Is History Repeating Itself?

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It's been a while since I made a topic here, so I thought I would air out some of the thoughts on the gaming industry I've had and collected over the past year.

First, some background. I love gaming. I used Lego blocks as controllers when I was 2, so I started early and was around for most of the creative renaissance in the medium that started in the 16 bit era, matured in the 32/64 bit era, and perfected in the 128 bit era. Mostly looking at the big blockbuster AAA titles, I cant help but feel familiarity for an era I was never around to experience first hand. The crash of 1983 was a dark time in gaming and much of what I know about it comes mostly from second hand research due to not being alive then. I'm noticing a pattern in recent history especially in the AAA sector of the industry that seems scarily familiar to what happened in the lead up to the 1983 crash. Oversaturation of rushed, often incomplete games, more and more desperate business and monetization practices all give me the feeling that history is repeating itself. The famous quote "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" comes to mind.

First Let's compare and contrast what's happening now with what happened in 1983.

Similarities:

A hypothetical crash would only affect a specific segment of the market (i.e. the AAA industry being affected today vs the console gaming industry in 1983)
The crash did not kill gaming, merely restructured it, for the better, imo
Both eras involved a general oversaturation of the market mostly with games
Other sectors such as PC gaming remained for the most part unaffected
The crash was mostly regional, only affecting North America/the West in general
Nintendo will remain strong throughout the crash

Differences:

The 1983 crash also involved an oversaturation of consoles, something the current era does not have
Gaming was younger, smaller, and more niche in 1983 compared to today
The crash will likely not be as dramatic or catastrophic as 1983
Europe and most of the west in general will be affected as opposed to just North America in 1983

Now that that's been established here what I see happening now, and how it could determine what may happen in the future. E.T. is often, maybe jokingly cited as the sole cause of the 1983 crash, Fallout 76 seems to mirror E.T. in many ways. It was a rushed game that clearly needed more time in the oven so to speak and was not ready for release when it came out and it does not seem up to the usual quality of Bethesda's games. we're seeing general franchise fatigue for many long running franchises, innovation seems stagnant when it seems like every AAA game is just Assassin's Creed 19, CoD 19, or Battlefield 19. We live in strange times when the only thing differentiating free to play mobile games from $60 AAA games is the price tag. Not every AAA game is bad, Sony can still put out quality first party exclusives like God of War and Spiderman PS4 and those games show that all you need to do be not only fun, but profitable is simply make the best game possible. Sadly, in the AAA market those games are the exception rather than the norm.

The general disappointment with AAA offerings is why Nintendo first party titles, retro, AA, indie, and niche Japanese games are performing so strongly, so it's not all bad. AA and indie devs are working with smaller, more modest budgets and showing how much more you can do with less. So it's not all gloom and doom and we do have more options than ever before today. Still when it comes to AAA, things need to change, as the current model is unsustainable long term.

A hypothetical crash of 20XX would only affect AAA and would likely not kill most if any of the big companies as gaming at this point as a whole is far too big to die. We won't see giants like EA Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft, and Bethesda going belly up. What we will see however is a massive restructuring within these companies that mostly involves replacing the businessmen that rule that these companies with passionate gamers as AA and indie games remain strong in the meantime. Even if there are enough big spending whales to keep AAA live services going for another 5-10 years, perhaps this restructuring could return gaming back to the days where when you bought a game, you got everything at launch and it worked, and anything extra was earned only through gameplay and if you wanted more than that, you paid for expansion packs. We could see the birth of a second golden age post AAA crash.

So what do you think? do you think history is repeating itself? or are you enjoying gaming, AAA included now just as much as you did back in the day?
 
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I don't think it's really fair to compare a rushed AAA game to ET, decades back they didn't have a way to fix games post release (unless they made an updated version that had all the necessary fixes; but then you had to buy the game all over again).

Now they can fix a mess like Fallout 76 through a bunch of patches, but I don't think it will be quick or easy, the game may remain a flaming pile of crap for a year or two easily.

And I think that is a real shame they rushed the game out disappointing a lot of diehard fans with a lackluster game that is basically unplayable with very little to do; not to mention the switchbaiting with the collectors edition with the cheaper bag they included instead of what they advertised that buyers would get.

From what I have seen most of the worst games this year are from companies that tried to do too much in too quick a time frame, such as extinction (which sounded good, but they ended up releasing a Mediocre game at best) and Elex, and it sounds like Kingdom Come Deliverance was a hot mess upon initial release as well.

I will say though that in general it seems like a year with less amazing releases; which tend to be Sony exclusives; compared to the past 2 or 3 years anyways.
 
