[RZetlin]

Doom 4: End of the Game Industry?

Am I the only one who expects a collapse of the gaming business soon? Does anyone else think that it is overdue? It has happened before, and I can't see how people will keep shelling out $50 or so for a video game when the games have hardly changed since the invention of the first-person shooter.

I complain to my kids about this, and they insist that things have changed markedly. They show me examples, and all I see are tweaks and weirder, mostly stupid weapons.

I'm not the only one who thinks there's a problem. When Nintendo president Satoru Iwata spoke at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, he discussed the lack of new game ideas. He saw the same things that I see: There are four or five simple game categories and nothing really new or different.

The categories are shooters, puzzles and mazes, adventure games, sports games, and simulations. That's it. Most of today's hottest games are combinations of two or three of these categories, with a storyline added to keep the players from being bored stiff. When my kids show me a game, I usually say that it's nothing but the same old running-jumping-kicking-shooting with a new background. They leave in a huff.

Iwata mentioned that in almost all the big games, the so-called boss characters are all beginning to be pretty much the same: big, creepy monsters. If you want to see exactly how inane this is, go out and rent the brain-dead Paul Verhoeven film, Starship Troopers. The movie stank so bad that nothing came of it after its release. It's essentially a video game turned into a movie—all the elements are there, including an idiotic "boss" that is just some huge flabby bug—and it shows you just how lame these games actually are.

Iwata then showed us a couple of supposedly new (but in fact, rather old) ideas— two concept games that will be released later this year for the incredibly popular Nintendo DS handheld game machine. One is a pet dog that "lives" inside the machine. You can train this dog with voice commands, and you can literally pet the thing on the touch-sensitive screen

In someways he is right.

There hasn't been a game in the 128-bit console generation that blew me away -- not Halo or Doom 3.

There isn't a single game which I can indentify as the pinnacle this generation of gaming.

With that said I think this will not be the end of the gaming industry. We just going to get a videogame industry that will resemble Hollywood with its sequels and reused formulas.

 

[Dogmaan]

its gonna turn into a sort of pop culture,where every game is marketed towards the mass moo cows and all good ideas will be devoid of funding, our only hope is the mod community, but even they are being commercialised (steam).

 

[Melly]

its gonna turn into a sort of pop culture,where every game is marketed towards the mass moo cows...

Agreed. *cough* FFX-2 *cough*

They show me examples, and all I see are tweaks and weirder, mostly stupid weapons.

I love this! So true... gunblades, anyone?

 

[Shadow Lady]

adventure games is still a main category???? huh... go figure

anyway Counter Strike/Half Life 2 all the way X-D

 

[Demigod]

I agree that most games are simply rehashes of older games. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are prime examples of the repeating nature of FPS games. Neither of these games offered any innovation, aside from improvements in graphics (at least Doom 3 did a little with its innovative engine). Iwata left out some important genres though, such as real-time strategy and MMORPG. It seems to me that the genres he mentioned are console-based so I don't think he speaks for the PC gaming industry. Not that there's been much innovation in PC games. I've been playing every major release and there hasn't been a game that's wowed me since Max Payne 2.

 

[Syed Fawad]

I disagree with this whine.

I mean c'mon! the point of games is entertainment and fun. AS long as I am having fun playing a cool game, I don wanna get pointy in picking things about it.

New generation provided us with atmospheric games....that wasn't done before. Silent HIll series is what I reaally enjoyed. When GTA3 came, it was great great fun really. Can't say the same about its sequels. The Devil May Cry, is there ANYTHING like it before? Half Life2.....how many times you use the gravity for destruction in games before?

and even if you did all these things before, then with the advent of new technology, doing it with crisp clean visuals in a much more atmospheric setting and with surround sound and lots of cool special effect that weren't before....I seem to really enjoy it.

And then, at times when amongst these you come up with killer stories like that of MGS3....then well, I say games are FAR from over. I think we're just getting started.

*goes to have FUN with DMC3*

 

[MaZa]

HEY! I liked Starship Troopers! (seriously) How he dares to mock such an artistic movie.

