Gaming is Dead, and Here's Why

Ryukouki

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I hope this article gets more views. I've heard these arguments before many times, so there must be some truth behind them. I also believe indie developers make games that aren't sequels or ports, but nobody really cares about them; they care about big budget games like a certain shooting title, Just Dance, Mario, blah, blah, blah. I haven't been gaming too much lately either, but it's because I'm busy with Chrono Trigger and school. Now here's an example of a great game: the animations were simple to make, letting them focus on the story. And the entire plot was carried by written dialogue and music. And I feel an amazing sense of accomplishment when I defeat the pink Nu. But anyway, I've come to the assumption that when a game is released, it is carried by journalists who give rave reviews about it and that makes thousands of people buy it, letting the game company make its millions.

Is the MacBook Pro the equivalent of a Windows laptop? Or notebook or whatever the hell they call them nowadays? I want one of those Apple laptops, but I'm another broke college student. :( Frankly, the idea that people will shit on you because you have a certain electronic device is really stupid. I have a toaster oven in my kitchen, but people don't shit on me because it's a different brand from their own (or they don't have one because they're inferior to other kitchen appliances). And I might remind people that PC stands for Personal Computer, NOT Windows. And just because your personal computer can play games doesn't give you the right to sneer at people who can't play games on their personal computer.


Honestly, the Mac isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Price point aside, of course. :P For what I use this thing for, it's amazing. I also might be slightly biased because I paid for this using work money, so that made it more of a pride factor too...
 

Hop2089

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The Japanese gaming industry didn't used to be this messed up but boy in recent years, I've seen the downward spiral. In fact, about the whole gambling thing, the laws were changed somewhat due to the gacha system that was in place with a lot of mobile games but it didn't curb some developers from doing it anyway. Also, I'm tired of seeing the same types of games come out of Japan as well like these hunting games such as Monster Hunter and Freedom Wars. They all just are reskins of the same BS and in fact it's debatable whether that genre of games will even survive in the long run because of the number of them. Also the JRPGs are getting pretty bad as well. I'm sick of seeing girls and more girls as well as these games that seem to blend in too many elements of various other genres and the end result is a hot mess.

That's a problem with entire Japanese gaming industry, it's gotten to the point they need sex appeal to sell these days, while it does pump out gems like Senran Kagura and a few interesting ones like Bullet Girls, it's just not needed in most genres, the games with fanservice that are turning out good are already games with mindless gameplay and the fanservice is there for what it is and not tacked on and I suspect that the all female casts are another reason these sell better than normal. The problem with fanservice in RPGs is it's almost always tacked on ruining the appeal of both concepts, they just don't make the battle system or other concepts centered around the fanservice like Tacticslayer. Also, all these harem games have got to go, like anime, these are getting stale and I just wish I played one with all female cast and cut out the generic mc.
 

Mario92

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Honestly, the Mac isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Price point aside, of course. :P For what I use this thing for, it's amazing. I also might be slightly biased because I paid for this using work money, so that made it more of a pride factor too...
Apple products are good in way that they simply work. That's good, but not worth extra 1000€ in price and can't even play all games so nobody even bothers to try them out. Same with iPhone, they simply work but I can get much better phone for margin of the price when I just do some research.
Apple products are expensive foolproof devices to put it out nicely and isn't exactly best choise for gamer.

Also, all these harem games have got to go, like anime, these are getting stale and I just wish I played one with all female cast and cut out the generic mc.

Oh god yes! All it does in west make stereotypical thinking of eastern media even more stereotypical.
 
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shadow theory

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Just to present a counter-point:

THE LACK OF INNOVATION
I think your piece really underscores how subjective this can be. You bemoan the 3DS 3D capability as "gimmicky" but champion the DS's dual screen setup. The DS also featured touch screen capabilities that were largely gimmicky and beyond the first couple of years the touchscreen became less of a gameplay feature and more of a way to nagivate menus. Hell, the second screen has become the home of menus and maps, which while handy, have small impact on the way the game plays.

