So one thing I've been thinking about is the way the gaming industry is operating these days. I mean, back in the 90's gaming felt much more 'For the fan, by the fan'. Granted there were crap and good games then too, I feel like the gaming industry is more or less a svckers market. I mean, look at Saints Row the Third, before it's release they announced 40 weeks of DLC, and when you look at the game, as good as it is, alot of it feels like it was cut and is left for future DLC implementation. Then there's the gaming industry at large. These days when I read something in a game related article, often I hear about the 'stunning visuals' and 'epic screenplay' but very little do I hear about the game's technical works, how it plays ingame and so on. It almost feels like the games like COD and Battlefield and various others are constantly putting a vanity touch on the gaming community, if it doesnt look like an HD movie, some people seemingly won't TOUCH the game saying it's to 'lame'. I'm not going to put on the nostalgia goggles and go 'OLD GAMES ARE SUPERIOR!', that isnt what this thread is about, but rather I feel like the gaming community is being treated like a cheap hoker to dim to notice the difference between being given cash or crap.

If none of this makes an coherent constant thought, I blame my tiredness, but anyway, I just felt like ranting on about this >_>

It's turned into a big business, that is how big business is run. I actually think I'll focus more on music from now on instead.

Welcome to Capitalism everything revolves around money nowadays.

I can understand where you are coming from where games are more commercialized for the sake of profit. You do find those rare gems of a game that come up like Fallout 3, Resident Evil 4, and Bayonetta *My opinion there folks not fact* while there are games just made for the masses. Sadly I find the MMO market to be more corrupted than the regular gaming market due to console players with only 2hrs or less infiltrating the scene. Played several games that were extremely good at launch however they just went down hill as a result of players inundating them. Developers sought to please anyone and everyone instead of pleasing their core target audience which would stay instead of drift away.

Saw this with EQ2 where they wanted to retrieve players lost to WoW by adding in concepts meant for WoW. It truly pained me to see the "station store" aka microtransactions being put into the game for the sake of earning money.


For the non-mmo market as you touched upon Colonel it seems games are made then they intentionally leave out content. Later on they can say "hey look what you can get for $5 extra" allowing developers to squeeze out more money. There was even a rumor floating around about an idea where developers would make players pay for bug fixes/updates to games that were released.

Truthfully it's just an expected course such as the economy now dealing with a sort of "evolution." Companies/corporations that can survive die out and as a result new ones are born or the current ones gain strength from the downfall of their competition. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if in the end we saw something like Atari-ZeniMax-Micronytendo in the future being a sole mega monopoly corporation that makes every game known to human kind. (That is if we live that long)

Yeah. Shame it seems such an inevitability, corporatism svcks the soul out of everything it touches.

It's why I buy a maximum of 2-3 games a year. If that. Video Games nowadays are just not interesting me anymore. Very few I will look into.

Except Bethesda. I have a place in my heart for them. Always will. Skyrim has flaws, but it's far better than any game released this year, or last.

It's grown as a medium, but I still enjoy modern games immensely.

There are still people who make these games, because they actually LIKE making games. Plus, quality games DO sell well, generally.

I only buy three games a year at most exactly for this reason.

One of the reasons I'm so in love with books and don't think they will ever die as a storytelling platform. Books normally don't get compared too much, yes there are the "this is the next LOTR!!!!!!!!" advertisemants and such but no one will say "NOW 50 PAGES LONGER WITH 20 PAGES OF EXTRA STORY MATERIAL RELEASED EVERY WEEK FOR ONLY 5$!!!"

Augh, I just felt a chill run down my spine...

However, no, gaming itself is not about the numbers, the gaming market is, but the spirit of gamers still lives on, the TES community is one of the best examples of this if you look at the modders and mods that are out there. Another great example is Minecraft, I don't play it but it shows a game can have success even without the nice graphics and extra DLC′s.

I'm tired of this argument. If you buy games you know you'll like then there's no problem. COD players can pay $20 for five maps all day long, but I refuse to and therefore do not buy COD games. There's nothing wrong with this. It reminds me of music. Some people enjoy metal, I can't stand it. I used to like rap and no longer do - bar a few songs. So, at the end of the day, I'm left with a giant playlist of my favorite music, selected carefully and deliberately over time.

Companies are afraid to take risks, at least the bigger ones. So they tend to go with what worked last time. They just try to make their new games as close to their last one as possible. Just with updated graphics and a couple of changes here and there.

Most often they are right to do so which svcks. I have seen alot of stupid comments about how New Vegas has get this "to many options" and is "to different from Fallout 3." So in short they want another Fallout 3 which is pretty much a TES game. Today's generation of players for the most part don't want complicated, they want to do as little thinking as possible. So games get dumbed down. This works for companies, because they can save on writers and programmers.

