The Games Industry thread.

[Vince278]

The Games Industry probably peaked quite a while ago. High production costs and piracy has taken its toll. I don't see it getting better either.

[DrSpike]

Really? Profits, no. Sales, no. Total time spent gaming, no. So in what sense?

[Skanky Burns]

Quality?

[DrSpike]

Not unless you compare the classics of the past with the rejects of today.

[Vince278]

It costs more to make a quality game, so there are fewer. Shelf life (time from release to discount) appears to be shorter. The number that needs to be sold to break even is up. Piracy is more of a problem now than 1993, or the 80's.

(This is just my observation over the years, I don't have any hard data yet)

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Vince278
It costs more to make a quality game, so there are fewer. Shelf life (time from release to discount) appears to be shorter. The number that needs to be sold to break even is up. Piracy is more of a problem now than 1993, or the 80's.

And, taken as a whole gaming industry profits are up in real terms. So which effect dominates, these negative ones, or other positive ones?

[Kuciwalker]

The positive one that is the rapidly increasing market.

[Vince278]

The ups and downs are cyclical. Also, profits as a number could be rising while as a percentage they could be slowing. Numbers can be manipulated. I work for a company that cooked their books up to 1999 for over a billion. I'm not even in finance and I can make them look however you wish.

[Urban Ranger]

Yes of course, that's what receipts are for.

[snoopy369]

I don't think he's talking about direct sales lying ... there are an awful lot of things you can do to imply better profits than just say 'sales were 1bil higher than fact'...

[child of Thor]

Well i think the increase in revenue that the games industry is seeing is mostly to do with the current generation of gaming consoles. They have been running a few interesting threads over at 'quartertothree.com', with statistics and all that.
The largest profit margins(bar a few blips like WoW etc) for companies over the last few years has been console releases.

Now i'm not wanting to cast dispertions on console users(as i'm one!), but it does seem the 'average' console user is much less discerning over what games they buy. They probably dont hang around here or at other fan-sites much. They buy a game based on console magazine reviews(and if you've ever looked through those magazines, you know how much they hype everything!), TV adverts(how else to explain EA's 'Fifa street football' game being the uk's top seller for a while?) or if they fall into the target demographic(or wish too) that a game is aimed at.

This type of customer base sees computer gaming as a quick thrill and throw away experience, seemingly happy to spend £40+ a time on games that they will probably never complete once the thrill has worn off or only play once(as many games are once only events).

In a way this type of games industry+customer is a win-win for both parties. The games companies can turn out well manicured but often shallow or short(or both) games that the punters hungrily snap up untill boredom sets in and they move swiftly on to the next.

Its been interesting to see the rise of second-hand gaming in the main high street stores. I think this is a natural result of the type of games industrey set-up i've discussed above.

What the longterm effects of this kind of thing will be is hard to say, but factor the growing ammount i've seen in people saying 'its a rent game not a buy one' , and i can see it more as a problem for developers rather than a positive.

You end up with an industry that will have fewer big hits(but will make mega bucks), and lots of failures. Sort of a boom+bust enviroment. EA has seen this i think and its why its adopted an extremely aggresive buyout policy - if it can churn more market share of product than other people it increases it chances of having one of those hits. of course it will also have many more failures, but getting the hit(s) cover those.

My beef with this whole setup is that it makes finding the quality gaming experiences i've been used to over the years, harder and harder.
Yes rubbish games have been made in the past(before we get onto that line ), and will continue to be made now.

But i can't deny the fact that for me(a huge games buyer across a variety of platforms), i've seen a downturn in the number of enjoyable quality games.

Graphics have definately improved in leaps and bounds, but i'm left feeling a 'golden age' of gaming may have been missed? And in this curent market i cant see one around the corner, but you do still get the odd unusual gem that appears out of nowhere - so i have to rely on these rare occourances to keep my gaming qouta happy.

Anyway i've gone on more than i wanted, and still haven't really nailed it

Still as PC gamers, are we feeling a little unloved with all the attention paid to the consoles over the last few years?

Apart from some excellent MMORPG's and the odd high-end FPS things seem a little lean?

Still thats why i'm an old game lover There are many games i have yet to play - some very excellent, so i constantly scan for these titles.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Not unless you compare the classics of the past with the rejects of today.

Well, I would prefer to compare the classics of the past with the classics of today, but that would require some to have been released.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns


Well, I would prefer to compare the classics of the past with the classics of today, but that would require some to have been released.

now that IS cynical!

i was haveing a frustrating time on the weekend trying to run an atari8bit simulator on my pc - to try one of my all time fav games 'Alternate Reality' http://members.chello.at/theodor.lau...games/ar-c.htm

After finding a copy in a carboot sale of the PC version(very poor!), it was obvious that i needed to go the emulation route.

Anyway i would rate some of the recent games as future classics:

Morrowind(although its path had already been set with Arena+Daggerfall).
KOTOR - most agree it was something special in todays market.

to name a couple that spring to mind. So we do still get great games, that offer a decent challange, some depth and longevity and i suppose value for money.
But i agree with Skanky - it seems these kind of titles are the exception to the rule in an otherwise bloated games market full of flashy graphics and super hype?

Its different now i guess, much more mass market driven, but i dont think you can(or should) hold up the few super successes in the games industry and say 'look at all the money generated - everything is going really well' , and ignore the increasing rate of failure(loss of mega money) for the majority of titles.

Once the dust has settled and we have the few remaining uber-publishers controlling it all, then we may be in a better postion one way or another to give a final diagnosis of the games industry.

So we have a little longer untill that point is reached imho.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Vince278
The ups and downs are cyclical. Also, profits as a number could be rising while as a percentage they could be slowing. Numbers can be manipulated. I work for a company that cooked their books up to 1999 for over a billion. I'm not even in finance and I can make them look however you wish.

They could be lots of things. They aren't. Profits (in the industry as a whole) are rising in real terms in levels and percentages, and the effects are far more than can be explained by cyclical effects, or misreporting.

Therefore I am forced to conclude that:

Originally posted by Vince278 The Games Industry probably peaked quite a while ago. High production costs and piracy has taken its toll.

was just a rash and misinformed post.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Really? Profits, no. Sales, no. Total time spent gaming, no. So in what sense?

as always depends on definitions.

PC game revenues, as reported, are in slow decline as we discussed before, with the usual caveats about MMPORPG's and online sales. Console game sales IIRC are growing but rather slowly - but thats in the last years of a console cycle.

OTOH there are new areas that have high growth that we dont usually think of : online casual games (sorry, Doc) Cell phone games. And "serious games" (IE games not sold primarily, or at all, at retail, but developed for a business or govt agency as a training/simulation tool.