Death to the Game Industry! Long Live Games!

[Vicman]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/3

I just found this VERY professional online free-zine and read over this article by Greg Costikyan titled "Death to the Game Industry! Long Live Games!" It concerns the state of the gaming industry and what must happen for it change for the better. Here's just a small snippet of this article, I strongly encourage all to read the full write-up in the link above.

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"Glitz Over Gameplay"
The problem is that once something becomes technically feasible, the market demands it. Gamers themselves are partly to blame: Indie rock fans may prefer somewhat muddy sound over some lushly-orchestrated, producer-massaged score; indie film fans may prefer quirky, low-budget titles over big-budget special FX extravaganzas; but in gaming, we have no indie aesthetic, no group of people (of any size at least) who prize independent vision and creativity over production values.

But the nature of the market and distribution channel is even more to blame. When a developer goes to a publisher to pitch a title, the publisher does not greenlight it because they play it and say "what a great game!" The developer may not even have a playable demo - but what he will have is a demo reel, a non-interactive visual pitch that may work to get some sense of gameplay across, but is mainly designed to impress the marketing dweebs with the graphics. Glitz, not gameplay, is what sells the publisher.

For that matter, half of the people sitting in on that greenlight meeting are probably marketing suits who think they're in a packaged goods industry, and are a lot more concerned about branding than anything else. Sequels and licenses, good; creativity - that's too risky.

And glitz, not gameplay, is what sells the retailer. Retailers don't have the time to play every title that comes across their desk and, in many cases, they don't play games anyway. They look at a video, they look at the materials provided by the sales guy, they make a decision. And that decision is ultimately based on concerns like branding, how much money the publisher will spend on product placement and stocking fees (what the industry calls "market development funding," or MDFs) - and whether it looks pretty or not.

And finally, there's the industry's attachment to "feature list" marketing. Online play? Check. Dozens of levels? Check. HDTV support? Check. You can often tell a game has nothing new to offer just by reading the backcover text: If it's basically a list of features and numbers (five of this and a hundred of that), you know they've really got nothing to say.

In other words, graphic glitz is the first barrier you must surmount. If you don't have it, you won't get greenlit; if you don't have it, you won't get distribution. Maybe, someday, way down the road, the actual quality of the game will matter to someone - a reviewer, an actual gamer - but you don't even get a chance to get to them if you don't have the graphic right stuff. In other words, gameplay may affect ultimate sales - but it won't get you shelf space.

The reverse isn't true, though - poor gameplay and great graphics will work just fine, as far as the market is concerned. 80% of all game sales occur in the first two weeks that a game is available; all you need to do is blow through your inventory before word of mouth catches up with you. The industry is full of best-selling, lousy games. Can you say "Driver 3?" I knew you could.

In other words: Pretty + bad = financially successful; good + not pretty = fuhggedaboutit. Of course, pretty + good would be nice - but neither the publishers nor the retailers have an incentive to care."
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[Wampaa]

That's why I play 95 percent 16 bit and computer games. I don't even have a new generation game console. A dreamcast is my newest system. It's sad that I have to go back to the past for an enjoyable gameplay exp.

[GeckoYamori]

Or in the future publishers won't even be needed and developers easily distrubute games themselves over internet services.

[Electroman]

I welcome a new videogame crash actually. I still believe that the best gaming years were during Nintendo Sega NEC era, from 1987 through 1994. I also feel that since the Playstation/N64/Dreamcast era, things have gone downhill, and that Sony has taken all magic out of videogaming. X-Box just exacerbated the issue. I mean look at Playstation 2's gaming lineup last couple years... full of GTA games, and others about urban violence, fighting, and citylife.

The last home console I ever bought was my NEO GEO AES. I have bought a GBA SP and a PSP, the latter being a big mistake.

In my mind, gaming is dead, its why I still play my 8/16bit stuff today.

[StRiDA CoL]

yeah most of my friends arent gamers, what i mean by that is they only play next-gen games, thaey do claim to be old school like me by playing stuff relesed like 6 or 5 years ago. all they do is care about graphics and violence, i only have 5 friends that are oldschool gamers. i play both types of games old and new, but, only if it looks like it is something new like Killer 7 or the WWE games of today, but in the end the gaming industry is mostly clones of other games. look at all the first person shooters and GTA clones out there, at least come up with something original.

Im just hoping Nintendo, Capcom, Konami,Sega,a nd all those graet legendary companies dont go out of buissness, because new companies like Rockstar(who i hate with a passion), and Bungie try to take the gaming market


Overall the future looks very bleak for the gaming industry.

