Games Industry (The Absolute State Of)

You don't have to buy them tho do you? Hell you don't *have* to buy the base game, let alone the DLC of the monetisation in game stuff.

Dragon's Dogma 2 got a lot of stick for the in-game purchases, but I enjoyed the game without going anywhere near it. In fact, I know know about the possibility in game purchases because people were complaining about it so loudly.

I've consistently bought the DLC for crusader Kings 3 because I enjoy the game and the DLC keep it fresh and interesting for me.

The only thing that irks me is the defacto unregulated monetised ganbming that seems to happen in some games. Also have you seen the state of mobile gaming?

I really don't get the obsession with how much money publishers are making. That really doesn't factor in to me when I enjoy playing a game. I've got images of you sat on the sofa, controller in hand, while wearing a berret and a Che Guevara t shirt forcing yourself to play the game through gritted teeth.

Fwiw I'd be quite entertained by the corporate drama of Ubisoft/ms/Sony/valve fucking up massively and making huge losses. I'm not here as a corporate shill. I don't get the way that people apparently let a faceless corporation making money impact how.nuch fun they have in their own home enjoying a game.

Nerds generally are a funny bunch. They will pay £silly for some plastic tat representing some made up thing they enjoy, but at the same time play champagne socialist the minute anybody mentions shareholde value or corporate profits. Culturally pick a lane. Fight the power or engage with shallow capitalist consumerism.

I know it's inevitable, but I dread the day we are an end to physical game media. I still buy most of my console games via cex and trade them in when I'm done. I thought we'd see that this gen, but it can't be much longer now...

You should consider getting one. They're all the rage.

Also you're not denying the Che Guevara t shirt.

It was a present

I am absolutely not. I remember it clearly as it coincides with Uni. So the main Game in the Manchester Arndale is the one I'm thinking of. They'd shrunk PC gaming down to 1 row of shelves 50% of which were those white label classic 90s game for £3. That's 2003-2004. Various things I bought back then I had to get from Play.com etc. because the main Game store had either not stocked something, or stocked like 5 copies on PC and sold them all, then wouldn't re-stock it. Thief: Deadly Shadows, Rome: Total War both fell in that camp and they're not niche releases. I did manage to get Doom 3 there before they fucking ran out. 

Obviously they'd done it as PC Games could either just be copied or cracked so easily and that trade-in was a nightmare.

Half Life 2 is 2004, they didn't get a third party game on Steam until 2005 (Darwinia and Rag-Doll Kung Fu if memory serves) and it wasn't really the main PC gaming sales platform until like 2006 or 2007 (when I was doing my Masters).  Anyway the chronology is they shrunk their stock down massively making the whole thing a massive pain in the arse, or hard to find. Then Steam happened and everyone just started using it because physical copies were such a fucking nuisance before hand. e.g. the uptake of Steam was so rapid relative to PSN or Xbox Live, because the likes of GAME had ruined the physical copy market before Steam popped up so us PC saps were more willing to go for it.

Also Civ 4 did not need a Steam Code to work as I remember cracking the fucker to play a LAN party.

Back of the original box from 2005, as lol GameSpy:

I remember buying the Diablo 3 expansion from Game. It came with a disk too. I was shocked. I think it may be the last disc based pc game I bought. Shame as I liked having a collection, I still do for console but do see the convenience of having digital when you just want to install something but don't have to faff around with a disc and also applying a patch before you can play.

Yes, I will agree that I have noticed the bullshit of not being able to play a digital game if there's no connection which is pretty fucked up.

Digital distribution also lowered the stakes for games being released with bugs. Cos you can always patch them, right?

I miss things like flight sims with stupidly dense manuals or RPGs fold out world maps or adventure games with random toys in the box representing in game objects.

Ah, jumpers for goalposts.

I think the problem I have is that the executives are pleading poverty and using that as a reason to close dozens of studios and put thousands of people out of work. While the reality is those publishers have record breakingly large revenues and profits and those execs are taking home larger than ever pay cheques and receiving the biggest bonuses in the history of the industry.

And when a product or game does fail its the lowest level guys who get the boot while those same execs responsible somehow end up getting another multi-million dollar bonus.

It feels like the industry is on the verge of something potentially bad but its being caused by greed at the top rather than by the devs who’ve been taking the heat so far.

There’s more than enough money in the industry, its just in the wrong place.

Agree there, but I wouldn't hold you breath about that changing imminently.

Again (soz) to compare to the music industry: this has been the case there for absolute ever and no sign of changing. The vast majority of acts bar the very top tier handful make absolutely no money and even technically end up in debt (to the record company). Even when there opens up a small crack of opportunity it just gets dominated by big players who take all the money as middlemen. Live gigs in the 90s (Ticketmaster will take that thank you) or streaming post 2010 (record labels again even though no "records" are involved). Big money will always win.

With gaming I think we're on a path, not a precipice. We're going to see more consolidation and entrenchment, less diversity and choice in producers, debelopers and platforms. It's been that way since the 1980s and I don't think it's done yet.

I assume big publishers will continue to go the way of big movie companies and just produce a handful of big franchise blockbusters each year, and the budgets will be so big that they won't take any risks.

But on the other hand digital distribution has democratized game development a lot, and there are many many* small indie studios putting out interesting and weird and original games every year.

*possibly too many, which might be an issue.

If gaming does eventually move to a Game Pass / Netflix model, that's going to disrupt that market, but I'm not sure yet whether it'll be for good or bad.

Barring that, you'll continue to have some who buy AAA games at full price on launch, and some who wait a month or so to buy them for $5. You'll have some who only play one big franchise or GaaS game a year, and others who buy dozens of small indie games, etc..

I suspect it's getting a lot harder for indies to get noticed these days though, at least compared to the indie golden age. On the other hand, middleware and dev tools are much cheaper and easier to use, porting to other platforms is a lot cheaper and easier, and there's a possible massively long tail.


Also a bit worried that all these dev layoffs mean that the indie market is going to be even more crowded, as all of them decide to make their own game that they've always wanted to make.

I’m guessing at the moment the Gamepass model is still actually paying devs somehow, as opposed to the Spotify model failing to remunerate anyone who isn’t already a stadium act or Joe Rogan

As a customer I do enjoy the convenience of digital sales (in both senses of that word) as a way of buying almost all my games nowadays