Oh the games industry....
What do I have to say....
It's an industry I want to be part of?
Well, it's in a really weird place right now, it's not good or bad, it's just all over the place.
On the one hand, AAA publishers are screwing over customers with micro-transactions and shoddy DLC, releasing sub-par products which are broken on launch with the promise it will be fixed later, Ports being released in shitty states and the trend of annual releases.
Hopefully the industry gets to a point where things aren't as bad, I don't think it would happen anytime soon, there are still a lot of issues and it would never get to the point it was in the early to mid 00's, but I can say I'm at least somewhat happy where it's at right now.
Taken as a whole from my position as a consumer, the industry actually feels positive overall. Sure, microtransactions, DLCs, poor product quality on launch, publishers lying, but the resurgence of indie games and the fact that they have platforms like Steam to sell it on (I'm still uncomfortable about Valve's monopoly, though) is fantastic. Plus, customer feedback is becoming a bigger and bigger thing everyday. Without looking at any facts, the general feel of it is just fine. It's not perfect - it could always be improved - but you could say the same about poverty, crime, racism, disease, war, and all the other stuff.
At the same time, the AAA market is booming with high quality releases, we have a huge number of open world games coming up which are now starting to take more risks. It's a much better state than what we saw a couple years ago where every game was a disapoinment. Games have risen the bar and hopefully we see more of it.
The indie scene is getting some love, with games I'd never thought we would see again given new life through kickstarter (Wasteland 2 and Shenmue 3).
In fact, indie is becoming mainstream. Hard copy releases are coming with game manuels while the big companies would rather do them digitally, that's a weird transition.
One of the bigger problems of the AAA market is a symptom of the one that also plagues movies - safety. All safe ideas, no risks, just copy what everyone else is doing. It seems even more prevalent now than before - publishers haven't done anything really bad as of late, but nothing exceptional either. All the popular IPs are just slowly morphing into the same game because mass appeal, corporate approach, etcetera. Hoping to see even more changes in this by 2017, and will be curious what new ways publishers will find to make even more money in absurd ways. DLCs, microtransactions and episodic content are just the tip of the spear to me.
People keep saying the indie scene becoming mainstream is part of a cycle, but when it comes to eras, ages and periods of time, I don't believe in cycles. It feels like a natural evolution that many was already expecting, really. The "big companies moving towards digital" thing is again another demonstration of gravitation towards "safe" ideas as originally founded by Valve.
The journalistic side is where things have gone down hill. While fans say one thing, gaming sites are saying another and it's going into mainstream media.
I've always said that 2015 was the polar opposite to 2014, in 2014 the big news story was GamerGate, a thing that split the community for the worst. No one looked good coming out of it and we have an embarrassing year to look back upon. The games of 2014 were rather lacklustre from the AAA side of things and the new consoles didn't really pick up much speed. HD remasters were the big thing, pretty much meaning the AAA market were making quick money from games they already released.
I paid zero attention to GamerGate and barely had any idea what the whole thing was about, mostly because it coincided with a period where I really needed to focus on my studies, but I did hear that it was some big controversy over completely contrived reasons that triggered lot of discussions. Something something ethics something journalism.
HD remasters did cause 2014 to be a bit of a slow year in gaming, but as the Zero Punctuation reviews mentioned, it's a problem that came with the new console generation being introduced too quickly for the purpose of making money, therefore disrupting what would have been a steady movement in the progression of video games. I like to imagine that there were a lot of publisher directors sighing a lot during that year.
2015 was a much different year, the games were good for the most part, even with all my rants and ramblings, I couldn't say I walked out of Fallout 4 completely hating it. The Phantom Pain gave me an experience I didn't even know I wanted and Witcher 3 is shaping up to be a game that has set the bar so high for upcoming games. The big news event was Konami vs Kojima and that was a more interesting story. Only one side looked bad out of it and now we got Kojima working on a new game already, the whole thing is rather strange.
Phantom Pain and The Witcher 3 were showcases of the true power of what good developers can do with AAA budgets and without publisher limitations. Well, partially for Phantom Pain, since it seems like the disagreement cut some of the writing potential in it. The Konami issue was rather big. Other than that, safety prevented things from going downhill, such as with Fallout 4 where it was more a case of publishers that didn't want to take risks just sitting there. I guess no step forward but no step back, while the indie scene makes the step forward instead, is kind of interesting.
So it looks like things are on the up, I'm not entirely optimistic about the future, things could fall down again as publishers learn they can release games that are just trying to reach a target audience they haven't before.
Bethesda becomes increasily more vary and could be the next big gaming villain if they don't sort themselves out. EA hasn't done anything to truly piss me off in a long time so that's something.
Capcom at least seems to be trying to mend the mistakes of the previous generation, althrough I don't think Street Fighter V is helping.
Ubisoft is ubisoft, they will always make games that would sell.
I feel like the whole Bethesda issue has been blown out of proportion, and it feels personal here only because it involves Fallout, but in truth they're just making the same mistakes other publishers already have. They'll deal with it in their own way. Many IPs and their variants of NMA have had this outrage before, I suppose it's just waiting for what's next.
Plus, I guess I've already learned to accept that publishers will just release games reaching new target audiences. Whichever one it is will set the stage for the next AAA preset - for the late 2000s it was mostly shooters, and for the 2010s it has mostly been open-world games. It will be interesting to see what would happen if turn-based strategy became the next big thing. Ubisoft making an XCOM ripoff, anyone?
). The problem is the gaming industry's inability to tell a good story from a bad one, Fallout 3, of course being a perfect example, winning a Writing Award for Christ's sake. The industry has made it clear that it will approve of storytelling that wouldn't make it past the first review of a book publisher.
