Life after video games

[Baphomet]

This link. To a website called PWOT: Pointless waste of time, in case nobody's heard of it. Has an article talking about the fall of the gaming industry as we've come to know it.


He discusses such things as how games have come to rely on trite details and improvements such as the one described:

Quote[/b] ]Compare Madden NFL 2001 to Madden 2004. You have to squint to tell the difference. Do you think innovations for Madden 2007 will be startling by comparison? I'll never forget the IGN Madden 2002 screenshot with a caption pointing out that it would be the first Madden to depict players' arm hair.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when details such as this are selling-points for a game.

He goes on to illustrate the difference between 1997's goldeneye and 04's Red faction.

It's true, things really haven't changed that much in the past few years. Games have become stagnant and shallow.

The whole reference to arm hair does run a similar parallel to the OFP community's increasing interest in making insanely detailed addons if for no other merit or reason save for it's own.

Other people in the PWOT forums have argued that:

Quote[/b] ]With all due respect, this in no way counters Wang's claims. His argument is not that there is little room for advance left -- he'd be an idiot to think otherwise. Video games have a very long way to go until they are real enough to mistake with (say) a television show in terms of realism, both on the screen and to the ear. The problem that Wang brings up, though, is that it doesn't matter. Graphics are "good enough" now and the remaining areas of improvement are going to bring greatly diminishing returns. As he pointed out, one of the the major differences between Madden 2001 and Madden 2002 was that the players had arm hair. That improvement, while appealing from a realist or aesthetic perspective (cough*shallow*cough), bring no more enjoyment to the game.

Personally I'd be glad if the industry -did- in fact collapse and revert back to the way it was when I was a kid. When there were niche developers and there wasn't such widespread exploitation and interest in the genre. Developers had to work a lot harder and innovate more to satisfy that customer than they did some drone who bought the newest game because it depicted armhair, or some other similiarly trite feature.

I think 1997 could be a microcosm for the gaming industry in general. As some may recall it was the year of the real time strategy. I think the same thing (although it's taken a bit longer) is what's happening to graphics in games. Pretty soon, well hell, even now. Every game just looks fantastic. However they all seem very empty to me. Like most of them are all just the same. Same as back in 1997 when RTS games were flooding the market en masse and soon the craze abated and then the age of Quake 2 took over after that and gave birth to (or kicked in to high gear) the online multiplayer gaming community.

At any rate. I find this information actually encouraging, I only really play OFP anyhow. I'm very apathetic to the happenings elsewhere in the gaming world.

[toadlife]

I've seen that site, and think the author is living in some kind of fantasy world.

The gaming industry will thrive in it's current state. It will allways be dominated by flashy cookie cutter titles which feature little innovation, but there will allways be good products which come about from time to time.

Now take what I just said and put 'movie' or 'music' or 'television' in the place of 'gaming'. It's pretty much the same story with all forms of media entertainment.

For the authors prediction to come true, society would have to take a massive exodus away from it's current mode of consumerism. This would take far more than a slew of crappy products to hit the market. A giant asteroid or a few nukes might do the trick, but not crappy games.

[Baphomet]

That's probably true and generally I thought that was unlikely, however wishful thinking tends to influence my opinions.

I think the industry will subsist on those aforementioned drones who will consume just about any old game or software because it is new and "appears" to be improved. People are stupid. There's no way around that.

I think it's because of this trend towards mass marketing that has shifted my interest away from games. I think I should be happy about that though. Sometimes you need a kick in the right direction to move your life into the next phase.

[RalphWiggum]

the age of gamers are increasing, and in long run, i see no decline in the number of people playing games. there will be 'mass produced' games, using well known engines, and some acute ones like OFP.

for 50+ yr, i'd have to reserve some forecast since it is dependent on population of new borns.

[Certa]

Ten (I should say 15) years ago it was possible for two friends to write a game. Today it's a project more costly than shooting a film, the development time is rarely below 2 years and it's hard to do it with a team smaller than 20 people.

We've grown used to the details and taking them all away would bring us back to Amiga 500 graphics that simply wouldn't sell. Well, there are excellent text based games online but the audience is limited.

Developers are working hard enough these days. The gaming industry is a publisher industry and like any other publisher industry the developers are often slaves under bad terms.

95 out of 100 games do not generate profit for the developer, BiS are one of the lucky exceptions who made it a hit. The other games that failed we don't remember or talk much about. The publisher will however make a profit from 100 of 100 games published. The right of the investor in a way.

I was in the game industry from 1994 to 1998 but considerably raised my salary and working conditions by moving to the next building, writing the same code but for apps, not for games.

I still have a passion for games, I'd love to get involved in game development some time in the future again but I won't work for a publisher.

Luckily the terms changed.

The future of game is open source and modular design. All of ID software's games are available as open source. Counter Strike was a mod.

All of you mod and mission designers are part of the game industry. You might not make the big cash but you bring the development forward.

Today and in the future, game design is based on modules. In the future, the game creators do not have to write the rendering from scratch. They will be able to put a game together by modules and often it will be open source and that means most of the games will even be free.

