the community |
 |
17.6% (109) |
large corporations (like EA. Activision) |
|
44.1% (274) |
mobile (and casual) gaming |
|
3.9% (24) |
critics |
|
1% (6) |
the media |
|
6.4% (40) |
other |
|
13% (81) |
none. The industry is moving at its own pace, and nothing is holding it back. |
|
13.8% (86) |
Poll: What is holding gaming back, as an industry? Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT | |
I can understand and respect that position. I guess I should have elaborated. My main problem is that many games are really trying to copy that exact same feeling as CoD. I enjoy a good, simple to pick up and just play game where I can just relax as well. But I don't want every single game to avoid any challenge to it can attempt to be more like a more popular game. That's what seems to have happened. And it's too bad. That's the nice thing about difficulty levels though. It can allow games to allow that more badass feeling for those who desire it. I'm thinking of going through the ME series on easy recently to play through the story as myself instead of trying to get the good endings. The reason why I mention this is because I wouldn't bother if not for difficulty. Changing difficulty allows people to play for whatever they want. Challenge, story, or relaxation. | |
What? I'm pretty sure that even if you have a really nice graphics card, heavy graphics games can be pretty graphics intensive. As I'm always hearing about CPU being a bottleneck in games, just because of graphics. Bleh, PC gaming talk, gross. Well I hope somebody can put all that computing power to good use. Because that hasn't much happened, in my experience. Because when playing the new games, I don't usually feel that impressed. Some new games are impressive to me, but it's rare.
2D games are the real games.>:( Seriously, I hope that was a joke. Considering 2D games as lesser games is really.. pathetic. There's no merit that 3D games have over 2D ones. And I long for the 2D era. Those were better times as far as I'm concerned. | |
Producers and publishers. Businessmen who know nothing about games but make all the decisions. | |
Honestly I'd say that the current console gen IS holding us back. I kinda doubt anyone will read this or care so let me know if you want the details. I'd be more than happy. | |
Oh yeah that thing which is making gaming more widely accessible and thus more accepted by the rest of the world (kind of important since people are trying to this day to pass laws outlawing the games we love and while not succeeding they have not been entirely dismissed by the people who make decisions) and is bringing in more investment into the industry as it makes many of the larger games we enjoy financially viable. If you disagree with that then you are simply blind to reality. Then there is the fact that gaming is not being ruined by consoles and I would like you to elaborate on your infantile comment on how you think it is harming the industry/holding it back. Also just because you do not enjoy something doesnt mean the entire industry is being held back maybe you just need to accept things change and you wont always like it yourself. | |
Heh, making your entrance with a boom I see my friend. Good to see you making such an impression already =P ...please skype me when your internet is back I'm so lonely. | |
He means the hardware. If there were no consoles things would advance very quickly. Sure gaming would become very expensive, but the devs would all be chasing the ever receding hardware limits. however, I think this only leads to graphical and mechanical advancements. Being stuck with the same hardware pushes devs to do the best they can with it and once they've done that you get more innovation and ideas in other areas. Ea and Activision are holding the industry back in my eyes. Churning out the same shit over and over each year and I can't help myself but buy them. I can't help it. I really like CoD. | |
Doesn't that mean that the community is holding the industry back because they keep buying it. After all if the customers demanded innovation then the publishers would have to release innovative games to make money. | |
The community, it's age as a medium and the lack of respect from critics. | |
The unhealthy obsession with graphics, the unwillingness of the mainstream industry to try new stuff (aside from new ways to fry our GPU's that is), the cookie cutter money making generic games... (wow, added alliterative appeal) But, all is not lost, for there is the indie market, for us pretentions snobs who just know that the mainstream is beneath us. | |
Hmm. You raise a clear and logical point. However, it doesn't excuse them from doing it! I don't want a new CoD every year. I want new and better CoD, and each time I buy one it's with the hope that it is. | |
Now, I voted the media who label us as future murderers because we like something with less violence and sex than your average daytime TV show. But I've noticed a weird hate to CoD. I don't like it as I prefer games with more story but it is actually 'pulling the industry forward'. Why? Because it introduces people to video games. I can guarantee that your first gaming experience is on a 'casual' game. | |
They will do what ever makes them money, with big companies like that that is what they are supposed to do, the are obligated to make profitable games not necessarily good games. As a consumer you are supposed to make logical choices that will encourage the practices you would like to see. If people don't want to buy the same game every year they need to stop buying the same game every year. | |
Other: The costs. The costs to make a high-profile triple-A PS3 are exponentially larger compared to making a high-profile PS1 game back in the day. The closest would be to blame the Community for their taste in games (why don't they all like experimental stuff rather than the big mainstream titles) but blaming taste is really pointless. The industry being held back is inevitable. It occurs in all entertainment industries. | |
