Gaming nerds talk about the state of the industry. (Image-Heavy)

Justice4243

Prompted by something lee brought up. This thread has been rattling around in my head for awhile.

Somehow when I first read this, I missed all the vitriol, or maybe I shrugged it off.

Scott is sure mad at the gaming industry. He seems to think the industry owes HIM something just because he got a few wedgies in high school.

Honestly? What's the big deal? Not every game can be gold, and guess what? Pandering to niche groups doesn't get the big bucks. It's never bugged me that some of the most popular games where made for tiny fractions of the cost of some games that bombed. 

Also, I remember running around the playground asking if people thought Sonic could beat up Mario, and...there are a slew of shitty Sonic games. I never lost my shit over it. 

Thing is...Penny Arcade looked into this YEARS before VG Cats

Well, that's a bit better. Some self-loathing, admittance that they're just saying theories, and a bit less declaration that they are OWED good games.

Still, I detect hints that there's some "old school gaming cred" or at least, that it was thought that occurred to them. However, seems our boys are a little more accepting of the "causal game culture" they're no strangers to Bejeweled or Guitar Hero, or at least they are now.

They still think the Kinetic is shit (not the idea, just that it doesn't work like it should) yet acknowledge that what how successful something SHOULD be is often the opposite of reality.

Maybe, this is why I could never be a hilarious games reviewer. I only pick up a handful of games a year, and usually, they rock my frickin world as I pick things I'm fairly damn certain I'll like. 

To me, the industry is fine. I have Angry Birds to play when I'm bored and have my phone about, and Fallout 3 and Okami when I REALLY want to play a game at home.

And someday...I'd love to finish Kotor, and play it's sequel, and maybe pick up Mass Effect or the Elder Scrolls series.

Maybe I just don't have enough self righteousness despite plugging Sonic 3 into Sonic & Knuckles and trying to get a Sega 32X to work.

I mean, I read stuff like this: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20110307 (warning: Ctrl-Alt-Del may not be safe for people with two brain cells to rub together)

And it just makes me want to punch Tim Buckley in the goddamn face...though, I think that's sort of a natural reaction to Tim's work.

Thoughts? Musings? Insights? 

Ace Rimmer

Blah blah Nostalgia filler.

I remember playing games like Diablo and Warcraft 2 and FF7 and UFO: Enemy Unkown. Trust me, the only reason people say those games are good is because they frustrated the tits off you. For some reason people think that if a game frustrates you then its better when you come over it. Most of this frustration was from things known as black swans

In my opinion, games are better, more hardcore and harder than 10-15 years ago but there is more hand holding now and less frustration. I say more hand holding because in the old days there wasn't any hand holding at all.

Icalasari

I find Tim's work amusing at times (although he really does have a seething hatred of Pokemon which annoys me as he hasn't given it a try yet (I recall him saying at one point he would, but I haven't read anything about that since))

Also, I agree with you. I think part of the problem is rose tinted glasses (hey, people, older games can be fun, but they aren't unbeatable. Except apparently Ocarina of Time. As great as that game is, I don't get how its managed to hold on to the #1 spot for so long, only occasionally exchanging places with a hyped up game)

Justice4243

^^It is interesting that some "old school gamers" seem to think that's a bad thing.  

I love auto-save. I still save pretty religiously, but christ on a bike, loosing an hour of game time because you haven't save or your system crashes suuuuuucks.

Back in the day, replaying the same stuff over and over again was "part of the experience". Is it really THAT great you get to play the same stuff over and over again? 

This might be some of the benefit of story driven games. They take don't make it hard as hell because you're suppose to see how everything ends. There's no REAL benefit in spending 10 minutes to reach the same jumping puzzle so you can fall to your death and start at square one.

"although he really does have a seething hatred of Pokemon which annoys me as he hasn't given it a try yet (I recall him saying at one point he would, but I haven't read anything about that since))"

Oh Jesus, so it's a case of complaining about something you haven't even played?! 

That's just...that's just sad.

