Disappointing pattern I see in gaming (long read)

I wrote half my masters papers years ago on online gaming and it's affect on brain/behaviour and possible social implications (positive and negative). I have been a long time gamer of PC and consoles. I have had almost every console imaginable from the iconic 3DO and CD-I to the Atari Lynx and Virtual Boy Flop.

Game development seems to be taking a horrible turn that I have now begun to hypothesize to the fact that it is for pure profit and media hype to increase margins.

For example, BF3 was hyped and linked to media websites and the graphics looked almost lifelike. I mean it really looked immersive and laudable. After the first scene played out when I bought the game I was in awe. stepping out of the RV into a city that was truly lifelike. Unfortunately then the game shows it's true colours; a relatively good-looking game made even better by dynamic lighting techniques. Unfortunately the story, the gameplay mechanics and the graphics took a "console" turn for the worse. If the "average" gameplay was shown; people would have been less enthused by the game I believe.

Rage is another example. Once touted as the most scalable, technical and eye catching engines ended up being very "meh" to an overall audience.

We PC gamers have always been a niche crowd. Demanding not only the top eye candy but uncompromising play mechanics, downloadable mods, SDK freedom and a cohesive community. As such, we are keen to BS games much moreso than pure console players.

As the tides turn and consoles reach critical mass of online capability, we are seeing too much cross-platform development and a, for lack of a better word, "consolization" of the PC experience.

What looks good on paper isn't translated to the experience and that has been rare for PC gamers. Doom, Quake, Unreal, Flight Simulator, BF1942, WOW, RTS icons, Counter-strike, Half Life, et. al, were all leading edge games that pushed forward gaming experience. Those days seem to be getting smaller and smaller but the ads and hype of new games seem to get bigger and bigger.

On the console side, Mario, Zelda, Kid Icarus, Elevator Action, Bionic Commando, street fighter (arcade i know but those days are gone), Mario64, Ocarina of Time were all games that truly immersed a gamer.

Now games are barely played all the way through. I loved the Fight Night franchise. But now they make a game with AUTO BLOCK (in a fight game?). It sure looks and plays good and makes for pretty viral uploads and previews but doesn't translate to a good playing experience. And it took numerous patches (yay now consoles are like computers...the bad part of computers) to get blood and cuts in the game as it was originally advertized as "the bloodiest fight night yet." No...fight night round 3 was.

In conclusion, it seems like developers are interested in garnering Buzz more than spending and investing in gameplay. Maybe developers need to take note of Uncharted 2 or God of War 3 and just make the game and release it and let the GAMERS HYPE it up. Rushing out an unfinished product across the PC, 360 and ps3 to only try to then patch it as their sales continue to climb is just plain unethical.

Gamers need to be respected and the way SOME of the developers and development is going is in the wrong direction. Stop focusing on the Media end of things to increase margins, and focus on the core of the gameplay. It just took me one look at the new Counter-Strike that will be cross platform to see that it was being played on a damn Xbox. CS was NEVER meant to be played on consoles (nevermind condition zero). The levels, corners, map layout were all predicated on "twitch style" reflexes and timing and it can NEVER be the "same" if consoles are kept in mind; hence why core maps are being changed. Just sad. End rant.

 

This isn't specific to games. It can be found in other media, and everything. Look at how many products you own that are made in China because companies wanted to increase their profit margin.

It is left to indie developers, those who don't have multi-million dollar advertising campaigns to make great games and spread the word through positive word-of-mouth. Find those games.

 

Obviously but this is for the gaming forum And gaming is growing exponentially faster and people are spending more and more money. Part of the reason is the conditioning of the buyer to get "new" games every few months that are really just updates of the same game.

In the 1960s cars were made to be driven and no one was complaining about buying a new car every five years. Now we are conditioned to think cars are "old" when a new fender is wider or a new fake vent is shown; or we need a new iphone because there is some chick that talks to us (I have it). I obviously could have expounded on why the media has conditioned this but I just figured a throwback to gaming and discussing the crappy trend it took would be sufficiently deep already....

 

I've mentioned this before about BF3. Things like this really bug me.

 

I really like Rage. I'm currently on my 2nd play through. I've never seen AI moving so dynamically, and well awesome. ID Software continues to be among my favorite developers. I admit the sometimes the texture pop-in annoyed me, but overall, Rage is also one of the best looking games I've played. I really love how none of the textures were re-used for the areas.

