It's uninformed. You left out the n. When I first read it I thought you were talking about something else entirely.

I opted for fanboys but...only so far as they can sometimes seem unwilling to try something new or play a game that isn't attached to a console. Honestly, the funnest stuff to give a whirl is consistently blazing out of the indie scene.

Fanboys are fine and wont ruin the industry, however fanboys who Flame thier hate will eventualy get an outlet that is larger than a net board and will ruin the industry. If the major media new the things being spewed on boards the gameing industry would have to fight its self out of a major hole created by idiots. Can yall imagine what would happen if fox heard alot of things on boards or accross the internet gaming chats? Chaos!

MMOs aren't going to be the end of the games industry. The only way I can ever see that happen is that if game developers and advertise-err I mean reviewers think that they can do whatever the hell they want with the single-player campaign and that having multiplayer would make up for it. I find it interesting that many of the MMO games that sold well were the kinds of games you actually didn't NEED To play as a Massively-Multiplayer game, you could actually solo your way through. (Diablo 2 if it counts, Hellgate London, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and I don't know about Age of Conan or Warhammer online)

And in fact of those ones I listed (Excluding Warhammer Online and Age of Conan since I never played them) I've actually played through either mostly or all single-player. I've gone through 99% of Guild Wars grouping only for PvP. (Vizunah Square had a bunch of stupid henchmen that'd get stuck behind walls so I needed players) Before I lost interest I went through just about all I played of Hellgate London by myself.

But I really doubt that the appeal of multiplayer gaming will keep game companies from trying on Singleplayer Mode. I'm really a single-player, I never had anyone to play with me since I'm the only person within a mile or so radius in my neighbourhood who's into video games, so of course I had no one to play with.

Sure I admit Co-Op can be pretty fun and some of the most memorable experiences with my friends are when we got a few really funny occasions on Smash Bros or when we managed to get that 752 hit on Mithos on multiplayer. (Considering we managed to stun-lock him enough without spamming Sword Rain _____ and it was on hard I think that's definitely memorable) Oh and Legend of Mana. I'm really not that competitive at all.

I voted for Rabid Fanboys.

Speaking as someone who's studying to work in the games industry, I find it quite disheartening sometimes when I read some comments on forums left by fanboys or spoilt brats with an over inflated sense entitlement.

I can easily imagine how soul destroying it could be to have put in a lot of effort & spent over a year working on a game only to have it unfairly criticised and taken apart by fanboys, especially if they go along the rout that they took with Kane & Lynch for example, posting lots of biased 1 score user reviews even though they'd never played it.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm even bothering to get into the industry.

Shit, I'm already jaded & I haven't even finished the 1st year of my course, let alone worked on my 1st game.

ThePlasmatizer:
Don't be a fanboy, I believe mmorpg's are definitely a problem.

1. Subscriptions fees - there was a 2007 survey on the revenue in browser based mmorpg's and it turned out item shops turn in relatively the same amount as subscription fees.

I also think the usual counter argument if there wasn't subscription fees they wouldn't be able to make the game as good or keep the servers up is utter rubbish, the reason why there are subscription fees is because they are a company and they want your money, they are like the government: if they can get away with it they will tax you for it.

I can understand one time costs but continually paying them imo is ridiculous, and yes I can afford to play subscription based games before anyone jumps on me for this.

Well, this is certainly true. But when it comes down to it, people will pay for what they enjoy. And it's at maximum $10 a month, hardly breaking the bank.

ThePlasmatizer:
2. People who don't like the game but like the people or their friends play it, so in there opinion it's awesome!
If the game is terrible and your just using it as a social networking site then it's not a good game.

I've said before that I play FFXI, and I play it as I would play any other game, I switch it on, I level a bit or I do some missions for a bit or I do some endgame events. Then only person I talk to out of the game who owns it is the person I bought it with. I mean, I talk to people and I get along with them but when it comes down to it, a game is all it is.