Why? Is there some rule that says it has to be held back by something. Because last time I checked, it seemed to be striving. With each year of video games, I find I'm looking forward to more and more games. If CoD was holding gaming back, it wouldn't have such a large fanbase. It just means you don't like the flavor of the day. So in essence, you're shit out of luck until the next big thing entices you. And then you're the one that's gonna be holding gaming back. Community? I don't see how being a dick can somehow hold back an industry. The community is still buying the products and fueling the growth of the industry, otherwise they wouldn't be a gaming community. And the backlash at the ME3 ending is only a good thing in my eyes, so there's that. Mobile gaming? That's really an option here? I'm not even sure how people actually think that holds back the medium. It's only grown larger because of mobile gaming. Media? A non issue. Funnily enough, the gaming community can be louder than the media, as they've done on multiple occasions. Gaming is stronger as an industry than it has ever been before. Not to mention we're right on the verge of the next generation. | |
People's opinions on gaming is the biggest thing holding us back. Small little generalizations like "all gamers are scruffy neckbeard virgins that have no lives" and that "all fans are entitled little shits" and "all companies are criminal masterminds that steal your money because 'art'" things of that nature..... People just don't understand why its the same as any other hobby ever. | |
For the first part, read the rest of my original post. But as it seems you can't do that, the tech used for consoles is always outdated by the time it is put on the market. If they make a more powerful console then we will get better graphics, improved physics, better ai, bigger game worlds etc. For the second part, of course better tech won't 'create' better games. It will however lift alot of the restrictions that current developers are working with. Better tech would give them the chance to do things bigger and better. It doesn't mean that they will but the option is there. | |
I responded with Large Corporations, but it needs to be further defined. E.G. Survival horror only really worked on the PS2 as far as I'm concerned, I mean Deadly Premonition was not suited for this generation of consoles, Though to ignore all that nostalgic crap, just make the next generation all It is a problem with Large Corporations not being willing (or possibly capable, I'll also note that both the consumer and the producers are at fault with the I mean I think Fallout New Vegas is a lot better than Fallout 3, just because Uhm... Yeah! I think that's all I have to say. Probably not worth all the effort | |
Large companies who are too fixated on making money which slowly leads to an abundance of DLC of content which should have already been in the game to begin with I've got another rant for the lack of innovation and new ideas but frankly I can't be arsed typing anymore. I may bring it up later... | |
On the one hand, as tech advances, production costs go down. I bought an I7-2600K for 1/2 the price my buddy paid for a I7-970 and it is about as fast if not faster. For what my buddy did pay, there is a new 2211 architecture. RAM now costs next to nothing. But, HD games take twice as much time to make and cost nearly twice to make as did their non-HD counterparts. As the tech improves and gets cheaper, driving production costs down, demand, thankfully, for even better looking games. | |
i am from the shadows i lurk. i thought up the idea of selling sports games year after year. i make sure all protagonists have short brown hair. i spawned controversy over violence and sex in games. i make sure all games have at least one female whose role is nothing more than to look sexy. i fund sequels of shitty games, then go online to organize boycotts that always fail. i steal unique ideas then cluster them with the generic brown/ gray colors and tired themes. | |
Large budgets and focus on a production process streamlined for a large workforce to work in parallel. AAA games are basically made as sausages in a factory. Thats good for economic efficiency and makes large budget games possible, but it's not good for creativity. I sometimes notice that 'Game director' and 'Game producer' is the same title. I think the gaming industry could do well by having someone in charge of artistic vision that doesn't need to bother too much with practical limitations. As a side effect of the factory production method, games use pre-rolled engines that are limited in what they can do. The good old fashioned game programmer who designs and implements a game engine for a specific purpose seems almost gone now. If an existing engine can't do the job, the game will not be made.
I'd say the opposite is the case. As tech improves production cost goes up, because it takes more people to fill out the tech. When consumers buy a brand new gaming rig, they don't want games with a look and feel of last year, they want games that use the tech. Thats also why I think the least thing we need is more generations of hardware, because the limiting factor is in software design. Some people mentioned that better tech could mean better AI, but in fact our current tech is far ahead of what can effectively be used. Because designing AI that takes advantage of the tech is much more time consuming and expensive than developing the hardware. | |
On a business and artistic sense NOTHING is holding back the games industry. More people than ever are making indie games, while the AAA titles are making more money than they ever had. Even people who have been shot down by publishers are using Kickstarter to fund their games! On a technological sense though, I think it has gotten to the point where our current gen is starting to slow down our development on graphics and AI and possible technological innovations. It's only really getting to be an issue now because this generation has gone on for more than long enough, and it's really starting to show. None of your options are holding the industry back but pushing it foward. | |
big companies, i guess... indie devs is where all the innovation lies these days... my opinion anyway | |
