I have serious concerns for the gaming industry

[BORTZ]

I don't mind playing FPS's but they are just too over-hyped...
Plus they get pretty boring if none of your friends are on to play lol.
@Bortz, bro gamers?
you know the college douche type that all all obout CoD and nothing else.

You see, this is the reason why I mostly play old games.
Even the old FPS's were fun and creative.

I agree. The old bond games were fun and i was terrible but i still enjoyed running around collecting weapons and laying mines lol
Jet force Gemini? yes please.

I play older and handhelds alot too. I havent touched anything other than my PSP for months.

QUOTE(Jockel @ Aug 3 2011, 10:18 AM)

Eh my favourite genre has been pretty much dead since the mid-90s.
There's effectively only one company left in business that makes good shoot em ups, and that's Cave.

First person shooters are just not my cup of tea. I bought Halo Reach and stopped playing before reaching the end of the first mission, gave the game away after that.
The market is oversaturated with bland games, sure.

But it's your decision to buy those crappy copy-paste fests or go out and buy some original game without a million dollar budget behind it.

I miss frantic space shooters

When i say shooter i want to be behind a cockpit overhead view flying my overpowered ship through billions of enemies.

 

[machomuu]

I miss the days when FPS were a PC niche.

 

[BORTZ]

yeah me too. And all the FPS tards would leave me alone

 

[The Catboy]

You see, this is the reason why I mostly play old games.
Even the old FPS's were fun and creative.

I agree. The old bond games were fun and i was terrible but i still enjoyed running around collecting weapons and laying mines lol
Jet force Gemini? yes please.

I play older and handhelds alot too. I havent touched anything other than my PSP for months.

OMG! I love Jet Force Gemini! No wait! I love all the old Rare games! God they were the best games out there...too bad Rare sucks nowadays.
90's please come back, you had all the best stuff.

 

[BORTZ]

I think i might make another blog post tonight about my nitch in gaming too.
Seriously between my PSP and DS i can play anything that i want to play, Excluding N64 (damn you nintendo for not making your DS be able to virtualize games like the PSP)

 

[Hells Malice]

I disagree with hating EVERY FPS. Frankly that's just as bad as FPS junkies hating on other genres.
FPS do have their merits. Halo is actually incredibly fun, and it continues to vastly improve and change. Though, FPS are definitely not a "story-based" genre.

The problem is too many -bad-, boring, bland and repetitive FPS get released. CoD obviously being the boss here. They essentially turned CoD into a sports game. They just roster update (shuffle some guns/perks), tweak the graphics, and resell the same game every year.

Actually, the problem is people buying all of those boring, bland and repetitive FPS and jacking off to them every time.

 

[pubert09]

The problem is that now anyone can play one of these games on their phone.

Ha I was just think about how I've been letting my PS3 collect dust and playing flash games as I was reading this!

As for OP, I can really agree with you mostly. I absolutely hate FPS games. The only exception for me, though, is if I can play multiplayer on one console, no online junk. It's really fun to play in the same room and laugh and yell at each other. As for casual games, I can really enjoy them when I'm in that mood, it's just not very often. They can offer something though.

 

[BORTZ]

I dont mind playing Halo with some buds, especially if we are online, cause then my teammates can carry my weight lol but CoDesertstorm2011 is what i dont like at all.

 

[doyama]

The problem is that now anyone can play one of these games on their phone.

Actually the main problem with PC gaming really is the reliability of the experience. Any PC gaming forum will have reams of pages of people having issues with the game in one form or the other. By contrast a console users pops the disc in, (then waits for the installation of the game...zzzzzz, at least in this way the PC and console gaming is the same), and then it works. Most people do not want to have to deal with the fact that because they bought an AMD/Nvidia card that for some reason the game doesn't work. Or the plethora of other issues related to god knows what.

Flash games are more about the convergence of cost to users as well as a reduction in apparent complexity. The console side has the ease of use, but a high barrier of entry, the cost of the console plus each game. Plus many console games have complicated control schemes which map something to every button. I don't think people realise how most non-gamers would view the usual controller-diagram of arrows to every conceivable place indicating some weird action.

Flash games always work on your browser. They're free. Stuff like farmville is controlled almost exclusively by the mouse, which makes it more access-able to users who don't want to use keyboard shortcuts into oblivion.

Free flash games aren't new but their acceptance in the broader non-gamer space is new.

Also from a dev perspective there is a lot of allure to this market. Firstly you're not slogging through crunch time for several years. You can bang a game out in a year easily. You have a lot more autonomy since the cost of the game is low so your publisher isn't going to be hounding you constantly. Also the 'make lots of money'/'become popular' is also just as random and unpredictable as in the AAA title market. So why not do something where you have more control and takes less time to do?

I find it interesting to see how companies are going into the Free to Play space. Ironically this started mostly in response to WoW for MMO's but now has expanded to all sorts of games. It's new and there's always a different way games are trying to make the F2P model work. I think devs are really looking into ways to tap into that and be the next 'big thing' because they thought of it first.

If you think F2P is stupid you better start getting used to it. I met a friend of a friend who's an analyst. His area is in the gaming sector. He went to PAX East to 'do research' but really was just having fun like the rest of us. But he was surprised that Zynga wasn't there. As far as people who have real money are concerned, Zynga and similar companies are the 'big players' now and thats where a lot of money is being poured into. It doesn't matter if you think it's dumb. People with BILLIONS of dollars think Zynga is worth more than EA and Activision/Blizzard and has a better future. They'll continue to fund those projects until they feel that F2P isn't worth investing into.