I also think it's pretty temporally subjective. When we went from Atari to Nintendo, from Nintendo to SNES (or likewise from Master System to Genesis) the big change was mostly in raw power. If anything the new consoles are consistent with the trend.

SEQUELS AND PORTS
Again, at times this seems like it is affected by whichever generation you came into gaming. Sequels and ports have been an issue pretty much since the Super Nintendo generation. Large companies like Capcom, Konami, Nintendo, Sega have all pinned their caps on making iterations of their best selling series. At this point we were already on the fourth Final Fantasy, the seventh Megaman, etc. This isn't to say that even then they weren't repackaging games into collections. How many times did Sega give us Golden Axe before we got to the original Xbox release? Five times? Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo?

PRICE
If you adjust for inflation actually all the consoles are on the high end of what consoles have cost in the past (Looking at US pricing). Add to this a climate like Steam where games can get steep discounts and gaming in a lot of ways has become cheaper than it used to be.

DLC and Microstransactions
I will agree that these have effected games in a negative way. However DLC is not a new concept to gaming either. DLC is really the new form of delivering what used to be disk based upgrades. How many level packs came out for Doom? The bang for your buck used to be much better, especially considering sometimes these things were completely free, but they worked in the same manner. How many times was Doom reskinned and sold as different games? Chex Quest was a good example.

So yes, DLC can make developers lazy and make them release games with missing content on purpose (See Street Fighter x Tekken) but it is not necessarily a new issue.

Conventions
This is something that has changed in the face of the different way we get information. I remember as a kid getting issues of Ultra Game Players and reading all about the news from E3. Perhaps if you happened to live near the venue you got to go, but for the large majority of us, we later saw the news in the form of newsprint in magazines. The internet has allowed us to engage and interact with those wanting to show games and that connection has proven to be more popular--and so game companies have followed suit by shaping the way they market their games accordingly. I'd much rather see the games than hear about them later by someone else's recollection.

Anyway, just a thought.
 

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Money will always be why we get ports, remakes, sequels, prequels, etc. If people are still buying them, why should they stop making them? Change the subject from gaming to movies, sports, music, etc. You can say the same thing. Whatever makes the most money.

I'm self employed with a retail business. I would love to bring different items in my shop but they don't make me the most money compared to the old boring everyday items. I see game companies/developers in the same situation.

Bad thing about growing up. When you were younger, you had all the time to play all the games on every system but couldn't afford to buy them all. Now that you're older, you can afford all the games on all the systems but don't have time to play them. What a life.
 

CathyRina

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Gaming is far from dead.
In fact it's more alive than ever.
I don't see console gaming going for 4K in the next 10/12 years. Currently games struggle at increasing the graphical quality while maintaining the 1080p resolution with a good framrate. Look at MK8, it runs at 720p because they couldn't optimize it enough to look as great on 1080p with the same frame rate. And frame rate is very important because it can cause input lag thus making games harder and unfair.
Also I don't see how smartphones are gaming relevant. This platform is absolutely terrible for gaming.
The touchscreen uses isn't precise at all. Like when I try to play Plants vs zombies 2 on my Samsung galaxy 3, because I'm on a toilet, I often miss the button because, surprise, my thumb is fat and not transparent.
And I can't use a touchpen like if I do with DS, 3DS and Wii U because of the weird touchscreen technology that will react only to fingers and pens that have to be bought separately because its a phone and not a gaming console with gaming in mind.

The micro-transactions thing is really killing games though. Every time I hear a big company announcing a F2P title I think "yeah, another game that will have more micro-transactions than game value". If they want to make you buy a game after playing a good portion of it then why not making a Demo?
I really miss the old days when you simply download a Demo of a game which shows a part of the game that summarizes the whole game feature-wise into a 30 minutes gameplay presentation or even shows demo exclusive levels like in Jedi Knight 2. Most demos are just a lazy "play the first 30 minutes of the game" that in most AAA titles doesn't show all the features that a game has and give the player a wrong picture about the game. Heck, the European PSN store on PS3 doesn't even have a extra subcategory for Demos while the Japanese does. Why is that? there are also some games that in Japan have demos but in Europe don't. why? For example Rayman Legends has a demo on the Japanese Vita PSN but in Europe it doesn't even though Rayman origins has. This question is really killing me and Legends did demos right. If not for the Demo on the E-shop my friend wouldn't have bought it on Wii U.
Same goes to DLC's. I really don't like those. Devs should go back to Addons and Addins and create packs that justify the pricetag instead of small portions of content that combined together are more expensive than a addon would be or are more expensive than the game itself.
 

