Gaming Downturn?

From an article on ABC News

With games, the cause is more subtle, but I believe it has to do with the interaction of two very large forces:

1) Experiential exhaustion "” Each generation of young people seems to discover computer gaming anew, adopts it with a passion, runs it up to a kind of hysteria, then walks away. The bigger the generation, the bigger the game boom – and the deeper the subsequent bust.

2) Technological stasis "” Each decade of gaming seems to produce one or two fundamentally new game types, usually made possible by technical breakthroughs at the hardware level. These new game genres set the pace for the next boom. But once their bloom is off, the industry returns mostly to incremental improvements in look and narrative line "” features that soon grow boring to all but the cogniscenti.

Point 2 seems dead on to me. FPS and RTS have ruled the scene for the most part of the last five years. All the changes have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Where is the fire that the original Doom or Civilization or Warcraft ignited?

I can see the gaming industry will eventually reach a peak but is not likely to bust. I believe the business fate of the game industry tied to the aging of generations that grew up with video games from childhood. A person that continues playing from childhood is more likely to keep playing, than a 40 year old picking up video games as a new hobby. As new generations start playing the industry grows. Even if the playing is on again off again, it''s more on an individual basis than a mass generational change to stop playing. I may not play FPS when I''m sixty , but I can see playing a game like Civ3.

Also, he''s comparing software to hardware. That''s like comparing movies to TVs. Heck, that''s a good analogy. The movie industry doesn''t have a boom bust cycle. The TV hardware industry is more likely to boom and bust with new tech but the movies just keep coming.

I hope this is readable.

Point 2 seems dead on to me. FPS and RTS have ruled the scene for the most part of the last five years.

Too bad he didn''t back that up with anything, but it IS a commentary piece, so I guess he doesn''t really need to back up any statements.

One oddity from the article:

He''d much rather play Sonic the Hedge Hog[sic] than Halo II -- and that wasn''t true even six months ago.

Now, if the kid is passing up Halo 2 today, I''m sure his friends would love to club him with a controller. If he was passing it up six months ago, I think MS might want to have a chat with this guy.

The author also talks about ""computer gaming"" but uses it synonymously with console gaming.

I''m not saying he doesn''t have any points, but I am saying he doesn''t exactly exude Game Biz Guru, either. I''d have liked to see some backup on theory point 2 as well as a bit more than ""look, my kids are barometers of the gameplaying world at large!""

Interesting if a bit light in the pants.

Edit: Good analogy, Slick, but I would posit that the movie industry does, indeed, have a boom-bust cycle, but it is measured in months, not years. There are the annual monsoon-like deluges followed by the dry season. *cue Elton John* It''s the ciiiiiirclllle of liiiiiiiiiife!

There is some logic to his argument ... but I doubt the numbers bear it out. If the game industry truly worked in cylces, any reasonable author would be able to back up that argument with hard statistics. Perhaps the statistics back him up, but I don''t want to be the one to have to do that research.

I''m not sure why he completely left out MMORPG''s as I don''t think many would argue that this isn''t that next great advancement in gaming and its only really just hitting the mainstream. I can easily see online console and PC gaming contributing to the biggest upturn the industry has ever experienced.

I will agree that I have seen my interest in computer gaming wax and wane over the years but I attribute much of that to events outside of gaming and not a result of ""experiential exhaustion"".

I''m not sure why he completely left out MMORPG''s as I don''t think many would argue that this isn''t that next great advancement in gaming and its only really just hitting the mainstream. I can easily see online console and PC gaming contributing to the biggest upturn the industry has ever experienced.

Most industry analysts will tell you the the MMOG market has been a huge dissapointment and has really failed to live up to the ""hype"" It''s growing but far slower than many were predicting...and actually quite differently..

Xbox Live for instance is a bigger success than SWG, COH, and the rest of the MMOG''s launch in the last 18 months combined.

It seems an awful lot like he''s saying ""I don''t play games any more; therefore, the gaming industry is about to crater!"" He generalizes about the future of the gaming industry from a tiny handful of very subjective data points and acts as if these ""rules"" were set in stone. He insists that the gaming industry is on a five-year cycle, then produces absolutely no empirical data to support that point. He brings up some interesting theories and analysis, but doesn''t support them with cold hard facts, rendering them mostly worthless.

I''m not saying he''s wrong (the fact that both Sony and Microsoft are losing big bucks at this point, and PC games have seen their market share drop dramatically, points to some serious problems in the industry), but he needs to have some facts/figures if he wants to convince people.

In other words, at only 13, he is already a classic gamer. Yet, in the last six months, I''ve noticed that he has begun to drift away from games. Sure, he plays the new ones when they appear, be it Medal of Honor or Doom, and he has already pre-ordered Half-Life 2, but the fire is gone. These days, his high-powered Alienware game computer is used just as often for downloading music or movie files, or surfing the Web. He is leaving games behind "” I suspect within a year, he''ll stop playing altogether, returning to gaming perhaps in some university student center five years from now.

Yes, why would a 13-year-old boy be thinking about anything other than playing games?

Yes, why would a 13-year-old boy be thinking about anything other than playing games?

Umm, Ninjas?

If by ""ninjas"" you mean ""suddenly curvy and bumpy 13-year-old girls"" then I think you are exactly right.