ThePlasmatizer:
3. Most mmorpg's aren't fun - I used to play mmorpg's I stopped when I realized: This is not fun, sure chatting with other's online is fun, but the main focus on mmorpg's is competitive play which generally is more OCD and elitist based. It's like I killed a billion of a monster to get a rare item drop, and when I finally got the drop it wasn't as rewarding or fun as I first thought.

Well, I enjoy the leveling aspect and the endgame events. I tend to cut corners and avoid grind wherever I can though. I mean, I've been leveling Samurai recently, and there are these special gloves you can get for them which increase your attack slightly. But I do I want to spend hours and hours pissing around, killing a mob every 2 hours? No not really. If people get bitchy then who really gives a shit? It's a game isn't it?

ThePlasmatizer:
4. All mmorpg players are evil - Come on everyone at one time has PK'ed a lower levelled character, the thing is with mmorpg's like real life people are nice to one kind of person and hate another.

I remember clearly what happened in a badly moderated mmorpg where there was widespread killing everywhere, just like rl people killing each other for no reason, abusiveness and death threats, and on this particular server there was a day where a group banded together and killed all players of a nationality, the other side then responded with equal killings until mass bannings were in effect.

Mmorpg's aren't the devil of gaming but I think they have committed sins against gaming.

Well, I haven't encountered anything like that. There are a lot of... jaded people shall we say that get thier kicks by thinking "oh I'm a better Paladin than you, I'm therefore more awesome" but they can be easily ignored. Luckily, SE have made it impossible to MPK people unless the other person did something totally retarded.

In conclusion, I agree with you that MMO games are a bad thing if you let them get out of hand, but if just treat it as any other game then I don't see any harm done.

k3v1n:
I think rabbid fanboys are ruining the gaming industry..such as *twitch* myself..*gears of war* *twitch**chainsawwssszaza BLOOD*

Please, show yourself out of the window.

Anyway, the biggest threat to the gaming industry is a casual take-over. If everyone had the big N philosophy, good games would be extinct.

Number one threat?
BEARS.

Sorry, had to stick that in. I think journalists villifying the entire gaming community are some of the biggest threats.

casual gamers....... at least they are the biggest threat to the kind of gaming that I give a shit about

I vote for EA on this one. Their actions over the past decade
point to an attempt to turn all their games into a service
rather then a product. Imagine Gametap only each game
cost full price and authentication cost a monthly fee.
This is why they have moved to much harsher DRM.
It isn't going to stop at the PC either. Sony may not have
turned on their console-disc verification but it is still a
possibility. This is what happens when you have MBA
wielding money-suits in charge rather than someone who
understands gaming as a hobby.
My personal solution to this is to buy independent or
buy used.

TheEggplant:
Speaking in verse.

Quite the little V aren't you? But you do relise EA have been doing this for over 10 years now? If they hadn't, the gaming industry would be in a much worse shape than it is now. Not to say I'm a fan of EA, but they have done a lot.

Jazzyluv:
casual gamers....... at least they are the biggest threat to the kind of gaming that I give a shit about

Specify, what's a casual gamer?

[quote=]Specify, what's a casual gamer?[/quote]

people who like COD4 multiplayer, those that think Halo is actually good. The people who think the peak of gaming is Portal.

Pretty much all of the really shallow games

It's actually just one ass in South Australia that is blocking the legislation allowing us to rate games R18 but i agree with the blocking us experiencing things comment i want the same horrific violence in my games that you get in the states,

As for that Jack Thompson does anyone pay any attention to the shit he spawns any more, he just has a personal vendetta against GTA, would he rather us all play Pac Man or bloody tetris (not that i have anything against tetris or pac man the both ROCK) but still let our generation be, and go FUCK OFF JACK

I agree with ThePlasmatizer and disagree with the Pheonix Arrow by looking at the bigger picture. Yes subscription fee's don't exactly cost much, what's 10$ a month? Although world of warcraft make like 47 million pounds every month, minus the costs of running the servers that is still a huge profit.