While the ability to fix games post release is nice, I would argue it encouraged devs to get things right the first time. They knew you couldn't fix the game post release without a re release back then so it felt like they were encouraged to get as many things right as possible the first time and make it playable because you only got one release and that was it. While 76 can be fixed, the damage has already been done and you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. The only difference is 76 can be fixed after release. I still feel it's fair to compare the 2 because the overall concept is the same, a big game with a ton of hype behind it rushed out with the bare minimum effort put into it in order to make a quick buck and because the company thinks they can get away with it, only to have the whole thing blow up in their face as the consumerbase turns on them. Though I would argue 76 is worse because of the whole false advertising fiasco and the data breach debacle.
 
I agree that the damage is done with Fallout 76 and many people will (rightfully) never trust Bethesda again, I know I wouldn't if I was a FallOut fan and bought 76 when it just got released.

But I do think Bethesda could make more sales of 76 if they do a bunch of patches, and drop the price significantly (which would get a lot more buyers than trying to sell it at retail, especially now that people know just how bad it is).

As far as another crash related to video games, I dont see it happening, sure some games are like FO76 (flaming piles of crap that should make people wait for reviews because you cant trust a company that think it is acceptable to do as Bethesda did).

But that is a rather small exception, after all the only 2 huge blunders I have heard of in the last 2 or 3 years of games has been No Mans Sky, and just recently Fallout76.
 
BabyTyrant said:
I agree that the damage is done with Fallout 76 and many people will (rightfully) never trust Bethesda again, I know I wouldn't if I was a FallOut fan and bought 76 when it just got released.

But I do think Bethesda could make more sales of 76 if they do a bunch of patches, and drop the price significantly (which would get a lot more buyers than trying to sell it at retail, especially now that people know just how bad it is).

As far as another crash related to video games, I dont see it happening, sure some games are like FO76 (flaming piles of crap that should make people wait for reviews because you cant trust a company that think it is acceptable to do as Bethesda did).

But that is a rather small exception, after all the only 2 huge blunders I have heard of in the last 2 or 3 years of games has been No Mans Sky, and just recently Fallout76.

I envy your optimism, and I guess you're right about games like 76 being a small exception when looking at the industry as a whole, but when looking at only the AAA sector I'm not so sure about that, AAA is making lots of money in the short term, but it's not in a healthy place long term because shareholders aren't satisfied with lots of money, they want ALL THE MONEY, and my concern is that constantly shooting for all the money in the world will scare many customers away over time and the industry will run out of new ones to draw in leading to the need for an organizational restructuring. That's why I say a hypothetical crash won't be as bad as 1983, Gaming as a whole as too big to die at this point and so are the big AAA publishers, but AAA game development needs to change and the whole "live service" trend and aggressive monetization seems like a bubble waiting to burst, and like we're already seeing the early warning signs of said bubble bursting. Personally, I have a pretty big backlog of games, there's still amazing AA and indie titles, and Nintendo is still good. I want to see ALL of gaming get better and succeed, even AAA.
 
Yeah I hate this excessive monetization too; with the Loot boxes in games -such as in Star Wars Battlefront 2 where extra characters take way too long to unlock, otherwise you have to spend money, and there is no guarantee you get the characters you want.

Also in game stores where they try to sell you things that you SHOULD be able to unlock for free (often at a high real money cost inside a terrible game), not doing anything revolutionary the right way; sometimes they are too ambitious and they screw up (like fallout 76), but more often they sell you "revolutionary ideas" that just aren't executed that great.

I think it's a shame these companies have started getting so lazy that at best you end up with Mediocre games that should have been amazing, like Far Cry 5 and the last 2 or 3 Assassins Creed games (I used to love Assassins Creed, but I think they ruined it after Syndicate by turning it into something it should have never been turned into; complicating the combat system and making it nigh on impossible to actually do stealth Assassinations).

Not to mention AC Odyssey being turned into a game where you end up having to grind for long hours to level up before you can continue the story mode, and then they want to sell you an item that makes leveling easier; which people may very well be tempted to buy because of how difficult they made the leveling.

I hope Anthem and Cyberpunk 77 will end up being amazing because it will be so disappointing if they end up being either mediocre or just amazingly terrible like Fallout 76.
 
It's weird, I used to love gaming but as technology has improved beyond the wildest dreams of my 12-year-old self the games have got less and less appealing and look more and more similar. A lot like movies in many ways - bigger budgets, bigger effects, but missing something.

I know there's indie games etc. on Steam but I just can't get into games these days, I guess adulting gets in the way... one day I *will* drag my Amiga out of the loft for another crack at Cannon Fodder though.
 
RubberJin said:
It's weird, I used to love gaming but as technology has improved beyond the wildest dreams of my 12-year-old self the games have got less and less appealing and look more and more similar. A lot like movies in many ways - bigger budgets, bigger effects, but missing something.

I know there's indie games etc. on Steam but I just can't get into games these days, I guess adulting gets in the way... one day I *will* drag my Amiga out of the loft for another crack at Cannon Fodder though.

