What's Killing the Video-Game Business?

[Onkel Neal]

What's Killing the Video-Game Business?

Games weren't always expensive to make: In the early days, a boy with an Apple II could rule the world. While there are still scads of cheaply made games on the market, all of today's big publishers employ hundreds of professional developers per game. These projects take years to complete, as each new generation of hardware allows for unprecedented advances in graphics, sound, and everything else. The greater the complexity of the game, the larger the development team. The larger the development team, the bigger the budget.

While industry leaders anticipated that budgets would creep higher, the shift to high-definition gaming with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 has proved to be more expensive than estimated. At a conference in the spring of 2006, then-Midway developer Cyrus Lum sounded the warning, telling his audience that game development budgets could rise as high as $15 million to $25 million for a single title—previously unheard-of averages. "We need to rethink how we're financing games," Lum concluded.

Yikes, $15 million, that's 200 people at $75,000 each. I don't claim to know what it takes to make a game but, wowee, that's a lot of people.

it cost Rockstar $100 million to produce, 1,000 people worked on the project

A thousand people??

[danlisa]

Yeah, those figures are par for the course these days.

While it may not be generally accepted, the money is in the consoles with studios being given budgets that are close to eclipsing movie studios. This is easy to accept with todays console using HD graphics, 8.1 surround sound, integrated online features & friend tracking, VOIP comms as standard and using media that max out at 50GB (at the moment).

Most big console titles are built & marketed as a blockbusters in every sense of the word.

Contrary to your lead title, the games industry is the only large sales sector to post year on year profits during this global financial crisis. So I can't see it die off.

P.S As for Rockstar employing 1000 people, consider that this figure was spread across 3 different game media, PS3, XBox & PC and not to mention the ongoing DLC and online management features. Aint hard to see where the money goes or where the people are needed.

[AVGWarhawk]

Hey, people are working. Part of the stimulus package. Just like anything else, if the quality is there the game will sell no matter the cost. Years ago I remember paying $19.99 for Jane WWII sim or something like that. Now games are $49.99 or more. I pay the price if it looks good and well done. Look at Grand Theft Auto 2. People were lined up around the block at every retailer to get the game. Lets look at the flip side, perhaps knowing a project must sell to turn a dime, every resource is thrown at it to produce an excellent game and hopefully bug free. Generally an imaginative game that is well polished and replay value is there or online gaming with the disk is there, the price will not matter. For instance, I have COD waw. Just an all around great game. Graphics are excellent. The scenarios are well thought out and imaginative. Personally, I think COD waw is the best of the series but.......it was a very short game. Not much replay value after you have completed it because the player already knows what is coming up and what he needs to do to complete the scenario. How to overcome the short game low replay value...online gaming and frag-fest with your buds. Now your talking! So, the developers need to consider imaginative games with plenty of replay value to garner the forthcoming increase in the cost to purchase. Look at Rise of Flight, from what I see, excellent graphics and they devs are really taking their time to get it right. It will have single play with campaigns and that generates replay value and ultimately online play creates the best replay value for this game. I think future games should be designed and have a theme that lends itself to online gaming with others. I think the future of games garnishing high dollars to purchase are those that offer online gaming (look at Rock Band and Guitar Hero, both hot sellers and online, group play weather sober nor not). As far as complexity of the games and faster hardware to run the games now, I countered by getting a very fast machine. In short, I'm ready for these games and will pay the price to play them if the quality is there along with replay value.

[nikimcbee]

I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. I think one thing that frustrates me is when a company just slops a game together then releases it.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. I think one thing that frustrates me is when a company just slops a game together then releases it.

Exactly. The quality of games nowadays is piss-poor. They look nice and are most of the time pretty bug-free, but there's no story, a good story that is.

Today's game storylines tend to be just a filler, you know, kinda like commercial breaks in a way. The main part is the action, whereas before, the story and the action were one seamless package.

Luckily, there is still few good games coming out now and then, but they're getting very rare. Brothers in arms: Hell's Highway being the last good game for me.

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. I think one thing that frustrates me is when a company just slops a game together then releases it.

One company in particular comes to mind... *cough* EA

They've had some pretty good games... But about 3x as many poor ones.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Weiß Pinguin

One company in particular comes to mind... *cough* EA

They've had some pretty good games... But about 3x as many poor ones.

Amen to that.

[HunterICX]

There are many bad ones, but not all is lost as there are still some gems to be found in a while. Good reason to be on a forum like this there might be someone here that finds one

HunterICX

[stabiz]

I dont own a single game from EA, not because I am making a statement or anything, their titles just dont interest me.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

That game is proof that big game developers are full of bull. (Read the development pages for details) Dwarf fortress has 2 devs, Tarn Adams and his bro. (His bro just does story) and its one of the most detailed, most immersive games out there.

Its also proof that video game development is not dieing. If those big game developers fall then ITS PARTAY TIEM. If they fall then their ruins will pave the way for awesome indie dev teams to rise and bring about a golden age of gaming. (At least for awhile untill they are all assimulated by new publishers who care for nothing but money then turn into the new EA's then the cycle repeats.)

