Game Industry Doomsday at PC Magazine

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PC Magazine is speculating on the nearing doom of the games industry. It looks like PC games are on the way to extinction and consoles are taking it all. Here's a snip:

None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?

That time is drawing near. We are already getting pre-hype for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 2, as well as the new Nintendo. All this will do is make the visuals more lifelike and the blood and gore more realistic and nauseating. While the kids who are used to this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be repulsed and skip these new generations of machines altogether.

If that doesn't flatten the market, the never-ending need to satisfy the demanding full-time game-player should do it. Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play—unless gaming is your so-called life—and so daunting to casual players that they will quickly reject them. Who needs to devote themselves to a game just to play it once in a while? I'll take Spider Solitaire instead.

I really can't imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there.

Read the whole thing at PC Magazine.

 

Actually, I have to agree with this statement. Which leads to the big dilemma – should game developers “dumb-down” games to make them more accessible to casual gamers, or should they try to appeal to the more hard-core gamers and risk turning off a larger market that would allow for greater sustainability?

As a gamer, I’m basically half-way between casual and hard-core. So ideally, I’d like to see some kind of balance between the two objectives. Of course, I sometimes also wish that Santa Claus really existed…

 

While it may be true that the multiplayer community is hard for a casual/new gamer to break into, there will always be others of a similar standard to join up with.

But games getting harder? Has no-one played Zork? Gunstar Heroes? They're tricky! If you want to dumb down a game, put in a difficulty slider. Lower the AI response time, or take out a few tougher puzzles like in Monkey Island 3.

As far as I've seen, more games are coming out now which allow for an easier game; it's more up to the player to make it challenging. Freedom Force and Neverwinter Nights are simple if you play to win, whereas the original Eye of the Beholder had a final boss who slaughtered any party under max. levels. Your (party's) life depended on your ability to wring every last drop of XP and equipment from a near-bottomless dungeon... not newbie friendly.

It's much more sensible to make games that don't force this kind of powergaming, but can still offer a depth of play that the obsessive hardcore fan can take to another level... playing with the weaker/deliberately flawed characters in RPGs instead of the tanks, or trying to get through the Emerald Hill Zone with all the rings in 20 seconds No-one says you have to... but it's there to be done.

 

I have read several articles of the doomsday of gaming but I don't really believe that gaming industry will disappear now that it has become this large. I agree with Tal about the new games not being very innovative and that could well be a factor that crashes down the gaming markets eventually.

The other issue of course is that when Microsoft and Sony decides to create their new "3rd generation consoles" the costs of making games for these platforms jump skyhigh which may lead to the increasing of prices or to the fall of several companies. Allready today the amount of gaming companies doing profit are not that many, which is quite strange since everyone is talking about the games selling better than ever. Profits divide themselves very unequally and this might eventually kill a lot of the competetion.

 

Tal is right. Dvorak is such a troll.

While it may be true that the PC Gaming industry is "dying"... games certainly are not getting more "complex". They are getting LESS and LESS complex.
Anyone who doesn't see that is either a dolt or was born yesterday. Sorry for flaming.

 

Photorealism is NOT the end of gaming.. it is just one attribute of a game.
Games are many facets and many facets have been ignored and downplayed at the moment for photorealism. When that attribute is significantly high that all games have it, they'll compete on other grounds.
I believe it will be in world interactivity/physics simulation.

When people can no longer tell the difference in experience between the real world and an AI world then they will have reached the end of the road hardware wise. Then it will be SOLELY about the stories they can tell with it, the experiences they can give that are either too dangerous . too difficult or too rare to experience in the real world.

 

Like Splunge, I would enjoy some balance between casual and hardcore. Casual enough to play it like a game and not a Master's thesis and hardcore enough to use some brain and some skills and to feel that I am accomplishing something.

Ridiculously difficult passages making you reload over and over, especially if preceded by long movies or spoken parts, are only annoying. What a challenge if it depends so much on luck? And what point making you reload. Heck, I understand retrying RTS missions, but it's not like you really should reload in RPGs. Things should be doable and should never depend too much on luck. For realism, some "accidents" are needed -- like in real life, where you can't always explain everything and sometimes you just seem to have good or bad luck. But too much is too much. Heck, I know easier said than done. I've done some programming myself (although nothing so advanced as games) and it's not so easy to meet competing needs, even your own, let alone those of the audience or the market. Especially if you have a nasty deadline.

