The games industry is like a toilet, apparently
by Jennie Lees 
{ Nov 29th 2005 at 10:00AM }
A rant has been published by The Inquirer which rather
grimly predicts the collapse of the entire gaming industry—likening the current situation to a similar period in the
80s when strings of bad games and console failures caused the industry to go dormant, and claiming that the industry is
a toilet that needs to be flushed.
The article cites the current overdose of mediocre, un-original titles, claiming that the huge amount of money required to develop them leads to publishers and developers taking safe bets on sequels. The increasing cost of games for no discernible improvement is putting consumers off, and the writer predicts that the industry is due for collapse:
"Sadly, the gaming industry is in a self-imposed death spiral. Everyone is putting on a brave face, touting the latest v6 of a game that came out before most of it's audience was born. What was a fun hobby full of creative geniuses and their mad art has become a grey corporate parking lot."
[via digg]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dead Like Steve @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
They are partially correct. We almost never see new original games thanks to companys like EA who buy up other company's titles and sequel them into the dirt. Want a war based FPS? There is Call of Duty, Band of Brothers and Battlefied. SciFi? Doom, Quake, Unreal and Half Life.
Where as some of these are great games they are sticking to tired (and tired) genres that they know will sell. It would be nice to see new game developers come to the table with a decent offering and not have one of the larger game companys buy them out just to shut them down.
gjd @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Uh, isn't that what Nintendo's been saying all along?
At the beginning they briefly mention the Revolution and then not again for the whole article! Sigh... When will people start taking it seriously?
Truth @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
I wouldn't be surprised.
Heretic @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
EA is the only thing im worried about. We will always have brilliant devs such as Bungie, ID, Nintendo, i mean to i really have to keep going?
Dogbowl @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
I doubt another crash could happen again.
At the time, strong companies like Activision and Imagic just couldn't compete against the flood of crappy, yet cheap titles from everyone else. At the time, a AAA $39 game just couldn't compete against D- $5 dollar games.
However, today all titles have significantly higher costs .. we're not going to have a flood of new $5.00 PS2 games anytime soon.
jc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
From my experience, the consoles died off in the early 1980's because the personal computer made such inroads. People dropped their Atari and ColecoVision games and started playing on the Apple ][ and Commodore 64... not to mention the influx of quarter eating arcade games.
Gaming didn't die in the '80s, but it did leave the consoles. We may see console growth slow down, but I really doubt "the gaming industry is in a self-imposed death spiral".
$.02
G-T3K @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
It will be interesting to watch this next generation. I've always said that it's coming way too early.On paper the new consoles sound good, but practically, they don't offer anything terribly new and exciting. This whole next-generation is less about outgrowing the old platform, and more about profits. I've never been less interested in games, with the exception of the stellar DS lineup that's been coming out.
While some of the best hits have been throwbacks to the past (Mario Kart, Sonic, Castlevania), the system has more variety and quality in its stylus than the XBox or PS3 has in their entire lineup. And at least new ideas are being tried out.
I'm still holding out for the Revolution. I have faith in Nintendo. I hope it is as interesting as Nintendo is making it out to be... Developers' support will make or break the console though.
bouncicles @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
What's missed here is that consoles didn't die. The NES popped up in a few years. Yes, there was a sort of crash, and it may happen again, but the cosole bounced back.
(Also look at how some consoles are attempting to insulate themselves against this by positioning themselves as "media hubs," like the Xbox 360, PS3, and PSP.)
Wolfy @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Similar to a period in the 1980s?! The Inquirer should do some research before it writes an article like that. Differences between the game market now and 20 years ago are such that a collapse is impossible.
When the collapse occurred back in the 1980s, the industry was reliant on arcades. As the arcades went bust, the industry went bust. Twenty years ago, before the NES was released, home consoles and games made a meager percentage of sales and revenue.
In addition to the tens of millions of home consoles in the market today, you also have mobile gaming. Between the GameBoy, DS, and other mobile gaming devices (even cell phones), the industry has been able to reach new markets. You also have the PC games market, which is relatively small, but still counts.
The fact is that video games have become a major industry that will not and can not collapse. Everyone now knows that the video game market is larger than the movie industry. When was the last time someone saw Hollywood shut down? Like any other industry, however, it is not immune to slumps. It is also a highly progressive industry and those companies that push the bounds of creativity will be rewarded.
