Gunstar Green wrote:Any "lack of originality" you're seeing has nothing to do with raving fanboys and everything to do with cost versus risk.
Cost versus risk is part of the equation. Also demographics versus risk is as well. Thus the loudest focus group will get the most attention.
Making a video game in the 80's was a few thousand dollar investment for a developer. Now they're several million dollar investments.
There were quite a few games in the 80's and certainly the 90's that cost over a million dollars to make. Making games was always a risk because even for a small company a $10,000 bomb could put a three man basement team out of business.
Gunstar Green wrote:As for things being more pure or whatever, that's all nonsense. Video games have always been profit before art.
I do not agree with you, but I'm not going to get into the "are video games art" debate.
Gunstar Green wrote:He probably would've never gotten into the industry or been allowed to make his dream game if it wasn't for the Internet in the first place.
Maybe he would have, maybe he would not have. Totally hypothetical. But plenty of innovative game designers made great games solely by themselves long before the internet existed. It has more to do with personal ambition than having internet access.
Gunstar Green wrote:Indie games are only a thing now because digital distribution has given them an inexpensive format capable of mass distribution.
I am afraid I don't agree. That is because I remember buying indie games from companies like Apogee, Epic Megagames, Ambrosia, etc. through mail order catalogs after playing demos of their games via floppy diskettes I got out of magazines. Indie games have actually always been around since the invention of the PC. They have only become more popular due to the internet, not because of it.
Crowd funding has, for better or worse, also allowed talented people to make the games they want to make.
Yes it has helped. I just joined this Kickstarter today actually:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/119 ... ef=popularOne of many I've funded.
I would argue that the most original content that's been released in the last decade is because of the Internet, not in spite of it.
The content has been released because of talented designers, not because of "the internet". The internet was just a tool for them to get their product out to other people. The internet didn't sit down at their computer and make their games for them.
So listen, guys, I want to say that I don't think the internet itself as a stand alone tool is a bad thing. It's just that, a tool, a means of communication. So forgive me for implying (accidentally) that the internet itself is the bad guy. I didn't mean it that way despite making it sound like I did.
It's just that when entitled fanboys use the internet as a conduit for tidal waves of whining in hope of changing a studio's development of a product..
that is a bad thing. IMO that's compromising the designer's vision and is something that didn't happen in ye olde days of game design. Back then games were designed in a vacuum, for better or worse. But at least when the games were done and published they were purely as the designers intended, not altered halfway due to Twitter rants or modified to have a "better ending" via DLC. That's the "purity" aspect I'm talking about. The game was made in a bubble and when it came out, it was done and done. Like it or not, that's the game. Love it or hate it but whining won't change a thing.