|
 Every time the entertainment market shifts into new directions, the controlling powers scream about the death of their industry. Each time, they end up as nothing more than a Chicken Little.
You all know the story. A little chicken is sitting under an oak tree and an acorn falls and hits him on the head. He assumes he was hit with a piece of the sky and starts screaming "The sky is Falling!" to everyone he meets.
Eventually, he is found to be an idiot and everyone goes on their merry little way.
Today, we have two such Chicken Little stories posted on Gamasutra. In one you have Colleen Delzer claiming that $1 games are going to kill off their developers. In the other, you have Mike Capps claiming $1 games are going to kill the AAA developers. Both are nothing more than Chicken Little warnings.
When the TV came to the market, the movie industry claimed that it would be the death of movie theatres. Movie theatres are bigger now than ever. When Netflix started offering streaming video, they made they same claim and are still making it. The movie industry are setting box office records since then.
When the DVR came out, television studios claimed that it would end the serialized television show. We have more long running series now than ever. They are now complaining about Hulu and other streaming services claiming they will destroy the industry.
When iTunes was released the major labels screamed that they would die if songs were sold for a $1. They now sell more music than ever before.
In all these instances, the major studios came out relatively unscathed. In some cases such as the tv and music industries, the controlling entities are losing money, but that money is not leaving those industries. It is now being spread to more independent content creators. We have more music available today than any time before the release of iTunes. We have greater access to foreign and independent movies and tv shows than ever before. Today, we have access to more games from independent developers than ever before.
The only threat that $1 games hold is to those studios that refuse to change with the market. If Epic's Capps decides that they are only going to focus on $60 games, more power to him. But I don't want to hear anything from him when the rest of the industry diversifies their distribution and monetary policies to match the market trends and he is left in the cold.
The future of the games industry has never been as certain today. Today we have hundreds of distribution paths available to us when in years past it was limited to the major consoles, PC and retail outlets. The introduction of high speed internet brought the ability to distribute digitally and completely bypass retail stores. We now have dozens of portable devices that play games and the developers can now get their games to the public at cheaper prices. We can play games online directly in our browser and we can pick up where we left off on one computer and pick it up on a totally different computer.
There is nothing to be afraid of here. The future of gaming is bright and full of thousands of people and companies fully embracing the current market shifts and making millions at it. The only people claiming the future of gaming is not certain are the former gate keepers who are about to lose their control.
|
The real fear they have from Netflix and Hulu is not them streaming movie and tv industry content. It is the worry that Netflux and Hulu will start streaming original content. TV and movie companies can still find ways to make some revenue from rented dvds and streamed content.
The game industry on the other hand is run mostly by idiots. Video game companies release a $40 game in the retail space while releasing the same game ( sometimes with more content) for $5 in the digital space. The other problem is the $60 games with 6 hours of content, while $40 and even $5 games pack more. Game companies just devalue their software in many ways. A movie is the same no matter where you see it. If you buy the DVD you pay more than you would in the theater. The DVD usually has more content in it. The movie may have parts cut out ,or is shown in full depending on your service and where you watch it on TV.
A video game should not have more content added at the lower price point. If a $1 game has more content than a $60 the more expensive game deserves to die. Game studios that rely on the retail space create their own poison.
Companies hurt themselves more this generation. They had a chance to reach out to an expanded audience with either the Wii or DS. Companies like Epic snuffed them both. Now the HD $60 game market is going strong and the $30 to $50 dollar market is on its way out. The problem with that is the HD market has high cost and no growth. A few games are hits but the duds can put you out of business. That expanded market was left high and dry with shovelware leaving the lower cost retail space with little growth. Even now most of the software was sold on the SD and portable markets. The industry has itself to blame as it fears the cheap digital market.
Only a few companies in the retail space are secure for now.
There are more gaming markets yes. That's fantastic. Can any company branch out and establish themselves in every one of those markets, who knows. Who cares? I prefer to not look at these things from a single company's perspective but from a broader gaming perspective. The gaming future has never been brighter. It may be scary if you're a company relying on your traditional business but I don't see the traditional business dying anytime soon. I think that the budget gaming market is only going to increase the outlook for traditional businesses in the long run. Just keep making quality games and you'll be ok. The gaming demographic is expanding fast. It'll be interesting to see how some companies are able to seque their customers from mobilesocial to traditional. Reputation is key. Blizzard could release just about anything at this point and succeed... at least until they release something inferior / unworthy of the Blizzard brand.
Spreading a better wealth of game genres to niche markets, at costs the consumer is willing to pay
Or
Having the industry as a whole make more money.
Because similar to the music industry, while there will be a massive flux of niche markets, and genres, at the same time yes the game industry will make less overall money, because people will spend more on other things with the money they aren't spending on games.
I for one, lean more towards having a wealth of game genres myself.
I feel there is no reason why we can't all live within our means, and make games. Simply put, things in the AAA industry need to be stripped, and revamped of how money is being spent.
But that being said, I don't have a family, and am used to working for lower wages.
I doubt that I would change my opinion if I did have a family. But you have to think about all these aging developers, who have been paid well through their career, and are now being threatened with their livelihoods being taken away by us, the young blood, willing to work for bottom dollar, and with the advent of gaming engines, we can do it just as efficiently.
Some companies are too big to succeed (the opposite of what the 08 bail-out rally cry was). If you can't pivot over disruptive change it probably does mean the end of your company. In a historical perspective humans basically have always done the same things, the only difference is that as time continues technology increases and the rate of change (the universal constant) increases. With rapid change what do you do for survival? Stay agile. And if not, it's ok if your company dies. That's capitalism. Start a new one and keep going. It's not that hard, take it from a serial entrepreneur. It's very hard to subtract mass from your company, so sometimes it's easier just to let it fall apart and walk away and do something else. Technology, culture, art, styles never go away but they have cycles of relevance. Heck, stone chisels are still being used even though we have "superior" paper and word processing computing. Been to a graveyard lately? Yeah it's still there. So things like "the PC game market is dead" are really stupid to say. What's more relevant and accurate is to say that the PC market is waxing or waning by say 50%.
a) Development time vs Price Tag : Being "shorter" games means less develpment time in an "Budget Skyrocketing" Era wich in turn means that's is easier for them to adapt their Budget to a Quality Standard in terms of a Adequate Price Tag. It also means you can focus more in realing a game with less bugs ( since your game unit is smaller) , and , in turn , gives you an aportunity for legacy owned bugs to be solved in future episode.
b) Added Content : You can change mre easilly Art content to better suit story or script directions. Creating a dynamic content without directly risking a uprise in bug counts.
c) Market Evaluation : Its easier to measure if a guiven production line direction its given the expected results or not , since you can check if an episode its being sucessful and , if not , change direction accordingly.