We've brought this on ourselves. Musings about the state of the industry.

[Colt47]

Actually the 3ds seems to be having an avalanche of great releases right now. It's turning out to be a fantastic portable, despite me never using the 3d ever.

Yeah it does, I just keep kicking myself for not waiting until they released the much more usable 3ds XL instead of the original model. The DS lite had more screen space than the 3ds does!

The game list I was looking at includes SMT 4, Fire Emblem, and oddly enough Luigi's Mansion. I thought I'd have sworn off Mario games due to the repetitiveness of some of the releases, but never having played the original Luigi's Mansion I've got to admit it's kind of fun. I don't even think I am part of the target demographic for the game.

 

[Frybird]

You can't generalize it to one reason, many failed games did something wrong individually or are just stricken with "bad luck"

Dude I read your entire post and couldn't find the coherent argument within. Would you mind summing up?

I mostly just answered to your observations and nitpicks, and answered your final question with saying that there is no one alone to be blamed for ALL OF THE THINGS. When a game flops, it does not necessarily have to have one reason or the other.

Generalization is a general problem in many gamers viewpoints. There is no definite answer to be found in questions about DRM, DLC, Marketing or Design, and especially not in how to sell a game since that is a pretty risky endeavor. Especially not from a customers point of view and most people don't know shit about selling a product. As such, i'm not really feeling like telling people what they should and should not buy from their money, nor do i pretend that i'm "doing it right"

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I kind of agree with the sentiment of what you are saying but i must put my foot down when you mention checking reviews.

I think i was 12 years old when i first realised that games magazine reviews were biased and as the years have passed on i have come to understand that they aren't really anything more than falsely advertised puppets of the games industry...the people who allow them access to income to survive. With such a conflict of interest they are always dubious so i write them off out of hand. Then we jump to player reviews. These reviews are even more dubious because they tend to be written by the same people who complain so loudly they get game breaking changes put into games that are perfectly ok as they are. Even my friends tell me to get games that are definately sub-par because they find something in it they like or they want a player like me to help make the game great for them.

So basically i advise avoiding reviews altogether and find some screen shots online and maybe a few lines of text explaining the setting and then make your own mind up. The entire problem with all our society is that people allow other people to make decisions for them. Sure, you can make mistakes by going it alone but at least those mistakes are yours to cherish and ponder, to avoid in future but to learn from. You learn nothing by following the herd and you certainly learn nothing by not thinking for yourself so get out there and apply your own thoughts and fuck what Mr Activision puppet says about your game, fuck what Mr Fanboy Loudmouth has to say, and be critical of what your friends say aswell. One other thing...advertising. If your product is good enough then it sells itself. If you see something advertised on tv, websites, billboards etc then the chances are it's going to be mediocre at best. Avoid things that are over advertised.

For my part i rent games nowadays and buy almost nothing. I finish pretty much any game of any genre within 2-7 days and i destroy the achievements wherever possible. The problem with the game industry lies within the casual gamer market which buys games but never plays them. I have friends with games still in the wrapping 2 years after release which they paid full price for. They could have rented it...they could have waited 2 years and bought it second hand for next to nothing but no, they made the company think they had a winner and now they have released a second game that has flopped.

I'm all for defending the weak but i refuse to defend the stupid.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I don't think there's anything wrong with games-
-Modern military shooters selling well (especially CoD) ? That's because they're genuinely good games that play to their demographic.
-Yearly installments? People buy them, so they'll just keep selling them. Bear in mind that they aren't always that bad.
-Pushing devs for deadlines? Everyone needs deadlines. You can't just say 'have as long as you want' as this'll lead to them just meandering around instead of focusing.
-Wii/casual gaming popular? It's because they are innovative and aiming at the bigger demographic- a huge demographic.
-Too many MMOs? People play them. Whatever gets made, you can be sure that there will be at least one person who thinks its amazing.
I'll disagree, however, that there are loads of mediocre games instead of a few excellent games. Hell, even in the last 6 months we've had XCOM, Far Cry 3, Black Ops 2, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Dishonoured, Borderlands 2 and many more amazing games. No-one can argue that that isn't an amazing roster.

 

[bug_of_war]

However, the same can be said about action platformers, look at Assassins Creed. annual sequels until the market stops buying them. Assassins Creed IV being entirely naval based suggests that instead of respecting their customers and waiting, Ubisoft are just rolling out the only good bit of AC3 into an entire game by itself.