EA, Rockstar and the like are huge linear storyline whores anyways. If your devs can't make a game without a linear storyline then they should not be aloud to make games. IMHO.

[CaptHawkeye]

Well to be fair the age of super-easy low cost games wasn't exactly a great thing either. It's what led to things like E.T. and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 after all.

[NeonSamurai]

The problem with DF (aside that it is massively overcomplicated) is that it has zero graphics. This is also why such a game can exist. As such you can't compare it with a commercial game at all as if this game did have graphics (say full 3d graphics even a generation or 2 old) he would need 10+ people working on it to have any chance of getting it out in the next 3 years. Also not everyone likes sandbox games, (personally i like both) but like well crafted linear story lines (or both).

Also I don't consider DF to be at all immersive (addictive sure). You don't feel like your there, its kind of hard to be immersed by smiley faces moving around on a ASCII icon field.

The big point though is if you want any kind of modern day graphics, the development costs and man hours increase exponential from the simple games like DF (and DF is a simple game, just pure coding, no sound effects, modeling, skinning, etc.).


As for why the game industry is suffering well there are several different reasons. First off lots of the big publishing houses keep putting the same crap out year after year, rehashed endlessly with newer graphics. Due to the man power and time necessary to produce AAA titles, most publishing houses aren't willing to take many risks on a new idea due to the risk of it flopping. They also have the nasty habit of releasing pure bug ridden junk in an effort to recoup expenditures. This leads to their customers becoming increasingly bitter towards the company and can even lead to the customer becoming a software pirate in retaliation for having been ripped off so many times.

Piracy is also playing an effect. Peer to Peer file sharing programs have lead to an explosion in software piracy. Before this only people in the know could easily pirate software, now any idiot can. Publishers mistakenly believe though that the console market doesn't have that problem and are switching over in an effort to stem the tide. But software piracy is quite possible on the consoles too, but the console needs to be physically altered to do it (That alteration is very easily done though). Software piracy also isn't going away, there is no way of preventing it, no pirate proof copy protection system, physical or software based. The only way to combat it really is to make games so good, people feel they should pay for it (and those that pirate it anyways never would have bought it to begin with and so pretty much don't count).

Its not all bad though, there are smaller companies out there that do put out top grade titles that nearly have it all (good graphics/physics, game system, open ended/story line, etc). Egosoft is one such example, they have top notch graphics, fun open ended games where you can do anything you want in the game, their only weakness is that their storylines sound like they were written by a 5th grader (but thankfully the storyline aspect of the x games is short and doesn't interfere with everything else). The big companies do produce good games too once in a while.

In summary I think the industry will survive, those that can't compete will be weeded out, some of the giants may fall (and its about time for some of them), but things will carry on. They should ease back on the graphics side of things. Good graphics are nice, but you don't need to go overboard at the expense of the rest of the game.

[Robsoie]

In the past game developpers wanted to make their vision into a game.
Maybe that was why games were so deep, creative and interesting before, the developers really wanted to make them as they dreamed about, they were putting their soul into the job.

Now the developers wants to make a game that will just appeal to as much people as possible, will go to extremities as even "dumbing down" their product if it can touch even more customers, such games have nothing to do with their visions, they are just commercial designs.

I remember having read about "Sin episodes" from i think the same guys that made the original "Sin" a game based on the quake2 engine.
In the article that was a bit sarcastic though, at some points it described that some kind of ninja were supposed to assault the player in a plant.
Those ninja-like guys were of course black, to use the darker corner of the plant and create an ambiance.

But the developers thought that the player was not seeing the ninja-like guys well enough as it was already dark in the plant.
Then they gave those ninja textures huge yellow bright colors.

I don't know if the story was true, but i remember the screenshot with those ninja-like guys and their strange yellow bright colored parts.

That's an example of why games are now made to catter for the maximum of people, in the hope to sell as much as possible.
Unfortunately for developers, sometime dumbing down your game willingfully like that is a complete mistake, as in an industry that is saturated with games cloning each other, the customer would then go to the game that may take him the less for an idiot.

[A Very Super Market]

I swear, I've played the same FPS at least 10 times. Then there are all those strategy games that have the exact same mechanics, little story, and only tiny details separating them. But the recent games that have impressed me have always left a lasting imprint on my mind. So it's not really worth it to whale on crappy games, better to praise good ones. It's a bit like movies. The classics we remember are the shining examples of cinema in different eras. For every movie we do remember, there are countless that failed miserably.

[Captain Vlad]

Originally Posted by A Very Super Market

The classics we remember are the shining examples of cinema in different eras. For every movie we do remember, there are countless that failed miserably.

Indeed. All you need to do is to buy one of those '50 Horror Movie Classics!' packages or pick up a $5.00 John Wayne collection (the one with the movies he was in you never heard of) to get a nice example of that.

Wanna see just how many crappy games there were back in the 'glory days', go to any abandonware site and just browse through the titles that came out the same year as, say, F-19 Stealth Fighter. There'll be some other good ones, but there'll be 10 times as many that makes you think 'why would anyone have willingly played this'?