That's not what I'm trying to say though, what I'm trying to say is what stops other companies from bringing this into other genres? If Blizzard can do it why can't VALVe for instance? Then it could become a case of.. you can only afford 3 subscriptions so you have 3 games. That's it. I personally think this will cripple the game industry. If companies become overly profit hungry, they will have taken that from MMO's. Feel free to disagree I'm up for a debate and maybe someone can change how I think? I don't know, but yeah :)

Jazzyluv:
people who like COD4 multiplayer, those that think Halo is actually good. The people who think the peak of gaming is Portal.

Pretty much all of the really shallow games

People who aren't elitist pricks like you then?

Uninformed Journalists FTW, seriously, they get all of their facts wrong. And I don't think they would be helped by playing the games either, they only see what they want to see
Jack Thompson doesn't win because he's unanimously considered senile and rude by judges and is now disbarred

Phoenix Arrow:

Jazzyluv:
people who like COD4 multiplayer, those that think Halo is actually good. The people who think the peak of gaming is Portal.

Pretty much all of the really shallow games

People who aren't elitist pricks like you then?

I love the elitist prick argument... its shit, and you don't know anything about me do ya?

I like games that have depth, and i am sick of what the casual gaming community has done to game development. I don't want games to be made like summer blockbuster movies that are completely devoid of any substance, i want a game to have depth, a game that will still be interesting after years of playing it.

Sorry i think that COD4, Halo, and portal are poor games that don't do anything really amazing, they have nothing to explore, to discover, to master in the game.

Jazzyluv:

Phoenix Arrow:

Jazzyluv:
people who like COD4 multiplayer, those that think Halo is actually good. The people who think the peak of gaming is Portal.

Pretty much all of the really shallow games

People who aren't elitist pricks like you then?

I love the elitist prick argument... its shit, and you don't know anything about me do ya?

I like games that have depth, and i am sick of what the casual gaming community has done to game development. I don't want games to be made like summer blockbuster movies that are completely devoid of any substance, i want a game to have depth, a game that will still be interesting after years of playing it.

Sorry i think that COD4, Halo, and portal are poor games that don't do anything really amazing, they have nothing to explore, to discover, to master in the game.

So, if those games suck, then what games you like? What games appease the mighty Jazzyluv?

starcraft, warcraft 3, Any of the quakes, CS, Devil may cry 1+3, DOA4, forza racing. All games that are nearly impossible to master.... and their is depth in all of those, most notably, Starcraft, quake, cs, and DOA4.

Again, i like games where i always have to push it another level.... those are dieing

Jazzyluv:
starcraft, warcraft 3, Any of the quakes, CS, Devil may cry 1+3, DOA4, forza racing. All games that are nearly impossible to master.... and their is depth in all of those, most notably, Starcraft, quake, cs, and DOA4.

Again, i like games where i always have to push it another level.... those are dieing

Heh. Find me depth in DOA4 please. I like the game and eveything, completed it with all the characters, but OMG! HITOMIS MAKING A SALAD. She dropped it though. That crazy Hitomi. Where is there any scope for depth in Forza? And how is there more depth in Quake and CS than Halo?
I don't mean to sound harsh but I find you painfully hypocritical. It just seems to me that the cool kids aren't allowed to play games because you played them first.

ThePlasmatizer:

4. All mmorpg players are evil - Come on everyone at one time has PK'ed a lower levelled character, the thing is with mmorpg's like real life people are nice to one kind of person and hate another.

*raises hand*
Nope, never done it. And I used to play MMOs quite a lot. I never PK'd. Closest to it was in Flyff with the duels, for which both parties had to agree before you could fight each other. I did a little of that, but that's consensual duelling, not PKing.

I voted for fanboys, because I have a skewed view on what "gaming" is. In my view, enjoyment is the only prerequisite for a game to be "good", and no matter what the situation you can find fun games if you look. So I think rabid fanboys who ruin the fun for others are the biggest threat to gaming, or at worst the closest thing TO a threat.

There is no threat to the gaming industry.

All of you people are fucking paranoid.

There are many issues with gaming in general at the moment, we are in strange and rough times.

