Is gaming dead?

[Manji187]

Opinion/ possible nostalgia goggles aside...there is definitely a case to be made that the quality of games has declined. Contemporary games are, on average, shorter (single player: 5-12 hours), less replayable (in terms of content/gameplay) and, for better or worse, more "streamlined" in their mechanics. Sure, on the other hand, the quality of things like graphics and voice-acting has gone up...but that's an improvement in breadth (technology), not depth (design).

That's just the AAA market, a subset of that market, that you're referring to.

A case can be made that the quality of AAA games has gone down, especially with respect to the length of games, with Max Payne being a vanguard of the industry decline in that regard, and the simplification of interface and game mechanics caused partly by the success of click-fests like Diablo and more importantly by more developers developing for both PC and consoles.

But the tremendous rise in all other markets besides AAA has made the AAA market relatively unimportant, and many games are still made with dozens of hours of content.

The streamlining of game mechanics has been good for gaming as a whole, helping bring it to the masses. I love complicated games but one reason (the other major one being the democratization of high technology like digital distribution) gaming has become so popular and there's now such creativity in game development is that developers have focused so much on making their games easy to play. And this opinion comes from a guy who calls Skyrim an Action/RPG and wishes The Elder Scrolls had remained a hard-core RPG series while Bethesda could have formed a new IP for their streamlined Action/RPG desires.

Yes, I was referring to the AAA market. I only know of three markets: the AAA, the indie and the casual market. In your view, are there others?

I don't see how the "tremendous" rise in "all other markets" has made the AAA "relatively unimportant". That is just too vague a statement. Relatively unimportant how? Also, just because the casual and indie markets are going strong lately does not mean we should just forget about the AAA market and its troubles.

Yes, streamlining has had its beneficial effects, bringing many new gamers to the fold. It has also brought disappointment in the form of games such as Dragon Age II, Final Fantasy XIII and Ninja Gaiden III. There is a loss of depth/ enjoyment if a game goes from "easy to learn, hard to master" to just easy to learn/ execute.

Also, the easier it is to be a total badass in gameplay...the harder it will be to convey a sense of weakness and accompanying growth story-wise. This is shown best by the new Tomb Raider. This is a design issue that may come up more often with the continuing streamlining of games.

What I'm saying is...streamlining is not a pure gain, it is offset by a subtle but substantial loss.

 

[Chris Tian]

This is a fact: most acclaimed games today are just shittier versions of games that came before them

Internet debating rule number 1. opinion equals fact.
All kidding aside, are you sure you know what the term "fact" means? Because you are using it very wrong.

Basically all your posts just say: "I liked gaming better fifteen years ago". You rephrase that as if it were facts, and to prove those "facts" you state your personal opinion of some games over the years, again as if they were facts.

There is just no way good or interessting discussion can come from that, especially because you do not once give examples why you think all those games of old were better than they are now

I've actually given specific examples repeatedly. And no, I don't think this is just 'subjective'--most lists of 'greatest games ever' disproportionately feature games from the fourth and fifth generations, and about one-third of the people on this thread have expressed a similar discontent to the one I'm describing. So evidently, this phenomenon isn't confined to me.

Some games are objectively better than others--it's not a very effective or thorough response to just claim everything is relative...

First of, most things are relative, just claiming "my opinion is obectively true" is neither effective nor thorough. That counts double for things as subjective as entertainemnt products, and if you call games art or creative products that is even more true by like 100x.

Your claim that some games are "objectively better than others" is just untrue, because there is no way to truly measure the objective value of a game.

Just because a few, or even alot, of people agree on something does not make it an objective truth. If you think that, than you do not know what objective and subjective means and where the difference is.

Even your argument neutralizes itself here. You say your opinions become objective because a few in this thread and some arbitrary lists agree with you; that makes no sense.
Wouldnt't, by that logic, the opinion of the majority count as objective?
If not, it would still be you who decides what sources combined judge the "objective" value of a game.
And because you just pick the sources that agree with your opinion, it would be utterly subjective again.

How many people like it is the only "objective"(ish) standart you could measure a game by. And that would make CoD the best game of all times, every game in the "objective top 100" would eclipse every game you mentioned and they would all have been released in the past few years.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I think i made my feelings obvious in one of your previous threads on 'artsy' games so i won't bother dragging any of that back up. I will however comment on a few things i've noticed in gaming from this generation.