Another thing that bugs me is that games are geared toward kids and teens even when those games are rated M, so meant for 17+. I don't get it, kids and for the most part teens don't have money. So why are companies making games geared toward young teens? They should be making games for advlts, those that started gaming back in the day when, thinking was a requirement.

I for one don't like how games are getting dumbed down.

Gaming has never really been the thinking man's hobby. Developers have always been targeting younger audiences, particularly on consoles (which is what the industry revolves around these days). There's a reason why games were seen as little more than toys for the past two decades.

Also, teens have parents that have money.

That's where downloadable, and indie games excel. Innovation, as the consumer that buys those types of games tends to be a more open-minded, risk-taking individual. Plus they are pretty cheap to develop, and produce, so it allows for more innovation with less risk.

And don't equate people's(my) disdain for NV with idiocy. I wanted them to advance the series, and innovate a bit. Not take the game back to the nineties.

Edit - In all fairness, they did add new mechanics, but I felt they weren't implemented as well as they could have been.

Forgot to end that with "Aside from Alan Wake and New Vegas". :dance:

Games made of PC back before Playstation and Xbox were about thinking. You had to remember things because the games couldn't remember fo you. You had to plan ahead, design your character before you play. A real RPG. Not just a game that makes you god at everything and you just pretend.

Kids do have parents money, to spend but do parents have money to drop $60+ on games these days?



Most of the mechanics that were added to New Vegas were from Fallout and Fallout 2 but left out of Fallout 3. I agree they could have done more, by adding more mechanics from Fallout and Fallout 2. Also I am not talking about turned based isometric, incase anyone is thinking that.

By going back "to the nineties" the devs made a game that requires thinking, gives your actions consequences and many different ways to complete the game. So if going back to the 90s is what it takes to have a real RPG again instead of a dumbed down FPS a four year old could play, then bring it on.

I agree with the OP, I feel that people are too focused on graphics and screanplay these days. A little bit of me died when my friend told me Crisis was a good game because of its ground breaking visuals. IMO these powerful graphical engines have ruining the industry. If developers put more money into the games themselves and not on how shiney they are they would probably turn out a lot better. I back this statement by only buying one $60 game this year and I think two the year before and only sub to one MMO (not WoW).

you can still make a game that is an epic on its own based on content rather than graphics, its consumers being begrudgingly content with polished turds that allows them to be profitable...

that said, Occupy...! where do they make the games

It's been like that for a while. The Gaming Industry becomes more like Hollywood every year. This isn't to say gems can't be created still, but the amount of money put into making one game is such that taking a risk isn't something a lot of companies want to do. The current state of the economy also is a factor in making companies even less risk-taking than usual. See the amount of remakes and adaptations being made lately in Hollywood.

You got that right :sadvaultboy:



I think thats more to do with Hollywood being completely out of ideas, then a bad economy.

Book DLCs and expansions... Now that would be something.

Ain't that called a sequel, or if the author is out of ideas... a prequel?

Yeah, dosent bother me much though, I still pick out what I think will be god games, and if I dislike how the company works I wont support them. I found 2 arcde gmes I enjoyed this yer (from dust and Bastion) ad I think DLC cn be great (FNV) so im not too bothered. llthough it does nnoy me when a game sells alot and its not cosidewred enough. Mirrors edge sold 2 million iirc, that should be enough for a sequal. I dont know how well AP sold but iirc they made profit, but SEGA wanted to be dikes, denied Obsidian sequal, now they have the rights and do NOTHING with them. Ok it didnt meet your expactations, but if your not going to use it sell it t Obsidian for crying out loud.

Hmmm seems this pisses me off more about publisher greed than developer greed.

You're not understanding me, I'm not taking pot shots at CoD players for liking CoD, I'm taking a shot at the FPS market in general. Whenever people talk about them it's always about 'the stunning visuals' or the 'realistic looks and kills' or something. I feel like these kind of things are ruining the marketplace because I seem to be noticing alot of developer houses trying to take the CoD fanbase by surgically installing CoD mechanics, but with maybe one or two tweaks to gameplay. I feel like there's to much focus on how shiny and pretty the gift wrap is as opposed to the gift inside. Like I said, there's still very great games out there, but compared to the past, these days it feels like gaming in general is become fairly copy/paste of other ideas. Like Styles said, to many dev houses wont take risks anymore, and that stagnates the game market.

Dumb your game down, make money.
Make your game a great immersive story where you control everythings fate, lose money.
People can't think for themselves when it comes to games as much nowadays, since a lot of little kiddies are coming into games that are rated well above their age, possible then going to the forum with a false age and complaining about how its too clever for them yada, yada and then the game gets made to suit their style of thinking..

A book DLC would be a few extra scenes added to the book that were deliberately cut out in advance.