 

Any multi platform game that is released, regardless of the "lead" platform will end up being designed within the contraints of the weakest system. I don't need to reiterate what we have seen from games in the last 6 years.

Let's just cross our fingers that Blizzard never sells out and goes cross platform.

 

I dunno, I wouldn't call it selling out, I would call it responding to incentives. People like money and if they can release on the console and make more money they will do that. Unless you are an altruist, pretty much anybody likes money.

The real reason Blizzard doesn't make console games is quite simple. First, their games are low requirement so pretty much anybody with a PC made in the last couple of years can run it on low settings. So they can hit a larger market. Second of all WoW and SC2 do not translate well to a console environment at all. You could never run it on consoles. So there is no way they could get Blizzard quality on consoles (because of the control schemes).

It is interesting to note that Blizzard is PC exclusive but their PC games demand less then non PC exclusive games like BF3 and Black Ops.

Finally I would say Blizzard has enough pull that even typical console gamers will buy a blizzard game for a PC, I know a lot of people who play SC2 but are predominantly console gamers.

 

^To add to that, Blizzard has already hired a team to work on porting Diablo 3 to consoles.

Anyway, game development is exactly the same as it's been since the first Playstation, it's just that the budgets and stakes are now much larger.

It also reads like you're only referring to the decline of the First-Person Shooter, but encasing all genres within your argument. The vast majority of games do not receive significant marketing, and are not developed under a "hype first" mentality.

There's been too many quality games released this gen to even have the hopes of playing them all, depending on one's personal taste.

Both of which had marketing budgets nearing or reaching eight figures. The difference is those are 1st party games, and the developers do not toil under publisher deadline pressure.

 

Not really, or to say the least, not more than creating a good product. That's the problem, the people who enjoy making games for sheer pleasure and the novelty of hacking (like John Carmack) are being overrun by those who would use gaming like a cheap prostitute like EA/ctivision and Bobby Kotick.

I keep hearing attempts to justify ports because of increasing budgets and profits, but they fall on deaf ears, or at least only the ears of people with dollar signs in their eyes. Maybe we're part of the few, but if the latest psychological research is correct, the geniuses of the sciences and technology are less motivated by money (in some cases it demotivates them) but rather rely on the joy of creation/adding value to society. The problem is these people have been muscled out of leadership positions in the gaming industry (possibly because many of them aren't interested in it), and at worst, end up working for those that muscled them out.

Coupled with mainstreamism, honest game designers and gamers alike can no longer be heard in today's world of instant-gratification and quantity over quality. It's a dire and sad situation and will most likely result in the death of PC gaming, and certainly the end of the golden era. But as noted by others, this is the result of mainstreamism, and it happens to all industries. Theatre and movie buffs have to put up with Hollywood; book worms have to endure the onslaught of tabloids and chatelaine; real musicians and music lovers must persevere through the sugar pop fads and Justin Beiber.

And with the world going mobile and soon embedding "entertainment" systems into TV's and such, it can only spell more disaster. Personally, I don't see a recovery for us until the world piques its interest in realistic simulation (possibly tying directly into our synapses), then our time will come again.

 

The greatest fallacy is pretending this "mainstreamism" hasn't been the focus of gaming from its very inception. The gaming industry has always (read: ALWAYS) been about money and graphics, first and foremost. Big budget game development just evolved with the technology, and so did the need to reach a profit.

And you guys still aren't addressing the high amount of good games which have been released since 2005. It's been one of the best software generations of all time.

Also...

You may want to sit down before reading this.

 

it's just one of those things

we're living in a time where gaming is more mainstream than ever before, and make no mistake about it, this ISN'T the 90s, gaming is now a cross-platform business and "business" is the word. Consoles represent the vast majority of the gaming install-base and publishers are looking to make money and take as little risk as possible.