Eelektross

You know, as elitist as they sound, I can actually understand why they're doing this. They're bitter that it isn't fair that the people with girlfriends and actual social lives get to play games, a pastime formerly reserved for them. I think Gabe sums it up best:

They were selling our heritage to the same fucking guys who used to beat us up in P.E!

Yep, still doesn't excuse the "why don't we have the games we DESERVE?" sentiment I'm getting.

ProfessorGator

I mostly agree with what Justice said, except with more Nintendo games in my library than anything else. Besides, I'm not exactly the best gamer anyway. I mostly play for fun, so I wouldn't be asking for too much in particular from the game industry.

Even if I did have much to ask, I don't see the point in being bitter and pissy about it.

Eelektross

I think they're forgetting that video games are primarily for making money. If casual games sell, then they're going to make more casual games. I don't like it, but I don't exactly have much of a say in these things.

Gelzo

I understand the sentiment, and I don't think they're complete idiots for expressing it. Though, I guess I can agree that it's overblown.

But I think that no matter what games you like, unless it's a specific MMO, now is the best time to be a gamer than in any other point in history. You have access to pretty much every game that was made in the past. 

Salix Babylonika

Somehow when I first read this, I missed all the vitriol, or maybe I shrugged it off.

Jesus Christ, that was supposed to be serious?

I'm flabbergasted.

Justice4243

Maybe it wasn't. That's probably why I dismissed it, initially. 

Though, the second comic seems to support that Aries really meant it. 

To be fair, he probably is using some hyperbole. If he 100% meant every word he said, he probably would have used his author avatar, Pantsman.

Aries is the almost always irritated character who should chill out a bit.

But the second comic is aimed directly at Nintendo's vital organs (Mr. Potatamoto has been used to discuss the Wii before, and the name is clearly based off Shigeru Miyamoto). And maybe it's because I don't crave a video game shoved down my gullet every week, but is Nintendo really doing a bad job?

I was under the impression that the Zelda games where still fun, and Wii had plenty of fun games that didn't rely completely on motion controls to be entertaining. Now, this comic came out in 2008, so there where probably fewer great games on the market. But that still gives us Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. 

Heck, I bet if we considered the Nintendo DS, the argument falls apart completely.

Nintendo might not have been shoveling new games into the furnace of it's loyal fans, but just because they found people really like their motions controls and ways to make those appealing hardly means the don't care about their other fans. 

I think another thing that gets me about this is I don't see anything wrong with gaming being a maintream hobby.

So I can talk about gaming without people thinking I'm an unwashed basement dweller. So I can talk to my co-workers about the latest Fallout game. I guess maybe I'm not suppose to feel as special because lots of people do the same thing I do?

Sure, there's some pride in being an old school gamer. Comparing notes on "who had the oldest system" can still be fun, and I'm sure it's nice to exclaim "Atari 2600" (though my "Wondwe Wizard"* usually wins), but that's not nearly as valuable to me as having common topics and reference points with people.

And really? Stuff like DDR and Wii Sports is fun, even if they're pretty far from a conventional video game.

*Yes, it's a real game system and not a euphemism for my penis.

ProfessorGator

I have a confession to make.

When I first read the second comic in the OP years and years ago, I completely missed the Miyamoto reference. I read it as just "Mr. Potatoman" for some reason.

Justice4243

Oh, I did too, somehow...

Maybe Scott Orwellian edited it in? 

It wouldn't be the first time he revised the dialogue on one of his comics after it had been up for a while.

Gelzo

No, I remember it being Potatomo. Pretty sure I remember it when it was new, too.

Ace Rimmer

loosing an hour of game time

How does one loose time? :o

Justice4243

You die or the system crashes and have to play the same thing again.

Auto-saves are awesome because you rarely loose more than 10 minutes of time. If THAT even.

Ace Rimmer

Do you mean lose?

Salix Babylonika

I think another thing that gets me about this is I don't see anything wrong with gaming being a maintream hobby.

