Gaming in decline?

[Hex]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]
This topic might seem a bit out of place. After all, with the Wii's sales higher than any console ever, and the different ways to play promoted by Nintendo, plus on the other side of Sony and Microsoft, the major revolutions made by games such as LittleBigPlanet and COD4, how could anyone claim gaming is in decline.

However, if we look at the amounts of major franchises failing to beat the quality of their previous releases, others drawing to a close, the closure of many of gaming's most historic companies such as Ensemble and the amount of shovelware on the Wii, you see another side.

On the subject of games from the past few years that failed to beat the quality of their previous games:
[/font]

• [font="Calibri,Arial"]COD5 while with a more "epic" campaign and the Nazi Zombies game mode was good, for serious multiplayer, I still go back too COD4.[/font]
• [font="Calibri,Arial"]Simcity Societies. This one is a matter of personal taste. I personally dislike it as do many hardcore Simcity players. What is not disputable, is that it is NOT a Simcity game, and should never have been labelled as such. No Maxis, no traditional simcity gameplay, and the emphasis of social feel in the city place it far away from the Simcity series.[/font]
• [font="Calibri,Arial"]GTA IV. One of gaming's current darlings. Yes, Buckets more features, much better graphics and a well written storyline. Yet, for some reason, it's just not as much fun as San Andreas or Vice City. I can't put my finger on it, but nearly all my friends agree with me.[/font]
• [font="Calibri,Arial"]Final Fantasy. Now XIII, might turn it around, but the series has been in decline since FFX. X-2 and XI never really took off, and I've yet to find someone who'd pick XII over X.[/font]
• [font="Calibri,Arial"]Command and Conquer. The series never really got back to where it was after Red Alert 2.[/font]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]
On the other hand, you have some of the gaming main series drawing to a close.

At one point the 360 vs PS3 debate was summed up as Metal Gear Solid vs Halo. Yet both the main series are finished, and I can't see too much hope for the spin-offs without Master Chief and Snake, for games as based around their main characters as these ones.

And if you look at the developers, you see a situation where formerly major companies such as Ensemble are being closed down.

And even the ones that are still around, a lot of them are shadows of their former selves. Look at Rare and Sega. And even the ones that are publicly healthy such as Maxis are unable to match their former creations. Spore is nowhere near it's orignal vision, and the product as delivered can not compare to their older games such as Simcity and the Sims.

The days of the game by a single developer are well over. No new games have been developed by a single developer, other than those who have had previous successes:Will Wright and Hideo Kojima are the only 2 I can think of who made games recently. While a few games are going around with Sid Meiers name on them, most of them are remakes or sequels to his games, not ones he was directly involved in.

Then the various "interesting" gameplay styles for the Wii. While some of them are good, 99.9% of them are complete shovelware. Who needs the 450th minigames compilation?

So what's your opinion on gaming nowadays? Is it at the verge of a bright new dawn, or in a major decline.
[/font]

 

[Pojo]

Well the video game business is increasing in this economy...

As for creativity, I do feel that a lot of game ideas are constantly reused, but that doesn't mean that they won't be fun. As long as developers add something new to the mix, or make the game creative, people will still buy them.

 

[TheFoxxehAssassin]

Ah yes. The gaming consoles.

I might barely be a teen, but I remember waaay back when all we had was an SNES, an N64, and an original Nintendo. I remember playing Perfect Dark for hours and hours, and I was only 5!

It seems nowadays they make waaay too many sequels. I remember when Halo was just coming out, eight years ago. Now, they have Halo 3, and probably 4 (I don't really keep up with this stuff). Same goes for a lot of games. It seems things are getting way too repetitive these days.

With the Nintendo Wii, and PS3, and Xbox 360, there's really nothing old left. The last old consoles are Gamecube, and PS2. PSP is going to go out of business really soon. So, we're left with a bunch of newfangled machines!

I still think the N64 is the best console ever made.

--The Silent Assassin--

 

[Hex]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]Here the Gamecube was dead on release, and PSP went about a year after it came. The PS2 has also given way to the 360/PS3.[/font]

 

[Skeeter]

I'm an original gamer from the Atari 2600 days.

All things ebb and flow over periods of time. Because video games are currently a cash cow, people who don't care about the actual games are involved.

When the big gaming companies begin collapsing, only the hardcore will survive. When money continues to be lost, only people who love video games will stay in the business. These few will be the ones to bring a rise to better games and fresh ideas.

 

[h3g3l]

Ah yes. The gaming consoles.

I might barely be a teen, but I remember waaay back when all we had was an SNES, an N64, and an original Nintendo. I remember playing Perfect Dark for hours and hours, and I was only 5!

It seems nowadays they make waaay too many sequels. I remember when Halo was just coming out, eight years ago. Now, they have Halo 3, and probably 4 (I don't really keep up with this stuff). Same goes for a lot of games. It seems things are getting way too repetitive these days.