a.) publishers are going to fund teams to develop cross-platform because that's just how they're going to make the most money. It means they take less risks, use a cross-platform engine and one team and therefor less time and less money - unfortunately this is generally going to result in a game which won't be as optimised as it possibly could be for PC (or either of the console platforms for that matter - remember that up until recently most cross platform titles were worse on the PS3)

b.) not only are the majority of games developed cross-platform but you're pitting consoles using 6year old+ hardware against the PC, a "gaming" system that's continually evolving and increasing in power. I remember a time where even top of the range gaming PCs wouldn't be able to play the latest games at the highest settings. Is it such a bad thing that the majority of new, cross platform titles will usually run at max settings on a midrange desktop GPU? As BF3 has shown, an amazing looking game doesn't mean having more polygons than another game any more, it's all about the particle effects, subtle lighting and shadows and other post-processing effects that can add a sense of depth and realism to a scene. I like the fact that developers nowadays aren't just throwing polygons at a scene to make it look better - they're finding new, inventive and resourceful ways of working with lower spec hardware to provide a better looking AND better running game.

c.) 2014-ish when the new consoles hit the shelves will bring with it another graphical race/competition with the PC. At this point the whines of "Why can't we have games that take full advantage of our hardware" from PC users will be replaced with "why can't my top of the range SLI/XF quad GPU machine run this pesky console game?!" and it'll stay like that for another 2 or 3 years while mainstream PC hardware catches back up.

d.) Whereas in the 90s game developers could take a chance on releasing what would, by todays standards be considered an "indie" game nowadays you're looking at a budget of millions to develop, advertise and distribute a game. Publishers are putting all of their eggs in one or two baskets and throwing money at them (see COD and WoW) in order to keep customers and shareholders happy... the indie scene nowadays is limited to a handful of steam/XBLA titles and whatever you can download for 99p off the IOS/Android app store.

I could write about all of these things until the cows come home... but at the end of the day this is the world in which we live now, one could argue that the IOS platform is now the largest gaming platform in the world and it's one that will continue to grow - consoles and publishers should take note, whereas we're part of a generation that is used to paying £40 for a console title I'm sure the time will come where kids wonder why they should pay that much when Angry Birds 5 is only £1 on the app store...

 

@op; it doesn't take a master's degree to understand what is going on in the gaming industry. Gamers have known it for a long time, and have even talked about it quite a bit here at NBR.
The only thing I can say is, the economy is what drives innovation, and it's the same exact thing with the movie industry. They are afraid to take big risks, and go the "safe route" with their investments. That's why we're seeing so many remakes lately in theaters, and with gaming, console ports. The industry knows the money is in consoles and that's where they, I believe are focusing most of their effort.
As far as I'm concerned, the golden age of gaming and the movie industry has already passed.

 

While everything you said is true, it is partially due to the fact that the "gaming" sect is getting younger and younger. When I was 10 years old, I was NEVER allowed to play an M rated game. Now, when I try to play call of duty or some other shooter, I hear 6 year olds talking more profane trash in one minute than I have done in the past year of my life. When I try to play on the pc, the amount of kids using cheats and hacks is absurd. These big game companies know how easy it is to persuade kids with flashy ads. It's essentially like that one person you know with the attention span of a gnat who is easily impressed for a quick second. This doesn't just apply to gaming either. When was the last time you had a truly visceral movie going experience? The only one I remember in the last 5 years is Avatar. Granted, some of the games and movies coming out are good, but they just don't pull me in the way they used to. I remember the very first time playing doom. I was awestruck by the use of 3d in the game. Now we are stuck with the milking of franchises IE Mario, Call of Duty, Madden, Zelda just to name a few.

 

I agree with the most part here, but your last sentence to say the golden age has come and passed I would say is more like a "defense mechanism" to being let down from games of this "modern age."

If people arent expecting greatness, then greatness has no reason to even come to the party.

As far as I can tell, games are getting better and better. I think people tend to just generalize the entire industry based on couple remakes.

 

I agree on almost eveything you said, but with the "golden age" theme we should contextualize it a bit further.

Pc gaming has been spreading alot in these years to generic masses of users, much more than it was used to be when it was BF2/quake 3 and doom
Times.

Pc always faced the console market. When NASCAR/Indy/gp 2 era was at his best, the fruibility of pc was seriously limited by price, confining such pleasures only to those who could afford one.

In that period it was easy and more accessible getting a sega genesis or a super nes to play alot of good looking/entertaining titles without even bothering about oc existence at all.

When Quake 3 came out on Dreamcast that was a clear sign that pc industry needed to change drastically.
It was less expensive than having a mid end pc to play quake 3 online.