Gamers need not worry.
dre @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
uncreative corporate parking lot?
90% of the industry's media are crap?
according to this logic the movie industry should have died decades ago. and the music industry. and tv sitcoms. and...yada yada yada
in short, not a terribly persuasive article.
DT @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Yeah the sentiment is true and I for one though I own all 3 consoles haven't purchased a new game in a few months...nothing really looks original or fun. I still don't see the industry crashing but I'm also not getting any "next gen" consoles until there are soem games worth playing on them. I am thinking about a DS, mario Kart over WiFi just sounds too good to pass up.
Pixelantes Anonymous @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Not gonna happen.
For every ten EA sequels (what's the word for the 16th in the series anyway?) there's that one kick ass game from some other publisher. As long as they keep putting out games like Lumines, Halo 2, Forza Motorsport, Nintendogs, Mario Kart DS, WoW, etc. there is no fear of the industry collapsing. Mobile gaming will give the industry a big boost during the next few years as well.
EA might collapse, but the industry is doing just fine.
Joseph @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
But think about when you were a kid when a new nes or snes game came out. The excitement. That feeling isn't there anymore...
Tobor is robot spelled backwards @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
jc, don't take this the wrong way, but you are terribly wrong. Dogbowl nailed it. The crash was caused by the US courts ruling that anyone could make 2600 cartridges and peripherals WITHOUT Atari's permission. The influx of crap flooded the market, tanked the prices, and killed the console business for 4 years, until Nintendo rescued it from obscurity.
I remember being eight years old and digging through bin after bin of $1 games looking for a gem. (all crap of course)
jc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Tobor, I remember the Coleco Gemini that could play Atari games... without needing to give any money to Atari. I would also agree that this could be part of the reason for the so called 'gaming demise of the '80's'.
But are you saying that the popularity and influx of the personal computer had nothing to do with the downfall of the consoles?
jc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
t-ready @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Kind of like the current situation with Hollywood films...
illspirit @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
From TFA:
"The last one happened at the height of Atari's power, they were invincible, pumping out hit after hit. Pac-Man, ET..."
ET on the 2600 was a hit? Now, I know The Inquirer isn't known for it's research and stuff, but, erm, ET was one of the crap titles that led to the crash. Unless of course The INQ's idea of a "hit" is a game so bad it's buried by the millions in a landfill...
http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp
Tobor is robot spelled backwards @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
jc, yeah pretty much. You could argue that consoles were the gateway drug to get people to play on computers, but computers never took away mindshare from the consoles. If everyone left consoles to play on computers, Nintendo would never have revived the console market. There clearly was a need that Nintendo filled. People who didnt have enough money to buy a computer still wanted to play games.
GunForHire @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
I always said EA will be the death of the industry. Nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks this.
jc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
tobor, I don't know if you don't remember... or you wern't there, but the Comodore 64 was all that and a bag of cherries.
"Tramiel, still looking for market share, slashed the price of the C64 to $200 and virtually walked away with the 1983 holiday buying season for the second year in a row" -(wikipedia - video game crash of 1983)
In 1982 and 1983 the C64 was the (present day) X360 and them some.
Tamo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
I find it kinda amusing that people bash EA for all of their sequels and buy them anyway. on a side note, "Madden sucks, NFL2k series better."
I personally think that Nintendo is making the Revolution for this very reason. Since originality is stagnent, the new contoller allows for new types of games to be made. Also with the other systems being costly to develop for, the Revolution will be a lot cheaper which will allow for more risk taking.
Semms to me that Nintendo is addressing almost everything that this guy is saying. That and neither Pac-Man or ET were a hit on Atari 2600. People thought the Pac-Man port looked ugly as hell and everyone knows about ET.
sharpfish @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
It is somewhat true - more specifically it is harder to KEEP the attention of a gamer from young age through to middle age withouth offering new innovations and really new "exciting" experiences - just like when we were kids with Ataris or ZX spectrums - the way things are now, new kids/players are conditioned on gfx and hype and then get fed up of it.. There are many great games out there that can be played again and again, but withouth new games like that eventually people will look at alternate means of entertainment.