[Drixxel]

Death to the Games Industry, Part I.. that's a very intriguing article, and it's hard not to see the truth in it.

There will always be the consumer who wants the glitz, and I think from this point forward in the gaming industry there will always be that flashy product available for that particular brand of gamer as there always has been. There will still be million-selling games with astronomical budgets that carry the prestige of pushing more polygons than any of last years efforts, but I think creativity can simultaneously exist in that world.

I would like to see the games industry parallel closer the movie industry..

In the world of film, you have your summer sequel blockbusters with astronomical budgets that manage to turn a profit in North American box-office and on the opposite end you have indie films funded by lunch money that get a limited theatrical release, but gross more per-theatre than the blockbusters and offer a generally more original take on filmmaking than the wide-release films. These lower-budget films for the most part still make money, and the makers of such films can continue to make movies exactly how they want to due to the limited but sufficient financial success of their creations.

There are several ways I see that indie-spirit being injected into the gaming industry. One is through the re-emergence of classic gaming into the market (c'mon, it'd be awesome!), the other through releases for modern consoles that don't even try to compare with the current graphical trends (Alien Hominid, for instance). Budget titles sort of achieve that... sort of. The problem with budget titles is that their goal is to compete against games of the modern aesthetic standards while operating on a reduced budget. They try to seduce buyers with a reduced retail price that ultimately labels the game as 'cheap shit,' and hell, many budget titles are uncreative cheap shit that deserve that label (not all, though).

New releases like Beggar Prince give me hope that maybe a 16-bit revival could take place (even though Beggar Prince is strictly a re-release of a pre-existing product), but the hurdles preventing that are plentiful and painfully obvious. Developmental budgets, cost of cartridge and packaging manufacture, distribution deals (i.e., finding a publisher), finding that old audience.. egad. There has to be a cost-effective way to do it and make money off of it, and bloody hell, I plan to figure out a way.

I suppose it all comes down to this: if an incredibly fun and creative game was released for the current or next generation of consoles that for all extents and purposes could have been achieved on the Genesis, how much would you pay for it? Would you buy it at all? Now I mean a game that literally could be a Genesis title - it would be running on an emulator and thus would be confined to all the limitations the Genesis hardware present, only you have the option of buying it new for, say, $15 from the PS2 shelf at EB. It's as quality a release as the Genesis ever saw, but clearly cannot compete in the slightest with the graphical spectacle of today. Would.. you.. buy it?

[j_factor]

While I sympathise with the author's concerns, that article is, in a word, false. The "indie gamers" crowd very much exists, it just goes virtually untapped. The conditions he describes about publishers are true in some cases, but were it true that every publisher only greenlights games based on glitz/graphics, we wouldn't have so many fugly games coming out. Retail space is becoming less of a concern as more people turn to online stores which carry everything. And no, gameplay doesn't really affect even ultimate sales, except in a few isolated instances like Katamari Damacy. He is right, though, about feature list marketing, and about bad games selling well because of hype.

And also: "the actual quality of the game will matter to someone - a reviewer, an actual gamer"

He gives too much credit. Reviewers are as guilty as anyone else in this problem. Reviews are often scores doled out based on how technically sound a game is; they merely run down their checklist of graphics, sound, features, etc., and pay no attention to anything more ultimately important, like ingenuity. In fact, reviewers tend to prefer the metasequels and clones to anything original.

[lordofduct]

I agree with J_Factor... there is SO a indie gamer crowd out there.

Homebrew Scene?
Old School Gamers (why do you think we play old games? A nostalgic person would only play for a short period of time, not all the time.)
Niche Gamers

We are out here, we swamp message boards, create fan sites, we are the geeks who make fun of GTA on gamefaqs and IGN all the time. We are out there!

That actually really upset me... I don't know why. That and the guy was saying you can't be creative on a console! WHAT? Because of the expensive dev systems and limited buttons on the controllers... huh? Some of my most memorable and creative games are on consoles (and he lists "command and conquer" as an original idea... hrmm, he never played the genny did he?)

He had some good points; yes. The gaming market does cater to the glitz and glam. But he is acting like he and other "insiders" are the only ones in the up and up about it; like us gamers don't realize it. Yeah right!