That started the trend imho. In the following years pc gaming saw the very bottom of the barrel until it slowly began to raise again due to newer hardware and decent prices.
Things didn't changed alot thought. As an example, speaking of another iconic title, it was easy to get a cheap ps2 or xbox1 to play need for speed underground.
Let's say that the total price of the setup was around 350$.
A pc capable to run the same title with the same smoothness along with some more details would break the 500$ budget in no time.
Without even taking into account that the pc evolution from
2001 till 2005 saw an insane growth with 15 CPUs types released in a solar year each with a different and evolved technology.
Same applied to gpus.
It was easy to feel screwed when you realized that your 2 month old intel pentium has already been declared old by the newer gen p4 for just 40$ more.
It was sad to see your brand new 9700 pro being kicked in the by the newer 9800 pro that retailed for 70$ more with a free half life 2 copy. This all after a few months.

Consoles aren't the real culprit here, at least not the largest part. Most of the fault comes from the industry itself that ripped money and user faith too much since dos times without delivering the constant satisfaction and user happiness like consoles did.
Beside some titles on pc, nothing was really worth comparing in the general point of view. It was a niche market more strong than our current days.

Consoles ports and current gen brought some benefit afterall but were far from being stable.
Pc costs dropped almost 75% compared to those in the late 2000's.
We have 1 or 2 CPU generation per year (not taking about models, the technology behind it, such as an example core I and core I sandy's) and most gpu makers makes gpu cards for each segment, at least 2 for each one, with good performance and bang for the buck.

Even a gtx560 which is a middle end desktop card can provide good performance and it comes really cheap.
Plus since main sku's are consoles, this cuts down upgradability costs to pc users since most of the late games can be played above console standards for just 150$ gpu card.

There's alot of things to speak about, but I hope you get the meaning of this long writing. We need always to take into account alot of things, and afterall consoles aren't killing the pc market, it's more than a developer decision from a development cost perspective.

The oc industry made huge steps with affordable thus extremely performing build at a low cost, now it's devver turns.
For sure they don't want to see this platform fall back into the limbo as it used to be some years ago, or a niche status.
This evolving brought some cash to the market, just see how much steam pre orders growth in these years, thanks to a suitable user base with medium end pcs and notebooks that can run almost anything.

This was utopia 6-7 years ago.

 

Truth is most people are idiots (cue most of your friends on facebook and the stuff they say there on a daily basis), but they are still... most people.

The mainstream gaming industry knows and has repeatedly gotten a taste of how sweet it is to grab this audience - all they need is accessibility, streamlining, pop culture references, viral marketing, and voila even the crappiest games earn millions.

Meanwhile those who try to stay true to making good games and nothing but good games continue to be humble underdogs with moderate success.

 

I wish I was born 15 years earlier.

 

Im sorry but what? If they were "good games" then why are they the underdogs?
(good as in, they beat the crap out of the so called mainstream games)

*ques in COD vs BF flamethread*

 

uhh.... yeah! shouldn't take a master's degree to figure this one out Anyone with at least one eye, a frontal lobe, and 20 years of experience living on this earth should be more than capable of figuring this out.

There are a couple ideas I don't necessarily agree with. I'm not saying I disagree entirely, but you haven't given me enough to prove your point to me.

1. Old games were good, new games are worse.
2. Old games were played through completely, new games are not (because they are worse).

I think a good chunk of this type of thinking falls under "rosy retrospection". It makes sense that in your opinion (and my opinion), games we grew up with look good in our eyes. I think you should be more careful and put more consideration into such a brushstroke comment if you are going to valuate things using major ranking terms like good and bad. I also think it's hard to make claims about whether games are finished by people in general, especially if you're making a comment about how that is important. Many games, since the *dawn of games*, haven't been meant to be finished. Tetris, pac-man, etc. and newer games that are online/multiplayer oriented may not even include single player, or if they do, it's not the focus of the game. I think that difference is something you should explore in more depth before talking about how not finishing modern games is relevant, and I also need more convincing that it's factually correct.

The other thing I disagree with is that PC gamers are smarter (ie. more keen to BS) than console players. I think there is a small group (as in compared to the total PC gaming community) of people who expect mods, SDK support, who are also extremely loud and vocal about it on the internet. The PC is the only platform that supports those things, so that expectation doesn't exist with consoles.

However, I think all gamers, regardless of platform choice, have similar expectations about good gameplay mechanics and community support. I also think that there is a similar level of "keenness to BS" among all groups. All of these things are on a spectrum - a normal distribution among the population that is shifted more towards the side of "oblivious to BS" for ALL groups, INCLUDING the PC.

