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An article on the current state of affairs in the video game industry.


This is an article that I've decided to write on the current state of affairs within the video game industry. This is as much a rant, as it is an informative article and history lesson. Take it for what it's worth.

Firstly, I'd like to say that I am a huge fan of video games and have been my entire life. Hell, I was practically raised on video games. The first game I've ever played was for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (aka NES or simply Nintendo), I don't remember what it was called but I remember it was a top down shoot 'em up game featuring a jet fighter with a laser projectile. The first level was over a field with these panel things that fly at you and I believe the first boss was this bunker that shot things at you. Keep in mind, this was over 15 years ago, and is well past my memory considering that much of my childhood was ... difficult, to put it simply. I also remember playing Tetris (though not very often), as well as the Duck Hunt/Mario Bros. cartridge and Ninja Turtles (the one that you couldn't save, so if you lost, then you had to start the entire game all over again). The next game I remember playing was for the PC and that was the original Doom among other things, and a very large variety of DOS and Windows 95 and 98 games. Then, I had a Playstation and Playstation 2, then an Xbox 360 (which I have had several of, over the years). Point being, the video game industry has changed dramatically since the NES was released on the market 20 years ago.

Now let's take a look at the industry before the Nintendo... Arguably, the very first video game that ever came out was pong. Now this was a very simple game, just get the ball (represented by a dot) over to the other side and use the paddles (represented by a bar) to deflect it. These are the humble beginnings of games. The program was originally designed by a computer coder in the military for something to do while he was bored. That's what I heard, though it's been a while since I heard the story, so it's probably skewed at this point. But in any case, Pong, I would say, had to be the birth child of video games - the egg that came before the chicken, so to speak. Later on, we would then see Pac-Man developed. It was revolutionary because it was a much more complex game than Pong, in comparison. It took an entire machine the size of a wall locker to play it, but these found their home instantly in arcades packed with air hockey, fussbol, skeet ball and pinball. These were what the original arcades were - simple machines with carnival style games, and these are still used to this day, albeit, not nearly as much. I feel these are worth mentioning, because arcades were the forerunner to the video game industry. However, I doubt that it could've sparked the video game industry itself, it was definitely the fuel that needed the spark when Pac Man was first released.

Obviously, as history has told, Pac Man took the arcades by storm and people were lining up to take a whack at it. Then more games like Missile Command, Pong (this time out on public arcades) and Defender began to hit the arcades. The industry experienced a boom not unlike when audio film and color television first came out. It was a completely revolutionary concept, almost like a movie, but actually doing the acting and events yourself! Then the Atari, the first home video game console was released. It had high expectations after people played the arcade, but to everyone's disappointment, it fell hugely short, mainly due to the low quality of hardware and software. Probably the biggest well-known failure in video game hardware to this day, was probably the Atari and the biggest failure in software was ET (commonly listed as the worst game in video game history). Even arcade hits like Pac Man fell short. Atari tried to remedy these problems, as well as newly formed companies like Midway and Electronic Arts, but because of hardware, many of these fell short and eventually the industry was in a state of coma. Many of these companies were considering pulling the plug permanently on video games, until *cue music* DU-DU-DU-DUN!!! The Nintendo Entertainment System was released in Japan!

Nintendo was oringally a company that mainly made trinket games like playing cards and the dreaded TAMAGOCHI (which is actually where Pokemon originated from). But when Shigeru Miyamoto saw what was happening with video games in America and saw the sheer potential, he had the company invest in creating their own home gaming system. It was released in Japan and it was a HUGE success, and eventually made its way to the American market where it revived the comatose industry, with smash hitting launch titles like Mario Bros, and Duck Hunt. Many companies started to jump on the boat and began making games for the NES. Then Nintendo decided to take things a step further, and released the Super NES or simply, Super Nintendo. This time Nintendo would not go unchallenged, as another company called Sega released its own hardware called the Sega Genesis. Although Sega had faced tough snags in the market and has been releasing consoles, they fell short in the 70's all the way to the early 90's. In this period of time, the gaming industry would continue to grow tremendously and we would see familiar franchises like Donkey Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog, Prince of Persia and Mario, but would face its biggest challenge yet, and it is a fight that is still being fought today.

