Will another video game crash happen again?

Do you think that it might be a possibility of another video game crash like in 1983 will happen again? Since I noticed that the economy is currently bad and most of the modern games are really shitty compared to older games so it might be possible that another video game crash might happen or something far worse. Looks like history could be repeating itself again...

thoughts?

pardon rant

i've been speculating this since half-life 2, everyone wants to make interactive cinematic experiences with generica but good graphics, and not gameplay elements we haven't seen before. It's sort of a dirty rehash of the 83 gaming scene with floods of casual games in every avenue that play like Puzzloop, practically SWFs on a disc or so, but with 10x the DRM which is the icing on the cake. There is hardly a median of this, the no-plot-nonsense game targeted for the gamers like us is rarely found past Serious Sam in this decade. We're still playing Doom because it's still a game, and not a game with a storybook shoved in your face. That is the key to its replayability, which many recent games don't offer since they want to showcase a cliche'd plot than introduce something never tried before to make or anger the customer who bought it for the hero. It's hard to do that without becoming a limited-time novelty nowadays anyway (like Portal, all the huge fuss it was in Oct 07 like it's the next jesus and STILL ALIVE BEST SONG EVER etc, comes silent toward the following year). Adventure gaming 'died' because it only had one story to play through and you knew what happened. Today, other genres want to be linear adventures on a set path, and this doesn't look too good for the industry. How about those layoffs huh!

Gaming is dying. John Romero had better get his ass in gear and have 'Design is law' law passed in that congress over there before things get worse.

Well there's some rare games that are good... but I can't recall a period where that wasn't the case. There's also been plenty of crap/shovelware put out, and I can't really say that perceived quality has any bearing on the situation (those nostalgia googles tend to filter out the crap of the past, mind you).

Personally I can't really see how a video game crash of 2009/201X can happen, it's fairly ingrained into the culture by now and there's always idiots that buy into EA's never ceasing yearly updates to the sports franchises or Cooking Mama 4.

MikeRS said:

Personally I can't really see how a video game crash of 2009/201X can happen, it's fairly ingrained into the culture by now and there's always idiots that buy into EA's never ceasing yearly updates to the sports franchises or Cooking Mama 4.

Well it gets show how dumbed down most of todays people are compared to 1983 I guess.

Nightmare Doom said:

Well it gets show how dumbed down most of todays people are compared to 1983 I guess.

Much like your posting....

Video games are dying because they aren't making exactly the same kind of games now as they did when I was 12. >:(

leileilol said:

pardon rant

...

I have to admit that we often were not in agreement about certain things but I 100% agree with everything you said here.

No, a videogame crash won't happen because there's too many people willingly buying thre garbage that is produced these days.

Sadly, gaming has gone mainstream so most stuff is developed for the lowest common denominator - and to quickly get their investment back the companies apparently produce more and more non-replayable stuff these days. That alone is enough for me to just rent new games, give them a quick pass and move on. But since this goes completely against the interests of the industry they have to come up with increasingly insane DRM schemes to force people to buy their overpriced shit without any chance to get at least some of the money back by selling the game later.

Sorry, pals, not with me. Old games are better anyway.

Will there be another video game crash? I hope so. The industry's full of bean counters, wannabe film makers and publishers who are looking for new ways to dress-up titles they've been selling for decades - they're taking the fun out of games.

Video game crash - bring it on!

If there will be one, it won't be comparable to 1983: then, there were just arcades, home game consoles and a few home computers to play games on.

That one, it mostly affected North America, and then only certain home computers and game consoles, of which there were an admittedly an awful lot back then, according to wikipedia.

But today things are different. PCs are ubiquitous, the console market and its market share have settled down long ago, plus consumers are much more aware and informed than in 1983: it's just not possible that millions of people buy e.g. E.T. for 2600 without knowing jack about it and then angrily throwing it in a landfill.

Plus, PC and console games have taken quite different routes e.g. you don't see RTS and adventure games on consoles, certain titles are exclusive to certain consoles etc. and plus there's the whole "casual game" market for Flash and Java games etc. it's just not like 1983, in any way.

That having been said, there have been some clamorous flops since 1983, e.g. the horrible FMV "games" from the 90s or the occasional bad title (e.g. Daikatana, Battlecruiser 3000...) but nothing so severe as to bring down a whole industry to its knees. Even the FMV games were mostly done by third-rate video game TV production companies, so they didn't make more than a splash in the big picture (and I'm personally glad we got rid of them...or haven't we? o_O)

I'd say a restructuring of the industry is more likely than a crash. Games these days have ever increasing budgets despite the fact that we are still playing the same games every year.