I really hate the way gaming has become a war between consoles. Ok its always been a competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo but it really has become very ugly the last few years. The gaming media is very much to blame for this, they are becoming worse than shitty tabloid newpapers but they love it because it sells magazines and generates pageviews.

PC gaming has had a rough few years for many reasons like Vista/DX10 being a failure and because of the console wars. Microsoft only cares about its xbox360 at the moment and is neglecting the PC Gaming market which is a serious mistake. This also ties to lazy developers like EPIC Games getting shoddy on the PC side, then getting all huffy when UT3 doesn't sell. So they decide to stick with the Gears series. You also get developers just porting over shoddy and/or dumbed down versions of console games.

Then you get EA fucking things up also with DRM, making the game screw up and having terrible restrictions which has only been making it more likely for people to pirate the bloody game. People who are pirating Spore had no issues with a cracked DRM free version compared to the real customers getting fucked over. (many people on this forum had issues)

Thankfully things are finally looking up now, developers are working better with cross-developed/ported games like Fallout 3 for example. They said it won't have any the retarded UI, dodgy font sizes and dumbed down problems that Oblivion had.

Piracy on PC AND consoles is an issue but its always been around and its not going away so it shouldn't be used as an excuse by developers and publishers. DRM isn't the answer, you just have to give a reason why somebody shouldn't pirate the game. Valve has a good way of doing it with Steam, not because it has strong security but because they have built a strong community, regular updates, free content and value for money.

One thing thats going to be interesting with PC Gaming soon is free web-based games like Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes. (EA doing something smart for a change!?) Its likely we are going to see alot of them soon.

Another problem with gaming i find that the consoles are in a strange position right now. How long is this generation of consoles going to last? Can they afford other jump and when will it happen?

Ea will turn the gaming into the movie industry. Same with activison blizzard conglomerate.

Australia is only one country.

Lawyers are as bad as the companies that employ them (See:EA)

Journalists will only ruin little timmys chance of getting GTA for his 4th birthday.

MMO's and Fanboys have been here for a long time without ruing the industry.

You forgot the greatest threat not just to gaming, but to America itself:

BEARS.

All kidding aside, however, MMOs are taking singleplayer in their grip like a boa constrictor and squeezing the very life out of it. EA's John Riccitiello (sp?) has gone on record as saying he won't greenlight a game that doesn't have a significant online component (even if it's as mundane as the shared content in Spore). XBox Live has marginalized the lone gamer on Microsoft's platform and Sony and Nintendo have gotten in on that action as well. You can't disconnect as a gamer these days, even as a singleplayer one, because the industry standard has become to release games half-finished knowing that players will always be there to download updates---the code's been built into the games themselves.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play Port Royale 2, a true singleplayer classic that has never once in its life required an Internet connection (the retail version didn't need patching and there's no MP at all.)

Phoenix Arrow:

Jazzyluv:
starcraft, warcraft 3, Any of the quakes, CS, Devil may cry 1+3, DOA4, forza racing. All games that are nearly impossible to master.... and their is depth in all of those, most notably, Starcraft, quake, cs, and DOA4.

Again, i like games where i always have to push it another level.... those are dieing

Heh. Find me depth in DOA4 please. I like the game and eveything, completed it with all the characters, but OMG! HITOMIS MAKING A SALAD. She dropped it though. That crazy Hitomi. Where is there any scope for depth in Forza? And how is there more depth in Quake and CS than Halo?
I don't mean to sound harsh but I find you painfully hypocritical. It just seems to me that the cool kids aren't allowed to play games because you played them first.

Im sorry, but you have to understand how utterly hard these games are and how much they have evolved. Quake is a game that has been in constant evolution, quake 3 for example came out in in 1999, and the level of play has completely changed how the game is now played. Imagine keeping track of 4 armors timings on 25 second timers mega health on 40 second timer, weapons on 15 second timers to control them from the opponent, the position of the enemy, and what weapon to use when.... all while having to do a complex movement system called strafe jumping.