Last, I don't agree that cross-platform development is a problem. I understand that it's a popular thought that a game that is developed cross platform is approximately as desirable as getting stabbed in the eye. It's tolerable if it's between the two consoles, but an absolute no-go between consoles and on the PC. I think that's unreasonable, but before I go into why, I'd like to hear more specifics about WHY you think that cross-platform development is a problem. Basically I heard from you that "cross-platform sucks because consoles suck and it makes PC games suck like console games". I don't find that to be a clear enough thought for this type of discussion, so correct me so we can get on the same page. Is it performance / graphics quality concerns? Is it game-play not fitting the human interface (mouse and keyboard)?

 

I did not say it takes a master's degree to understand so let's not twist words shall we? You have no clue what I do for a living, if that is even where I stopped my education or anything about me; rather just showing passion for gaming so much that I incorporated it into my degree.

If you think the crappy games are due to the economy there may be a shred of truth to that, but I don't think a new jersey colour or dog tag ribbon or new hat is anything to justify the purchase of a brand new title.

Anyways, everyone good posts. I see a LOT of great points here.

 

This is one of the issues I have with people knocking cross-platform development. Your talking about a hardware and software issue, which is extremely complex. The main issue that I have with this type of logic is that this is true even if the game is PC only. There are modern games that run on a 6600 GT/ 9800 Pro AND recommend an 8800 GTX / 3870 (or better!). Even though you DO have to make some considerations in your design to fit the weakest supported platform, the PC *is* multi-platform. Even within just the PC community, you gain a lot of sales by making your game scale well. This is why big-name developers target a wide range of platforms on the PC.

They have to make their game run well in multiple resolutions, aspect ratios, and as many hardware generations and tiers as possible. Supporting 2 more platforms isn't asking very much considering 80-85% of the market is in the consoles. They have to make their games scalable. If they can scale down to fast single core or slow dual core on the PC, and down to about a 7800 GT, there's no reason they can't write generic code in the first place that will compile on PPC and maintain high performance regardless. Game companies aren't in the compiler making business. AAA game companies write their code in C++ for performance reasons.

 

Hey Chief. Good points about rosy restrospection. To be honest, I really was just writing due to boredom and wasn't expecting such dissection of every letter I wrote.

But point two I will go further in. I DO think PC gamers are keener. First a few assumptions I am making:
1. I am not including solitaire players and facebook poker players as PC gamers...nor the average Sims gamer. I am talking about Niche PC gamers.
2. I know there are keen console players but they are few and far between the masses.

The reality is there are 120 million PS2s, 100 million wiis and about 120 million PS3+360s (don't know the true newest numbers). Either way, there are hundreds of millions of console gamers. Therefore there is a greater probability of having a standard distribution to compare...well whatever you want to compare.

I work with teens everyday. They typically all love COD; any COD..it doesn't matter. They think it is the best FPS. Most have "heard" of counter strike but never played it. Most have NOT heard of Crysis (until crysis 2 came out...and that game "sux.") Most don't know that their games are either upconverted or playing at 640p (GTA 4, Halo3, etc). Most don't know what 640p means. The irony...is now PC gamers, bloggers and websites are using "1080P" and that is probably my biggest pet peeve! We have been able to play higher than that for years and it wasn't really until Sony was claiming all this "120 FPS at 1080P" crap that even WE caught on!

But the bottom line on that point is that PC gamers are a bit more niche and there IS a bit more workaround to get games going properly and therefore just in general a bit more savvy; not directly correlating to IQ or anything. I know if I work hard to tweak a game I tend to invest more in it.

Actually, the best way to prove the point; go play BF3 online Xbox Live or go play on your PC. Play COD on Live then on PC. Overall, PC is much more mature. Just true chief.

 

That link is him saying the same thing he has said in almost every interview since 2007. Carmack is a complete sellout and really has ridden out a lot of his success on his name alone. He even admits that he doesn't do a lot of the trenchwork coding anymore (as he shouldn't). His point there, while VALID, is still valid for Capitalist only reasons.

I will provide a counterpoint. It is important to develop for the PC as the lead platform because that will drive technological developments and create greater competition to create more advanced and innovative games. That is VALID. Just not Capitalist.....

