I've hit the limit. I do enjoy the Wii U, 3DS, and Vita because I can find enough "retro-ish" stuff to suite my tastes. But I have little interest in any future hardware.
I am loving this modern indie scene on the PC though. I must admit that I find PC gaming more exciting now than I did years ago.
+1
LensOfTruth wrote: That's why all these new development philosophies have torn away the creative fabric in the name of big money.
That's very poignant. If I knew how to do a Sig, and chose a line from RB, this would be it.
marlowe221 wrote:Also, when it comes to game preservation, digital is the ultimate solution in the long term. I love my original hardware in most cases. But I recognize that there will come a day when there is no longer a working NES or Genesis out there in the world. There will come a day when the cartridges no longer function. CDs and DVDs are very easy to damage and the systems that use/used them have more moving parts and seem to be even more prone to critical hardware failure than the older, cartridge-based consoles.
I agree with this. I dislike the idea of digital distribution. I live in the one of the most depressed areas in the USA, and have horrible internet access with a cap, so it has never been much of an option for me. I have a copy of Shogun 2 that I got free with my PC from Steam, but at 26GB, it would take nearly all of my monthly cap to get it, which isn't worth it. I ended up buying the disc version off Ebay. It feels like digital distribution is ignoring that I and many others have these issues, but that's not the fault of video game companies, and I digress.
Whatever my umbrage, digital distribution is coming, and has great potential for good or for bad. One thing digital has done on the positive side in my view is allow an alternative to unreliable optical drives. The first time I saw the Wii could download and play VC games, and then learned the 360 could copy games and run them from its HDD, I saw great potential. I got a used Wii and its disc drive started failing within a few months, but it didn't matter much to me because with the built-in ability to play games from storage media, I was mostly reading rips of my library from a re-purposed HDD. This was just a simple softmod involving less than 30 minutes, compared to converting my Xbox to do the same when its disc drive began its demise, which was a headache and took a few tries (experience my have played a part here).
Support for the online repositories of older consoles is going to go down inevitably, but gaming is more popular than ever. Look at how well the imminently less accessible games from 20 and 30 years ago have been preserved (okay, so in the grand scheme, not so good maybe, but hear me out). It bears out that these patches and DLC packs and digital-only games will preserved by the much larger community with much more widespread and suitable capability, even if not by the publishers themselves. With this in mind, I have no doubt it will be possible (albeit questionable) to play and enjoy games released or supported digitally. You can go now and do this very thing, creating a patched and DRM-bypassed "archive" of most any game on Steam if you so desire, and I'm sure most XBLA/PSN-only games will be the same, not to mention DLC and patches. I'm not supporting it, but if the digital doomsayers have gotten you down, it's something to consider.
IMHO, it's not the indie market we should be worried about. If a collapse is coming anywhere, it's coming here. Arguably, it may already be happening with some of the traditional big names in console gaming bowing out of the market (e.g. Konami).
Too true. Was in a Gamestop today and I realized I couldn't find a game I'd add to my PS4 collection (which is only about 10-12 games), there just aren't many big console games coming out anymore. I could just be being picky, but it never seemed like the industry experienced such a drought. In the last 20 years I was looking, there were always multiple games I'd want at the same time, but had to decide between. Now I'm just wanting a single game worth picking up.
The thing is, DRM is currently working really well. Denuvo takes months for hackers to get through and has almost caused a few to throw in the towel. You can say, "well they still get through it," but the goal of Denuvo isn't to be uncrackable forever but to keep the game's initial sales period free from piracy. So far, so good.
That's true. I'm actually really fascinated with some conversations surrounding Denuvo. The creators seem to think of it as more of a time-release pirating block. I wonder if they are holding back, making each iteration just a bit more difficult to circumvent without showing their true hand, making crack teams do the testing for them. Some say the same for the pirate groups, that they had become complacent and this will be a call to a new type of cracker that will set a new standard for DRM crackdowns. I support GoG as much as I can with my limited resources, but this is a very interesting arms race.
As for the books vs. games argument, I think the odds of finding something you subjectively like are going to be wildly different between people for any medium, but if you draw on a million samples vs. 10000, with a similar difference in install base and available information, not to mention the relative resources required for a book or short story vs. a full RPG or indie platformer, of course the odds are better for finding a book you like. I read many more books I consider bad before coming across something I love (probably 12 to 1), than I do for games.
Then again, I look for much more when seeking out a book than I do a a game. I expect more from a book before I'd call it "good" compared to a game. I look for a different type of experience when I watch a film or listen to a song as well. They're as different as any other two forms of media.
There is also a greater amount of marketing and "push" for a book from a decently sized publisher, because the book has to be read and approved by multiple editors and agents before really getting that sort of treatment. Games mostly rely on word of mouth. Looking at recent publishing I'd say this mirrors AAA game development, leading to more generic, less interesting and original writing rising to the top of public perception, just as it has with CoD and the like. I guarantee there is more crap per capita each year in book publishing than in game publishing, even considering the much greater sample to average. But that's just one very personal opinion. Someone else with different criteria and values would likely have a different outlook.
