The Downfall of the Gaming Industry

[thebabyhater]

As somebody who has beaten the original Super Mario Brothers before learning to walk, video games are a huge part of my life. Growing up, games like Chrono Trigger and Secret of Gaia really influenced my creativity, and are still very important to me. Games had a heart and soul, and the ones with the best reputation earned it because they were original and creative.

But now, with game development budgets approaching $6 million for some big titles and 1080p graphics as standard, I can't help but feel like the focus of the gaming industry has changed. The original games are VERY few and far between - practically everything that comes off the shelves is just another generic FPS! Don't get me wrong - I still play DOOM II online every once and a while, and love the everloving crap out of it.

Where are the great stories, the memorable characters, and the all-around experience that made each game stand out as an individual? Gone. Nobody cares about that anymore - they just want graphics and more graphics. Professional game reviewers give generic games like Halo and Gears of War perfect scores, yet they drastically underrate original games because they simply aren't cookie cutter copies of the latest and greatest FPS.

I can't wait for Still Life 2.

[lemon-tree]

I just believe the focus of the market has changed for one key reason: the market has changed. Originally, it was a very specific market where satisfaction was guaranteed and the games had that 'human' touch in the design and the overall game-play. However, nowadays the market has changed somewhat to serve the masses and people are more bothered about graphics and so on.
I personally enjoy both genres of games and take the benefits of them both.

[leo1954au]

A current example is GTA 4 it needs a good PC to run it and only has option for mouse and keyboard and if you want to use a joystick your out of luck unless you buy an adaptor for your PC and use the Xbox 360 game pad.

But some guy has made a little program workaround to use a PC game pad, steering while or like me a joystick.

http://www.tocaedit.com/IB/index.php?act=home

[xPlozion]

I loved the games on the NES and Genesis, did they have good graphics? No, but they had a good story. The best game IMO on the last gen consoles was undoubtedly Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 (and Black Arrow). Nothing like it and I have tons of pleasant memories about it.

Unfortunately, all the FPS games I play are multiplayer, and with the audience for older FPS's dying every day (especially on the consoles), it's really hard to find someone playing it. Racing games I've got no problem playing both online and offline.

[Livewire]

A current example is GTA 4 it needs a good PC to run it and only has option for mouse and keyboard and if you want to use a joystick your out of luck unless you buy an adaptor for your PC and use the Xbox 360 game pad.

I'd like to point out real quick the 360 adapter is only required if you use the wireless gamepads; wired ones are Plug N Play, and if needbe the driver installer is freely available on Microsoft's site.



Continue

[thebabyhater]

Ugh, now I realize that I mean "Secret of Mana" and "Illusion of Gaia." Both very good games.

I'm glad to see I'm not alone here. One thing I didn't mention was the new focus toward online games, too. I would be fine with a multiplayer game that was creative and original, but now everything is just a generic RPG. Click on the enemy, watch it die, click on the next enemy, repeat for 90 days until you have a level 99 character, start all over... all while getting called a "noob" and asked "hoe 2 mien 4 fish." Talk about boring... and to think people actually pay subscription fees for games like this.

[enraged]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who is strictly against subscription fees/

[warlordste]

i am against gaming fee and the gaming industry has changed it used to be about creating good games with alright graphics but now its just become another money making scheme where there not botherd about the story lines any more just about the graphics and how much they can make wish it went back to the good old days

[Smith6612]

Personally, while the creativity of games has gone down, I don't see the gaming industry declining at all. Being a PC gamer myself, and of course liking games, I have a crapload of FPS games as well as a few games such as Starcraft and Trackmania, etc on my system. Now, I may be the oddity out there that has to have a god-like machine and tons of games, but the PC gaming market as well as the markets for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii have really kept up. Not sure how the PSP or the DSi/DS is going though.

[zen-r]

I suppose the gaming industry is just like any other long-standing industry, where it gets harder & harder to come up with original ideas. The music industry is just the same. It's quite rare now that I hear any good new original stuff - most of the time it's just a re-hash of music I heard when it came out first time around. Youngsters are fooled into buying it though, because they haven't heard the (usually better) original. And when the new stuff is original, it is still often very similar to a thousand other tracks which came out years earlier.

In respect of the gaming industry, each new generation of players often feels the same as you do; about creativity being lost in the trend towards over-utilising the newest technology just for the sake of it, & blatant commercialism. Even the film industry suffers from this, where often the CGI effects take over, at the cost of basic good story-telling.

I'm lucky (unlucky?! :happysad: ) enough to have been there when some of the first computer games were just becoming available to the average consumer. I was the first kid on my street to get a Ping Pong console, only to see it blown away a year or two later by the Atari console which took cartridges for additional games. I typed Basic code into my "computer" in order to get it to play Noughts & Crosses or Pontoon. I was there to drool over the first Space Invaders, Pac-Man & Asteroids when they arrived in the pubs. I wasted a few hours on text-based adventure games.

By todays standards these games were primitive, but just as you are perhaps feeling now, somehow those games & some of the subsequent games seemed to capture for my generation, more pure gamesmanship & quality of design than the later ever-more graphics-heavy games. It's remarkable how inventive the early coders could be, when they had very few pixels, Hz, & bytes to work with! As the computers power increased, the coders could get lazy with the cleverness of the gameplay itself, instead relying on impressing the player with ever more realistic looking graphics. And, of course, even when the coders did try hard to be creative, they suffered back then from the same problems as are being discussed here; that they were running out of fresh new ideas.

What it always seems to need when an industry stagnates is a whole new platform, or a revolutionary concept on which to build fresh & original products. So, just as the internet & MP3 gave the music industry new platforms on which to be creative (though more in the delivery of the music, than the actual music itself) then I'm guessing that new platforms will be required in the gaming industry before anything particularly new & exciting will happen. Who knows what this might be, but I'd suggest that areas involving greater interactivity will be a likely starting point (online multi-player gaming, the Wii, total immersion suits etc - they all may have their part to play).

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