Tom Bombadildo

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>Upgrading PC components being cheaper

:rofl2:

As an avid (and cheap) PC gamer, in the past 3 years including the original price of my original desktop, I've spent ~$700 (soon to be $900-$1,000 when I replace my aging CPU) in 3 years just trying to keep up with PC gaming. And this is just budget crap, not top of the line i7 with a GTX Titan blah blah stuff. If ~$1,000 in 3 years is "cheaper" than a one time purchase of $300-$500 (not counting games/peripherals/hardware defects that call for replacements) that will potentially last 8+ years then I guess we're living in opposite world :lol:

Also, PC gaming hasn't "harmed" gaming in general at all, no idea where you got that idea :unsure: PC gaming has been around longer than console gaming has and, if anything, increased gaming audiences throughout since PCs are more widespread nowadays, and while they aren't all going to have Titans and Intel i69's in it they're still capable of enjoying all the little indie games and junk that run on bare-minimum specs.

Also, mobile gaming is doing so well because it's not marketed just for the "core" gaming audience, it's marketed towards anybody with a smartphone (read: a shit ton of people) that gets bored sometimes (read: a shit ton of people). It'd be like saying store-brand crap coffee is killing off all coffee because more people buy store-brand crap than premium Colombian.

Regarding prices, gaming nowadays is relatively cheaper/the same as it was ages ago, especially when you account for inflation regarding the previous consoles. Plus we have all of these bundle sites and huge game sales and what-not that weren't ever around back in the day (at least, not to this extent) that makes gaming just insanely cheap. Hell, people nowadays have hundreds of games they will never play that they bought just because they were cheap as hell on Steam or were in a $5 bundle on Bundlestars/Humble Bundle.

As for the rest of your points, I think it really depends entirely on opinion at some point and it'd just be silly to argue over them. "Innovation" doesn't automatically = good the same as lack of innovation =/= bad, sequels are a-ok as long as they bring something new to the table that expand upon the original game, ports are nice to help bring the game to every single gamer and while I think all these "HD re-releases" and stuff are pretty "lazy", it's still not a bad way to get across to the nostalgia audience or to even brand new gamers who haven't been around as long.
 

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I wouldn't say gaming is dead, and I wouldn't blame the new generation for the medium's current shortcomings. Most of the current problems didn't just appear with the new generation, they started in the previous one. The casual games are certainly hurting the quality or products coming out of the industry, but they aren't entirely responsible. The previous generation started all of the trends that are currently hurting the industry. The ps3/360 started the whole HD remake craze, which was actually rather well received at first. People were glad to see some old favorites with nice new graphics. Now the developers want this success again, but they are being foolish and using games that are too recent. The wii showed how much potential money could be earned through the casual gaming market, and the mobile market then took advantage of that audience. The issue with the current generation isn't that this generation is killing the industry, its that its trying too hard to imitate the strategies that worked in the last one. People are tired or the cash grabs that started last generation, but the developers haven't realized it yet. They will catch on eventually, but that won't be for a few years just like it took them a few years last generation to optimize they're way to milk its ideas.

tldr: The issues started last generation and the devs run on a different cycle than the hardware does

As to the mac argument, I don't think the issue is with the macs themselves as with the sheep that refuse to accept the fact that they're device isn't 10x more powerful because it has a fruit on it. There are actual people in the world that believe that apple products have better specs than other products, and it gets on people's nerves. Since those people are rather vocal, people who understand the OS is the real difference tend to get on edge around mac fans and try to explain the facts in a rather rude manner.
 
