Poll: Is the gaming industry deterioating?

[krazykidd]

No, it's not. Games are selling more then ever, and while their maybe many Military FPSs there is also many other types of games that are thriving.

Depends what you consider deterorate . Quality or quantity? Sure military fps sell a lot but most of it is recyxled stuff , no other genre can get away with that.

This past year has been one of my favourites in ages as a PC gamer with so many high-quality releases that for a poor schmuck like me it's just impossible to keep up, even with STEAM and other digital distributors being merciful and tossing sales and such my way.

Nah, don't pay attention to the hearsay. Everyone always says things are getting worse and seemingly 99% of the time it's just nostalgia. Call of Duty is hardly the first game series to become a popular phenomenon and milk it for all its worth after all, these things come and go all the time.

Nostalgia argument is kinda weird . Weird in the sense , that according to you life long gamers are blinding by nostalgia thus they think everything is going to hell , but new gamers ( new here is reletive ) think they are awsome . Now who has more credibility? The gamer who has been player ganes for 20 years? Or the gamer who has been playing games since this gen? Hmmm

OT: personally , and i talk only for myself, Less and less games interest me as time goes on, does that mean that the industry is deteriorating? Not exacly , just thst they moved past what i prefer in my games . It's just my taste that has not evolved with games. Thus i buy less games that i have in the past . I do have 30 some games on my xbox 360 , but that compared to the 100 games i have on the ps2 , the 100 games i have on the ps1 , the 60 games i have on the snes and so on and so forth , it is just a few. Since i only buy games that really interest me , apparently not that many games this gen pique my interest .

Also i don't feel the need to replay any of my xbox360 games, save 3 or 4 , compared to games i have on previous generations that i replay quite often. Anyways thats just me.

 

[Signa]

Wow, the responses on these last 2 pages are impressing me. I asked this about 2 years ago, and everyone called me an idiot.

Granted "Falling apart," "deteriorating," and "Dying" are all alarmist terminologies, but it's something I've seen on the horizon for a while now. It's just nice knowing the indie scene is bringing us things like Terraria, Bastion and Sanctum. Games certainly aren't dying if this is what we can look forward to.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Yea, I think it's deteriorating but not because of Battlefield or MW3.
The problem is that the console market has been pretty crappy and hasn't been selling nearly as well as it was last generation when it should be selling a lot more. Because of that AAA games haven't been selling nearly as well, except for those old franchises that keep picking up more and more fans.
Console gaming used to be an easy alternative as PC gaming but in this generation it's become more of a pain in the ass. It used to be that you just had to worry about patching, punching in codes, and what hardware you have when you were a pc gamer but now console gamers are being asked to deal with it and there are a lot of ps2 owners who decided that they just can't be bothered. As someone who has tried to make the best out of being a ps3 owner, I can't blame them.
Even the kids in my family who used to want games for Christmas, now want other things.
Of course the industry would much rather put the blame on used game purchasers so I don't see an upturn coming any time soon.

I agree with this. Is it alright if I rub it in? I'll do it anyway. HA HA, PC'S GOT IT SLIGHTLY BETTER!

It isn't detoriating in sales, its just deteriorating in quality. However even I hesitate to say that this is the case, with so many indie games that are unique selling well I say that gaming is better then ever.

Feel free to rub it in. It's the reason I've been gaming more on the PC lately. If I'm going to go through a bunch of annoying bs, I may as well be able to install mods and tweak the game settings.

Consoles seem to just be taking all the annoying parts of pc gaming without any of the benefits. And really there's no reason for it. Sales for consoles has definitely deteriorated since last generation and that could be a reason.

You're right about the indie games though. They seem to be doing well with a mix of affordability, charm, and the territory marking preferences of hipster culture: "What, you've never heard of Hot Dog Trucking the game?" I like those big AAA games but if they can't expand the market for them, we'll probably see a lot fewer. But considering that more than half of them are crap anyway, this could be a good thing.