I agree, and while I don't think it's just a case of everything being a variation on an FPS, I do happen to think that FPSes have created a really myopic view of games and gaming.

Also, games and gaming companies these days are a lot more reasoned and calculated business maneuvers than they are coded and released by legions of avid gamers. While this is just the nature of business these days (when compared against the 1980s) there is more to it than that: developers and designers are under continuous aggressive pressure to release the next $100M cash-cow for their respective companies. So much pressure, in fact, that there is little if any time to do things "right" in the software engineering sense of the phrase. I have an acquaintance who works at EA, and an average work week is 60 hours. 80-100 hours a week is not unheard of when a deadline is looming. Their effects/art/meshes are all kept in various hacked-together libraries. He used an example of "I want that fireball from ..." and led us through some steps on how to find out who knows about the effect, to get the files moved over to the project, to shove it into the project, and then to call it good and quickly move on.

It's really quite sad, I think, and I'm happy to support "Indie" games as they come out. For instance, I want to buy a PS3 just for Little Big Planet; a friend of mine has the Katamari Domocacy (I think) game for PS2, and the freshness and uniqueness of that game made me think very long about getting a PS2.

I'm an original gamer from the Atari 2600 days.

All things ebb and flow over periods of time. Because video games are currently a cash cow, people who don't care about the actual games are involved.

When the big gaming companies begin collapsing, only the hardcore will survive. When money continues to be lost, only people who love video games will stay in the business. These few will be the ones to bring a rise to better games and fresh ideas.

Well. You've nailed it with the "cash cow" idea.

But now it's story-time. In 1983, the game sector collapsed completely. Since then, we have had two distinct cycles of gaming. So while I suspect this is just a lull in gaming and we'll eventually recover, I really hope that frameworks can make small-shop development easier for gaming consoles and computer platforms alike. It is from this avenue that I see the future of gaming evolving.

 

[frillyfoxy]

You just have rose tinted glasses. I will throw this out their. For me FF has sucked since FF3, GTA3 was not as fun as the original and the list goes on. There are occasional surprises. I thought Galaxies was fantastic, but a large part of me also things SMBworld was way better. There is always nostalgia involved with hobbies.

That said there is a lot going on. In reality what is going to happen is gaming will change a lot in the next decade. Shovel ware is so popular on the Wii because it is easier to sell. Making modern games is mind boggleingly expensive. Even a C grade game will take a metric ton of cash, and like the movies there is often no return. Making money with shovel ware is easier then with larger projects.

There is a reason all the best mods were made for older game; Making one now that looks modern requires a disproportionate amount of time, skill, and ability compared to the past. Just the step from HL to source is massive. In Q1/2 you made a simple mesh, a low res texture and exported the animation frames. HL kicked it up a notch requiring a mesh, texture, animations with a skeleton and compiling.
Well source You have a mesh that is 10 times as detailed, LOD meshes, a complex weighted skeleton, hundreds of animations, multiple base textures, a series of shaders, textures for said shaders, a complex QC file to define a long list of features (making the eyes work in HL2 is more complicated then a large amount of anything when it came to HL graphics) reference frames for handling the facial animation system the list goes on.

What is going on now is a lot amateur and small studios are opting to do shorter, more focused games. There is a lot more 2d involved, web games are bigger. Things like Live and the PSN stores will get a lot more popular as standalone store products are reserved for big ticket titles and small studios focus on simpler stuff. We are going to see a lot more tiering to games. Look at how ipod/iphone gaming has been taking off. Simple design concepts with solid but non complex graphics mean you will see a lot more solid, innovated games.

 

[Icey]

• [font="Calibri,Arial"]GTA IV. One of gaming's current darlings. Yes, Buckets more features, much better graphics and a well written storyline. Yet, for some reason, it's just not as much fun as San Andreas or Vice City. I can't put my finger on it, but nearly all my friends agree with me.[/font]

I agree with you, Dreamaker!! I like the look of GTA IV & how real it looks, but I think that is some of the problem!! The realism is what kills it, San Andreas was fun to play!! You had so many things to do & toy around with!! Like jets & jet packs, which are lacking in GTA IV!! What do you think?

 

[teddy564339]

To me game sequels, like movie sequels, are all about milking something successful for everything it's worth.


It seems like most games that run in series (or at least most popular ones) reach their peak on the second or third game in the series. These ones usually take a successful original game and make improvements upon, basically keeping what made it so great but fixing the issues or extending upon it. However, once you get to the fourth or fifth one, it usually gets old.

The only difference is that sometimes a new console can take an old idea and revolutionize it. Some people would argue that Super Mario 64 or Zelda: The Ocarina of Time did this because they took the 2-D games to 3-D.


But I don't think overall games are in decline. There are always going to be sequels, but there are also always going to be new ideas. To me it's the same basic thing that was happening ten or even twenty years ago.