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Been watching the market for ~20 years... there's been many times like this and articles about end of gaming for as long as i remember... it'll pass. But i get your point, there's been a lot of disappointments lately and dlc are annoying.. Well there's always piracy if the developer wants to fuck you up with over priced dlc. So long as piracy is alive publishers can't keep fucking up for too long or they'll start losing money. I'm guessing at some point pc/console gamers will wake the fuck up, and all that dlc and micro transactions crap will go back to cellphone market and facebook shit.

Dunno how long it'll take i guess maybe 5 more years ? assuming anti piracy fascist wont get too much power.

As for games I'm guessing this year will suck, next year will be a bit better, next 2-3 will prolly be awesome again.. problem is most of the best studios that actually make great shit release games at pretty much same time, and years in between are mostly covered by milking software.... or mediocre games. As for consoles - well i'm guessing this generation will be screwed... maybe i'm getting old but to be honest it's the first time i was not hyped for any of the current new generation consoles... dunno maybe once they have deccent library i'll be tempted but unlless sony/ms will figure something out to liven up the industry this generation will be fucked... i won't mention nintendo since wii u is already dead in my opinion... there's still some minor hope for 3ds but prolly only if nintendo won't screw up this one too...


Still thats for consoles, pc's are a different story and so are games.. I'm guessing current crisis will force the devs to wake the fuck up.
 
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Jayro

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I would be more inclined to play on mobile platforms if big name developers would get off their lazy self-righteous asses and port their games to Android and have an ACTUAL STEAME STORE FOR MOBILE GAMING!!!!!
 

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Well, I started gaming when I was 3 years old, on the NES, brought to me by my father from Japan (for a reason still unknown to me it was a NES, not a Famicom). I'm 26 now and I don't feel like gaming is dead.

First, you can never underestimate technical progress. Everyone likes good looking games. We still are to get 1080p at 60 fps. The graphics are not photorealistic yet. Games like The Order: 1886 and Uncharted 4 do impress. I began gaming with games that told me that a blue square on the screen was my character and that red square - his enemy. Today I boot Watch_Dogs on the PS4 and see an almost real city, where I can go anywhere and do virtually everything.

Than again, we are going to see new types of gameplay. There will be more non-linear and open-world games - the tech is there now. Online will be blending with offline play. VR is clearly the next big thing to happen. We now have a choice: to get a $60 AAA blockbuster or go play a $5 indy, both of which are interesting and entertaining in their own way.

As for Nintendo, their flagship series are entering the era of HD. The quality is still there, but say Mario Kart is now pixel-perfect pretty. Zelda in now truly open-world - for a long-running Nintendo fun there's just so much to experience.

There are problems, though. DLC and F2P are the first to come to my mind, but I never actually thought of them as an issue. I've never purchased a single piece of DLC and never felt my experience was somehow reduced. As for F2P, it's meaningless on a hardcore gaming market, as people there are serious about their hobby and are ready to pay relatively big money for good games. As for smartphones and tablets - well, it's primarily a casual gaming market, so I just pay little attention to it. I still get some yummy things though, like DQ8 or TWEWY on the go in 1080p on my Galaxy S5.

It's tougher for dedicated handheld platforms, but on the other hand the 3DS is healthy and is living on - the only problem is dedication and the willingness of the maker to support their system. The 3D tech might not have caught all the fire, but great games are still there. It's a worse story for the PSV, but it's a matter of Sony virtually dropping the support - a softer "Dreamcast scenario", which has little to do with the death of gaming.
 

Ashtonx

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i doubt seeing how i keep on playing old games a lot ;p

This year sucks ? who cares, there's still over 300 games in my backlog.

as for android porting - problem with android is that phones/tablets for this platform suck as gaming platform...
after using my tf300 for 2 years i pretty much gave up on android gaming.. I only use it to read or watch something now.
Rather i don't see a point for devs to even bother with platform where you can't even find a decent software since it's overloaded with crap on every corner (play store). Why would they invest shitload of money and have to compete with 100 cheap chinese farmville clones who seem to generate more money because they're "free to play".


Besides i'm guessing steam streaming service will cover that in near future ;p
 

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