The Games Industry thread.

[Jamski]

Its not in the gaming companies' interest to make a game that you will play for years and years - they want you to keep buying new games!

-Jam

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Jamski
Its not in the gaming companies' interest to make a game that you will play for years and years - they want you to keep buying new games!

-Jam

True Mr.Jamski

Still i think this is the arguement that the accountants have been whispering in the 'bosses' ear, like so many worm-tongues

And its definately being driven to be this way for most recent games.

I actualy think they may have it the wrong way around, or atleast its only a partial truth and doesn't apply all the time(or should!).

I own(or have owned) some of the most indepth games that have been made over the years. The thing is i dont just play one game only at a time and finish it at the first go.
In fact i may never finish it, but what i appriciate is being given the 'journey' of the game. And i want more of the same. So i look around and hear whats being whispered on the games grape vine and whenever i see a potential 'epic', i make a note of it and usualy buy it.

Now i buy other games too - its been a pet project of mine these last few years. I've got consoled up and i've been buying the best console games have to offer. I've spent a good grand on it in this time. I wanted to get a good feeling of the state of the industry and what seems to be making it tick.
So i own Halo1+2 etc, not bad games imho, just too short

a few days ago i got hold of 'Baten Kaitos' http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/rpg...ml?tag=mp_2to9 for the cube, its a +60hr japanese rpg affair. My gf loves it - she's a big Final Fantasy fan, so feels right at home.
I'm half forming the oppinion we may have an east/west divide, when it comes to the ammount of game a certain company offers its customer. Anyway this will be another topic i'll cover in more depth later.

Back to the point in hand - the thing is i dont play many of these stunted games anymore(well apart from the real simple arcade ones like tetris/pac man etc). So i have a growing pile of titles that end up in the second hand section of my local store. I dont feel a 'love' or affection for them as they are not of that 'keep' quality, generaly being short play once only games.

So we appear to have a growing throw-away attitude to our games? This seems a little sad to me, as i have many games i would just hate to part with, but for a recent release to feature in this list is very rare.

I just cant help but think all these new attitudes to gaming, just doesn't equal the one thing i, as a gamer am most concerned about; that of good games being made.

It seems to me that when the whole approach becomes one of chasing the dollar over the quality of the gaming experience(brevity being one aspect of this), then its a slow slippery slope to ruin in the long term?

[DrSpike]

In my day.............

[child of Thor]

.........you loved neon coloured graphics


Here's another bbc article, about 'casual gamers' - i must admit to having difficulty with these descriptions, they tend ot get in the way of the real issues of gaming imho.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4151431.stm

The thing is i'm not anti the 'casual gamer'. completely the opposite. I think its good that titles like the Sims have brought many more people to appriciate computer gaming(sorry Dr.Spike ).

The only problem i have with this approach is when its the 'only' type of game being made, cause some bright sparks have decided we just can't handle games with lots of depth and or complexity.

These games used to often be called budget titles, and were half the price(or less) of a full price release. It just doesn't happen that way often now - we pay full price for these 'budget' games

[child of Thor]

Now i'm not going to be making a pure *****ing and moaning thread
Bits of that are bound to creep in, but i'm going to be discussing many aspects of the games industry past+present, some things just from my own observations, and some stuff form people and sources within the industry. And all are welcome to chip in with their observations and examples etc

For example why do so many developers fail these days and how would you aim to make game making a much more succesfull business for more companies?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by child of Thor


The thing is i'm not anti the 'casual gamer'. completely the opposite. I think its good that titles like the Sims have brought many more people to appriciate computer gaming(sorry Dr.Spike ).

You can be sorry all you want - it wont change the fact that the rise of the casual gamer is responsible for many of the trends you dislike. I consider it indisputable.

[child of Thor]

well we have had the casual element since the begining, so its not just a straight forward a+b=c equation imho.

We've always had simple arcade games, good for a quick 20min blast and you can pick them up and put them down just as quick.

In the 8bit days we had loads of them, mostly because the hardware was a difficult limit for the programmer to overcome.

The rise of the console into mainstream use has been responsible for its rise again, but its for different reasons i think now.
We certainly dont have the hardware limit that used to exist. But i think part of this added complexity has brought about its own problem to making games, and might be one of the fundemental reasons behind some fo the problems the current industry faces, and casues some of the issues that myself and other 'serious' gamers find grievences with?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by child of Thor
For example why do so many developers fail these days and how would you aim to make game making a much more succesfull business for more companies?