 

[JohnDoey]

No the industry isn't deteriorating and quality isn't falling either, whenever someone claims games have gotten worse they seem to be thinking of some non-existent period of time when every game was either fallout or planescape:torment level of quality.I think games have gotten better at least now even if a games crappy it's actually playable and beatable.

 

[TheDooD]

Yes, because the industry at the higher levels are extremely scared to take risks or have serious quality control which will turn off some players. Plus seeing versions of the same game getting released every year is like eating meatloaf every week it's ok for the first month, yet after that you don't want to see the shit again. Well unless you really like meatloaf.

No, because its growing in different ways. PC has ALOT of access to different games most that were on consoles or arcade cabinets at a point in time. Some of these games never reached the US/EU, They're now being translated unto English and other languages as we speak.

Yes, because of the greed of a few AAA companies are pretty much spoiling the broth for others. It's all well and good to make money. Yet don't short change people who're still paying alot of money for a game that should be 50% or less of the current price. They should be focusing on the replay value outside of a cheap multiplayer aspect. Now gamers see MP as a cheap way to really keep players playing when they should have focused on making the game in itself something worth coming back to. then pretty much making games an $60 investment that's beaten in a afternoon and pretty much returned to Gamestop the next day. Is a pretty bad choice in quality control. Then said AAA companies get mad that they're own games aren't staying in people's houses yet when it's their own fault for not spending a bit of all that money they have for some legit quality control. To prevent their game from ending up being a majority in the bargain bin.

No, because now gamers are starting to get into creating games they experienced what they find wrong in games and are gonna try to fix it to appeal to other gamers instead of the cop-out in my opinion of mass market appeal. With taking what they know they're trying to convey what they loved in gaming and trying to get people to understand that. Gamers that are starting to get into development are gonna change, or at lease try to change the mistakes the fatcats are currently doing industry.

No and Yes at the same time. Gaming is massive yet because of said mass more people are able to have access to gaming through consoles, mobile, and PC's. The bad thing of said mass is that generations are moving too fast at the moment and quality games are pretty much lost to those that missed out.

 

[michael87cn]

I voted no.

It's already deteriorated in my opinion.

Started with Halo and the first Call of Duty... then people just stopped making good PC FPS games, well 'cept Half-Life1/2, those are great.

We've also had a distinct lack of good RTS. I played some StarCraft 1 today and find myself blaming the graphic-whoredom for costing too much and taking too much work to make new games.

 

[Skops]

Alright so we aren't seeing things like E-SWAT and Lost Vikings anymore, but regardless. The Games industry is bigger than the Movie industry right now, and you think we're on a downward spiral?!

 

[ComradeJim270]

Nostalgia argument is kinda weird . Weird in the sense , that according to you life long gamers are blinding by nostalgia thus they think everything is going to hell , but new gamers ( new here is reletive ) think they are awsome . Now who has more credibility? The gamer who has been player ganes for 20 years? Or the gamer who has been playing games since this gen? Hmmm

It's not really a matter of credibility. What happens is that people remember good games they've played in the past, because... well, because they were good. But bad games we've played? Unless they're truly horrendous, we tend to forget about them. This creates the illusion that more bad games are being released now than there used to be.

I voted no.

It's already deteriorated in my opinion.

Started with Halo and the first Call of Duty... then people just stopped making good PC FPS games, well 'cept Half-Life1/2, those are great.

We've also had a distinct lack of good RTS. I played some StarCraft 1 today and find myself blaming the graphic-whoredom for costing too much and taking too much work to make new games.

People are still making those games, but you have to look for them.

 

[Something Amyss]

I am going to disagree with you here, here is why.

Mario indeed wasnt the multimillion dollar smash hit that claim the top spots today, however it was popular and influential enough that the 2D platformer became the standard go to solution for every shitty game that was either a movie/comic/cartoon/toy tie in. From Barbie to Seven Ups Cool Spot, they all massively abused the idea and churned out crap around the clock.