Um...Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is not an entirely naval based game. They've come out and said that the game is gonna have just as much naval sections as there will be on land sections. And as for Assassin's Creed 3, the game reviewed quite well, and apart from a few bugs many people still enjoyed the game, but were somewhat unsatisfied with Connor as his character was a hard one to click with. I liked Connor, but I can see why many did not. Also, Ubisoft have said that each Assassin's Creed game is given 3 years development, so it's not as though they're just quickly making a 20 hour game in 1 year.

Well this is the problem when you commercialise an art form. It's sad to say, but I'm completely ok with the AAA industry imploding. If it leads to a better industry in the long run, sure! Why not?

Here's the thing though, all art is commercialised, and games have yet to fully solidify themselves as an art form. I would hate to see the AAA industry die, as that would lead to a long period of games being made for niche markets by indie developers, thus many people would have less games they would have to play and it would severely hurt the future of gaming as we would loose a majority of people. COD does COD well, and it serves the gaming community by pulling in more people. I know many people whom only bought an Xbox/Playstation because of COD, and then slowly began to expand into other games.

 

[flarty]

Snip

This would be a valid point if indies and kick starters wasn't changing the landscape.

 

[fenrizz]

It's really quite simple.

1) Never pre-order. Doesn't matter how inviting it looks, how much you like the company or series, you don't ever do it. No, shutup. Just don't.

2) Don't buy games until they're a week old, or until a handful of post release reviews are out- whichever comes last. It's these goddamn first week blind sales that drive the direction of the industry, and they are defined entirely on how well something is marketed.

One could also say you should boycott DRM and always online games, but that sentiment is as lost as a fart in a hurricane.

If I don't pre-order, then how am I going to get my hands on the Collectors Edition?

Besides, I don't think the game industry is at a bad spot at all.
Hell, I'd argue that it's the best that it has ever been!

The sheer magnitude and variety of the industry these days ensures that there are good, quality games out there for almost everyone, no matter how odd or common your tastes in games are.

From AAA to indie, you have never had a wider and varied selection of games to choose from.

 

[DSK-]

Making games nowadays isn't about making up new and interesting ideas and concepts into practice, but a rather pragmatic, money-orientated approach; it's all well and good about having interesting ideas and concepts, but will it make Company A and Publisher A money?.

We're seeing a slight buck in the trend though with Kickstarter, where the consumers are being pitched games they want to see released and play. If games like Project Eternity, Torment and Star Citizen turn out to be big successes it might just enable game development houses to survive without being bought out and forced into Activision/EA workhouses.

Alright, I over-embellished the last paragraph but still :/

 

[Raikas]

And the day we have fewer, excellent games coming out rather than many, many mediocre games, is a day I'll be happy to see.

I'd say we are at that day already, but instead of a few excellent games we have many. Every year many, many excellent games come out while the mediocre shooters are still a minority.

Yeah I used the shooter genre as an example as I said midway through the piece.

However, the same can be said about action platformers, look at Assassins Creed. annual sequels until the market stops buying them. Assassins Creed IV being entirely naval based suggests that instead of respecting their customers and waiting, Ubisoft are just rolling out the only good bit of AC3 into an entire game by itself.

Eh, until AC3 the popularity for that franchise was quite high - and it's still fairly generally popular, no? And if they make their target market happy (and most of those yearly release shooters and sports games do), then that's success. If those were the only games available then yeah, that would be a problem, but they aren't. If anything there are more games coming out now - the existance of one doesn't cancel out the other.

It isn't actually possible for the excellent to outnumber the mediocre, because then the definition of mediocre would have to shift along with it.

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

I only read reviews on Destructoid & RPS these days. Greg Tito giving 5 out of 5 to Dragon Age 2 removed all credibility this site had in terms of reviews. Ranking the Escapist with Penny Arcade is a complete farce.

Wait, hold it right there. Just because The Escapist gave a 5 out of 5 to one little game you didn't like, suddenly they have no credibility whatsoever in terms of reviews? I'm sorry, that just reeks of pretentiousness. I mean, if the Escapist had a history of giving glowing reviews to truly bad AAA games or if there was a scandal involving review writers here being paid off by EA or Activision to give a 5 star review to a game: yes, then you'd have a reason to not believe this place has any credibility. But just because they 5-starred a game you didn't like? No. That's just not a good or logical reason to disregard any website's credibility.

