The great video game 'crumple' of 201x?

[Madame Adequate]

Interesting article went up on Gamesradar a couple days ago: Could motion control cause a game market "crash"? | GamesRadar

Basically his argument is that the nature of trying to appeal to casuals encourages shovelware (because, as non-serious gamers, they won't go out looking for information, they will just see something appealing and buy it) and that we could become so inundated with shovelware once Natal and Move show up that we experience a fairly serious reduction in the market. Not as severe as '83, but big enough to force businesses to rethink what they're doing quite strongly.

Read the article and discuss! Inevitably rage against Wii/elitist self-procliamed "hardcore" gamers!

[VeloZer0]

I read this when it was posted and found it quite interesting.

Seems quite plausible, though with something like this it is just as likely it could be a shot in the dark.

What I missed out of the whole thing was why I should care. It sounds to me like a purge of all this crap from the gaming industry would benefit someone like me. Sure motion control has brought a whole bunch more money and interest into the industry, but that money and interest is just going to develop more (as much as I hate the term) 'casual friendly' content.

Imo if 'gaming' and 'interactive entertainment' could split the sheets and go their separate ways I would be really appreciative.

[Levian]

As far as I'm concerned there's already an overflow on the market besides shovelware, in the form of an endless pit of FPS, Racing and Sports games. Adventure Gaming has taken a serious hit and it's a damned shame.

As for a possible shovelware overflow, I think natural selection will take care of that since there's a whole bunch of successful established franchises out there that will continue to crank out sequels without motion control, people would rather buy that than shovelware.

[I Took the Red Pill]

Not as severe as '83

dear god not '83 again. please god, anything but '83. that was a bloodbath

i have nothing of relevance to add to this thread.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I smurfing hope it does, then maybe we can go back to real innovations and real gameplay for a couple of years and not waggle.

[Slothy]

If anything crashes, it'll be the shovelware motion control market rather than games as a whole. I've thought for a long time that pandering to people who could care less about games and are as happy to leave when the novelty wears off as they were to join in when the Wii came out is a bad business practice. Software attach rates are absurdly low for those people as it is so there really isn't much market there.

But the idea of shovelware becoming all that there is on any of the consoles is a little over the top if you ask me. When it comes right down to it, it's not casual sales that have kept the PS3 and 360 going so far. Each has a strong install base among people who actually give a crap about games and not Wii Fit and that base will continue to grow for each, so I don't see shovelware becoming the dominant products for those systems, or causing their particular market to collapse completely. Now shovelware may become more prevalent and a little more annoying for each system, but heralding the game industry apocalypse is little more than just trying to be alarmist if you ask me.

[Rad Bromance]

I hope so. Maybe then we can get more than one worthwhile non-FPS game a year again?

[kotora]

As far as I'm concerned there's already an overflow on the market besides shovelware, in the form of an endless pit of FPS, Racing and Sports games. Adventure Gaming has taken a serious hit and it's a damned shame.

As for a possible shovelware overflow, I think natural selection will take care of that since there's a whole bunch of successful established franchises out there that will continue to crank out sequels without motion control, people would rather buy that than shovelware.

There aren't that much good racing games (other than GT and Forza), but you make a good point. The market is being flooded with the same FPS/TPS games and sequel after sequel. Games are getting more bland and dumbed down and too focused on the action, Mass Effect 2 being one of the best examples of this year of a game that sacrificed plot and depth for 'moar gunz'.

While they're selling like crazy atm, I think the xbox kids who buy all these games (and who are probably the biggest cause behind this development) are gonna have enough of them and then the market will come crashing down. And maybe then the PC will shine again as a gaming platform because it's really been going downhill since this last generation of consoles.

[Mo-Nercy]

There aren't that much good racing games (other than GT and Forza)

Depends on whether you prefer simulation or arcade. If you're talking pure omg-this-is-impossible simulation, GT and Forza are pretty much your only options, but if you start to move down the scale toward half-sim, half-arcade racing, you've got Colin McRae DiRT, Race Driver: Grid, Need For Speed: Shift and games like the Formula One sims that give you a million driver aids if you suck. Purely arcade-style racers like Burnout and the illegal street racing-style games (NFSs Underground to Undercover, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer) are losing their grip on the market but games of this niche within a genre like Most Wanted, Carbon and DUB Edition were pretty good games.

