "hey, your saying we should work ourselves to the bone to produce these things of beauty and give you joy and we don't deserve to get anything out of it?". It's circular and can get nasty on both sides, and it's where the statement "support the art, not the artist" comes from.
I think video gaming is best compared to the music industry at the moment, right now we're seeing a situation where gaming companies are indie bands who saw the potential to make a lot of money, and using the money they earned from the fans who supported them decide to launch a bubblegum pop career, to produce music for the masses, regardless of the fans who got them to the position of being able to do that feeling that their work that is raking in the dough is utter, soulless, garbage. A situation where the original fans who supported an artist will say they sold out, and the artist will say "hey, I don't owe you guys anything" which is of course a lie, because they never would have been anywhere without the initial fans they betrayed, however it's easy to soothe that conscience with tons and tons of money. Sadly, it's a rare case when there is any justice in situations like this, with say a band that crapped all over it's initial fans falling on hard times, trying to re-capture some of it's old glory from it's "loyalists" and instead getting laughed at since they don't have any anymore.
The game industry won't die, but it's not going to be anything like it was before. Sad, because it had some unique oppertunities here. It could have been one of the few mediums that encourage people to rise to it's level, as opposed to stooping down to their level to grab their money and never bothering to try and rise beyond wallowing in that muck.
I would start to argue with you, but my Nyan Cat marathon is sapping my arguemental skills (gah only 760 seconds?!)
But DA2 = ME2 not in space? Ah lol
But DA2 = ME2 not in space? Ah lol
The video-game industry has yet to properly find a way to combat piracy, and the only thing they can do now is trying to ease access of games, the same way iTunes saved the music industry. But dying is not likely at this point, as the point at which it will completely kill the industry is so noticeable that they would have likely come up with something by then.SpartanBlackman said:
DLC's are actually, believe it or not, a clear step up from the days of old when it comes to extra content. For you see, back then they used to release skin changes and few extra missions by releasing the same game with said skin changes and charge you full price (not to mention, games cost about 80-100 bucks back then).
Sure there may be somebody that makes crappy DLC, but Sturgeon's Law applies to DLC as it does to video-games, namely that 90% of everything is crud.
Welcome to at least 20 years ago, if not more.
The video-game industry has always followed the leader, especially when it comes to FPS's (the dominant genre), its just that you do not remember all the Doom/Wolfenstein/Quake/Unreal Tournament-clones that were made (as they were not worth remembering). So FPS developers copying Halo or CoD or whatever is nothing new and will always happen (this applies to WoW and MMO's also).
I suggest looking up the fighter-craze and the mascot-craze if you don't believe me.
This is a fact that has been known since the Hellenistic period (somewhere around the 3rd or 4th century).Ecclesiastes 1:9 said:
The Age of Decadence, A Valley Without Wind, Dead State, Minecraft, Avadon, yep, the future looks pretty bright in you actually avoid the big publishers pushing out the safe franchises that are guaranteed money earners. In this economic climate can you really blame a company for wanting to make money, you knew they were a snake when you took them in.
Was The Witcher 2 dumbed down? I'm not a big fan of radial menus, but the core of The Witcher seemed pretty intact in the sequel. I didn't love the combat in either, but 2 was marginally better. I generally prefer dice rolls in my CRPGs.
Was The Witcher 2 dumbed down? I'm not a big fan of radial menus, but the core of The Witcher seemed pretty intact in the sequel. I didn't love the combat in either, but 2 was marginally better. I generally prefer dice rolls in my CRPGs.
Well, so so. Angry Video Game Nerd is pretty much trying to be funny by picking specific examples that can be used that way, and "Extra Credits" is arguably a group of industry shills. They have some interesting things to say, but a lot of the time I think it definatly comes down to them trying to convince us to do what's good for the industry and finding ways to justify that, more that fairly looking at the issues they present... but that's a whole differant discussion, I've said a lot of that before, and if you read my responses to some of the Extra Credits episodes... well, let's just say I might not be popular, but I am not shy about expressing my opinion. I do keep listening though, and obviously care enough to comment, so I guess that means they are doing something right.Grunt_Man11 said:
The thing isn't so much that those old games are sterling examples of compared to today's games, if ported directly to current technology as they were and held side by side. It's simply they did a lot of things better, and showed a promise that was never really delivered on. While those games were at least trying to do new and exciting things, and bursting at the limits of what the tech of the time could do, today's games are content to wallow in mediocrity, it's not just lack of innovation, but a lack of even being willing to try and do what other games beforehand had done, but better and with new technology. Take for example the game "Wasteland", it's arguably one of the best CRPGs ever made, and this considering you had to read the plot elements out of a paragraph book that doubled as the game's copy protection. Without that game, there never would have been a "Fallout" and the box for the original "Fallout" pretty much admits this. Yet today, nobody is even willing to try and have people create parties of characters, or encourage people to experiment with things within a game (for example in Wasteland you'd be surpised that every skill can be used somewhere, even if it's not obvious, and you'd be amazed at what you can find by using a high perception skill on everything multiple times). The bottom line is that a game like Wasteland involves numbers, stats, turn based combat so you can control multiple characters, and similar things, none of which are paticualrly popular with current game developers, because they aren't popular with the lowest human denominator, and that is pretty much where the money is. What would Wasteland look like today if someone tried to do it with modern technology? We'll never know, because there is no money in ever finding out since the basic game conventions demand too much from the gaming demographic with the most money to spend.
Consider for example that most games today are developed out of the same basic toolboxes, and make a ton of money despite being the same game multiple times with new graphics slotted in over the same framework they all use. This is what the various game engines powering the games you buy are about, the days of people designing a new engine for each new game are pretty much over, you rarely see it anymore.... and that's kind of the problem. The lowest human denominator accepts it and buys the games, and that's all that mattters anymore.
"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? "
This little tidbit right here confirmed to me that you are wrong.
Games in most cases are not rip offs of other games as many that I know tend to believe. If game developers disregard their fanbase ad do what is "popular" then they really don't have a fanbase know do they?
This little tidbit right here confirmed to me that you are wrong.
Games in most cases are not rip offs of other games as many that I know tend to believe. If game developers disregard their fanbase ad do what is "popular" then they really don't have a fanbase know do they?
I like how you say it's your favourite interactive medium, when, in fact, it's the only interactive medium.
Anywho, if pirates are ruining gaming, then why are there still movies? Why are there still books?
DLC may be stupid, but it's not ruining anything. It's just stupid.
Sure, some games copy, but some don't. The same is in movies. And in books.
And yes, there are cash cows, but no, people don't need to "do it for the art". That's pointless; some art games, sure, but ONLY? No.
Anywho, if pirates are ruining gaming, then why are there still movies? Why are there still books?
DLC may be stupid, but it's not ruining anything. It's just stupid.
Sure, some games copy, but some don't. The same is in movies. And in books.
And yes, there are cash cows, but no, people don't need to "do it for the art". That's pointless; some art games, sure, but ONLY? No.