I saw a link from Cracked.com today for an article called '5 Reasons the Video Game Industry Is About to Crash.' Sadly, the author is probably not wrong.
The reasons listed (re-written in my own words) were as follows...
5.) CEO's with no knowledge of game design are making creative decisions.
Actually, they know enough to make bad decisions. They look at market trends and use that to decide which games are made. That's why everyone and their Grandmother made a First-person Shooter after Doom unleashed Hell on Earth. That is why everyone made space shooters after Space Invaders and Asteroids began draining quarters from circulation. That's why everyone glutted the NES libraries with Platformers after Super Mario Bros. made that console such a huge success.
So, why is no one taking a chance to change the paradigm again? Why is the industry stuck on RPG's and 'Call of Duty' clones? See #4...
4.) Budgets are so big that companies have become risk-averse and stick to 'guaranteed money-makers'...
And that is why there's a new Call of Duty game every time you blink... and why they all stink. I haven't played a single title in that franchise since World at War was released in 2008. I thought the quality was suffering back in those days, not to mention being sick of games that were set in either WW2 or the modern day War on Terror. It gets old. These 'new' settings they've used with the not-so-distant future aren't impressive either. It's been done to death. And it got done again here because some CEO thought that would sell after seeing Deus Ex make money for it's publisher. Lame! I don't want more games with Terrorists for bad guys or some kind of Cyberpunk geek fantasy! I am over that shit! Give me something new!
At this point, I'd be happy just playing an old Puzzle game, and I found one that does the trick. I'm actually surprised that it hasn't become a timeless classic/perennial favorite like Tetris. I'll discuss it in another blog sometime soon.
3.) Reviewers are being manipulated into giving good reviews to games they know are shitty... Or, they are just seeing/playing what the developer wants them to see and play.
As the old saying goes, 'You can't spell ignorant without IGN.' No publisher is going to send their games to reviewers who bad-mouthed their previous title(s). After all, you want GOOD advertising for the product you're trying to sell. Contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as bad publicity. Just ask automakers whenever the media gets wind of a major recall on one of their models. That heavily damaged (or even destroyed) the reputations for quality that Chrysler and Toyota once enjoyed.
Also, the reviewers are not playing the whole game, just the parts of it that the developers thought were the best. The level designers are also usually in the room with them giving them tips on how to get through said level. Again, Lame! How can they tell me about the game's difficulty if the freakin' designer is right there holding their hand through the whole damned gameplay session!
2.) The game's design (not to mention the hardware on which it will run) is CONSTANTLY changing, which makes developers have to re-work the code, art assets, et al. many times before release.
That's why Aliens: Colonial Marines looked much better in the previews that were released a year before the game hit the shelves. This is also why games on consoles usually never look as good as they possibly can until the very end of the system's life. Sadly, by that time, the next console has hit the shelves and the old one is forgotten.
It's happening right now with the PS3. Now that PS4 is out, it seems that PS3 is almost an untouchable. I bought 5 PS3 games from Amazon around Christmas time and the combined cost for ALL of them was about $70. 4 of these 5 came from signature PlayStation franchises like Ratchet & Clank, God of War and Twisted Metal. That has never happened with Nintendo games. Halo 4 still costs nearly $40 on Amazon right now. So, why are PS3 games so cheap now? The console might be 7 years old but, the games still look and play beautifully...
Oh, well... At least I get to add to my collection for rock-bottom prices. :)
1.) The industry treats the talent like a cheap and easily expendable resource, often requiring 60-80 hour work weeks when the game's development cycle gets into 'crunch time'.
'Crunch Time' is that last 20% of the time set aside for a game's development, which is also where 80% of the work is done. It is very stressful. I remember hearing a story about how Atari's CEO Ray Kassar once told his company's programmers (who were only asking for their name to be in the game's credits and a small commission) that they weren't very important, which is why some left and founded Activision. His exact words, according to legendary game designer David Crane, were "You are no more important to that game than the guy on the assembly line who puts it together." Bullshit! Those guys on the assembly line wouldn't even have a job without the designers making the games! Not hard to see how Atari made the bad business decisions that led to their downfall and the Great Crash of 1983, huh? Arrogant Ass...
Anyway, if you look at the games Activision made for the Atari 2600, you'll see the programmer/designer's name is usually on the label. That is especially true with David Crane. He's the man who made Pitfall!, the world's first platformer. Say what you want about Activision as a company today but, once upon a time, they were something truly special. They were to the Atari 2600 what Rare was to Nintendo's Cartridge-based systems.
Anyway, the industry hasn't learned from that lesson. The crunch time and poor treatment has driven away the talent in droves. They go off to other related industries where they make much more money for much less work. Why write code for MMORPG's when you can write simpler/easier code for automated monitoring systems on an oil rig for MUCH more money? Why create realistic-looking animated 3D character models for games when you can do the same in a small production company making TV commercials AND MAKE MUCH MORE MONEY that way?