 

The best is over guys just face it.

There is still as serious hunger for games out there you can tell by the amount of people that buy a £40 game on release then trade it in and get the next new thing. Programmes now need to forget programming for faster and more memory machines, these make no difference to a game with a good concept, the amount of people downloading those retro games of the eighties and early ninties is huge. these are not great graphics but the concepts of those early games were unique. I have an X box (as well as nice shiny new pc) but the games are all the same, you have essentially 4 choices, Shooter, Driving, (these often mix up a bit eg driver but the controls for the non driving scenes are crap, sports, and sims. the sims are ofter poor versions of pc games. You notice there are no RPG metioned, thats because they aren't any RPG's just shooters with swords not guns. The sports seem to be the only games that offer serious longevity but then a new version seems to be released every year.

It's sad to say but profits are more important than the actually games. if they can get some one to buy a £40 game at least every month thats better than someone buying a good £40 game that keeps them entralled for 3 months, wheres the profit is selling fewer games. The worst bit it that game depth is what is suffering. why spend 3 - 4 years on a vast RPG that might sell 1 million copies when you can churn out a Slash and Hack in 18 months and sell half that.

For me BG 1 & 2 are going to get the replay treatment until something great comes along, well that and Champ manager 5 anyway

cheers

 

This doesn't impact me much because I only get to play about 1 game a year and the industry will never get som bad that they only release 1 game per year or less.

And Splunge - yes, 90% of games I encounter are far too difficult for me now. Games used to be much easier last century.

 

Sorry, but that is rubbish. Can somebody name these "far too/ridiculously hard" games? I remember the games I was playing 8/10 years ago being a lot more difficult then anything I have played in the a last couple of years. Thinking about now, I remember some really hard almost impossible games. Games today have gotten tons easier then they used to be as far as I am concerned.

 

I tend to disagree that games have got much harder - theres almost always a difficulty slider.
I think most of it comes from a lack of effort on our part due to the fact that we've seen most games before in various incarnations.
Sometimes I just can't be bothered to put the effort in to learn the little tricks I used too. Unless that is, the game is a really good one.
Most of us probably think BG or BG2 are easy games now - but on my first time through I got completely slaughtered by Kangax, Sarevok, Firkrag etc, I would doubt anyone that claimed they beat Kangax without prior knowledge of his abilities!
Today the gamimg world is already being monopolised by a few big players. This will happen more and more - as games get bigger and more difficult to design.
We will probably end up with a small collection of games that are based upon the more advanced game engines. The small software houses will probably be limited to mods, expansions and such like. While most new ideas will probably be limited in their scope because the larger software houses are not willing to take the investment risk.

 

I agree - there are no real clues in the games that tell you how to deal with fights such as Kangax, it is trial and error. Unless you have prior knowledge.
I suppose my point is that Baldurs Gate series is not simplistic or easy for an average gamer. The stack of material available on this site is a testament to how complex it can be. So this Dvorak is talking rubbish if he things games are too hard or complicated to play - and if a game is good enough people will dedicate their time to learn it.
IMO the games industry does need to change - the last change has come in the form of the widespread multiplayer internet play, This has removed some of the need to rely on the limitations of poorly programed AI. But it needs more than this though.
In terms of creativity and ideas I don't think theres much that has never been done before without venturing into the realms of pure fantasy. Or changing the mediums we use to play games. Games like golf course/casino tycoon etc. indicate to me that theres not that much c**p left to scrape from the bottom of the barrel.

 

But you can win the game without fighting him, so it doesn't make the game hard. In fact, I've still never managed to feven find this elusive Kangaxx character.

For me the reason why games are harder is that they require more buttons.

Example: Frogger had no buttons, only a joystick. Same with Pacman. Space Invaders had only one button. Now, I try and play one of those fighting type games like Tekken 26 or Street Fighter 2.95654 and you have to push 73 button combinations at the same time as twisting the joystick in 42 directions in line with phases of the moon to get your character to do a special punch. By the time you've done that, you've been flattened by some 12 year old who doesn't even look like he's trying that hard.......

 

I'm not sure if I like the idea of reloading being an intended part of a roleplaying game. Ideally, you should only save and load when you have to leave the computer and come back later. Like to get more coffee or something.