 

[Maz7006]

i usually don't play FPS games alone. Whenever. if ever anyone see's me online i'd actually be playing in a party of people, most of my gaming is offline Racing sims and fighters; i also enjoy the odd platformer here and there

so i'm quite indifferent, i mean i enjoy ALL games i suppose, but no doubt, too much focus on FPS these days, where are all the platformers at ?

.. i mean we just have 3rd person action shootup games more than the platformers these days.

 

[Hop2089]

Armored Core 5 may be pretty good now that it got delayed to Jan 2012 because they are listening to the fans for the first time ever and decided to balance the game properly.

 

[BORTZ]

i usually don't play FPS games alone. Whenever. if ever anyone see's me online i'd actually be playing in a party of people, most of my gaming is offline Racing sims and fighters; i also enjoy the odd platformer here and there

so i'm quite indifferent, i mean i enjoy ALL games i suppose, but no doubt, too much focus on FPS these days, where are all the platformers at ?

.. i mean we just have 3rd person action shootup games more than the platformers these days.

I know i miss games like SM64, Banjo Kazooie, Spyro, Crash, etc...

 

[Nimbus]

I couldn't agree more with the statement that the Gaming Market is getting too casual.

It's forced more seasons and serious gamers like myself into seclusion. We don't get nearly enough decent games, just crapware and whatnot, and millions and millions of FPS.

It drives me nuts too, I'm at least glad that we got Solatorobo for the DS, and some other various gems before it died.

I'm pretty sure I share the same concerns for the Gaming industry, and it sickens me where it's headed. If companies would just return to their original market, the entire balance would be put back in place, but alas this will probably never happen.

 

[InuYasha]

To funny a couple of hrs ago I was watching X-play(which i'm sure was a repeat but it was new to me) and they were talking about the current generation being the same old crap over and over because noone wants to take a risk anymore and strategy games are starting to die a slow death,being a nintendo supporter for basically my whole life I can't say I have much faith in them currently,in the older days mario and zelda games were enough to keep you into the nintendo fan base but now I hate to say it but its not nearly enough...

 

[Hells Malice]

Armored Core 5 may be pretty good now that it got delayed to Jan 2012 because they are listening to the fans for the first time ever and decided to balance the game properly.

A 5th one?
Fuck yeah Armored Core is epic.

....though I hope the online doesn't suck this time.

 

[Hop2089]

Armored Core 5 may be pretty good now that it got delayed to Jan 2012 because they are listening to the fans for the first time ever and decided to balance the game properly.

A 5th one?
Fuck yeah Armored Core is epic.

....though I hope the online doesn't suck this time.

I'm glad FROM is actually balancing it out for online, it may make for an epic experience.

Japan has just stepped up their social network gaming and social networking is getting more audience specific, there's already a VN company, Success that created the site Moetopia, for fans of moe and it has games that are free to play as well as some pay to play stuff. Oh and quite a few top people and companies have sold their souls to Social Networking. The conclusion there's already audience specific social network sites and games and it will be a matter of time until a FPS specific social networking site will be created.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

So just because you don't like something, it means it's bad? lol k.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

OH NO FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS ARE USING IRON SIGHTS/GUN SIGHTS. THE GAMING INDUSTRY AS WE KNOW IT IS COLLAPSING.

Seriously, this is the dumbest thing I've read in a while. Gun sights are popular for FPS games because they work. Even in non HYPER REALISM games (like Borderlands, Fallout: New Vegas, etc) they use it because it gives better precision than your standard run-and-gun games. It's called natural progression, get used to it.

For a casual market, I'll agree with that. I feel like companies will eventually realizing selling "casual" games or doing a "quantity > quality" of shit games may hurt gaming quite a bit. But to say it's gonna collapse or anything is far from reality.

Mobile phone gaming is pretty boring and the only things I enjoy playing on them are PopCap games (because they're FUCKING POPCAP GAMES).

DRM is DRM, you can always pirate the game to show your lack of support for it (when the DRM is cracked).

Games are plenty creative, people are just too busy bawwwing about the fact that a game may be in the first person to actually notice.

This entire thing is just someone getting their panties in a bunch over FPS games being popular. So what? At every point in the industry some genres are more popular than others. Just because its FPS games this time doesn't mean the industry is "dying" or in a "rough spot". Don't like Halo or CoD? Don't play them. There's plenty of other games to play.

 

[Hells Malice]

OH NO FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS ARE USING IRON SIGHTS/GUN SIGHTS. THE GAMING INDUSTRY AS WE KNOW IT IS COLLAPSING.

Seriously, this is the dumbest thing I've read in a while. Gun sights are popular for FPS games because they work. Even in non HYPER REALISM games (like Borderlands, Fallout: New Vegas, etc) they use it because it gives better precision than your standard run-and-gun games. It's called natural progression, get used to it.

You COMPLETELY missed the point of that joke. It wasn't saying iron sights are bad, it was saying there are a fuckton of FPS flooding the market, and they're still increasing in numbers. So you better enjoy looking down iron sights because that's all you'll be doing in your gaming career these days.

Get it now? I really can't explain it much simpler then it already is.

The reality of casual gamers ruining the market is actually pretty harsh. The FPS genre basically collapsed, and so have MMOs, thanks to two of the biggest casual games being in either genre.

Though the RPG genre itself isn't dying from casualization, it's just dying from retarded production companies not localizing enough fantastic games that they could easily turn a profit from. I'm looking at you Sega. Fuck you Sega.

 

[thegame07]

I really wouldn't mind FPS games if they weren't all just clones of each other. It doesn't matter what fps I play it just feels like the same game over and over again.

How come 90% of the fps story lines are gameplay is bland and generic?