Sorry to say this, but when I was reading the OP I couldn't help but get a feeling that this thread was just another long "I personally don't like what the industry is doing, therefore the industry is bad and all of you should feel the same way!!" kind of rant. That statement I quoted just proves it. Plus, it kinda goes against one of your statements in the OP. "Read reviews" you said, but then turn around and say something akin to "Only Destructoid & RPS are credible to me". Only sticking to two websites really is limiting yourself when it comes to making sure one will "Read reviews".

 

[shrekfan246]

What I got out of this thread is that I should go play Diablo III again.

So I'm going to go do that.

Also, I only buy games I'm pretty sure I'll like. I've never bought a military shooter and I fund games that I feel expand the modern mold, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mirror's Edge, Dishonored, Portal and Bioshock. You know, first person shooters that aren't all the same. Because not everything is a clone of Call of Duty.

 

[Weaver]

Whoa whoa whoa, don't pull this "we" stuff. I'm incredibly careful and dutifully selective with what games I buy and when I buy them.

I didn't buy Sim City, D3, etc. I don't buy untested hardware with the hope it "might get good" and I very, very rarely pre-order games (and when I do it's because I got into beta or some such and liked it).

 

[GonzoGamer]

It's hard to tell what a flop will be for gamers.
I thought a defective console with a monthly fee would flop but it did pretty well; not ps2 well, but too well for a defective console (to be fair, they have since fixed the defect) with a monthly fee(they've also raised the fee since then). Maybe that's why they're testing how far they can go this coming gen with all the net rattling about always online consoles.

Whoa whoa whoa, don't pull this "we" stuff. I'm incredibly careful and dutifully selective with what games I buy and when I buy them.

I didn't buy Sim City, D3, etc. I don't buy untested hardware with the hope it "might get good" and I very, very rarely pre-order games (and when I do it's because I got into beta or some such and liked it).

I too have been a selective buyer this gen. I shy away from games that have online pass or too much first day dlc.

I'll admit, I buy an Asscree and a CoD now and again, I don't feel the need to get every one of them but they are good games.
I think the problem is that too many devs just want to copy the biggest success, so everything funnels into fps; another thing Jim pointed out this week.

 

[Lilani]

It's really quite simple.

1) Never pre-order. Doesn't matter how inviting it looks, how much you like the company or series, you don't ever do it. No, shutup. Just don't.

I think that's a bit unfair. I think companies should be punished when they make shit products, for sure, but I also think they should be rewarded when they make good ones. Valve has a consistent reputation of producing quality games, so I happily pre-ordered Portal 2, happily enjoyed the 10% discount that pre-order earned me, and happily played the game when it came out. Of course there's always a bit of a gamble, but if you know and trust the dev and they have a history of treating you right then why not? I don't remember anybody complaining about pre-ordering Skyrim or any Valve game, but just looking at EA's reputation as of late and all the bad press it was getting there was plenty of warning that SimCity was going to be shit.

2) Don't buy games until they're a week old, or until a handful of post release reviews are out- whichever comes last. It's these goddamn first week blind sales that drive the direction of the industry, and they are defined entirely on how well something is marketed.

One could also say you should boycott DRM and always online games, but that sentiment is as lost as a fart in a hurricane.

Again, this is a great strategy for punishing bad devs and publishers, but if you do this for all games then you're also hurting the guys who do it right. Not rewarding bad business practices is important, but so is rewarding the practices we want to see more of.

 

[Terramax]

seriously, if anyone?s got a recommendation for it, that'd be much appreciated.

Vita is worth its price tag for Everybody's Golf. Better than any game you've played in years. Go forth now!

And the day we have fewer, excellent games coming out rather than many, many mediocre games, is a day I'll be happy to see.

Did you play games in the previous console generations? Do you know how many terrible games there were on consoles like the Nes, PSX, or systems like the CDi and Jaguar which barely had any good games at all?

Personally though, I'd prefer mediocre games to supposed excellent games. Because it's been years since I've played an 'excellent game' that's actually been excellent. Give me supposed mediocre titles like Tenchu Z, Shinobido 2, Ridge Racer 3D, Army of Two: 40th Day, etc, over games like GTA, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, or whatever other big title you mention, any day of the week.

You under-estimate that, without hit-and-miss, flawed titles, we won't see progression or originality in games.

Also, seriously, that's an awfully long post for teaching granny to suck eggs, or stating stuff we haven't already heard 100 times before.

 

[Lugbzurg]

You know what we could really use? More satire games. Seriously, there needs to be a larger market for satire videogames.