Most of my friends now spend more time playing indie games than big titles and the reason for that is the big games of today are mostly just clones of classics with a hint of something different...that generally makes the game easier to complete. I loved thief when it came out, dishonoured though had magical teleport abilities that fly in the face of stealth. Thief took me a month to finish, dishonoured took me 1 session.

The PC players i know only pay for 1 full game...World of Warcraft. Everything else is pirated with the odd exception of games like Minecraft or with super cheap classics re-released on Steam that they remember fondly but never actually bother playing once purchasing. People, it seems to me, are more willing to pay money for older games rather than the new ones and though the reason isn't obvious, the assumption is that new games lack the quality of older ones, despite having better graphics and more money spent on them.

My console gaming friends are all getting bored of the same old games and have moved from purchasing games to renting them or getting cheap second hand games...this includes me. 40 quid a game used to seem reasonable when a game would take a week to finish but 40 quid for less than a days gameplay just doesn't wash anymore. If they remove the ability to lend/rent games on the next generation (as has been hinted at in the past) then there is a good chance that my console friends will turn to pirating PC games and playing there instead, still adding no money to games developers.

When me and my friends gather for a piss-up at someones house we don't really play any new games but stick to old school music games or the odd beat-em-up...new titles are far too online multiplayer oriented to be any fun for a group of 6-8 drinkers. Even single player games that are easilly passable to the next person are becoming harder to find. Nowadays you really need to play the tutorial to get any sort of understanding of what can and cant be done within the game world and having to watch minutes of cut-scenes really destroys the fun. Trials HD and Peggle end up dominating when rock band and guitar hero have worn us out...new games don't stand a chance.

I'm not entirely sure what conclusions i can draw from these trends i've noticed. Certainly the games industry has stagnated in terms of innovating gameplay but i think the practices they now use to fail to deal with piracy are seriously harming their revenue stream. They try to put second hand games companies out of business and they kill off part of their new games sales. They try to make you have to play online all the time and alienate anyone who doesn't have internet access. They make the single player campaign so short and easy that single player gamers have nothing to gain by purchasing their product. It's 1 big giant mess that only a few companies are actually doing anything about and they will be the big winners overall.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Yes, gaming is dead. Gabe Newell made the announcement last month. Sony and Microsoft will pull the plug any day now and everyone else is already packed up. Didn't you get the memo?

 

[nettkenneth]

Personally i won't say that gaming as an idea Isn't dying and good games still come out but since there is a game slump where sales aren't really matching up witch in turn makes companies take less risks and we are not really helping since we take less risks with our money, so i think companies must reinvent themselves to make lower budget games and a tighter focus and reach out to core gamers instead of alienating us.

in general i think the 60 dollar AAA developing need to be cut back and maybe go more for 40 dollar releases since we really don't need expensive orchestral soundtrack or celebrity voice acting or in certain cases top tier graphics and to be honest it would be easier to spend 40 bucks on a game than 60. how many games have you thought "maybe when it is cheaper"

 

[NearLifeExperience]

Yes, gaming is dead. Gabe Newell made the announcement last month. Sony and Microsoft will pull the plug any day now and everyone else is already packed up. Didn't you get the memo?

I was going to post something similar to this, so thanks for screwing that up for me

 

[Toxic Sniper]

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are both better than Severance: Blade of Darkness (Yeah, I went there) and the King's Field series, so I don't see the problem.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

In all seriousness a full crash of the Video Game market is HIGHLY unlikely. That would necessitate virtually everyone to stop buying video games at the same time, what we are seeing now is a slump. Keep in mind that this can be more equated to the economy than the actual business practices of the publishers. People are still being careful with their money, and videogames can be a very expensive pastime.

Firstly what caused the crash of '82 was caused not by shitty DRM or heavy-handed developers publishing for the masses. No, what caused the crash was a LACK of regulation and quality control by the hardware manufacturers. The actual cost of manufacturing a cartridge in '82 far exceeds the cost of manufacturing a dvd, blu-ray, or digital downloads. The high profile failures of Pac-Man and E.T, which lacked any form of quality control and were manufactured in troves lead to Atari suffering abysmal losses.

Second on the list was the mountains of shovel-ware published by third parties for these early systems. Hell in 1986 Hiroshi Yamuchi went on record to say "Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third-party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games." In order to prevent a repeat from happening, Nintendo limited the number of games a publisher could release on the nes annually to maximum of five, hence the Nintendo seal of quality.

