On the new state of gaming...An editorial.

[dravisar]

A lot of well thought out gripes made here, and I agree with a lot of them. My gaming career started with commander keen, rise of the triad, wing commander, xwing, etc...I remember those days...it seemed like another great game came out every month.

I remember going to Valves offices and getting to play an alpha build of Half-Life...and knowing they had something special on their hands...and that was when I was the average age of "console gamers" today. So yeah, maybe I have a little bit of nostalgia for the "glory" days.

My biggest gripe with today's gaming industry: It takes so goddamn long to pump out a game. Studios are taking 2...3, sometimes even 4 years to put out games, and all that waiting, all that buildup, eventually leads to disappointment: Fallout 3 being a prime example. I'm terrified that by the time time Diablo III releases, it will be behind the graphics curve, be short, or just plain old not feel the same as the originals.

Now hearing the rumors that Bioware is withholding dragon age purely for PC profits has me grinding my teeth...was looking forward to that one.

 

[phide]

It's really shameful that some of you consider yourself gamers, yet limit yourself to only 1 platform.

"Shameful"? A tad dramatic, don't you think?

We're just playing on the platform we prefer to play on. We don't play on the platforms we don't have any interest playing on. You call this "shameful". I call it entirely logical, reasonable and expected.

PC has a huge flaw, that no one has the same rig. Talk about a game being buggy and blame it on a console, while you have 100,000+ different computer setups.

You're overstating the obstacles here. Yeah, there may be millions of different PC configurations, but how many versions of DirectX are in use now? How many versions of OpenAL? How many Shader Models?

The reality is that most developers are writing around DX9/DX10 hardware. There's a SM3.0 path, then there are usually some extras on the SM4.0 path. There's one audio API (OpenAL or XAudio 2). DirectInput and so forth round out the rest. Developers never even have to get remotely close to metal. Both AMD and NVIDIA will optimize shaders for you -- for free -- if you give them a logo on your box. Technically speaking, they need only worry about a handful of configurations, not 100,000.

 

[Torgo]

It's been awhile, this old curmudgeon has an insight or two to share. "Good Ol' Day Syndrome" arguments have always persisted; arguments about 1989 being better than 1999 in terms of story and gameplay. Heck, I've participated in several of those threads.

The two main difference between 1999 and 2009 is the decline of the PC as a gaming platform and the larger base of game players. Here's some quick numbers to throw at you, which I'll follow up with some pithy commentary.

• Total video game sales in 1999 were $6.9 billion.
• 2008 video game sales were $22 billion.
• In 2001, PC video game sales were $1.6 billion.
• 2008 PC video game sales were $701 million

The answer to "why are things the way they are?" becomes obvious once you start looking closely at a few key factors which results in (yep, you guessed it) following the money. The majority of story driven games have been traditionally PC based. The PC platform had that magical combination of having a keyboard and mouse to support development of our treasured Infocom text-adventure games and the amazing LucasArts and Sierra adventure titles. The PC also had plenty of resolution to support number driven hard-core RPG titles such as Wizardry, Ultima and Might & Magic.

Now you need to take into account the demographics of this market back during the 80s and 90s. It skewed heavily male and the average age of that gamer was in the mid-to-late twenties. The market demanded pretty much only those types of games, so developers went along since that's where the money was.

During the latter part of the 90's, developers and marketing formed an unholy alliance to expand the marketplace. Developers are always wanting to try new and different games and marketing is always looking for more people to sell too. By this time, video games were around for over 25 years and all the old folks who claimed that they were a passing fad had either died or given in. The "tubes of the interweb" made people comfortable with technology. Kids growing up on games now had their own kids. So now the demographics were changing.

Today, the average video gamer is 39 years old and 40% of all gamers are female. Here's where it gets interesting. The number of people demanding the types of games in the 80s and 90s hasn't changed. It's just that in proportion to the entire market they are being drowned out by the majority of people who are happy with Wii Sports.

Most video game developers want to make story-driven games. It's just that as a business in a free-market economy, there's not enough profit in making a kick-ass RPG anymore. I can sell 3 million units of Wii Play every friggin' month, or sell 300,000 units of the greatest story-driven PC game known to mankind. It's obvious what projects publishers are going to front development money for.

Television is going through the same thing video games are. Just look at the shows nominated for Best Drama on Television (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost, Big Love...) and compare their viewership numbers against crap like "America Has Talent" or "The Bachelor". Reality television is just too cheap to produce and pulls in oodles of ratings for networks to ignore. They'd all love to have "The Sopranos", but the public is just too stupid. (Watch the movie "Idiotacracy")

Want things to change? You'll have to support titles and games that you like, but above all talk to your friends (especially the stupid ones) to give them a try. To borrow a phrase, you'll need to change the hearts and minds of the public to affect change.

 

[singe_101]

It's really shameful that some of you consider yourself gamers, yet limit yourself to only 1 platform.

What? So someone who competitively only plays basketball isn't an athlete? Someone who only plays one instrument isn't a musician?