Neither do I. In fact, the attitude that there is something wrong with it is what tends to bother me about indie reviewers. They'll stop reviewing for a minute to tell you just how much they hate THE INDUSTRY and its ENDLESS PARADE OF HALO CLONES when it's quite clear they haven't bought a new mainstream game since 2004. Even HG101 does it, and that's one of my favorite review sites.

Justice4243

"Do you mean lose?"

Probably. I wrote that when I was falling asleep, and I just wrote my response while I was waking up.

Also, Chrome could really use a grammar checker. :P

Tre

That CAD comic makes me want to, well, do the same thing Justice said. I mean, seriously, dude, you haven't even played any of the games in the series and you're here going on about how Pokemon sucks. I haven't played any of them either, but hell, I'm not gonna write the series off just because it doesn't seem like it'd be my thing! (for the record, I actually do want to play them, when/if I get a 3DS, but that's a moot point)

And no, I don't think the industry is dead or dying. Just because casual games exist doesn't mean you have to go off murdering kittens and scream "ANARCHY!". They're meant for a different audience than you, and if you don't like them, just ignore them. Seriously, it's not that frakking hard, and they're not going to stop making games you'll enjoy because they're there.

Justice4243

"They're meant for a different audience than you, and if you don't like them, just ignore them. Seriously, it's not that frakking hard, and they're not going to stop making games you'll enjoy because they're there."

Counter point: My dad was killed by an angry bird.

Counter Counter Point: No he wasn't.

Gelzo

^^You've never played Pokemon, and you're getting a 3DS to do it?

ProfessorGator

The 3DS can still play DS games, so it would be killing two birds with one stone. Or KOing two Pidgeys with one Rock Throw, as the case may be.

Tre

Not just for that, I'd probably get other stuff, too. I did kind of want Kid Icarus, and Rayman is going to be on it soon too, so.

Pokemon's just been on the list of "stuff I want" for ages. Scribblenauts was as well, but that pain has thankfully been alleviated via iOS.

Unknown

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Gelzo

I was just expressing surprise at him never having played it.

Unknown

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lee4hmz

Oh man, someone dug up that VGCats I ranted about. XD

This still pisses me off, actually. I lived through the era where playing a game was so challenging that it was kind of a turn-off, and some games were actually so hard that it was a pain to sit through them. While there's definitely some classics from that era, it's also not one I'd like to revisit because a lot of that difficulty was fake difficulty -- things that happened either because the game was buggy or because the game design itself wasn't thought out all the way. 

What we have now are games that are challenging, but that are also honest. They don't try to fool you with game-breaking bugs or unfinished or broken mechanics, they don't have hidden gotchas or dirty tricks (remember that damned yellow truck in R.C. Pro-Am?) and they don't make things so difficult for you that you end up rage quitting or throwing the controller at the TV. 

But no, we can't have that because it's a matter of geek pride and now those mean jocks that beat me up in high school are calling themselves gamers and so on. Look, geek pride is nice and all, but get this: YOU'RE AN ADULT. HIGH SCHOOL IS OVER. YOU'RE FREE. If this is less about gaming and more about getting one over on someone that wronged you, then this comic has no reason to exist at all. Playing the Mean Girls card is a really shallow, petty thing to do, the province of vindictive creeps like CWC, and you shouldn't do it if you want to be taken seriously.

TheMightyAnonym

At present, markets in general are moving toward niche marketing thanks to stuff like globalization and le' internet. I suspect that most major video game companies are going to continue banking on stuff like MMOs and other subscription-required things.

Honestly, this isn't all that bad, as it means that  indy developers who are doing it for the art are going to be more respected. Giants like Nintendo won't be able to compete with the hundreds millions of Indy developers and pirates, so it's all downhill unless they can find a way to pull a 180.

Nintendo itself is probably the best out of the different giants, because its selling point is stuff like portability and immersion (hardware). However, that has very limited appeal compared to what made them big (creative games, which now flood the market). As an added bonus, a lot fewer people have disposable income.

tl;dr

The advent of internet, piracy, and the current tech savvy generation has created a massive amount of competition, and the only producers left will be relatively unpaid.