Right now, the publishers. They really are screwing the pooch. I remember reading a statement from some bigwig at Capcom recently, commenting on the latest Resident Evil game. When asked about the franchise's change in direction from horror to action, he said that they'd looked at the figures pulled in by the likes of Call Of Duty and Battlefield, and didn't feel that a pure horror title would be able to pull in those sorts of figures, hence why they were switching the series to a more cinematic, action packed dynamic. Here's the interview in question. This mindset, more than anything else, is responsible for the absolutely atrocious direction in which AAA gaming has gone in the last few years. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money. Businesses need to turn a profit after all, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make a return on your investment. But this "Maximum potential profits" mentality that has taken hold of the industry goes way beyond that. Simply because one gaming series has managed to pull in record breaking numbers, publishers across the board now feel that they need their games to emulate Call Of Duty. Hence why Ubisoft is releasing the Assassins Creed games on an annual basis, why EA seems intent on rebranding all their shooter IPs as modern military blockbusters, and why Capcom is intent on changing the very identity of one of its most beloved franchises to something deemed more profitable. Fifteen years ago, this problem didn't exist. Sure, there were triple AAA titles like Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, etc, but they didn't exist to the detriment of other, more niche games. Squaresoft, that golden titan of RPGs, saw fit to publish both the mega-successful FF7 and the incredibly niche Vagrant Story on the PS1, as well as a whole host of other innovative, wildly inventive titles. Fifteen years ago, niche games were recognised by publishers as having their place and being worth investing in. Nowadays, if its not pulling in mega-millions of dollars, then its seen as not even worth pissing on. If you don't believe in the innovation and creativity that used to exist in the industry, ask yourself this. Take any third person shooter out on the market right now, and look at the way it plays. In the vast majority of cases, they will all follow the same template: press A to run/dive into cover, shoot at enemies from behind chest high walls, hold left trigger to zoom in your reticule... Gears, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Army Of Two, they all follow the same fucking template. First person shooters are just as bad now, with every shooter seemingly taking COD's gameplay, and maybe adding a new ability or twist here and there. We live in a generation of identikit games, when not even ten years ago we still has mainstream developers doing wildly different things within genres. Look at Halo and Timesplitters, and tell me they play in anyway near the same way. Or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Brute Force. Or Metal Arms: Glitch In The System and Scrapworld. People who say that gaming now is better than it has ever been strike me as gamers who never got to experience the vibrancy and unpredictability of the previous generations. Nowadays, you can pick out a game from the shelf and have a pretty good idea of how it'll play, just from the box art. Ten-fifteen years ago, you could choose a game from the shelf, and it could be anything. | |
I'd say the community. As a specific example to point to, look at how the community is snuffing out innovation and risk-taking. We piss and moan when we're handed the same bland, cliche format or story or ending, yet when the industry tries to give us something new we say "Holy shit what the fuck were you guys thinking you're ruining my game that you all made!" We need to be more open to new ideas and not just say that we are. | |
Guys like this. 'Nuff said.
You know, sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on this planet who remembers COD4 exists. Nuke scene? Intro bullet to the head? Pripyat? Hello? COD has done WAAAAAAAAY more to help gaming as an art from than it ever has to hurt it. Twilight has never had a single entry worthy of literary merit. Transformers as a movie series only really has artistic notability as the final great sellout for Orson Welles before his fat ass bit the dust, and went to a place filled with Misses Pelles Fishsticks. COD is not Twilight, and it is not Transformers.
From becoming a completeley niche hobby, catering to the minority and only extremely rarely turning out a product that can be widely appreciated like Journey or Braid? From having its cultural prescence and signifigance utterly wiped out and being relegated to obscurity, being satisfied with monthly downloadable titles, and once every four years, a Team Ico game? | |
Sony just basically gave a group of unproven developers who wanted to make a Sly Cooper sequel $30 million and said "Go nuts". How do you define that as anything other than risk? | |
I think the industry is doing great, but I do think the focus on graphics over gameplay is hurting the industry a lot, and with the coming next generation, I'm really worried that the new power is going to be wasted at graphics instead of things like AI and gameplay. | |
As the exception that proves the rule? =) | |
When I say "CoD is everything wrong with modern shooters in a nutshell," I'm talking about the current generation of CoD games. Previous games definitely did interesting things from time to time, although I wouldn't go so far to say that they did anything for gaming as an art form. | |
The Community holds gaming back. I'd say the Community is to blame for not kicking Publishers in the Face for trying to control the Market with an iron Fist. | |
Continuing to pour money into Team Ico after 6 years despite their previous games being flops? Throwing away all their rules about online connectivity for CCP? Giving Naughty Dog the green light to move on from Uncharted, basically the only worthwhile treasure hunting globtrotting action adventure series in gaming right now and a proven moneyspinner, to make a zombie game because they wanted to (yes, joining an oversaturated market is a risk)? (Allegedly) Handing over development of their crossover fighting game to an unproven indie studio? Insert other acts by other gaming companies that are similar in nature to these if you feel like, the company isn't the point I'm trying to make. My point is companies are taking a tonne of risks like these these days - risks on a scale far greater than ever seen before in gaming. If you had suggested to Eidos in the 90's that they stop Crystal Dynamics making Tomb Raider sequels for a few years to work on a concept the heads of the studio were passionate about, they'd have laughed you out of their offices. | |
The thing is that people want something new and good, not just something new. Dragon Age 2 wasn't disliked because it almost did something interesting with an unreliable narrator, it was disliked because it was rushed and poorly written. Metroid: Other M wasn't disliked because it did something new with the Metroid series, it was disliked because it was sexist, badly paced, and badly written. | |
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People treating a Beta Client as the actual game while they should be reporting bugs and flaws.
This is generally even worse, due to me not getting into the Beta.