 

[frillyfoxy]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]
The days of the game by a single developer are well over. No new games have been developed by a single developer, other than those who have had previous successes:Will Wright and Hideo Kojima are the only 2 I can think of who made games recently. While a few games are going around with Sid Meiers name on them, most of them are remakes or sequels to his games, not ones he was directly involved in.
[/font]

Also this isn't true. Hideo and Will Wright are no more lone developers than Tim Schafer or Shigeru Miyamoto were/are. There haven't been actual single developer games since the 90's simply because the scope of even simple titles now is well outside of even a single person; unless you start moving into the realm of small distribution titles. Hideo is unique in that he has parlayed his companies creations and his personal charisma into a feature of his company. Will Wrights old school legacy and attachment to his titles also makes his name marketable. Neither of them are responsible for the entirety of the game designs they represent. They are as much producers as anything else, which is fine because producers have the real power.

 

[link]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]And even the ones that are still around, a lot of them are shadows of their former selves. Look at Rare and Sega.[/font]

I don't know about Rare, but Sega just came out with Madworld for the Wii and it's one of the most fun games I've ever played.

 

[Fire2box]

All of the games you mention have 3, 4 or 5 or more at the end of their names.

People get tired of the same stuff over and over again unless they are mutant fanboys that think the games can't be bad, I am looking at you sonic fans.

 

[BabyWolf]

Command and Conquer. The series never really got back to where it was after Red Alert 2.

Command & Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3 are better than those old games ever were. So was Generals. Let's face it: those old games sucked. They were genuinely bad. Awful, inefficient graphics engine, slow gameplay, and just annoying problems and limitations. They weren't terrible for their time, but they weren't exactly spectacular, either. And their multiplayer was positively horrible. Killling off Westwood was the best thing EA ever did, because they can make some genuinely good games by themselves. C&C3 and RA3 both run and look great out of the box, and are loads of fun.

 

[Eulogy]

In regards to the C&C Games, Generals was amazing, but I still say the Red Alert Retalliation(Very limited production on this game sadly) was the best, nothing like Tesla Coils...lol

GTA IV is as stated above, not as fun b/c of less cheats(basically)...Plus, CJ was a funnier character, Niko Bellic is WAYYYYY too serious/corny

 

[link]

I am looking at you sonic fans.

Oh, and you say nothing about the Zelda fans! At least the Sonic games get some variety going from adventure to arcade to rpg, Zelda is always the same and always will be!

Wait... did I just diss Zelda? Noooooooooo!

I'm actually glad Zelda is always the same. I love that game so much.

 

[Mako]

People say this mid way through every generation. My turn was the last generation. Wait till it gets closer to the christmas season and next year. You'll soon forget that gaming is "in decline".

 

[Fire2box]

The Zelda games are actually still good and twilight princess and Wind Waker and Majoras Mask were far different then the other Zeldas.

Nintendo is the company that knows how to shake up it's series while the others keep repeating the same game with minor changes.

 

[Mako]

As was zelda 2 being side scroller.

Ocarina of times jump to 3D does make the game pretty different from its predecessors.

Oracle of Seasons and Ages had different mechanics then other Zelda games.

Phantom Hourglass with the stylus controls.

Four Swords being multiplayer.

People don't give the zelda franchise nearly enough credit for diversity. It's still save the princess, but its not the same game over and over. Just common elements.

 

[Falkio]

Far too many games nowadays fail to meet expectations, let alone exceed them. I own the new Call of Duty, but don't play it much. The general consensus is that people want modern combat - not the archaic weapons of WW II. It even lacks in the way of graphics. I still wonder why Infinity Ward sold the rights to Treyarch. They sold eleven million copies of Call of Duty 4, making it the second most popular game ever, and gave the rights to a competitor. Did I miss something? The profit potential for a sequel just makes it foolish.

Come to think of it, Resident Evil 5 was more fun than its predecessors. CAPCOM has a history of bringing the world edge-of-your seat, sci-fi thrillers. House of the dead was the first zombie game I ever played and I loved it!. Time Crisis, Mega Man, and Street Fighter were also made by that company. Most chart topping hits today are either FPS or RPGs. I even admit that Final Fantasy - my favorite game ever - just doesn't deliver anymore. Number 11 was virtually non-playable, and 12 was just plain boring. Thirteen will hopefully mix things up.

 

[frillyfoxy]

I even admit that Final Fantasy - my favorite game ever - just doesn't deliver anymore. Number 11 was virtually non-playable, and 12 was just plain boring. Thirteen will hopefully mix things up.

I think this shows how different people can view the same game. I think 12 was one of the best FF's I have played since 3. It was a much needed gameplay overhaul.

People also have crazy expectations for games now. People have really fond memories of the genesis and snes era but god damn did the early 90's ever define shovel ware. That period produced so many games that were literally unplayable it is amazing. Even some of the decent games had game stopping bugs so epic it is hard to believe they made it through QA.