Even worse is that many of these talented people are in my age group: Late 20's and early 30's. At that time, you want to settle down and start a family. How can you start (and keep) a marriage and family if you're constantly working 60-80 hours a week?
There are times when I get mad at the fact that I couldn't get into the game industry after graduating from college in December of 2008. I graduated at the worst time because that's when the economy went to Hell and everyone (including the once-seemingly invincible entertainment industries) started feeling the pinch. No one was hiring so, I joined the Army instead. As much as I don't like the Army, I do have to admit that I haven't been asked to do a 60-80 hour work week since I graduated Basic Training in February of 2010.
Either way though, it looks like BOTH occupations are very anti-family in one way or another. It's not necessarily intentional, either. The Army does try to help soldiers with families but, like all government programs, the results are mixed at best. Maybe not getting into the game design business or making a career out of the Army is a blessing in disguise? If you asked me (or, just about anyone, really) to give up on ever getting married and having children for ANYTHING, let alone a truly demanding and unsatisfying job, you are going to be severely disappointed.
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So, is the industry headed for one hell of a downturn and a colossal shake-up? Most likely, yes.
Is this a bad thing? Probably not.
Any industry that treats customers/reviewers like idiots and their employees like serfs (or, at least, makes them feel that way) is doomed to experience a SEVERE market correction. It won't be like 1983 but, the industry is almost certainly in a LOT of trouble. Why else would hardware sales be so low across the board? Why else would big companies that survived 1983 (Activision, EA, et al.) have to rely on churning out crappy sequels to once-great franchises just to pay the rent? Reading that article was actually kinda depressing to me...
After 1983, Nintendo came along and saved the industry with the NES. They did it by offering to buy back unsold product from retailers, actually offering a good product (such a shocker, I know...) and, they marketed the NES as something more than just a game console. Hopefully, Nintendo will be able to save us again. While everyone else is suffering from 'Terminal Sequelitis', the quality in their games has been consistently high. Even if it's not them that pulls the industry's fat out of the fire, I still expect them to survive. They've become the 'Walt Disney of game companies.' I find that to be funny since Disney does make it's own video games.
Of course, this could also be an opportunity. Like 1983, the industry has become cluttered with too many similar products (i.e. too many games in the same genre copying each other's design choices) and just entirely too much product. $50 to $60 per game is a lot of money for most people. Thanks to reviewers being bought off/manipulated, we can't depend on them to tell us if the game is any good or not. (After all, you can't spell IGNORANT without IGN...)
So, what would I like to see in a market correction?
1.) A few different console makers...
Nintendo stays. Period. Without them, the industry would not be what it is today.
Microsoft, however, needs to go. Any company that sells flawed hardware and charges me for online services when the competition is free SHOULD go away. If it was anyone else but Microsoft, the XBOX brand probably would have gone away.
I'm on the fence about Sony's PlayStation brand. They made the PS3 difficult to program for, which I think is a mistake. (So did Nintendo with the N64, which they later admitted was a mistake.) That machine can do some really wonderful things. If they hadn't made it so much of a pain in the neck to work with, it might have beaten the XBOX 360 in sales. Developers would have stuck with them since PS1 & PS2 practically printed money for them.
While there are things about the PlayStation brand that I do like, most of those things are easily doable on other consoles too. How hard is it to make a game console play DVD & Blu-Ray movies? How hard would it be for someone to transfer/port those PlayStation exclusive franchises that I love (God of War, Twisted Metal, Ratchet & Clank, et al.) over to a new platform? SEGA didn't seem to have much trouble porting Sonic the Hedgehog to other people's consoles...
2.) A return to the hardware market of a few old legends...
Speaking of SEGA, I'd LOVE to see them start making consoles again. I recently had an idea where a few former console makers (namely SEGA & Atari) team up with some dynamite 3rd party game developers (particularly Namco and Capcom, despite their cash-flow problems) to form a new company that goes on to make a console of their own. Plus, any franchise those companies have will become exclusives to that console. That means that Sonic, Mega Man and Pac-Man are all on the same system. I wouldn't have to wonder if the next game will be available for a certain system or which system will have the better version for the multi-platform releases. They will all be right there on their own company's console. It could work!
3.) Less worrying about franchises and more worrying about delivering an awesome game experience... Especially in crowded/neglected sectors of the market like sports titles.
There is also another golden opportunity for the sports games side of the market. The Madden franchise has gotten pretty damned trite in the last few years. SEGA made a LOT of very popular sports franchises on their consoles, many of which are sorely missed.
Imagine if the SEGA Sports franchises from the Genesis era came back into existence and made a Baseball game that was actually interesting... Or, how about a good Basketball game that didn't depend on NBA licenses or some kind of 'street'/in-the-ghetto theme? I might actually want to play that kind of game.
Of course, if SEGA really wanted to impress the masses again, they could just make a 3D Sonic game that DIDN'T anger players so much. How hard can it be to do a *GOOD* 3D Sonic game? The 2 Sonic Adventure titles on the Dreamcast (which were later ported to competing systems after SEGA left the console market) were considered to be good. What happened?
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
- Lord Publius
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