The fighters of the 90s in their own right did the same thing, with hundreds of shitty clones that featured at least a Ryu type Character.

Finally the JRPGs, just because most of them didnt make it oversees, doesnt mean Japan wasnt drowning in them, If you mention one Anime series from the 80s-00s era it had a JRPG game.

Okay, so if you're going to disagree with me, try and make it for something I said.

The reason I mentioned these specific genres is that they were popular, nay exploded in their respective time period. The argument had nothing to do with their popularity, but whether or not their popularity led to expectations of financial excellence on the behalf of other titles. You know, exactly what I stated.

Did Mario start the shutdown of companies who made less successful titles? Hell no. Did Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat? Again, no. Final Fantasy VII? No again.

So please, explain where exactly we disagree.

 

[Ryotknife]

i feel that the gaming industry is moving away from the demographic that have been playing for most of our lives, and that saddens me.

but i guess im just a dinosaur. so no, i do not feel that the industry is deteriorating, but it is moving in a different direction and im no longer invited to the ride.

 

[boag]

I am going to disagree with you here, here is why.

Mario indeed wasnt the multimillion dollar smash hit that claim the top spots today, however it was popular and influential enough that the 2D platformer became the standard go to solution for every shitty game that was either a movie/comic/cartoon/toy tie in. From Barbie to Seven Ups Cool Spot, they all massively abused the idea and churned out crap around the clock.

The fighters of the 90s in their own right did the same thing, with hundreds of shitty clones that featured at least a Ryu type Character.

Finally the JRPGs, just because most of them didnt make it oversees, doesnt mean Japan wasnt drowning in them, If you mention one Anime series from the 80s-00s era it had a JRPG game.

Okay, so if you're going to disagree with me, try and make it for something I said.

The reason I mentioned these specific genres is that they were popular, nay exploded in their respective time period. The argument had nothing to do with their popularity, but whether or not their popularity led to expectations of financial excellence on the behalf of other titles. You know, exactly what I stated.

Did Mario start the shutdown of companies who made less successful titles? Hell no. Did Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat? Again, no. Final Fantasy VII? No again.

So please, explain where exactly we disagree.

I precisly quoted the part of the text I disagreed with for simplicitys sake, Let me make it clearer for you.

Even though Mario didnt explicitly set sales goals (20 years ago, it was literally unheard of any game publisher sharing its sales), it did well enough and stablished a trend so high, that it drowned 8 and 16bit gaming in shitty platformers. You should be able to infer the parralels from Mario back in the Day and CoD today from this. Same example for Figthers and JRPGs.

More over, I have a problem with your continous statement "that COD has shutdown companies", I would like to see you show proof of a developer quoted saying "We shut down because we didnt sale as much as CoD".

 

[Something Amyss]

I precisly quoted the part of the text I disagreed with for simplicitys sake, Let me make it clearer for you.

Not according to your "Clarification." In fact, you still seem to be "precisely" saying what I did not and don't seem to be opposing what I was said.

Precisely.

 

[boag]

I precisly quoted the part of the text I disagreed with for simplicitys sake, Let me make it clearer for you.

Not according to your "Clarification." In fact, you still seem to be "precisely" saying what I did not and don't seem to be opposing what I was said.

Precisely.

sigh.

But Mario didn't set sales expectations or even sequel expectations. Neither did fighters in the 90s, or JRPGs in the late 90s/early 2000s

Mario did set sales expectations and did set expectations.
So did Fighters like SF and Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters.
So did games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Lunar, Phantasy Star, Tales of.

THE POINT -> Just because they didnt make the Billions of Dollars that a AAA blockbuster movie makes today, doesnt mean they didnt set, follow and exploit their trends. <- THE POINT


Is that clear enough now?

 

[Grygor]

Every media has an area devoted to mass market appeal.