 

Maturity is probably moreso a function of age and less related to having a console versus a computer. You might find that the niche PC gaming segment that you're looking at is older. PC's are still more expensive than consoles, although the net cost is probably much lower for an adult who could use the computer for work. I still wonder if you're comparing groups correctly. Perhaps bias is a factor. You're work with teens, and you're looking at teens with consoles. Which groups are you familiar with on the PC? Perhaps your personal friends play PC games? Something to think about.

 

Here is an excellent (or I thought) article. It talks about the cost of game development, coupled with the fact that most people don't even finish a game. And since most people bring in the most money, it makes sense that games are swinging this way.

Why most people don't finish video games

 

No need. They go with the weakest link for PC. None of their games are that difficult to run or stress the limits of PC technology.

I admit they are solid games. But nothing impressive in terms of PC Gaming.

 

I just want to say that I think it's hilarious that wanting to make money is "selling out". They would be completely stupid to leave money on the table. That's all there is to it.

 

I personally don't care if a game is cross-platform or not. That's just the state of gaming right now and it's not going to change.

All I wish is that if they release a PC version, they let me to configure the video settings that I want, be able to customize keyboard layout, and the UI interface isn't scroll based as it if it was meant for controller. And I want to save and quick save whenever I want to. While Rage has quick save, it's horrible. Causes the music, the game to pause while doing so which totally ruins the rhythm of my gaming, defeats the point of quick save IMO.

Also what is really annoying? The trend of having me press ENTER or START to begin a game. C'mon... really? Are they so lazy to remove that from the game when porting it to PC?

I don't think this issue is that big of a deal. I just can't see how much more time and money would it cost to do the above? Wouldn't that be in the best interest of developers and publishers? If they bother to port the game to PC shouldn't they do the best they can to get the most for their game? If people say Ubisoft are garbage and will boycott their game because they don't care even a little about PC gamers... yet waste their money and time on porting it... seems like a waste.

 

Agreed, money is what dictates everything. Focus would be on PC gaming, if PC gaming is where the money was at.

I'm going to look at it like this, The more they focus on consoles, the longer my PC will be able to run there new games. Meaning less money to spend to upgrade my computer.

I remember hearing that BF3 was going to need crazy computing power. My Notebook runs it on Ultra on all settings, 1900x1200 and no AA. Not too shabby. If my system can keep up with current games for a few more years, I'm not going to complain.

 

Actually it's not that they're getting younger, it's that it stretches across all age groups. Average age of a gamer is 37 years old, and buyer is 41.

The Entertainment Software Association - Industry Facts

I've been gaming since I was 6, and I'm 39 now. I've gone through the trends, played and owned pretty much every console imaginable and seen the PC gaming trend pinnacle in the late 1990's when PS2 and Xbox started to get a stranglehold on the PC gaming market.

I realize the late teens/early 20-somethings seem more content with the crap that's pushed out the door or more "whatever" attitude. I don't mean that as an insult only that's what they're used to. Same-same gameplay and unfinished code is the norm these days at launch date. Uniqueness is not encouraged, but copying ideas is. The whole business with invasive DRM has crimped gaming on the PC as well. It's a complete paradigm shift from where it was a little over ten years ago, and I can't say a shift for the better.

Gameplay IS watered down. Too little attention is given to the PC. Sure they're making it look better on the PC, but not very often do they add additional features for the PC that it could easily handle but consoles could not.

I'd say over 90% of games released today for the PC could easily be played on a game controller. Ten years ago I'd say less than 20% you could. Controls are simplified. Gameplay is simplified. The entire experience is not as fulfilling as it used to be.

What I find odd is that there are tenfold more (probably more) PC's in the world, yet consoles are what make the money.

 

My opinions on cross platform:

While I think that cross platform development is a *good* idea, I don't think it's being implimented properly. Developers optmise their games for consoles and then take a few days to simply "make it work" on PC, it's usually an inferior product compared to the console version. This is not how it should be.

Consoles and PC's have fundamentally different hardware design and so this has to be taken into serious consideration. For example, consoles barely have any RAM and so this has to be taken into account, whereas a PC has a comparitive abundance even on the lowest end machine. There are also problems with input, things which would not be noticable on a controller such as input lag are much more evident with a mouse.

What it comes down to is pure laziness on the developers part and businessmen with little knowlege of the products they're actually designing. An example is the GTA IV graphics customisation options, where you have "points" to spend based on your amount of VRAM (a large oversight of the fact that some gimped laptop cards come with 2-3GB of VRAM whereas a 512MB high end GPU would completely destroy them).