Cs, because it has been fine tuned into a game that requires amazing aim in 1.6 just to even compete with the strategic element, the timings, movement patterns and all that have constantly changed as players strategies, skills, and overall timing and teamwork have improved.

Doa, because of its very complex and hard to master counter system, as well as its highly phycological play to get an advantage. The reflex and control as well as general game understanding you have to have to be competitive is staggering.

Starcraft is a game released 10 years ago, and we still haven't even seen the limit of build orders, micro, and decision making this game will produce. It is a constantly evolving medium. The skill, and creativity needed to be truly amazing at this game is unparalleled.

Forza because it is extremely hard to master, the intricacies are almost like that of a real car. Again i could go driving.... but of course that isn't exactly exciting is it? It has a very high skill ceiling and that is what makes it a solid game.

Halo doesn't have shit to master in comparison to any of these game, and cod4 is a joke, and Portal is just another movie

edit: you must understand the game before you can see its peak

Half finished and games lacking in content is terrible at the moment, EA and many others do this simply to make more money on expansion packs and DLC.

Ivoryagent:
There is no threat to the gaming industry.

All of you people are fucking paranoid.

Oh come on, you know the counter-argument to this.

"OPEN YOUR EYES SHEEPLE! EA AND NAMCO CHARGE YOU MONEY FOR SHIT ALREADY ON THE DISC!"

I think the biggest threat is Jack Thompson (And people like him) and uninformed journalists.

Basically, both are doing the same thing: Spreading complete lies to further their own gain. With Thompson and people like him, it is some political or "religious moral" reason. For the journalists, it is all about ratings.

The journalists are particularly bad, because it is an example of what I HATE about the media: The concept of pulling things out of your ass just for ratings. Whatever happened to integrity in our news networks? Oh, I remember. That got pissed on around the time that everyone started dicking around and paying attention to celebrities more than actual news.

The journalists are worse than people like Jack though. The typical American has never heard of Thompson, and likely never will. However, when someone like Fox News shits out a steaming pile of lies and misinformation then people take notice. The Fox segment on Mass Effect is proof, as they based EVERYTHING they knew about the game off of a rant by some bigot looking for attention. Worse yet, they bring in a woman who has never even see a video game before as some sort of "expert" for a debate about Mass Effect and how bad and distasteful it is. Now, anyone who has ever played or done research about the game would see that it was all a load, but the average non-gamer American would listen to all this stuff about Mass Effect being a "porn simulator" featuring "full digital nudity," "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived," and "violent orgasmic rape," and be really concerned. This makes the game look very bad, and smears the name of the industry just because someone with an agenda started spreading rumors on the Internet and a group of ignorant journalists find it, think it will make a juicy story, and run with it without bothering to check their sources and do research...something that any respectable journalist SHOULD be doing instead of wanking off to potential ratings.

Really, this is just like someone making up a story about how a respected local surgeon rapes his female patients when they are under anesthesia and putting it on the nightly news. It smears that person's image by spreading outright lies for everyone to hear. Now, some might argue that a news network spreading lies about a video game for ratings is no where near as bad as that example, but really, it is. You have to remember that some of us work in the industry for a living, and when news networks spread lies about games or the game industry, it hurts us. Not mentally, mind you, I think some of these things can be rather hilarious, but then we have to deal with all the potential backlash and outrage based on something that just isn't true. Now we have to deal with the random angry mother groups and intolerant religious fanatics ragging on us because they heard a bunch of lies on Fox News.

It also hurts gamers, because now we have to watch what we do or put into games to avoid random hate. Which is pointless anyway; a lot of these people just make up random bullshit and get it passed off as fact.

In any case, uninformed journalists are one of the biggest threats to the game industry. People listen to what they hear on the news, even if it is bullshit they made up or spun from half-truths to make a potential rating booster. The more lies are spread about the industry or certain games, the longer the general public will have negative opinions about them. That in turn means that games will be everyone's favorite whipping boy for longer because it is easier to manipulate the masses to hate something they have a negative opinion about in the first place than to attack something that people have a better understanding of.