And in some ways you may be right, but new ideas seem to be more of a Sony and Nintendo thing, whereas Xbox/Microsoft has just recently obtained more game studios so they should have more interesting new IPs in the next few years.

Sony usually has 2 or 3 really strong, inventive/creative games every year, some being completely new.

Like God of War (2018) was way different from any God of War before, not to mention the new Spider Man is getting lots of praise, and last year had Horizon Zero Dawn (which you can get with 15 hours of DLC really cheaply), and of course The Last of Us, and many other amazing exclusives before then (not to mention some upcoming ones)

But you have all these Sony haters that are 100% certain they will NEVER LIKE ANYTHING on PlayStation, which makes no sense at all; at least they should be open to the idea that maybe they would like some of these games if they tried; just like I'm not gonna say Xbox will never have anything I want to play; but it gets boring when all they got is Multi-plat games, Halo (Destiny is way better), Gears (which is getting repetitive and boring), and Forza (which is basically for hardcore realistic racing fans).

Not to mention these "classic" consoles with a bunch of built in games (I'm surprised the PS1 "Classic" is missing a lot of that generations best games) and remakes/remasters.

I really think next year will be more exciting, I just hate these companies putting out mediocre games, and then either basically trying to force you to buy in game stuff with money (because of the convenience the items provide/inconvenience to not have them), or the game is 100% terrible and yet they still expect people to feel like spending way too much money on cosmetic items.

But the only way to get them to move away from those things is if enough people refuse to buy them
 
In 1986 there were very few titles available, so when 1 game crashed really bad it had a ripple effect on the entire industry. Given the vast diversity and so many different platforms, I just don't see how 1 game crashing now would have the same kind of effect.

Though for what it's worth, I've been a big fallout fan ever since it was called wasteland. Fallout 76 is a disaster with absolutely no story line to it, massive bugs and problems, and nothing but hype holding it up. I will not be playing that game.
 
The Crash was in '83 and there were quite a few games available - most of them were barely better than shovelware, but at the time a game could literally be the work of a single-person and none of the consoles had any sort of QA process.
Some of the biggest contributors to the Crash were an over-saturation of the market and broadly poor quality causing a loss of confidence in consumers. That isn't to say there weren't solid and well-done games, however such titles were few and far between. Lacking anything like Social Media or even gaming mags, it was much harder to spread the word about the good games.

I think we'll be seeing a limited version of the Crash in the near future, but it won't be enough to get the accountants out of the head office - which only means we'll be seeing it again later. The root of the issue this time is very much the reverse of the original problem: then, a single person could create and publish a game on their own in under a month. Now, it takes large teams and years; the need to cover operating expenses the whole time is reason for the existence of the big publishers. It does mean, however, that the publishers are really looking at this more like an investment than a creative project: that is, how soon will you make me more money than I gave you? And not, are you making a good product?
 
Well, if you think the next "Video Game Market Crash" is gonna be people being more skeptical about games, waiting until the consumer knows the games are of a quality actually worth buying (what is acceptable for a game released at $10-$20 is NOT ACCEPTABLE if that game is released for $50-$60 like FO76) ; and I certainly hope also refusing these micro-transactions that seem prevalent in a lot of games (in many forms at that)

this I could see happening and it could be a good thing as if they start making far less money due to this; then you would probably see them focusing more on quality than to hype up a game because it's from a known series and they know people will expect it to be of a similar quality level as what they have played from that series; and this also leads them to believe if they release good looking Trailers - the games will sell themselves.

Which sad to say is kinda true, I know I very rarely spend retail (or even close to it) on games, waiting until I see reviews and often until I can get a discount (which is usually easy due to a huge used game market on websites like eBay) ; used games is definitely a buyers market as so many people buy games, and then you have many trying to sell them used; so this leads to so much competition its basically a race to the bottom (who can sell it cheaper) to make sales.

Next year I am expecting both Anthem and Cyberpunk 77 to be amazing games as I loved all the Mass Effect games (even Andromeda which had some bugs, but I feel it isnt as bad as its reputation) and I loved The Witcher 3 (I never played the games before that, but 3 was soooooooo amazing)
 
One good thing about the industry in '83 is anyone could make a world-class game in their bedroom for no money - when you've got 64k of RAM to play with there's only so many ways to fill it! One guy hacking away in his bedroom could achieve wonders, and without a swarm of executives and shareholders and advertising people baying for deadlines, features, monetisation and the kitchen sink thrown in which is a surefire way to kill any creative project.
 
Not that I agree with them, but the boardroom bandits do have a point: modern AAA development has gotten VERY expensive. And the price for new games is pretty much at equilibrium: any higher and units sold starts dropping hard and even at $70, units sold nearly never recoups dev costs. That, right there, is a large chunk of why games come out "half-finished" and with numerous microtransactions. I don't know what the solution is, but hopefully someone comes up with something soon.
 
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