 

It's not a defense mechanism at all. In fact I couldn't care less. My entire game collection is from the 90's and early 2000's. New games just do not interest me at all. I just see the trends and where gaming has gone.

That wasn't a personal attack against you. To be honest I don't care at all what you do for a living, or where you stopped your education or anything about you. I think crappy games are two fold really. It's not just the economy, but I was only elaborating on that point. As I said, most game companies as with the movie industry are afraid to take big risks today, because of the economy. But the other side of it is, game companies just want to push out games as fast as they can as cheap as they can. You know, there was a time when game companies actually put thought and real effort into games. I remember a time, in fact I have many games from the 90's, that were virtually bug free because they took the time to test and develop a game properly. There was also a time when big game companies actually listened to the community and incorporated many features and changes the community requested.
Sadly that day is over. I started to see a trend in the late 90's and early 2000's, where games were rushed, inadequately tested. If a game is does not meet their expectations within a short time frame, they drop them completely and refuse to support them. I experienced first-hand big name companies that are not receptive at all to community feedback, even positive feedback. They don't want to hear what can be improved in their game, they don't like to hear of any shortcomings their games may have, or any misgivings the gamers may have, they want to dictate to you what *you* want. How many times did I see developers close threads and even threaten to ban people because of a little honest and respectful feedback. They just don't want to hear it. That's my disappointment if any with modern games. That is why the old games from my collection, from the mid nineties to the late nineties I still enjoy to this day, and they still *work*. They were creatively designed, a concertive effort was put into correcting issues and bugs, most have great community mods and even some great mods incorporated by the companies themselves.
Today games are bland, rushed, closed, buggy. What else do you want me to say?

 

Well said Roger. I agree 100%

 

A major problem with the gaming industry today is the "We can fix it later" mentality dev's have. Games are getting more and more buggy year after year. Hell, it almost took them a year to get Fallout 3 to the point where I thought it was playable.

Rage really left a bad taste in my mouth when it was released. I preordered BF3 and refused to play it until just a couple days ago. Now I've gotten to the point where I will just wait for a game to be released for a month or two before I even pick it up. It's getting ridiculous.

 

I would agree with this. I've been replying to every post that asks if they should pre-order a game, I say no. Wait at least a month, or until the dev's release a major patch to fix what they didn't bother to before release.

 

I didn't click the link because I'm just assuming it's the keynote or some quote where Carmack talks about his future vision of gaming, in which case: yes I read it, that's Carmack now, and yet he still makes better games than others looking to mainstream-ize. I consider that him finally giving up (along with the rest of his brethren) and realizing that's the best he can hope for.

What I was getting at was Carmack's roots: the hacker culture. That's not driven by money, it's not driven by mainstream desires; it's driven by a sheer compulsion to invent, to create, to do better. That's what the industry is lacking today because it's being flooded by those who just want to make quarterly profits and the cretinous drones who mindlessly give up their weekly paycheck to cater to that.

So no, it's not "ALWAYS" been about the money. If it were the case, John Carmack would not have dropped out of school to write games in his garage (no money in that and he had no idea he'd hit it big), nor would Gabe Newell quit from one of the richest companies (Microsoft) with nowhere to go but up simply to start his own game studio on a whim. That sort of "with mind and heart", approach to game design (and any industry that has become mainstreamed), as risky, but as honest and well-intended as it is, is in rapid decline.

 

Well, I'll be damned. . . is it wrong that I want to give rep-points to virtually every individual in this thread, even the ones that are debating against one another? Because very good arguments have been brought up that both -- deviate from and reconcile with -- the core thesis of the original post.

Hell, heated elements considered, this is still one hell of a wholesome attempt at a dialectic. . . and to think that I was a sceptic on the notion.

I actually agree with you. True passionate innovators create for the sake of creating, but they do hope for some kind of acknowledgement in return; something that reflects their contribution. I think that's where the problem comes up: acknowledgement and recognition are being quickly traded in or supplanted for financial status. These days, even to get noticed, one has to make some kind of monetary gain from a given idea otherwise they risk remaining obscure against a larger monolith.