Just at look at movies, TV, books, music, all these outlets have something that appeals to the mass market, despite being frowned upon by people who are more experienced with the intricacies of the media.


TV as reality TV, movies have the likes of the Transformers movies, books have Dan Brown (ugh, that guy sucks so much).

It's an inevitable consequence of popularity.

Thing is, movies also have their Black Swan and Children of Men. Books have their Tolstoy and Pratchett.

Games have... what exactly?

Games have Bastion, LA Noire, Portal. Those three are some of the best storytelling experiences I have had. You cannot of told those storys without it being interactive.

That's... that's it?

Don't get me wrong, those are good games. A couple of them are great. But comparing them to the best that movies and books have to offer just seems like a bad joke.

Thing is, movies also have their Black Swan and Children of Men. Books have their Tolstoy and Pratchett.

Games have... what exactly?

Planescape Torment, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami.

Once again, those are good games. (Can't speak for Okami, haven't played it.) But the notion that they are the best we can come up with is just a tad depressing.

Sure these titles aren't comparable to the greatest books and movies, but gaming is a lot younger than those things.

We'll have our time, don't worry about that.

Well, that's some consolation.

Yes indeed, it's important to remember that video gaming is still a young medium. Dating from when they went mainstream, modern video gaming is roughly equivalent to film in the early 1930's. Now take a quick look at the IMDb top 250: the oldest movie on the list is from 1921, and there are only 15 films from before 1940 (7 from the 1920's and 8 from the 1930's). In other words, when film was where gaming is now, most of its great works of art were still in the future.

Keep in mind that filmmakers were fairly quick to grasp the capabilities of the medium, and by the 1930's had already developed a grammar for discussing and theorizing about film - the artistic implications of gaming's signature element, interactivity, are still only poorly understood.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I've seen it all over the place on just about every message board that has to do with gaming: Gaming is on a downward slide thanks to Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. What do you guys think?

I think that I just blew a dude up with a blue disk in the Tribes: Ascend beta while we were both going about 100 mph in opposite directions. While jetpacking. So I feel pretty good about the future of gaming in general and shooters in particular.

 

[LilithSlave]

No, it's not. Games are selling more then ever

Eh, I bet about %20 of that sales boost is too to piracy. Media of all varieties are selling more. Because people are surrounded by media all the time on the internet and ways to purchase or pirate it, they become addicted to it and spend more time partaking in and buying it. Furthermore, they're surrounded by media that isn't forced down our throats via cable television, meaning that less people are saturated by sitcom media and other material controlled by major companies like Viacom, and instead more exposure to other media such as video games. Given that people are surrounded by different things, and video games have had a place to escape the stranglehold tv companies have had on media industry, video games are doing better than ever.

Also, just because games are selling more, doesn't mean the quality has improved. I believe that many things about the gaming industry have gone downhill. Maybe not the sales, but the quality.

 

[TehCookie]

OT: personally , and i talk only for myself, Less and less games interest me as time goes on, does that mean that the industry is deteriorating? Not exacly , just thst they moved past what i prefer in my games . It's just my taste that has not evolved with games. Thus i buy less games that i have in the past . I do have 30 some games on my xbox 360 , but that compared to the 100 games i have on the ps2 , the 100 games i have on the ps1 , the 60 games i have on the snes and so on and so forth , it is just a few. Since i only buy games that really interest me , apparently not that many games this gen pique my interest .

Also i don't feel the need to replay any of my xbox360 games, save 3 or 4 , compared to games i have on previous generations that i replay quite often. Anyways thats just me.

What a coincidence that's also me. I'll wave my cane in the air and say modern gaming is shit, but I hope no one takes my bitter retrogamer rants seriously. It's just my opinion.

Bah kids today have no imagination. They just play realistic games, and even their fantasy games try to be realistic. You don't need no powersuit to fight aliens, you just need more guns. You didn't worry about how you carried them, it was fucking magic.