 

[ResonanceSD]

You know what we could really use? More satire games. Seriously, there needs to be a larger market for satire videogames.

Medical Simulator 2013 looks like a satire game =D

 

[ThriKreen]

You know what we could really use? More satire games. Seriously, there needs to be a larger market for satire videogames.

Oh hey, Saints Row called...

Actually there's preorders for SR4 going on right now.

 

[ShogunGino]

In most recent years since I started attending college, I've been a lot more selective with my gaming purchases. The biggest reason being the decrease of finances, as some might guess. As a result, I tend to wait months after a desired game's release before I consider purchasing a new copy, once the price has gone down.

I was okay with getting games for the Wii like Skyward Sword, Xenoblade Chronicles, and just a few days ago, Pandora's Tower, at launch price (for other Operation Rainfall fans wondering, The Last Story was given as a birthday gift by a good friend), because: Skyward Sword had the gold Wii Motion Plus wiimote, and I had not Motion Plus thingie to play Skyward Sword with, and at $70, the actual price of the wiimote was half the price of a new one. XC was a lucky gamble that just really, REALLY appealed to me from previews, and I ended up really liking it, and Pandora's Tower because it was only $40 at launch, and I knew it was only going to have a rather limited printing schedule for the United States. It's an alright game, overall, IMO.

However, for my 360, many of the games I was interested in usually had dlc released for it. I always, no, I mean, always wait until all the dlc is released so I can determine which ones I would want, and then get them when the price of the game goes down, or a Game of the Year edition with all the dlc on disc or free downloads. Only two games have I gotten at full price: Mirror's Edge (I like it, but it's more of a $35 kinda game to me) and Arkham Asylum (same, but more of a $40 kinda game to me)

I nearly consider it a point of pride the fact I waited until all the dlc for Mass Effect 3 was released before I played it. In fact, I only just beat that game about 2 weeks ago for the first time, and I had a blast. Kinda buggy at parts (had to restart because a glitch kept me from finishing a sidequest), but from what I hear from my friends who beat it before the Extended Cut, I made a rather wise choice to wait a year, and have the whole story before me, which alleviates some problems with the end character (I'm sure you all know who I mean). And the price of the new copy of the game? $30. So I, in effect, paid 30 dollars less than my fellow Americans. And I am glad for that. Like I said, a bit of a point of pride.

That said, because of these spending habits, I tend to wait for reviews, common consumer feedback, and footage on Youtube from Let's Players or walkthroughs if I'm interested in something. Someone always, and I mean always, starts a Let's Play of any big name game the day its released. I'm very careful when I get something new.

I guess that's why I find gamer behavior to be far more apprehensive that others do. My purchases lean towards the years-old pre-owned games, and rarely the big launch titles. I carefully consider my purchases, I spend less, and as a result, I rarely feel disappointed in my purchases because I generally feel my games are worth the money spent.

To be a bit more OT, at this point in the industry, I guess I would just stick to either your niche indie titles, because just about everyone enjoys Steam, or look into older games on older consoles that you can find for a pittance that you can enjoy. I've never been so resolute on fancy graphics that I can't enjoy older 3D models, so I still find joy in my Wii with its large library of cheap, niche-appeal games (no, I'm not talking about the 'casual' games, I mean, decent niche games), and its backwards compatibility with my Gamecube games, my favorite console. I guess that's why I still like Nintendo best; they do the fewest things to irritate me. Are they perfect? Of course not, nothing is, but I'm generally okay with how they do things, more than Sony and Microsoft, anyway.

I only recently learned of how the big AAA industry is shooting themselves in the feet multiple times with a shotgun, and I'm in a financial position where my first thought is 'So be it. If they are going to fall, I will let them, and we'll see other, smarter companies rise from the ashes. My spending is limited as it is. It is only a matter of time.'

And at the end of this huge digression of a post, that's my honest opinion: Maybe it's time to just sit and wait on all these big titles that are becoming more homogenized. I've never been jaded enough about game releases to call games like RE6 and Dead Space 3 'bad', just mediocre with a few entertaining elements. My true passion lies in animation and I'm a lot more angry when it comes to how that industry is, but I digress, maybe we should all just kinda slow down with modern releases for a while. Wait for other feedback before making a purchase, be more careful about what you buy. Consider older titles if nothing new is up to par.

That's what I do, and I'm pretty much a happy gamer. Not to be rude, but, in all honesty, how many of you can say the same?