However I don't see it happening anytime soon. There is always a fresh batch of players coming along -the problem is sustaining it as they get older. Therefore it is a more a problem of "growth" than of actually crashing ala 1983 (When games were cheap and easy to make btw).
JRM @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
so many things led to that downfall in the 80's. It wasn't just one, and it certainly wasn't just the rampant lawlessness that consoles, developers, and distributors were living under.
One of the things that helped kill the industry (concurrent with the bad games) in the 80's were the strategies of executives to have games take a supplementary role and give preference to powerful, generalized hardware. the consensus was that a game console should rather be an affordable PC, like the apples and commodores, and this was supposed to be the most profitable route. Remember how every manufacturer wanted to tie in a keyboard, word processors, and such? Wasn't this their idea of expanding the market?
Fast forward to 2005, isn't this how MS is taking things? or even sony these days? MS wants the 360 to be a cheap windows media centre, sony wants the PS3 to be a cheap blu-ray player, and the PSP an iPod. Nothing says games should be #1 priority--and they certainly show it!
The trend in the 80's of people turning their back on video games is partly due with the console makers turning their backs on video games as well. If the company doesn't believe, than even less the consumer. The industry won't crash like it did in the 80's, just because it is now more established than it was in 1982. But that doesn't mean that the general public can't get apathetic about it, and therefore cost companies millions. It makes "revolution" a more fitting term now than ever.
Tobor is robot spelled backwards @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
But you make my point for me. The C64 was more of a console than a computer. And it was marketed that way. You just compared it to a console. I get that you are a C64 fan, you have mentioned it more than once. But whats your point? How did competing systems kill the market? My point is that bad basement software ruined the market for ALL the systems, computers included.
Tobor is robot spelled backwards @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
JRM, tying in game consoles with other media functions makes far better sense than making them computers though doesnt it? It's already under the tv, and people do like integration, as long as it makes sense.
jc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
The video game crash of 1983 was caused by a combination of factors:
-Very aggressive marketing of inexpensive home computers, especially the Commodore 64, with the theme "Why buy your child a video game and distract them from school when you can buy them a home computer that will prepare them for college?" Marketing research for both sides tracked the change as millions of consumers shifted their intention to buy choices from game consoles to low-end computers that retailed for similar prices.
-A flood of poor titles from hastily financed startups, combined with weak high-profile Atari 2600 games based on the hit movie E.T. and the red-hot arcade game Pac-Man.
-The news media sensationalized both the boom days of 1980 and the problems of 198283. In particular, the story of Atari burying tons of E.T. cartridges in a New Mexico landfill accelerated the change from The Video Game Boom is Boundless! headlines to The Video Game Boom is Over! proclamations.
-The conclusion by key toy retail chains in 1983 that video games were a passing fad (see Cabbage Patch Kids and Beanie Babies for examples) and that valuable shelf space should be allocated to new items.
(wikipedia)
(for the record, I did not like the C64, but did like my Apple//c)
Mullinator @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Well if this collapse is happening then all I can say is "Nintendo to the rescue"... Again.
Pixelantes Anonymous @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
The main competitive edge the Commodore 64 had over game consoles was the availability of, em, "cheap" games for C64. The pirate scene on that thing was HUGE, and back in the day pirated console games were basically non-existent. It's kinda hard to pirate a cartridge cheaply.
When I was a kid everyone who had a C64 had hundreds of pirated games on C-cassettes or floppies. Same with the ZX Spectrum owners. The only ones buying games were parents. Everyone else was just buying C-cassettes or floppies (damn they were expensive).
everdreaded @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Well as an avid video came console collector from wayback, i know for a fact many different factors were involved with its downfall back then. I had almost every dumb concole that came out including the infamous NEO_GEO. Hell I even had that Oddessy thing...LOL!
Anyway, the only thing I will point out as major to the crash before was the companies making promises they could not keep as far as products. coleco promised so many games for colecovision that never manifested. They made a keyboard for the thing that served no purpose other than get turned into scrap. In the later years, every post I see here has held true. Saturation of titles and themes and sequels and concepts that have been outdated for years now but are still produced as something new.
Madden, Ridge Racer, GTA, the Final fantsy series and a bunch of others count on it doing one fundemental thing. IT LOOKS BETTER!