The Super NES and Sega Genesis featured far superior processing capabilities to its predecessors, which allowed more complex games to be coded on to cartridges, therefore making more realistic graphics and differing gameplay. However, the game industry begins to face huge opposition from the law. The first game that sparked this was Duck Hunt, and many complained the use of a light gun was damaging to children. But what really started this witch hunt was Mortal Kombat, first released on the arcade in 1992. The game featured realistic graphics and a huge amount of violence and gore that was unseen in the gaming industry. Other games like Night Trap (which featured murder scenes on full motion video graphics, a common way of making realistic looking games, back then), Lethal Enforces (an arcade rail shooter which used light guns) and Doom prompted a flurry of complaints for angry parents (who I am convinced are just idiots, really, and I'll explain why later). This led to the forming of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) which required video games to make ratings suitable to age group based on the content. Although games like Doom and Mortal Kombat, received a bad reputation from mostly older folks, they were still hugely successful and the industry will continue to grow, as it has now enveloped the PC community.

The Sega Saturn was the first console to use compact discs and it had tremendous hardware capability and featured Virtua Fighter, a game that was the first to feature polygon graphics - a trend that would see huge improvement in the next couple years and further revolutionize the industry. However, the Sega Saturns life would be short lived as the Nintendo 64 was released shortly after. Although it still used cartridges, it was far superior in the capabilities it has delivered and had revolutionary titles like the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Starfox 64 and 007 Goldeneye. I felt that these titles were worth mentioning because they brought new dimensions into gaming. Goldeneye (and Perfect Dark) brought multiplayer gaming into the community. Ocarina of Time, brought story, depth, and scale, in fact, OOT was one of the very few games I've seen with perfect scores across the board. I'll start shortening the history lessons as we start getting back to the modern era, as we can start remembering these better.

Then there was the Playstation, released by Sony. This had even better hardware and its games were on a compact disc, it had succeeded where Sega had failed. This is where games like Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot, and Tony Hawks Pro Skater really got big, but around this time is when the industry starts on its long trek of self-inflicted destruction. This is the time where Electronic Arts, the largest publisher in the video game industry aside from Nintendo, had started its "Inquisitory Period" I like to call it. Games were being published left and right, but they were producing far too many games with quality that falls short of what was advertised. Huge gaming giants like Westwood Studios (who pioneered the Command & Conquer series) and Midway (which was one of the first pioneers of console gaming) were being closed down because they were either failing or refusing to meet the demand of publishers. Although, Electronic Arts has severly slowed its gaming company inquistion, long time publishers like Activision and even developers like Blizzard are quite literally destroying the industry.

History lesson is over ladies and gentlemen, I think you should've gotten my point by now. Do you see the trend? When video games were first being developed, they had to fail, in order to succeed (that's just how life works, you win some, you lose some, but you keep fighting). As they were being developed that got better and better, and the ones that were bad (there will be ones, that's just a simple inevitability) were utterly destroyed. However, we are facing something that may turn the industry into a smoldering heap of ashes that it may never recover from. Franchising, crony capitalism, corporations - all huge problems for the gaming industry. People that I like to call suits have pretty much ousted gamers from the ranks of companies. Take Westwood Studios, for example. They were responsible for making the early games of Command & Conquer, which revolutionized strategy gaming. Same with Blizzard and how they made Starcraft and Diablo. When Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Halo: Combat Evolved was released, they were huge hits. MOHAA allowed PC players to play on dedicated servers from across the globe ), Halo: Combat Evolved allowed people to play multiplayer on consoles. Although both of these games are not the first to do this, they definitely owe a lot of their individual successes to these features. Call of Duty first came out for the PC in 2004, and it was a revolutionary title that would become the poster child of the industry in the years to come. However, take the scuffle that the developers had with Activision not too long ago. Infinity Ward wanted to make quality games that would capture the gamer, but Activision wanted to franchise Call of Duty, make one every year, so they fired the founders. In the wake of this, many of the staff (more than three quarters) left the studio. Hell if you take a look at the Call of Duty series, you'll notice that titles like Big Red One and Call of Duty 3 aren't very popular. This is because Treyarch was developing these titles and Activision was simply holding the sign that said Call of Duty on it. The reason why I elaborate on this, was because Call of Duty was my favorite shooter series. Command and Conquer was my favorite strategy series and so on, so forth. Hell, even Warcraft 3 was my favorite at one point. The keyword to all these things here is WAS.

