Modern Games Industry: How'd We Get Here?

[Fragems]

Honestly I feel there are still a lot of mid tier games being made I mean hell I have over 200 games each for the PS3 and 360 and I've hardly put a dent in their libraries. Plus there are plenty of lesser known games like Darkest of Days(360) that are solid albeit not beautiful games from publishers/dev studios I've never heard of.

[darsparx]

Well yeah but it feels like we've lost the kind of mid-tier we had in what I'd say is nes-early wii. It may just be me but up to that point there wasn't many that did the whole play it safe thing as much as everyone does now. While a lot of the games we get today are fun, they're just not groundbreaking as much as they should be, and they're definitely not a abundance of the ones that are as it seems like there used to be.

All I'm saying is these developers need to find some new gameplay mechanics, combine a few odd genres, or combine some old tired game mechanics in a new way. Honestly getting tired of the dust of the dead horse being beat with these sequels to old series. Some might be good but otherwise yech....


Also whoever said cartridge based console wouldn't work with sd cards: vita tv. Basically the same thing if you ask me yet no one has considered it enough to make it more popular than it is right now. Honestly I'd love to see a return to cartridge based systems. The cases would take up less space if someone could figure it out for a modern day version that would really be it.

[chuckster]

All I'm saying is these developers need to find some new gameplay mechanics, combine a few odd genres, or combine some old tired game mechanics in a new way. Honestly getting tired of the dust of the dead horse being beat with these sequels to old series. Some might be good but otherwise yech....


Also whoever said cartridge based console wouldn't work with sd cards: vita tv. Basically the same thing if you ask me yet no one has considered it enough to make it more popular than it is right now. Honestly I'd love to see a return to cartridge based systems. The cases would take up less space if someone could figure it out for a modern day version that would really be it.

I told you, it's class inequality but with games!

I don't really think this is true though, especially with PS3, there are plenty of mid-budget games from Japan. The PS2 was the saturation point for console gaming, so now the current and last generations were a decline in absolute terms, and at first glance it seems like a more barren landscape. However, look at the explosion of games in the PC indie sphere and especially in the handheld market compared between PS2 and PS3 era. Those games are representative of those smaller budget, more experimental games, they're just shifting to other platforms because they're easier, cheaper, or better suited for those experiences (arguably).

I REALLY like the SD cartridge idea, I've thought about it a lot myself, though I first thought about it with SSDs (larger capacity, better format to equate with older consoles, more durable, larger than a fingernail). SDs could work across so many form factors though, and would be much cheaper.

I think forcing games to be released on SD only would be a revolution. When a game ships on a format itself costing 30x MSRP over Blu-Ray, publishers and developers would be forced to run a more legitimate business, come down to earth with budgets and efficiency (Destiny cost $500 million? Really?). I'd also like kiosks used for updates, or at least available for them. SDs would make this easier, though removable HDDs have made it very possible. Picture it: You could take your game with you when you go grocery shopping, plug it into the game kiosk in the electronics section, and have your game patched and updated, and even buy DLC. It would be a gesture of good faith for those of us who aren't able to download multi-GB day one fixes.

The overall output would drop of course, and companies would at first do the knee-jerk thing and just up the price or the budgets for games, but when they see the market won't bear $100+ standard game prices (Neo-Geo, anyone?) and that billion dollar budgets for video games just aren't going to work, I think positive changes could be made.

It's all a pipe-dream, of course. I'm probably being naive and it would probably destroy the industry as we know it!

[isiolia]

It's all a pipe-dream, of course. I'm probably being naive and it would probably destroy the industry as we know it!

Trying to force the industry as a whole towards a particular model simply would not work. Digital has taken hold because it's generally favorable for publishers, and offers some benefits to consumers.

Outside of those who don't have a good home internet connection, there'd be zero motivation to utilize a kiosk setup. Why go to the store, wait however long for the machine to copy tens of gigabytes to a card, drive home, and then wait for it to install (nearly all SD cards are as slow or slower than the Blu-ray drives in consoles)...if they could simply have preloaded the game digitally as we have now?
Not like they wouldn't roll in DRM anyway. It's like saying people would rather drive to the store to copy TV episodes or a move to their iPad, then drive home to watch it instead of streaming Netflix or Hulu.

If publisher did support that, it'd be with low-risk products. Kinda like you said, PC or other less controlled platforms would simply be the target for more experimental stuff. It wouldn't "fix" much of anything.


Also, remember, a lot of game budgets that get tossed around also tend to roll in marketing costs. That $500 million figure for Destiny does. The actual development budget is/was apparently more like $140 million, which is still a lot (comparable to GTAV), but not half a billion

To a fair point, I think things have to be looked at relatively. If the big games are in the $50-100 million plus range, then what budget really constitutes mid-tier today? $20 million? I'd guess plenty of games are in that range, or lower.
Big publishers are already putting out fairly low budget games too - MS published Ori and the Blind Forest, for example, and stuff like Marlow Briggs on the 360. The Xbox One and PS4 both have physical releases for Wasteland 2 and Divinity Original Sin, offhand.

I can appreciate the notion of it being nigh impossible to keep up with all the releases these days, but hey, having that happen in years past is how we get hidden gems for today. It's nothing new.

[Sarge]

The kiosk would be for folks that don't have good access to high-speed Internet. But really, in that case it'd be better to just let the user download to another PC, like Steam, and run the backup tool. If I could do that on console, and just do the authentication when I restore it after downloading at work, things would be peachy.

There's also probably not enough money in that segment, either. Redbox seems to do alright, but that's also a different business model.

[LensOfTruth]

"Mid-Tier" really stands for what the big and mid-sized developers of the PS2 days were putting out during that generation. (As we've discussed on other pages, "Mid-Tier" vanished in favor of the Indie/Triple-A structure.) After all, those individuals had decades of game design experience. I wish I knew where all that talent went, since very few of them seem to have stayed in the industry. (For example, formed a company and looked to crowdfunding.)

I'm a huge fan of Indies. Cave Story remains an achievement for the scene. However, not all Indies are created equal, as the XBLA showed. Some people just don't have a lot of game design experience, and, in the end, a gigantic Indie scene doesn't compare to the talent pool that dominated the PS2's library.

It is true that the PS2 had a ton of software, but those games sold. If they didn't, I'm sure most of them wouldn't have even been translated for North American/PAL markets in the first place. Look up Japan-Only PS3 games -- That's the result of the console space shrinking, likely due to the growth of the PC and Mobile markets.

I don't know if I've explained it well, but I definitely recommend reading all the pages in this thread.

[darsparx]

I kinda wish the same thing about the talent. Some of it is a little obvious(rare, which the talent was split three ways if I recall, then you have inticreates, comcept, and a few others). Honestly I need to follow these devs and create a list on twitter or facebook of these people...

[chuckster]

It'd just be nice for the option of kiosks to be there, or to allow remote download of the content, like mentioned. Of course there would be no incentive for those who can do it at home, that's because they can do it. There's no incentive to rent movies if you have decent internet.

The market would be small and probably in supportable though, so it doesn't happen.