Gaming

[ysabetwordsmith]

"'We were there in the 80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier.'"

guess I can get where they're coming from, but I don't think the current video game industry crash feels, specifically, "crashier." It feels worse and bigger, most definitely, which is what they meant, I'm sure, but it doesn't really feel much like an actual "crash" at all, at least not in the usual sense of such things.


This discussion post links to the original article about problems in the video game industry.

Comments

[arlie]

I used to follow game-related magazines and similar, but these days I'm no longer plugged into the industry. I haven't encountered a new game I like since before Civ VI came out - I understand there's now a Civ VII. Instead, I've discovered DOSBox and Abandonware, and am replaying old favorites from the early days of computer gaming. If I manage to get wine to cooperate, I'll add slightly later games to my available collection.

What changed? Well, maybe I'm just too old to enjoy learning a complex system and interface. That certainly accounts for Civ VI - too much micromanaging, in an inadequately explained system.

Reviews suggest Civ VII provides more of the same; it's notable also that Steam didn't even try to advertise it at me, in spite of my insane time accumulation playing Civ V, and my ownership of Civ VI, plus a tiny stable of Steam games which are all turn-based 4X strategy games. I only found out Civ VII was out, belatedly, when searching for information about my recently re-installed Civ I. If the issue is excess complexity, it would seem that my reaction is common enough that Steam's algorithm didn't even see me as a likely customer for Civ VII.

So if I'm right, the industry has consolidated around boring tried-and-true patterns which they try to spice up by increasing complexity. Documentation is too much like work, and the interface is too "intuitively obvious" to document, just like that of cell phones, even though users don't get it. This produces an experience that doesn't register as "fun" even for some long time gamers, so potential purchasers find some other hobby.

At any rate, I had no idea there was a crash in progress, but if my reaction to the industry's products is any sample, it's no wonder. Still, I'd have expected the perennial young male market to still be buying everything in sight, provided they get to kill (virtual) people as part of the game play, or, better yet "kill" each other. Maybe the economy has left too many of them without disposable income?

Presumably the "solution" will be to have chat bots create the next generation of games, since they cost less than human designers and programmers. That will exacerbate the boring-and-stale problem even more. It will probably also result in games becoming more prone to crashes and other bugs, not to mention security vulnerabilities. We can look forward to hackers (a) "winning" game tournaments and (b) extracting all the PII collected by the game companies.

Meanwhile, the computer gaming industry has been a horrible place to work as long as I've been aware of it. Many programmers want to be part of it, making competition so intense that pay tends much lower than elsewhere in the digital world, for the same or equivalent skills. I suspect the same is true for graphics developers etc. There's a lot of unabashed dude bro culture, not to mention unvarnished sexism. I looked into taking my career in that direction decades ago, and soon decided that would be a very bad idea.

The chat bots can have it.