[StRiDA CoL]

yeah ther is no original games out there, the most original is probably Killer 7

[Dartagnan1083]

Cynical articles are everywhere.
I sense a reformation, but nothing to suggest an all out crash.

but anyway, I thought I'd share some articles I enjoyed

A Gamer's Manifesto

Life After the Crash

[StealthNinjaScyther]

Really, the game industry is probably as healthy as its ever been. So what if most companies are producing "me too" games that take a popular form of gameplay and wrap it up in a new package? Same thing has happened in all generations of gaming. I love my 16 bit games to death, but this generation is still pumping out games that I love just as much. Creativity is still around, but as nice as creativity is, has there ever been a period when creativity was all games were about? Okay, maybe the first years, but even then, most great games are not the most creative, but the ones that took great ideas and tweaked them to perfection. Think about some of your favorite games, how many would be considered truly innovative or creative when they were released?

If anything is wrong with the game industry now it's how employers are overworking their employees. This problem is bad enough now that many otherwise capable programmers are simply burning out before their time because of the often unrealistic expectations that are forced upon them.

And there is a large indie following in games. Sure, it's not huge and isn't viable commercially, but it's there and it's great. Independent and often freely available shmups are practically pouring out of Japan. And of course there's the communities such as this one that are still devoted to older and sometimes forgotten games.

[Dartagnan1083]

^if you read the articles I linked too, you wouldn't be asking those questions.

I've recently noticed that my money goes mostly toward older games and not so much toward newer ones.
I've noticed the patterns that are often brought up.

While I don't think the crash is THAT iminant, I can see exactly why so many do.

[lordofduct]

Really, the game industry is probably as healthy as its ever been. So what if most companies are producing "me too" games that take a popular form of gameplay and wrap it up in a new package? Same thing has happened in all generations of gaming. I love my 16 bit games to death, but this generation is still pumping out games that I love just as much. Creativity is still around, but as nice as creativity is, has there ever been a period when creativity was all games were about? Okay, maybe the first years, but even then, most great games are not the most creative, but the ones that took great ideas and tweaked them to perfection. Think about some of your favorite games, how many would be considered truly innovative or creative when they were released?

If anything is wrong with the game industry now it's how employers are overworking their employees. This problem is bad enough now that many otherwise capable programmers are simply burning out before their time because of the often unrealistic expectations that are forced upon them.

And there is a large indie following in games. Sure, it's not huge and isn't viable commercially, but it's there and it's great. Independent and often freely available shmups are practically pouring out of Japan. And of course there's the communities such as this one that are still devoted to older and sometimes forgotten games.

My fav games:
Sonic: ummm, I think we can agree it was original at its time... speed!

Shining Force: yeah, not many strategy RPGs about before this

Phantasy Star: One of the first console RPGs AND was VERY original in comparison to all the other ones out at the time

Ecco: name another game out there like it? Ecco 2?

Earthworm Jim: platformers weren't original anymore true... but this game just had the charm and glam and humor just maxed so much that you never really seen it before.

General Chaos: pretty DAMN original

Herzog Zwei: first EVER of its kind... EVER

I just wanted to say that, and that programmers have always been worked to death... but yes it is the employers fault, they want to push games out the door that sell. That is the point the articles are making.

[j_factor]

Here's a list of my most recent game purchases.

Qix Neo (playstation)
Pac 'n Roll (DS)
Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (cube)
Retro Atari Classics (DS)
Yanya Caballista: City Skater (ps2)
Kirby: Canvas Curse (DS)
Star Wars (gg)
Fighters Megamix (game.com)

Two old games, two compilations of old games, one sequel to an old game, and four very original games. Fuck uncreativity.

[StRiDA CoL]

Heres what I think what will happen to the industry.
-Rockstar(go to hell) is making Bully for PS2
-Bully ships,causes contryversy about Columbine, since it is loosley based off of it
-News plus gaming press critiesiz Rockstar
-Rockstar gets pissed at Sony, Sony pulls plug on all Rockstar games on PS2, go to XBox.
-Sony retires console, industry now Microsoft vs Nintendo
-Microsoft demoshies industry, the Big N shocked
-Microsoft soon tired of console makes 360, fans pissed of high price: $450
-360 becomes next Neo Geo, overpriced, but unlike the Neo Geo, overhyped
-Microsoft has no good games from third parties acept Sega
-Capcom and Konami flock over to PS3....

BUT,

-Revolution launches, many old school gamers (cough cough myself cough cough), go to here because of its download ability to ressurect classics
-Bill Gates and prez of Sony angey
-Once again old school gamers take control of game industry

SCORE Nintendo-1
Sony-0
micrsoft-0

that is just the begining