The Game Business Is A Year From Irrelevance
boesky.blogspot.com
boesky.blogspot.com
The changes have already begun. First the largest game expo, E3, was killed off and brought back as a shadow of its former self.
Then we've seen the rise of the indie game. Braid and World of Goo have shown to be excellent examples of games that cost very little ($15-20) and provide a compelling experience.
Large studios are investing less into smaller games, like Valve did with Portal, and earning better profit margins by distributing them digitally.
There will probably always be blockbuster games like Grand Theft Auto, but the market is splintering. Millions will continue be lost in many of the big studios.
I personally think it's healthy. As a huge consumer of games, I don't think there's ever been a point in time when there's been so many amazing games available.
Casual games are the future of the big-budget industry.
I've been gaming a bit with my wife. While I don't normally consider myself "hard core" in most senses, my skill set is, whereas she is in the "played some Nintendo as a kid". (She can still beat me at Dr. Mario, but that's it.) I still note there is no apparent path from casual gaming to Mass Effect; it's still a huge jump. In my wife's case, I don't forsee her ever enjoying Mass Effect, but looking through her eyes, I wouldn't know how to get there, which is a problem in general.
Now if only the gaming MAGAZINES would get mature, too. The level of self-obsession is worse in something like Game Informer than it is on the gossip rags. Obsession with nostalgia is a constant pain, the overrating of big-name games makes the reviews irrelevant, and there are very few writers for magazines that say anything at all interesting.
The minute the RPG field gets developers who aren't obsessed with Final Fantasy VII, or the FPS scene gets people who realize how irritatingly mediocre the Bungie developers are, we'll see people experimenting. (To be fair, Valve is already doing a damned good job at that - they're the best hardcore developer around today.)
People who haven't played Passage yet should really get a copy and play it. It's cross-platform and a truly inspiring game. http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/
The plot goes really slowly. The writing's pretty iffy. The big death scene is way overdone. I played it right after rewatching Season 1 of The Wire, which has one of the most shocking death scenes I've ever seen, and it struck me as sad, how immature the writing mindset of videogames is. Even Half-Life 2, which is a pinnacle in a lot of ways, sheers away from really mature themes in plot.
Possibly for its time it was a masterpiece. But having played FFVIII to death, moving back to VII saw a lot of things suffer - this opposed to, say, Super Mario 64, which has a childish plot but the gameplay of which is still timeless.
(I don't like the slow-paced RPG battle system. Pen and paper works really well with it, but video games are played live. You should be thinking on your feet. For that reason I like the Kingdom Hearts system a lot, though I feel that got botched when KH2 came out. The emphasis switched again away from tactics and towards brute force.)
The problem with the game industry (and much of the entertainment industry) is that anything with a $20 million budget is going to be designed by committee, in addition to being harmed by culturally semi-illiterate moneymen who let economic interests crush aesthetic concerns.