What I find more concerning surrounds the cost of development. Yes, there's a burgeoning indie marketplace rearing its head of late, but indie developers aren't the ones making Call of Duty or Mass Effect. Those are way out of budget. Combine the increasing costs with consolidation of studios, and you'll get a homogenization of content.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
I don't think that Facebook and mobile gamers have really replaced the old traditional gamer market. Disregarding the recession that has effect software sales over the past few years, the core industry has met or exceeded all reasonable expectations. The mobile gamers are almost a separate entity. They're people like my wife, who've never really been serious console or PC gamers in the first place. They're just another part of that "wide blue ocean."
Now the only real sense of concern I have is with the younger generation. I have seen a lot of younger kids enjoy playing cell phone games, but I think that's more because they're simple games more than anything else, and touch screen controls are extremely intuitive. But I believe as those kids get older they'll likely gravitate to more complex games that require real controllers with deeper storylines and other features that can't be developed in a 2 dollar game.
The Giant Bomb crew are the last that should be talking about consolisation considering their tastes, except that one dude I forget his name. Also, no. There will always be traditional gaming alongside whatever mainstream fad occurs. What's EA and Activision going to do, shut down 80% of their teams to focus on 10-man-made facebook games or $1 apps? How many will they make before starting to compete with themselves? And even if they do, what will those laid off do, won't, at least the luckier ones, continue making games we will love, under different brands, indie or not? Even hardcore PC gaming, for all the ignorant talk of its death, still exists for those who want it, even if occasionally we weep over the loss of yet more franchises that went the dumbing down route. But maybe we're forgetting we have an equal number of brand new toys to play with in their place. Those who call it dead simply are ignorant, and think that because console games, or facebook games, or soon iOS games, are most talked about, then anything else is dead, when obviously what's most talked about will be what's most mainstream anyway, so anything more hardcore, or niche, will be talked about less, despite how healthy companies involved in that may or may not be (Valve, Stardock, CD Projekt, etc, for the PC gaming example). Maybe there will be less "AAA" dudebro type games if a few large companies bail, but I personally don't care, enough (relatively) smaller niche focused companies find ways to make highly impressive games despite the lack of resources compared to larger studios that wouldn't know a good game if it hit them in the face. See The Witcher 2 compared to Dragon Age 2 for a solid example of this. Another such series is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And not all types of games need that visual level. Also, casual games can fail and fade as well, see the musical genre.
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If the modern gaming is "Facebooked to death", I'll just go retro.
Atari, FTW! 
Agnates said:... obviously what's most talked about will be what's most mainstream anyway, ...
Yes, this gives hope. (I think the PC dude on bombcast is Brad).
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I keep coming back to what Yoda and others have said about the increasing cost/ develpoment time of a "big game" -- that is a $60 retail boxed game -- and how that is going to be increasingly impossible for even mid-size developers to support. I can only hope there is some amazing develpment in middleware to help bring down those cost and tiem investment -- but for relevant middleware you need long console cycles (or at a single slowly evolving cycle like what the PC world has had for years).
Someone or other was saying that these STOP/ START console cycles need to end, and that the consoles need to focus more on a console that lasts ten years but has some form of OS enhancement that would support getting more and more power out of the stock hardware.
robio said:...
Now the only real sense of concern I have is with the younger generation...
This is what they were talking about. In my words, how many Solitaire players decide to take up Poker? I'm guessing not many.
I can just point to my son age 4, and my friend's daughter age 3 to kind of show the fallicy of thinking kids who play cell phone games will stick with them. They've both have played a lot of cell phone games. It gives you 5 minutes of quiet in the car. But if you give them the option of playing a real game on the Wii or PS3, they'll drop the phone in a heart beat.
I think the more interesting thing is the transition they'll have to traditional controllers and what the future of that will be. These kids are growing up with touchpads on the DS, motion controls with the Wii, and now Kinnect. I know my son had a tough time transitioning from the Wii's pointer and the DS's touchscreen when I tried to introduce him to a GBA and the GC. He much much prefers games on the DS that use the touchscreen rather than the traditional control pad and buttons.
See.
aspro said:See.
What?
aspro said:some form of OS enhancement that would support getting more and more power out of the stock hardware.
That's a bit silly though, if the hardware is capable why limit it in software just to offer a gradual advancement, when it's likely the developers' own advancing know how that will offer that result, and smarter developers able to take advantage of it from the start shouldn't be penaltised for it.
For the cost issue of mainstream core gaming (er, yeah) it's up to the companies to educate their audience. If they treat less costly games like second class citizens, not marketing them or pushing them at all despite their quality and potential, then it's only natural the audience they spoonfeed with ads for AAA titles only will agree.
Anyway, any smart company won't pretend one or the other type will die off. See Nintendo. Selling a gazillion Wii Sports/Parties didn't stop them from developing Super Mario Galaxy and Zelda that sell far, far less, but still profit.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds while the pessimist fears this is true. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
The touchscreens. Jury is out on your kids until they are older Robio.
Part of what plays into this concern for the kids coming up comes from an experience I had with a 17 year old intern at my old work. (this is not going to be as interesting as it sounds). I helped out with tech support, and usually if someone was older than me, I;d have to give them some hand-holding and walk them through new stuff, but if they were my age or younger it was like, "here's the disc, log me out when it's done installing".
But once this young lady was like -- "oh I don't do computers" and I was like, in my head, "how does this happen" and then more and more that was the case with younger people at my job, and my younger relatives. For people my age we grew up with computers -- meaning, as we grew, so did the computers -- so we were able to learn as we new things were being introduced. But there is a whole group of people out there that see computers as a single part, not the composition individual components. Yes there are young people who are into computers, but like Agnates said, you'll always ahve hobbyists.
So what was my point? I forget.
I think it was something about older gamers and attention span?
^ 
aspro said:So what was my point? I forget.
Something about Leo's throbbing member.
*resisting urge for massive thread derailment*
Massive?? Oh don't brag.
*resisting urge for long and girthy, two-handed thread derailment!*
...
*barely!*
Giantbombcast was talking about the "consolization" of PC games and how only old gamers -- themselves included (those in their 30's) care anymore about such things options as inverted controls, config files etc...
They then pondered if the Facebook games and $2 iPhone games is where we'll all end up in another 15 years, whether or not MS or Sony will even bother with a generation of console after the next one. (This is assuming that everone agrees that Nintendo is an evergreen -- which is pretty much a fact).
Enthusiast gamers, are clearly the minority of the general population and listening to what is coming from GDC everyone not named Nintendo and Bethesda appear to be trying to be the next Zynga, or at least direct a lot of their focus on capitalizing on the unwashed masses.
I think there will always be enough core games around to satisfy the hobbyist, but I think you can easily assume the opposite given this social gaming/ cheap-as toy game trend. Unlike cell-shading or bloom, this is a trend that has money behind it, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon.