Another big gaming crash heading our way?

[Sketcz]

As someone who is to attend a design course and someday work in the industry, (fingers crosed), I find things a little worrying.

Actually, Ive found things worrying for a year now.

Remember the crash of 84? Too many games, too much crap, not enough sales, and generally bad company politics.
The whole thing collapsed, and looked never to return, like meat-flavoured milk shakes, and the spinning-hula-hoop.

Nintendo arguably revived the console market with its Famicom and NES, and the rest is of course history.

Thing is, right now, history seems to be repeating itself.

Sales are down, there is an excess quantity of titles forced onto shelves, and generally there is apathy everywhere you go. Not to mention exhorbetant development costs and the seeming death of experimental games genres, or worse, the total death of some genres.

In every corner I see scare stories, companies closing, payments not being made, and abundant redundancies. Everything seems unstable.

Now, I know people will be quick to say:
"We've never had it so good."
But if its so good, then why does it feel so wrong inside?

Gaming as a whole seems to be changing for the worse, taking a course I dont care for. Connectivity? Internet Multiplayer? I dont care for any of these.

Now, people could say Im whining, but the thing is, I dont want to believe what Ive said either. I really would like to simply go off, denying my thoughts and believing everything is well. But I cant, Ive been thinking these things for months, and its slowly eating away at me. Invading my thoughts at odd hours of the night, and bothering me.

Gaming, for lack of a better analogy, seems to be dying, while we all live in denial thinking this is the best its been.

So I ask again, then why does it intangibly feel so wrong inside? I cant really put it into words.
To me anyway.
Is it just nostalgia making me think there was a better time before?
Or are we headed for some kind of collapse?
The companies have deep pockets, so a total collapse doesnt seem possible. I mean, can YOU imagine all gaming companies going bankrupt and hanging up their gloves?

I dont know where things will go from here.

But right now, looking at 4 years of hard Univeristy work, in order to maybe get a placement in an industry on the edge laying off people left and right, nothing seems to satisfy anymore.



EDIT:
If this seems a little too depressing, then feel free to remove it.

[olly]

With gaming making more money each year, wouldn't this tend the industry towards expansion rather than implosion? Sure, independant companies have been dying and niche titles are fading in prominence etc, but as the analogy has been made many times, that's just like the film industry. There will be death in the industry, sure, but that's just competition, not sector-wide collapse.

[Salsa Party Animal]

It is time for other companies to inform people that their games are better and look outside EA License Brands. Maybe all of them should get together and aim for a games to be more competitive pricing like DVDs rather than 30-40 quid.

I would like to buy more games like Beyond Good and Evil but we can't buy 10 quality games at the same time as we all not all rich So imagine what it will be like for none serious gamers or unemployed or kids or pensioners who doesn't have much money to spend.

[taurusnipple]

The whole strategy of keeping the best games up until Christmas and releasing them then clearly doesn't work and I hope the companies get ****ed from their greed. I wouldn't feel so down though, by the time you've finished uni, things will be clearer in the games industry....I hope.

[Robster]

Its just simply the marketing machine aiming at kids who will in turn pester their parents to buy all the licensed dross at xmas time, games like BG&E,POP are not selling well because kids pay no attention to them due to lack of exposure/new game(bit risky lets stick to the the 3rd installment of this game)/not made by EA!!!!!!!.

The kids are the majority in this market now and the likes of EA etc slap a few big names on the front cover and the kids lap it up and sales rocket. The magazines dont help either by rating every"Big" new game as 9 out of 10 when it should really be 4 or 5.

The mags are all tied in to the big copanies in one way or another.

The onlydecent mags I know are Games TM and Edge.

I was in game today and I could count no more than 5 people with no kids over 20. The rest of the store was awash with kids.

The future is bleak Im afraid.

[Alf-Life]

Since Mr.Lejdg. mentioned DVD prices... I'd actually love to see some companies jointly producing titles with movie studios ('sort of' what they did with Enter the Matrix), make the game and film concurrently for 2 years, and then package both together.
And if that's too much of a stretch, at least include demos of the game versions on the DVD, and in turn a trailer for the DVD on the game.
LOTR:TTT sold really well even at the game-sized box/price of ?30, I'd have definately paid 40, 45 or even 50 for LOTR:TTT plus the game (or the Return of the King game, whichever). Obviously, it doesn't make that much business sense otherwise companies would be doing it... but part of the problem may be that games are tacked on (eg. Terminator 3) and not intrinsic. If I was "Teh B1G b055" of UBiSoft or something now, I'd loosely develop a game around a film that's in production, and then try to get a license/etc. If I couldn't, I'd then just put in my own characters and story elements and still come out of it with a decent game. :P1
Man, talk about your 3am rambles.