But I digress.

I don't believe that the attempts to make more games that appeal to casual gamers threatens the market. I don't think this shovelware is going to appeal to the majority of people with PS3s and 360s anyway. It's like in motorsport when one team develops some sort of groundbreaking new aerodynamic/engineering innovation. All the other teams will copy the first one to compensate. No team gains an advantage. Everyone is exactly where they started to begin with and millions of dollars will be wasted.

As Vivi said, every serious/hardcore gamer who owns a console, even the ones who own a Wii exclusively, are in it for the serious games, not the casual ones.

[Skyblade]

I can hope for a crash. The entire motion control idea was terrible for the beginning, and the sooner it goes up in flames, the better. Let's hope the Move and Natal crash and burn, and take the Wiimote with them.

[Slothy]

I can hope for a crash. The entire motion control idea was terrible for the beginning, and the sooner it goes up in flames, the better. Let's hope the Move and Natal crash and burn, and take the Wiimote with them.

The game market doesn't really need to crash for that to happen though. All it would take is for people to stop buying said shovelware which may be coming. But then again, my mom, who is exactly the sort of casual gamer Nintendo has been attracting since the release of the Wii plays hidden object games, so we may all be underestimating the tolerance level these gamers have for complete .

I swear it amazes me that her taste in games usually includes games that I previously would have thought you'd need to be five to enjoy.

[ReloadPsi]

I could see it happening actually; constant graphical upgrading is eventually gonna make games take too much time and resources to develop.

[kotora]

Except nothing new happened in graphicsland since 2007 with Crysis, and that's only going to be surpassed by its own sequel. These past years graphics have pretty much stayed the same because of the consoles being the bigger platform now.

[Bolivar]

I actually read this yesterday, it's something I've thought about and i think the article was pretty good about it.

I think VeloZer0 summed up how I feel. I hope a crash happens so we can get all the mutual funds big corporate investors out of here and get this thing back to an art/science instead of a business. We don't need video games to be accepted by the mainstream to start seeing quality titles. It's actually quite the opposite, I believe.

Also, others have pointed out how there is a concrete, knowledgeable fanbase of "hardcore" (ugh, buzzword) gamers who know what we like and buy it, so we don't have to worry. I actually feel like a waggle-collapse could be disastrous to the industry because of how much money is put into it and relied on it, that it could cripple everything.

That being said, waggle is a fad, and when the exodus begins, it will be a turning point for video games.

As far as I'm concerned there's already an overflow on the market besides shovelware, in the form of an endless pit of FPS, Racing and Sports games.

This is true and I sympathize with how you feel, but unfortunately there's been so many great racing and FPS games I'm almost ashamed to admit how many of them I've really liked. I'm actually having a blast right now with Bad Company 2 as I type this. I said to myself "this is the last kind of these games I have to buy," but already I know Resistance 3, Killzone 3, Crysis 2 and Far Cry 3 are all games I'm going to inevitably get and play the crap out of, even the new Medal of Honor is looking pretty good. Mo-Nercy summed it up about the racing games, but left out one of my favorites of today, Motorstorm, man I'm addicted with this stuff I would never imagine playing last "generation" (ugh buzzword).

Except nothing new happened in graphicsland since 2007 with Crysis, and that's only going to be surpassed by its own sequel. These past years graphics have pretty much stayed the same because of the consoles being the bigger platform now.

Well it depends. As far as progression, yeah, but there's barely anything aside Metro 2033 that even comes close to that (other than Crysis 2 on PC as you mentioned) so it's kind of like its own little thing. I think a big story is that the large publishers have kicked their reliance on the Unreal Engine 3. Personally that's huge to me considering how literally every other game used it only a year and a half or two ago. Also, I think motion blur's going to be a really big thing now. It made God of War III stand out as a beautiful artistic work in motion, it wasn't the first necessarily, but it's the first to use it in a good way and well. Look at the Reach Beta - it's Halo 3 with motion blur and the results speak for themselves.

Lastly, I think how far developers have pushed the PS3 has been a big thing. A lot of people feel the recent footage of Crysis 2 on consoles hasn't matched Killzone yet. And of course there's God of War as well

[Skyblade]

There is also the possibility that gaming will follow the movie industry. Hollywood has been putting out junk for decades without it killing their business. We'll just have to hope for the little producers who know actual quality.