Case and point: the vaguely touched-on discussion a few pages back about who's the "real winner" amongst these developers. Is it the developer who makes a mediocre title that earns big bucks or the developer who makes an innovative concept that is a bit too humble and doesn't acquire the same level of mainstream success and recongition? Depends on the perspective. Clearly Carmack's philosophy has changed over the years. I just don't understand how this change -- for whatever reason -- firmly contradicts the notion that once upon a time, Carmack was simply aiming to create without any conscious foresight of becoming big. People change all the time and those changes don't put a dent on their roots or initial philosophies as creators/inventors.

Yeah. That, or we have a rapid upsurge in the counter-culture to this kind of thinking.

 

HT and Roger, you've both made some excellent points that I was going to bring up myself. The age of gamers is something that I don't believe is well understood by publishers, the public at large, and to an extent gamers themselves. Yes, there are a lot of kiddies playing games they probably shouldn't (and much of that falls on the parents). But yes, many core gamers, those of us who grew up with the NES, Genesis, Commodore 64, et al, are now in our late 20s to late 30s. We have jobs and families of our own, with much more responsibility than when we were playing Starcraft on the university LAN.

Regarding the point about taking risks on projects, I wanted to bring up something on the other side of that argument. There have been many cases of companies that have taken risks on projects that ultimately failed. Case and point - Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil. These were really great games that publishers took risks on. They saw great critical reception, but ultimately bombed where it mattered most.

I guess what I'm trying to add is that you can't entirely blame the publishers for wanting to go where the safe money is. This is especially true today given the global economic situation/outlook and the fact that a AAA title can cost upwards of $70-100 million to make.

 

It's not like passionate people have just vanished off of the face of the earth. They still exist. Something else to think about.

 

The only developers not disappointing me these days are Blizzard and Valve.


EDIT: and tons of indie developers have excellent games.

 

Both of those developers have, at least over the past several years, let graphics take a backseat to focus on gameplay. Maybe that's what is necessary.

 

I feel like both developers have excellent graphics. I hate how my 1-year-old machine can't handle the latest titles at even the lowest settings. developers really do need to focus more on story and gameplay the popping out super realistic looking multiplayer games ever 6-8 months.

 

Given the hardware that can run it, source engine is actually increadibly well made and gives excellent results. Portal 2 was by no means shabby when it comes to graphics. Also, I believe valve is revamping the source engine renderer for CS:GO (I know there is already a working dx10 renderer prototype, it's been around for a while).

 

Well...it's a simple case of supply and demand. More people play, buy, resell, etc console games and systems than PCs or Laptops. Any company with half a brain will write their software for consoles because that is where the money is. So presentation - this is hardly new...at all. Since the Atari days developers have been making over to top commercials, trailers, etc and 9 times out of 10 you didn't experience any of that hype. It's how they sell games, it's how any company sells anything. Basically, why doesn't this come as a surprise to you? Why are you disappointed? Me, personally; I couldn't be happier with the current state of games. They are getting better and better as time goes by. Are there huge number of quality games? Well, that answer really depends on what your perception of a high number is. I think so

As for rushing a game...well that's probably because of share holders.

 

The gaming industry is booming with quality products right now. It's amazing that so much doom and gloom is present in the thread.

 

I usually respect and agree with your opinions Kevin, but there's so few quality products that don't reek of consoles.

Console games can be fun, mind you, but when you know it could be so much more involved or "better" if utilizing full PC potential, it gets quite frustrating and depressing.

 

I don't know. Make me a list of disappointing titles released since 2005.

I was casually scrolling through my Steam list, and can make a list of good games that's incredibly long.

It's all subjective, I know, so maybe going into list wars doesn't even matter.

 

Not sure what you're getting at here. If you mean sloppy PC ports where you can't adjust graphical settings much beyond resolution, then yes, I would agree with you. But if we're talking about gameplay or aesthetics (there is a difference between aesthetics and graphics), how is an experience such as Bioshock much different on a PC than a PS3? I've played the game on both systems, and enjoyed them equally immensely.

 

The majority of games released now are letdowns compared to what they're marketed as. Some are still good but don't live up to their hype, however some are just poor games in general with poorly thought out game mechanics, blatent oversights and glitches galore.

 

How about list quality titles since 2005, lol. That list would be remarkably short for me. By quality I mean games that actually had PC in mind, not just thrown to an intern for a week and told to make it work on PC. Too many games could have been good but ruined by poor control scheme (Dead Space), bad graphics implementation (more resources required than should be), or just bugged altogether.