And therein lies the problem. Looks are where its at. Right now Hollywood is in the throes of lackluster films because they have an outdated formula for boxoffice draws. Remakes and sequels are the only thing they can conceive of to bring in a sure fire buck, no matter how short the time before it hits video.But in the end, originality takes effort that makes a product outstanding and timeless.
I hop both industries get it in gear and start looking to the new s#*t. Or else there may not be a crash, but thier will be a downfall we all won't like.
WTF @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Its the sign of a maturing industry. It really parallels Hollywood. They release a whole bunch of crap, but come out with a few gems a year.
Todd @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Video games aren't swirling down the toilet yet, they just haven't been flushed in awhile and are starting to smell.
E-Male @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
This guy is two shades away from down syndrome.
Although it is true that inovation is low...its hard to inovate on the increadible games we have. It seems the only way to inovate is to make "stupid games" like katomari dumashi(spelling?)...(I'm not hating on it, I like the game its fun but...c'mon...its frickin stupid)
And back in the day the gaming industry almost went in the sh**er because it made crappy games (ie ET) at the worst time ever...when people still were very weary of gaming in the home...these games (along with lack of gamers) sealed the industry's fate.
Even if this happened now (nothing but horrifically terrible games) there is such a HUGE number of gamers out there now that the passion for gaming will cool but the flame will never...NEVER go out.
There will come a point were theres very little room for inovation...theres only so many things a player can do for a game. Take a look at movies and TV shows...there are inovative shows/movies out there, but nothing thats ground breaking.
Shagi @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
While I agree that were heading for a crash I dont think it will be anything like during the days of the 5200. Oh well, computer games will always be around and if the industry crashes computer games will only get more innovative.
I agree developers spend too much money on the same concepts and stifle creativity or creative game designers.
The Nintendo revolution is not the answer, since they haven't tried an original idea since the SNES Nintendo is trying to redesign the controller to fool us into buying the same old IPs again.
The game industry is in the toilet, lets hope developers wise up before we go into the dark age of games.
Sander @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
Totally incorrect. People whine about the good old days of gaming, whereas this is the greatest time to be a gamer, right now. The bar is repeatedly being raised, good, quality games are being put out constantly and there is a decent rate of the MUST HAVE games (such as Half Life 2, or Psychonauts). The industry is strong and getting stronger. There will always be crap games, and bad sequels, however, this does not equate to a collapse. Since when did bad sequels fail to turn profits, thus putting gaming as a media into danger? The very reason sequels are so mass produced is that they sell, evidenced in Roster Update 06 (otherwise known as Madden).
Someone at the Inquirer is just trying to make headlines.
Connmann @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
If people weren't so freakin afraid of change. Everyone always says that they want something, new , and different, but bottom line when they go to the store 9 times out of ten they are going to buy something familiar, in a familiar genre, with a familiar title. If the people who bought games would buy games like phychonauts or indigo prophecy than the industry would see lots of change. Developers wont make games that never sell, so that is why it is so rare to see a different game. And if they make one most people have no interest in buying it because they dont take the time to. I am a victim of this too.
ZeroCorpse @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
There was no "video game crash" in the 80s. There was a "home console crash" but not a "video game crash."
Hardcore gamers, like myself, were just playing on the Commodore 64, the Amiga, the Atari computers, arcades (remember those?) and early IBM PCs (Jumpman, King's Quest, or Art of War, anybody?)
Sure, Atari's VCS died. The Colecovision died. The gaming division of Magnavox and Mattel died. So what? We were already playing better games on the C64, and the "crash" was little more than the first of many deaths for Atari. No Big Deal.
There won't be another "crash" because there never was a crash. A few companies had to bail out of gaming, but that didn't kill gaming for those years- It just moved it to different devices.
Reports of gaming's death have been greatly exaggerated.
chudgoo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:38PM
For everyone predicting the fall of EA just remember that
there is a very large demographic that does not *care* about any of this and will shell out $60 without a second thought
......for updated rosters.
Yes, I'm looking at you sports fans.
Even if EA did nothing BUT sports games they would still be successful.
(For the record, the last sports game I bought was "Lakers Versus The Celtic" (an EA game) for Genesis. That was more than 15 years ago.)