Iwata left out some important genres though, such as real-time strategy and MMORPG.

Well... MMORPG (and RPG's general) ARE practically one form of adventuring games. RTS games is a good point though, even if i dont like that genre except Warcraft 1 & 2.

 

[XxCrashxX]

Im not really sure what this guy is expecting
what else can be done to games exept tweaking and adding of new cool features, I think games like GTA: San Andreas/Vice City, and God of War offer a new experience. I mean yes, the principle is the same, just running jumping shooting, but what else is there to games. I dont think its realistic to expect games to become so different and revolutionary, when they are fun as is. Oh as for the "collapse," it isnt going to happen, the business is thriving, especially with all the little kiddies buying all the big $50 titles whether they be good or not, as well as die hard gamers buying the good games out there.

 

[WindHydra]

What's next? Everyone should read summary of a book (novel) instead of the original book itself? Everything's right there in the summary, the original just have some tweaks and nicer graphics And which catagory does RPG falls in? And can someone explain what's adventure and action game?

 

[Dark Watcher]

In some aspects we agree with this guy, and at the same time we disagree. In essense he is correct. The game industry merely rehashes / evolves tried and true formulas, but the same could be said about the movie industry and even books.
Think about it...Just look at Zombie movies..
"Night of the Living Dead" debuted in 1968
Hollywood: "We made a killing with this movie! Put out more!"
Dawn of the Dead, 1978
The Dead Don't Die, 1975
House of the Living Dead, 1973
Return of the Living Dead, 1985
Return of the Living Dead II, 1988
Return of the Living Dead 3, 1993

Hollywood: "Hey..those zombie movies sold well..lets remake them!"
Night of the Living Dead, 1990 (remake)
Dawn of the Dead (2004) (remake)

anyways....you get the point... Books also...The D&D formula has been regurgitated in many forms.

So we agree that for most cases the game industry takes the same games and regurgitates the experience on the latest technologies.
However..here is where we disagree...every now and then someone takes a formula and truly grows something great from it. The bad thing is that either the innovations are not noticed my the majority (sleeper hits) or are abused by imitators who flood the market with the same new formula..

Game Industry:
"Use that Bullet Time thing!"
"Add some stealth elements..it worked for that other game!"
"Hey they got this thing called survival horror making money..we need to add that!"
"That GTA game made a killing..lets copy the formula and add more senseless violence and add boobs for extra kick!"
"Boobs and female looking males sell!"

 

[makotech222]

I thought resident evil 4 was a very good idea. Turned the RE series into a whole new action game. Its adds to the scariness alot with the new camerra views. Plus, have you guys heard about the new game called spore coming out sometime soon? U practically make anything you want in that game. I thought that was a great idea too

 

[CD]

Guy's a dumbass.

Make what you like, play what you like, buy what you like, video games aren't gonna disappear overnight. Kids would have to hate them right now, then grow up and replace all of us for that to happen. And even then, they'd prolly still be around.

 

[Player-X]

It means a slow colapse just like the pre NES collapse where the video game industry was flooded with crap and no one would buy any games because they tought all games were crap

It's not just about inventing womething new that makse something interesting it's also about using what you already have the right way

 

[Aided Onslaught]

I agree, pop culture is going to destroy games...I believe I've said this many times before...

 

[WindHydra]

What's pop culture? I hear it everywhere but always too lazy to look it up oO

 

[Sampah]

>>They show me examples, and all I see are tweaks and weirder, mostly stupid weapons.

stupid weapons? in DOOM 3? I prefer to call it a future weapons, oh and what about Counter Strike? did they using stupid weapons too? unless they are using bananas to shoot, then that's consider a stupid weapon...

>>There are four or five simple game categories and nothing really new or different.

c'mon man, Counter-strike is a very very simple FPS gameplay just like other games in fact more simple, just buy weapons, move to your objective points, saw enemies, shoot them gain money, dead, reborn in next round, buy weapon, move again and so on, but everyone likes it! what's wrong about having simple-simple things as long as the game is entertaining?