What's the trend with all of these games? They are huge names, but that's all they really are. We take a look at the games themselves and let's face it, boys and girls, they suck. That's right, I said it! They are terrible! Why? The gaming industry is about progression (hell, everything is), but when titles like Starcraft 2 and Black Ops 2 are being released with very little changed, except a little tidbit here and there, it stagnates the industry. Listen, if I wanted to play the same s---, I would just keep playing what I'm playing. Let's take Call of Duty, for example. World at War, what does it have? Tanks and guns set in World War 2. What's the difference between that and Call of Duty 3? More guns, customized classes. Well, so does Call of Duty: United Offensive, and that had bigger maps and more vehicles. What's the differences in Halo? Very little, it may have a progressed story line and a few more guns here and there, and better visiuals. Other than that, very little. A lot of games out there are following this trend of just changing it up a little and then blowing it completely out of proportion through marketing and advertisement. There is writing on the f---ing wall here people, am I the only one that sees it? Most people are too stupid to realize they aren't getting enough bang for their buck, but the similarities between titles are becoming so obvious that even these idiots who lack any sense at all are beginning to see it. In fact, in May of this year, overall sales for games are down by 29% = TWENTY NINE PERCENT!!! With all the games out in the market, that is a HUGE loss! And the way things are going, it will continue to plummit, because they simply aren't giving the gamers something that's worth their money (or they're giving it, but they kill it with micro transactions and tweaks like Battlefield 3). Okay, I don't mind microtransactions when they're WORTH IT, but when I have to pay for a million things that should have been included already, then that's when I simply refuse. On that note, a lot of games are being released with DLC content that you have to pay for. Why the f--- should I have to pay more than the full price for a goddamn beta?? I understand subscriptions like MMO's, but that's understandable, considering that it costs money to run dedicated servers with troves of players and keep them updated and well maintained. Even that is being taken advantage of though.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Some people have asked if the video game industry is dying. It's not dying, it's committing suicide. It's like a person that is morbidly obese. It's gotten so addicted to something that gave it life, that it overfed itself, continued to want more, and eventually it will destroy itself because of it. Suits made this happen. Face the truth people, we are living in an age where greed is the only thing that will get people through. In the gaming industry corporate greed is destroying our livelyhoods. It must be stopped one way or another, not by making more games, no. That in itself is in inevitability. These corporate pigs have to be ousted from the industry, granted there are some people in there that deserve to stay there like Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, and Peter Molleyneaux ... well, maybe not Peter. Although he deserves credit where it is due, his games have a tendency to promise so much, and yet deliver so little. They were still good and they were big in the industry, but not nearly as big as he made them out to be (Fable and Black & White, among all others) It was likes promising to bring in a White Tiger, but instead brought in a bobcat. Still a feircesome and beautiful animal, but not nearly to the level of a white tiger. Time to step out of our states of denial and ignorance. It's time to wake up and smell the ashes. Corporations that are only out for peoples money should not be developing, nor publishing games (or a lot of things for that matter).

That is the current state of affairs of the video game industry. Hope you enjoyed the article and will join in on the struggle to keep the industry alive!