Again it's possible for two friends to create a game, no need of going back.

Besides, playing games isn't a fad, it's more of a need and as long people need the excitement, there will be games.

[der bastler]

Old topic...
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;st=409



(seems nobody is reading my posts... )

[m21man]

Quote[/b] ]To a website called PWOT: Pointless waste of time,

That was a pointless waste of my time. The video game industry is still growing, and the creation of high definition television sets will allow console makers to bring even more amazing details to systems that are cheaper than PCs. The industry is nowhere near collapse.

Quote[/b] ]Personally I'd be glad if the industry -did- in fact collapse and revert back to the way it was when I was a kid. When there were niche developers and there wasn't such widespread exploitation and interest in the genre.

Are you actually stupid enough to think that games of OFP2 quality can be made by "niche developers"? You need large teams to pull off big projects, and a guy in his basement is not a large team.

[joltan]

I think it's just that with computer gaming being the big market it is today (and with the high investment nescessary to develop a good game) you get a situation like with the movie industry: a lot of similar mainstream stuff that may not be revolutionary but means (mostly) guaranteed revenues from the mass market, and only a few great exceptions - games that actually try something new and succeed at it.

Nothing bad about it. There will still be many good and 'revolutionary' games in the future (just like OFP when it came out).

[der bastler]

Quote[/b] ]To a website called PWOT: Pointless waste of time,

That was a pointless waste of my time. The video game industry is still growing, and the creation of high definition television sets will allow console makers to bring even more amazing details to systems that are cheaper than PCs. The industry is nowhere near collapse.

That is not the point. Sure, games will get more and more detailled, killing is showed even more realistic, etc.

But there's nothing new. New gaming concepts are risky, and shareholders don't really like risky things.


Example: Graphic adventures like Monkey Island, Larry etc.
Recently LucasArts decided not to develop any new graphical adventure games because they think there is no market (press release):

www.lucasarts.com,recently[/url])]
"After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC" says Mike Nelson, Acting General Manager and VP of Finance and Operations. There is currently no plan to reduce staff.

Hmm, but the gamers who bought Sam'n'Max back then aren't that old and therefore still alive to buy a new Sam'n'Max...


Instead, what's doing LucasArts? Exploiting Star Wars (I'm a SW fan, but in the last few years there was too much Star Wars -> myth exploited to death), creating action-adventures...
*frowns* *shakes-head*

[Baphomet]

Quote[/b] ]Are you actually stupid enough to think that games of OFP2 quality can be made by "niche developers"? You need large teams to pull off big projects, and a guy in his basement is not a large team.

I don't think stupidity has anything to do with it.

Secondly. How OFP2 looks is completely inconsequential to me. The simple fact is a game like OFP was created long ago. It was called Muzzle Velocity, which was created by a small software development company.This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. Secondly if the rest of the industry dries up then yes. More people interested in game development would conceivably form slightly larger (than what would be considered small back when gaming was in it's infancy) and more cohesive gaming development teams. However nowhere near the size I'd imagine of say the Electronic Arts development gulags.

Take for instance the group that made the game Birds of Prey for the PC. That was a terrific flight sim and it was complicated for it's day. Same with the Falcon series. These weren't made by "small" teams in the sense that someone was writing code out of his basement, however small compared to most mainstream gaming companies I'd say nowadays. I'm speaking in relative terms my good man. I'm just tired of mass production of entertainment software.

BIS in my opinion a niche developer whether or not you'd like to count the number of heads working on such a game. OFP is not a mainstream title, it never really has been. At least not in North America. Every software store I ever went to. EVER. Always had copies of OFP laying around whereas various shitty tactical FPS games of more notorious repute were usually sold out or sold down. I've known so many people interested in that sort of genre that never even knew about OFP until I introduced it to them. My cousin who plays it works at a computer store and was commended for boosting sales of a so called: "stagnant product" which again. Was OFP. This is in terms relative to more mainstream software that was sold there. So that is my basis for comparison.

Quote[/b] ]We've grown used to the details and taking them all away would bring us back to Amiga 500 graphics that simply wouldn't sell

Perhaps you guys. Not me, and that's a ridiculous comparison. There's no mention of taking all that detail away, it just means that headway in game development, such as making pointless little features like arm hair won't be a priority. Developers would have to work harder focusing less on a gimmick that will appear old in six months.

As I had posted in that quote before. Games look good enough as is in my opinion, and obviously the person who wrote that. I believe that most developers these days just take the shortcut and focus on visuals instead of innovations in other areas instead. Such as gameplay.

I think at the very least, gaming will and I think is slowly slipping in to a rut of mediocrity. When people start getting sick of playing the same game over and over only with more detailed eyebrows or nose hair. There will be a slump.

Quote[/b] ]Instead, what's doing LucasArts? Exploiting Star Wars (I'm a SW fan, but in the last few years there was too much Star Wars -> myth exploited to death), creating action-adventures...
*frowns* *shakes-head*

This is exactly what I'm talking about.