General
Written by Bueller
The Gaming Industry.
Games, they’re fun right? All about having a good time with friends and other players from around the world. And of course the people responsible for making and releasing such games only have our best interests at heart, right? Wrong.
Anyone who thinks that the gaming industry, more specifically the publishers have any interest in what we think is either ignorant or living under a rock. Now don’t get all defensive about this; let me explain why and what has happened to the gaming industry.
It is just that, an industry. People make games that are great not because they want to play a fun game themselves, but because they want to make something that people will buy. Of course, that’s only fair, I mean everyone as a right to make a living and after all creating a game is like creating anything, an art, a craft. It’s only fair that they make a profit on something that they have put a lot of effort into.
Let’s start with the developers themselves and how they are affected by the publishing system. There are three kinds of developer:
1. The misguided developer. I almost feel sorry for any development team that falls into this category. These are the guys that made great games but needed a publisher. So they sign with some game publishing giant that has no interest in anything but making money. The developer may be pushed into rushing the completion of a game or even splitting content up to be sold separately. This hampers the quality of the game and all the blame typically gets pushed onto the development team rather than the publisher.
2. The production line developers. These guys are adding to the problem. They have exactly the same mentality as the publishers. They don’t care about the quality of the game or what the consumer wants. As long as people buy it, they’ll keep pushing out trash.
3. The indie. These guys are trying hard. With no publisher to back them they are going to struggle to get their name out there. They won’t make any real money but their games are the purest of all. Untouched by the fat cats in suits, they can really go all out with creativity and really listen to the consumer.
Examples of the first category would be developers like DICE. The Battlefield franchise started off really well, but the greed of EA games quickly brought them down. EA wanted to compete with games like Call of Duty for the FPS market. So, they made DICE push Battlefield 4 out the door before it was even finished. This caused massive problems and EA even got sued due to it. But did EA take all the flack? Unfortunately not. Because of this DICE have lost their longstanding reputation within the gaming community. Let’s face it, it all started with Bad Company 2. The signs were all there but we all chose to ignore them. By the time Battlefield 3 was released it was in our faces. Premium split content packs, shortcut kits and budget servers. It was really our own faults for not seeing this sooner but hey, we gamers are quite a gullible bunch.
Yukes would be a fine example of the second in my opinion. Some people may think differently but they seem quite happy with pushing the same thing out and painting it to make it look fresh.
When I think of Infinity Ward and Treyarch I genuinely don’t know where to place them in this.
They show signs of being both of the first two examples. Activision clearly want to push out as much as they can so of course both developers are under pressure with a very short development cycle. On the same token though, both developers could have still done a lot to change things. Yet they didn’t, they let it go on with no signs of changing anything and what is the result? Who knows but micro transactions are already creeping in and I genuinely believe they will be featured heavily in future releases.
In the near future I will cover more of this and my personal gripes with the direction the industry is taking at this time and what I think it means for future releases.