Well, in any business, such is life. Think about how many movies are utter and complete flops - how many successful movie production houses are there? In the U.S., something like 5, or maybe 4. (Not the ones who make the movies, but the ones who release them - MGM back in the day, 20th Century Fox or whatever they call themselves to-day, Paramount, etc.) There are like 4-5 highly successful producers, and 10-12 middling successful ones. This is different from gaming only in the scale - the movie business takes more work than gaming, in terms of man-hours, by far; so there is room for a bit more in terms of number of companies.

I don't think we'll ever have a larger number of middling companies (as you probably are looking to aim at). Consolidation is natural; we'll eventually hit a stable number, may already have, more than likely, which will re-stabilize at different levels every time the tech gradually changes - a ton of new startups will occur, and eventually most go out of business, and the good ones remain. I don't think the number of failures should be remarked upon to be a bad thing, but simply ... life.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Jamski
Its not in the gaming companies' interest to make a game that you will play for years and years - they want you to keep buying new games!

-Jam

This is the problem with the disposable economy that we currently find in many nations, particularly the U.S. - you must make something that will be re-purchased soon, or else you shall never make a lasting amount of money. Unless a solution is found (in the way of increasing the money supply on a large scale, annual basis), I'm afraid this will never disappear...

[Jamski]

Originally posted by snoopy369




This is the problem with the disposable economy that we currently find in many nations, particularly the U.S. - you must make something that will be re-purchased soon, or else you shall never make a lasting amount of money. Unless a solution is found (in the way of increasing the money supply on a large scale, annual basis), I'm afraid this will never disappear...

This is why we see the rise of the MMORPG game with a monthly fee - if games companies want to make a game that people will play for thousands of hours, they'll want to keep earning from those players who are playing the same game for thousands of hours instead of buying a new game.

-Jam

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jamski
Its not in the gaming companies' interest to make a game that you will play for years and years - they want you to keep buying new games!

-Jam

On the contrary. If a game company develops good games, I will want to keep buying their new titles, because they are likely to be good as well.

OTOH, if the first couple of games I buy from a game company sucks rocks, I will cease to buy from them in the future.

[Skanky Burns]

Gaming companies don't tend to last much beyond releasing a few games.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Gaming companies don't tend to last much beyond releasing a few games.

Which is a ridiculas situation for sure, but part of normal market forces i guess?

Still some in the business are here for good. For who's good exactly, time will tell; or maybe it already is?

I guess our perspectives on all this are based on our experience of buying and playing games, for however long that is.

I've noticed a big change in a number of things:

1. the way games are now made and the costs involved.

2. a growing disatisfaction at many of todays titles.

the first bit we are told is 'our' fault - we demand film quality graphics in our games, and this is the largest money sink in makeing a AAA title currently.

The second i believe is partly because of the first - more effort on the graphics often means less effort on the game in general?
Not always the case for sure, but i've lost count of the number of gorgeous looking games that lasted about 30mins before being cast to one side.

So where does this leave us? I'm not an advocate of having games with bad graphics, when i play them now those oldie world text adventures don't hold up that well. Fun for perspective, and there is still the odd gem for sure.

But i think one option could be to find a graphical compromise - keep graphics decent, but budget them in the overall game design, definately if that portion of the game development is taking up more than the rest(?), then your graphics are too good? - something like that

But here's the problem with that approach.

The customers that the big guys are aiming at - not people like me(or civ fans in general?), are not going to be happy with less graphics than they curently get. And so the circle of spiralling dev costs and failings will continue.

Or maybe there is another way?

And here's another bbc article, this time about 'simple games' on mobiles http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4461239.stm .

Simple is fine imho, and it has its place - where's the 'main course' in computer games terms these days - or are we doomed to become like all those poor models, waif-like and anorexic in our game playing?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Gaming companies don't tend to last much beyond releasing a few games.

Not Blizzard, not Marxis, Not Firaxis (so far ).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Or maybe there is another way?

Long time ago (maybe a year or two ) there's this thing called Scratchware Manifesto. It's at a place where I am not supposed to link to, so you just have to use Google.

Anyway, it basically advocates simple games - games with a simple design, simple to program, and have prices between USD5-10.