[Alf-Life]

I just wanted to also add after reading over some of the posts above, yes there is a lot of **** about and EA and games-aimed-at-kids are abundant, but I honestly believe that EA and all that dross are opening up the market - I think a lot of people underestimate the casual gamer... in the first year a few people I could have sworn were FIFA-heads actually played and liked Pro Evolution a lot more... the average consumer can see what's dross and what's not, just like people not hugely into films can tell what a good film is. There're always be 'enjoyable'/pointless rom-coms, but there's still room and acclaim for the Fight Clubs.
Erm, yes, this is turning into another **** post (two in a row!), so I'll end by saying you also shouldn't underestimate the power of word-of-mouth, particularly playground word of mouth among kids, when I was younger a lot of people who I'd have thought would be into 'adult' games (not like that) looked forward and appreciated each Zelda game.

[Robster]

when I was younger a lot of people who I'd have thought would be into 'adult' games (not like that) looked forward and appreciated each Zelda game.

I can appreciate everything you say but the bigwigs just aim at the kids as they do in every other retail environment.

I remember sitting in a marketing lecture at uni and listening in disbelief as my lecturer justified placing sweets on the bottom shelf in a supermarket as that is where kids look the most, hence they will pester mum for them to buy it and she will give in for peace and quiet. Needless to say i left my degree and started working.

The flip side to what you have said re the kids is that if jimmy has moh rs then billy will get it and so on etc etc.

Lastly on a lighter note: your comments above that I have quoted - I laughed out loud at that I can appreciate your humour.

[Baroque]

I'm a big believer in the fact that a free market will correct itself.
If the games industry collapses then so be it, it'll flush out all the crap and we'll just begin again. We've begun from nothing before, what exactly are we afraid of losing?

I'm not sure if the market will fall over or if the people involved will just adapt like the movie industry has done albeit kicking, screaming, and foot dragging while doing so.

Think about it why do people buy licensed crap or the next remake of the same damn formulaic game?

They do so because they want to, there's nothing wrong with a change in taste killing something whose time has past. You end up with some casualties, the PC adventure game being bulldozed into the ground by the FPS springs to mind, but such change is nearly always messy.

[amanset]

In every corner I see scare stories, companies closing, payments not being made, and abundant redundancies. Everything seems unstable.

This is happening everywhere in the software industry, not just gaming. It is more a symptom of how the world's economy has been going for the past few years than any problem with modern gaming.

All IMHO, obviously.

[JRMacumber]

Come along, Chicken Little, the sky ain't fallin' just yet.

[Sketcz]

Come along, Chicken Little, the sky ain't fallin' just yet.

so says you, but Ill be hiding under this overturned bathtub with my Vectrex, just in case.

[JRMacumber]

so says you, but Ill be hiding under this overturned bathtub with my Vectrex, just in case.

Well, but I think that's a pretty solid policy no matter what, don't you?

[FelixofMars]

I have to say that I think the current next-gen consoles are failing to deliver, there are very few games that have come out in recent years that even match the length and gameplay of the PS, Dreamcast or N64, of course the graphics look better but in some cases it is only a marginal improvment and this is more due to hardware than actual code improvments. Also it feels like no one can be bothered to experiment outside of Japan with maybe one or two exeptions. Using the endless sequels and tried and tested film/tv licences to sell second rate games. Every week we are flooded with about 3 new releases telling the world they are the next big thing and ending up being average, meanwhile the innovators seem to get a tiny launch and end up getting poor sales, I am acctually suprised the whole thing hasn't sunk already and people haven't got tired of the ****e rehashes and leaching terrible cash ins.

On a positive note, with the introduction of phone games and portable consoles it is harking back to the days where it maybe possible to innovate and we may have a SNES style revolution again.. just dont hold your breath!

[nips]

Since Mr.Lejdg. mentioned DVD prices... I'd actually love to see some companies jointly producing titles with movie studios ('sort of' what they did with Enter the Matrix), make the game and film concurrently for 2 years, and then package both together.

Well the industry is always changing and things. The RvB guys just went to a conference discussing the use of game engines to create animated movies. Because animating films like Toy Story and The Spirits Within costs a lot of money, film companies are looking to use the graphics engines of top quality games.

With a few tweeks you can make brilliant looking films at a much lower price. With growing links between the two industries, can we expect support and growth, or co-dependence and stagnation?

I personally think that there is a wrong emphasis in gaming. Who cares about graphics, and who wants to play Sims Expansion #8 with patch 1.13b? I do think that you'll see companies murging before they close though, and that could be exciting enough to kick-start the industry.

I wasn't alive in 1984 so am unaware of the market at that time, but if it was anything like the way I can imagine this current market going... then arrgh!