I honestly don't believe the industry is sustainable in its current form given how much bloat there is. It doesn't help that almost every major game company works like this. I guess that's why casual gaming is so popular, but even that isn't the answer given how much of it is terrible, forgettable trash.

Of course, I could be wrong. But given the way the economy is heading, the boom times of the late 90's to mid 00's are probably behind us.

The huge budgets is a good point, not too many big games actually make any profit these days. But regarding a gaming boom, I don't think it's simply possible to see yet an other "hardcore gaming" boom any time soon. By this point the hardcore gaming market in the west is pretty much covered already and, in the west, the only possible serious expansion for the hardcore gaming market is to somehow turn the casual gamers into hardcore gamers.

The developing countries have potential for causing a kind of a gaming boom, but in their case we'll most likely see a boom of games from local studios rather than anything that will have an effect in the west.

Anyway, personally I hope something bad would happen to the game business. It would be good to clear things out a bit in any industry every now and then.

Well, if that happens, I suppose PC gaming could keep the industry alive (just like it did back then) until Nintendo comes out with some new product to take all the credit (just like it did back then).

Are you kidding me? Video games is like the nation's biggest industry right now. I think there's tons of other things that could crash well before video games could even dream about crashing.

There maybe a gazillion video game clones but that doesnt stop all the retards and a 12 year olds from making mom and dad buy em.

What I find ironic is the flash community is pushing out much more solid and fun games then the industry is putting out. It's amazing the fun and simple games you can produce with a commemerable skill at action script and Photoshop. I haven’t bought a video game in three years or a console since the Xbox but I find the Editing of Doom wads or the tinkering with action script two ways more enchanting as I aged.

In the same note though the hand held flash/java games are booming right now. Look at all the little trinkets you can get for iPone or Blackberry. And people are paying money for them.

The gaming industry may take a plunge but like my roommate who plays any well-advertised Xbox game I can’t see that happening.

leileilol has made some really great points. But like the animation renaissance of the nineties I'm seeing more small and creative teams producing quality fun games and distributing them digitally.

If people are going to have trouble keeping their shops open or buying their groceries, I don't see how the gaming industry won't be affected eventually. When money or work run short, commodities fall first. Maybe the economic crisis is partly due to people spending too much time and money on ephemeral entertainment, in the first place...

People without jobs will buy things that make them happy. Video games make people happy (along with other things like sweets).

It doesn't make logical sense but that's how most people go about.

Dunno, most posters here assume that video games are an expendible and consumable commodity, that eventually wears out, is consumed and needs to be replaced.

I personally consider video games more like movies or music: they never cease to be accessed and "used", so to speak, even if years after. With all those free Flash games, so many freeware titles, the magazine bundles, the bargain bins and yeah, let's admit it, the ease of finding older and obscure games via whatever means on the internet, totally excludes a "no more video games" scenario, unless times become so dire that even working computers become rare.

There are just too many video games around, and popularity of PCs (if we are to view consoles as too limited and proprietary) is unprecedented.

If big-time producers and publishers like EA or MS were to close down or seriously downsize however, I personally wouldn't give a rat's ass. Sports games? Gimme a break... Crysis-like FPS? Never touched them. I've got countless of bundle games each month from PC magazines most of which I will probably never play.

I'm not a "typical" player-consumer, that's for sure. I know many people who are however, but then again, they are the kind of people who are happy with playing football games all their life, so a "variety and creativity crash" will probably not affect them, hey even if they play the same exact football game straight for 10 years with team names' mods they won't notice.

God I hope.

Maes said:
I personally consider video games more like movies or music: they never cease to be accessed and "used", so to speak, even if years after.

I do that, to the point of not contributing much to the industry as a consumer because I can stick to one game for years, but at the rate operating systems and computers are upgraded by the more capable consumers, games are generally less lasting than movies and music, and online play also generates fads that tend to make software changes quicker than among isolated users.

I can't agree with that. You can look at it as older games are like older movies. There'll always be people who think of them as superior and so on. And there's usually no way for people to use the same hardware to watch those movies as they used to so, they get moved to work on more modern hardware like compact discs and dvds. Similar is being done for old games, with programs like Dosbox being created for their benefit.

myk said:

stuff about changes, trends and fads

Then again, I don't give a rat's ass about fads or trends in general. I do most of my shopping at LIDL and the bazaar on Saturdays, including clothes and shoes, and have no idea what the "latest" and "hottest" new artists, songs reality show superstars or similar things are. The "latest" game console I ever bought was one of those 50-games-in-1 Famiclone. OK, not everybody's cup of tea...and I know we can't go back to the 80s and fill the place up with many Jeff Minters regarding videogames. Kinda sad though O_o

@Kristus: tru dat about emulation/remakes. Today there's even less justification for letting older games being forgotten or bringing up the "but it's old" argument.