Looking at today's video game marker, we see a landscape DOMINATED by high profile releases of only a handful of games. Shovel-ware still exists in the console market, but most of it has migrated over to ios. Furthermore, we see publishers diversifying their portfolios. Let's say the next CoD utterly flops in terms of sales, despite popular belief this would not spell doom for Activision. Their ownership of Blizzard, Skylanders, and perhaps Destiny ensures the publisher as a whole won't fail. A repeat of the crash of '82 is nigh impossible. Furthermore, stricter quality control prevents the quantity of shitty games we saw back then being published is impossible. Sure some truly bad high profile games do get through the cracks, but they are the exception not the rule.

In summary, no. What I do think will help the games industry in the long run is not a crash, but a resurgence in the economy. As people start buying more, publishers will become more willing to take risks. I mean hell, look at EA in 2007-08. This publisher released Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Rock Band, and Cryis(remember these games had started development before the recession). All of these games were new I.P's, and furthermore many of them were unique.

Furthermore all of these games required immense funding to fulfill their potential, and substantial marketing campaigns to spread awareness of these new games. Despite all the promise of Kickstarter, the feasibility of a project on the scale of say Crysis or Mass Effect receiving the necessary funding for not just development but also marketing is regrettably bleak.

And hey, if you don't want to deal with all the B.S with publishers indie games are currently undergoing a bit of a Renascence thanks to high profile releases such as Minecraft. And now we have crowd funding, which has already given me FTL as well a funded a myriad of promising games that may have never seen the light without sites such a kickstarter.

 

[briankoontz]

Yes, I was referring to the AAA market. I only know of three markets: the AAA, the indie and the casual market. In your view, are there others?

My point is that never since the AAA industry got big in the mid 1990s has it been less important. If it evaporated overnight there would still be great games being released all the time.

I don't see how the "tremendous" rise in "all other markets" has made the AAA "relatively unimportant". That is just too vague a statement. Relatively unimportant how? Also, just because the casual and indie markets are going strong lately does not mean we should just forget about the AAA market and its troubles.

The AAA market excels at wasting it's potential. Where's the emergent gameplay? Where's the facial expressions that help make great dramatic stories? The AAA game industry should be ashamed that so much money is being spent so foolishly, yet most of them don't give a shit. They don't care what we think either.

Yes, streamlining has had its beneficial effects, bringing many new gamers to the fold. It has also brought disappointment in the form of games such as Dragon Age II, Final Fantasy XIII and Ninja Gaiden III. There is a loss of depth/ enjoyment if a game goes from "easy to learn, hard to master" to just easy to learn/ execute.

Absolutely. Dark Souls stands out because it's as if the developers cared about the enjoyment of the players, instead of what the marketing department thinks. Games like Left for Dead and The Witcher series are made BY gamers, not by corporate entities that only care about money.

Also, the easier it is to be a total badass in gameplay...the harder it will be to convey a sense of weakness and accompanying growth story-wise. This is shown best by the new Tomb Raider. This is a design issue that may come up more often with the continuing streamlining of games.

What I'm saying is...streamlining is not a pure gain, it is offset by a subtle but substantial loss.

The industry has massive problems far beyond what either of us has talked about here. But the solution is not for us to talk to the AAA industry, who never listens. The solution is for us to play the great games that are being made all the time, and if you're looking for "sense of weakness and accompanying growth" then how about I Wanna Be the Guy: Gaiden, or Dark Souls, or Slender, or Hotline Miami, or Desktop Dungeons, or Spelunky, or Super Meat Boy, or Thomas Was Alone... or the great pleasure of playing all of them?

The AAA industry doesn't listen to our words, but they listen to our money. Our job is to support great games, and if we do that the AAA industry will respond by learning how to make great games. They clearly have a lot of learning to do.

 

[themilo504]

O boy another person claiming that video game are dying because everything was better in their day.
I didn?t like any of the games you mentioned gaming must have been dying around 1998.

I?m sure that isn?t your only reason, but really I?m getting sick and tired of people using games where better in my days as a reason for why gaming Is dying.

Also no it won?t die the industry might crash but unless everybody who likes video games dies there will always be a market left.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Eh, just like everything else, some things are better, some are worse.
I've had the privilege of watching most of (from the end of the Atari-era onward) the tech arms race evolve.
And yeah, there is something from the bygone eras in gaming that's been lost or replaced, but it isn't "dead".

(Though I still cringe when someone states "3D graphics is strictly better than 2D")

 

[xDarc]

It's pretty much dead to me. I'd say the decline started with the shift to console in 2006 and today, the social and mobile games are the last nail in the coffin. I would play more games if they made more games worth playing.