Who Killed Videogames? (A Ghost Story)

[Inazuma]

Video games are a leisure activity designed to pass time in an entertaining manner. If the game is designed for the user to pay extra to speed up certain processes or essentially "cheat", then the game isn't very good at what it is supposed to be doing. If the game is boring without the increased speed or efficiency of throwing money at the publisher, then it wasn't designed to be entertaining.

Exactly. Many of today's game are not designed to be good games. They are designed to make as much money as possible. However most gamers aren't smart enough to realize it, so it ends up being a financial success.

[noiseredux]

Exactly. Many of today's game are not designed to be good games. They are designed to make as much money as possible. However most gamers aren't smart enough to realize it, so it ends up being a financial success.

you always bring this up, and it always boggles my mind that you seem to truly and naively believe that video game publishers of yesteryear were not in the business to make as much money as possible.

[Inazuma]

Exactly. Many of today's game are not designed to be good games. They are designed to make as much money as possible. However most gamers aren't smart enough to realize it, so it ends up being a financial success.

you always bring this up, and it always boggles my mind that you seem to truly and naively believe that video game publishers of yesteryear were not in the business to make as much money as possible.

We could actually own old games.

If you look at the last 5 years, you should see all of the new bullshit that the game industry has came up with to make more money than they used to.

Back in the day, you bought a game and that was that. Now you lease a game, pay for DLC, have horrible DRM, have commercials on Xbox live, no right to sue, pay to win online games, etc. Today's game industry is a total fucking joke.

[o.pwuaioc]

Exactly. Many of today's game are not designed to be good games. They are designed to make as much money as possible. However most gamers aren't smart enough to realize it, so it ends up being a financial success.

you always bring this up, and it always boggles my mind that you seem to truly and naively believe that video game publishers of yesteryear were not in the business to make as much money as possible.

The difference between then and now is that then they made good games, and now there are a few good games among many truly horrible games that trick and addict.

[Zing]

Exactly. Many of today's game are not designed to be good games. They are designed to make as much money as possible. However most gamers aren't smart enough to realize it, so it ends up being a financial success.

you always bring this up, and it always boggles my mind that you seem to truly and naively believe that video game publishers of yesteryear were not in the business to make as much money as possible.

I think the main difference is that developers and publishers were satisfied with relatively low sales and profits, which likely seemed high at the time. Now that publishers have merged into giant conglomerates (often owning the developers outright), the market has expanded greatly, and games "need" to sell millions of copies to be successful, the developer mindset may have changed from "create a game that makes us money to cover our cost of living and maybe some profit" to "create a mainstream game that generates X amount of revenue for our publisher or we get shut down".

To put it another way, developers used to make the games they wanted to make (with a few concessions). Now they make the games they need to make.

[AppleQueso]

In other words the gaming industry basically became hollywood.

[o.pwuaioc]

In other words the gaming industry basically became hollywood.

Exactly. And all we have left to really enjoy are arthouse films and the occasional mass-market big-budget film that is still enjoyable.

[J T]

you always bring this up, and it always boggles my mind that you seem to truly and naively believe that video game publishers of yesteryear were not in the business to make as much money as possible.

We could actually own old games.

If you look at the last 5 years, you should see all of the new bullshit that the game industry has came up with to make more money than they used to.

Back in the day, you bought a game and that was that. Now you lease a game, pay for DLC, have horrible DRM, have commercials on Xbox live, no right to sue, pay to win online games, etc. Today's game industry is a total fucking joke.

I think you're both right to an extent. In the old days we had quarter munching arcade games that became so difficult in the later stages that you couldn't pass them unless you threw money at the game, we had advertisements in game (Red Bull in Wipeout, for example), we had games that were advertisements themselves (Yo! Noid, Chex Quest, Cool Spot), we had early incarnations of DRM (CD keys, secret codes in the manual, disc checks, write protected etc.), we had stupid arcade ticket dispensing games that cost you $5 worth of quarters to earn enough tickets to buy 5 cents worth of candy, and we had horrible cash-in franchise games based on movies that led to the great video game crash of the 80s (Atari 2600 E.T., we will not forget).

No doubt, gaming companies have always tried to make money and that money motive has not always been achieved by simply making a good game. The problem with today's money grubbing tactics is that they are beginning to seem increasingly underhanded. Asking people to sign away their legal rights as part of the EULA that nobody reads, surreptiously forcing in-game purchases by practically requiring them to complete the game, or DRM so heinous that it makes the pirates look like the good guys for liberating the games of their DRM shackles.

Ultimately, consumers will wise up though. They'll get annoyed with all this fancy monetization bullshit, time-sucking manipulations, stripping of their rights of ownership, and nickle & dime torture cycles, and they'll just stop playing. Bad business can only work for so long before people easily recognize the cons and just don't want to deal with a company anymore. I've seen my own interest in new games from Activision, E.A., Ubisoft, and Capcom all but disappear. I'm much more inclined to buy from an indie developer that seems to have unique ideas and a no-nonsense business approach. With all the shenanigans of the modern gaming business I'm getting to a point where I'm willing to wait 10 years until it shows up on gog.com.

[Luke]

I think this could all lead to another crash in the videogame industry, or at least in part of it.

It would be welcomed.

No. The last thing I want are more people without jobs.

edit: or should that be "is more people"? Too tired to care about fixing grammar right now.

"is"

[Anayo]

To JT's original post:

Thanks so much for posting that here. I read the whole thing even though it was a wall of text. It was nothing short of chilling.