If there ever was a period in time where I was sort of concerned about videogames it was the mid 90s: after Doom, it all appeared to go downhill with the first shitty FMV/WinG/Windows 95 games, while anything that wasn't "Photorealistic, 3D and CGI Interactive Multimedia" was pretty much equated to a bucket full of shit and piss. Plus, emulation or 'retrogaming' wasn't as advanced as it was today, and yeah, there was a period where I feared that I would have to play FIFA 97 modifications and FMV games for the rest of my life...luckily however the industry took a hint back then and got their shit together and managed to push gameplay above chunky pre-rendered CGI scenes and marketing buzzwords. Maybe it's time they wake up again.

Kristus, older games may continue to be played, with the bigger ones still being sold to a point, but the relevance of something like DOSBox in the commercial field is small. Companies don't make much money out of that. An old movie on DVD, however, might sell at a reasonable price to a considerable audience. Like you say, developers have to make additional software or changes to make games work when technology changes. For movies and music, you don't need that level of adaptation, as they're not tied to technology in such a direct way.

myk said:

For movies and music, you don't need that level of adaptation, as they're not tied to technology in such a direct way.

On the other hand, nobody would dream of dismissing a classical concert or a Bob Dylan song as "fucking old bullshit" because it is not performed with cutting-edge synthesizers or dismiss an older movie because it may be -alas!- in black and white (ok....there are such people but I personally wouldn't even share a glass of water with them).

Perhaps if we stop comparing video games with actual movies and instead try to compare them with trash TV shows it all becomes clearer...which is sad.

One thing I have noticed as this thread went on is respective of our ages- many of the older members of this community, who grew up with doom, hope that a crash similar to (but not entirely like) the one in 1983 will occur to "clean out" the junk and restart; like clearing a virus off of your HD with a disk and booting up in safe mode.

Here, nostalgia plays a role in their/our preferences, since that was a time when a character could carry more than 3 guns and not be considered "behind-the-times", all the while not having some attempted intricate story to haphazardly weave it all together. We yearn for those simpler times when you could just blast shit; now it seems that games are too slow.

People like myself, who played Doom but also grew up with Halo, see it more in a grey-shaded area. Personally, I agree that something within the Gaming universe as a whole should occur, but I don't think something like the 1983 crash should happen; I believe, that we need to take a step back and ask ourselves: what is fun? Why is this fun? What makes it fun? These days, it feels almost like people lie to themselves about fun as a whole.

EDIT:
/rant

kristus said:

You can look at it as older games are like older movies. There'll always be people who think of them as superior and so on. And there's usually no way for people to use the same hardware to watch those movies as they used to so, they get moved to work on more modern hardware like compact discs and dvds. Similar is being done for old games, with programs like Dosbox being created for their benefit.

Newer games - with restrictive DRM and/or online registration - are a different story, once the publishers withdraw their support those games soon become little more than memories. For a generation of younger gamers it'll be a bit like returning to the "good old days" before video cassette recorders, when people who'd seen the same movie - but lack the means to replay it - would spend their time reminiscing.

GreyGhost said:

Newer games - with restrictive DRM and/or online registration - are a different story, once the publishers withdraw their support those games soon become little more than memories. For a generation of younger gamers it'll be a bit like returning to the "good old days" before video cassette recorders, when people who'd seen the same movie - but lack the means to replay it - would spend their time reminiscing.

Cracking a game is easier than DOSBoxing a game from the '90s.

Lots of absurd posts in here.

I wouldn't notice if the modern gaming industry crashed. I don't play new games because they all feel the same when I do. Plus I've discovered that I can't play them as easily in my spare time because I have to be bothered with stories and shit, which I don't care enough to follow when I just want to play games.

Maybe somebody will make a game that totally revolutionizes the gaming world in a scope beyond mere graphics and cool physics, but at the moment I'm not seeing it happening.

Zaldron said:

Cracking a game is easier than DOSBoxing a game from the '90s.

Lots of absurd posts in here.

Including yours :-p

Have you ever tried "cracking" a game protected with Shitforce? The one's I've see there just weren't "clean" cracks for them that would remove it once and for all, but you had to install it nonetheless and then use a combo of special image-mounting software and run-time "cracks". Or worse, a game protected by a client/server setup, which also requires setting up nothing less than a web server emulator to be able to (somewhat, sometimes) play it.

With DOSBOX, I can only imagine the "hardness" of typing a few command-line commands or facing the dreaded SETUP.EXE from another era, but that's it. DOSBOX runs most games easier than DOS ever did (for one, you don't have to worry about memory/driver configuration).

The Nostalgia Filter is a cruel mistress indeed.

footman said:

The Nostalgia Filter is a cruel mistress indeed.

That is something I would agree with.