I will admit that a reasonable analysis of the portents of the age (which may include an attempt to find the candy surprise promisted to me at the bottom of a handle of bottom shelf rum) paints a grim portrait. Giants in the industry faulter, staunch independents allow themselves to be absorbed by others, budgets have skyrocketed to the point that simply selling well isn't good enough to make do--you need a blockbuster. The wind brings with it tales that we live in the last cycle of the console as we know it and companies around the world have found they can make more money producing programs that are hardly even interactive much less games and distributing them on the internet.
From where I stand, the outlook certainly appears grim but I can't help but wonder if this is simply a natural feeling of uneasyness borne from close observation of an industry rapidly changing. Surely the industry itself cannot die - hundreds of millions of people play games each day and untold billions of dollars worth of infrastructre lay in the homes of people around the world. Even if the giants collapse because they doggedly pursue an unsustainable course, surely this won't dissuade people from soldiering on because games are a calling, would it?
The medium has survived more than one crash in it's short history and always it has risen again. Invariably the crashes did more to push the medium forward than anything else, for it is only in the face of utter ruin, when the biggest risk you'd ever take is simply trying to make a product for a dead industry, that you are truly free to try anything. The current age of video games has been on a death match for fidelity and only now, when we are tantilizingly close, do we see the error in our ways. A game can look good without looking real, and a game that looks real is not always going to be worth our time. What's more, we have only flirted with the idea that a game can be about something, but we find that most games that try to tread in this bold territory simply copy other media.
Thus I have to wonder - should I look upon the uncertain future of the industry with trepidation or joy? If it should collapse, it almost certainly wouldn't be the end of the medium, and who knows what may rise from the ashes?