 

[Demigod]

>>They show me examples, and all I see are tweaks and weirder, mostly stupid weapons.

stupid weapons? in DOOM 3? I prefer to call it a future weapons, oh and what about Counter Strike? did they using stupid weapons too? unless they are using bananas to shoot, then that's consider a stupid weapon...

>>There are four or five simple game categories and nothing really new or different.

c'mon man, Counter-strike is a very very simple FPS gameplay just like other games in fact more simple, just buy weapons, move to your objective points, saw enemies, shoot them gain money, dead, reborn in next round, buy weapon, move again and so on, but everyone likes it! what's wrong about having simple-simple things as long as the game is entertaining?

And you'd actually call Doom 3's weapons good? They're the same freakin' weapon designs that were used in the original Doom a decade ago. Doom 3 is actually the worst modern FPS in terms of weapons. It uses recycled weapon designs without even one iota of improvement (in fact the shotgun has actually decreased in effectiveness). As for the weapons in CS they could use some more features (e.g., aiming down the scope, bunting, etc.).

As for the gameplay in CS it's a bit too simple IMO. The damage system needs major reworking. Headshots are too easy to do and body shots aren't effective enough. I mean, shooting a guy in the head and in the chest should both be lethal and render the target unable to fight. Shooting a guy in the foot also shouldn't kill the person and a knife should kill a person instantly. They should also put some more realism into the game, such as having your target view waver after running for a certain amount of time or taking damage to the arm. A prone feature would also be useful, and should be correlated with better aiming (as in Far Cry). They could do a lot to improve the gameplay, but unfortunately this hasn't been the case.

You know, I once heard a person say that there are no more enthusiasts in the PC community, and that those who claim to be are lamers, fanboys, or worse. Although I do believe there are still some people who are genuinely into technology I generally agree that enthusiasts have mostly disappeared. Now it's mostly ATI fanboys vs Nvidia's, or AMD fanboys vs Intel's. I think it's the same case here. There aren't that many games produced nowadays that are for hardcore gamers. Most are simply carbon copies of previous games, made prettier, given a new name, and marketed to the pop culture generation. I blame big game companies for this. Instead of releasing a game when it's ready they rush things along with unreasonable deadlines, so instead of having a brilliant game every year we have a dozen crappy games every month. Good game designs go down the toilet as the time constraints won't allow for it, to be replaced with god-awful bull-crap designs and constant rehashes of old ideas (fall back on the general "formula"). Frankly, I couldn't give jack squat for special effects and prettier graphics as every single time I play a game it's always the gameplay that I find myself paying attention to (even H-games; my favourite H-games are ones with good gameplay). A game that just rehashes the old isn't really worth playing IMO. I think extending a previous game would be much better if they were going to do that.

I also agree with Dark Watcher on his observations. The game industry pretty much parallels movies and other media, which is why I've stopped watching movies and TV altogether.

 

[WindHydra]

No wonder my favorites games are two DOS ones And they both got tons of sequals...

 

[Cid Highwind]

>>They show me examples, and all I see are tweaks and weirder, mostly stupid weapons.

stupid weapons? in DOOM 3? I prefer to call it a future weapons, oh and what about Counter Strike? did they using stupid weapons too? unless they are using bananas to shoot, then that's consider a stupid weapon...

In fact one of the most enjoying hotseat games to me was Worms, and I loved the banana bomb
I also can't recall a comparable game that was good enough to beat the fun of Worms Armageddon and Worms 2.

About the article: In one way I am experiencing what he says, but on the other hand I don't think I've played enough games released the last couple of years to get myself a good vision on gaming market. But truth is that I don't really care about newly released games anymore, there are hardly any games I am really looking forward to.

 

[hofmann]

This isnt about good/bad games, this is about a saturated market where imitations after imitations are released just to make money. They are not making games anymore so that you and me are going to have a good time. Games are made now to take advantage of male teens that has a small penis and feels like a big boy when they play a cool character ;P