Too bad he didn''t back that up with anything, but it IS a commentary piece, so I guess he doesn''t really need to back up any statements.

Teach me to make blanket statements. Perhaps I was bit hasty and should''ve weasel-worded it as ""FPS and RTS seems to have ruled the scene for the most part of the last five years."" (And while I''m at add RPGs to that statement).

More telling in my view is the shrinking space that is now given to PC Gaming in retail establishments. For example, at the local EB five years ago an entire wall was devoted to PC Gaming. Over that time it has shrunk to a 1/3 of the size with a chunk of that taken up by used games. And of those games, to my jaded eye, it appears to be more of the same – the alphabet soup of FPS, RTS, and RPG. Today the store is dominated by consoles (which I have no love for - just can''t stand the controllers).

The article tapped into a general feeling of ennui I''ve been experiencing of late with PC Gaming. And although it pains me to say this it just doesn''t feel as fun as it used to, especially single player (Multiplayer with Teamspeak however is a blast and something I wish I had more time for). I think the downturn, the lack of anything really new, and my own aged cranky nature are just catching up with me and putting me in a gaming rut.

Teach me to make blanket statements. Perhaps I was bit hasty and should''ve weasel-worded it as ""FPS and RTS seems to have ruled the scene for the most part of the last five years.""

You misundertand me - the AUTHOR of the article didn''t back up his Point 2 with anything. You used the word ""seems"" in your original, clearly indicating it as anecdotal. The author, while the piece itself was marked as commentary, spoke as though his theories were obvious facts that needed no backup.

While I may agree that the theories are interesting and viable, I was merely pointing out that the article author did a bad job, IMO, of making it clear he was writing an anecdotal theory.

Your statement was just fine by me.

"duckilama" wrote:

If by ""ninjas"" you mean ""suddenly curvy and bumpy 13-year-old girls"" then I think you are exactly right.

Boy this really takes me back to when I was 20

Ducki, thanks for the clarification. See you in the hills for some JO tonight.

It''s an interesting opinion, but it''s still just an opinion. One''s 13 yr. old son suddenly losing interest in gaming is hardly evidence that gaming as a whole is in decline and part of a 5 year cycle. He talks about the cycles of interest being linked to generations, in that

Each generation of young people seems to discover computer gaming anew, adopts it with a passion, runs it up to a kind of hysteria, then walks away.

but a generation is much longer than five years. Even assuming what he says about generations has been true so far (excepting his too-short time span), computer gaming has only been around for a couple of generations. That''s nowhere near long enough to start predicting long term trends. It would be like looking at the last 20 years of presidents, seeing that 2 of the 4 have been Bushes and declaring that 50% of all U.S. Presidents will be Bushes from now on.

Err, anyhow, I''m rambling. It seems like every few months we get some wave of ""computer games are dying"" propaganda, which shortly thereafter fades away and gaming continues plugging along.

Just my two cents but I think that in 5 - 10 years PC gaming will be dead or limited to just the hardcore enthusiust. Developing for consoles is just too cost effective for companies. Why develop a game that has to run on millions of different hardware/software combinations when there''s an opportunity to develop for just 2 or 3 console platforms and still have a large consumer base.

How many households can actually afford a brand new Alienware PC every couple years to justify playing Doom 3 at Ultra Quality? I think most parents/gamers can justify $300 every 5 years to buy the next XBox or Playstation versus $2000 for a new gaming PC.

The latest generation of consoles (especially the XBox with Live) managed to bring the average Joe into the same quality of experience that PC gamers have enjoyed for a fraction of the cost and effort. There''s no need to setup Teamspeak servers or hassle with video card upgrades or drivers. Everything is integrated into a seamless package that anyone in the family can enjoy.

Of course, I''m still a rebel with just a PC and a Gamecube. Long live the PC but man, I might be buying an XBox for Halo 2 here real soon.

"mperrin" wrote:

Just my two cents but I think that in 5 - 10 years PC gaming will be dead or limited to just the hardcore enthusiust. Developing for consoles is just too cost effective for companies. Why develop a game that has to run on millions of different hardware/software combinations when there''s an opportunity to develop for just 2 or 3 console platforms and still have a large consumer base.

How many households can actually afford a brand new Alienware PC every couple years to justify playing Doom 3 at Ultra Quality? I think most parents/gamers can justify $300 every 5 years to buy the next XBox or Playstation versus $2000 for a new gaming PC.

The latest generation of consoles (especially the XBox with Live) managed to bring the average Joe into the same quality of experience that PC gamers have enjoyed for a fraction of the cost and effort. There''s no need to setup Teamspeak servers or hassle with video card upgrades or drivers. Everything is integrated into a seamless package that anyone in the family can enjoy.

Of course, I''m still a rebel with just a PC and a Gamecube. Long live the PC but man, I might be buying an XBox for Halo 2 here real soon.

shh! that kinda logical crazy talk will get you nowhere fast around here..

I didn''t even start ranting about how the ""console gamer"" is responsible for the recent trend in dumbed down gameplay as shown in Deus Ex 2.

One ironic tidbit in regards to the article is that I''m just finishing up a custom PC I''m building just to play old-school, pre-Super Nintendo video games on my television. The classics never die, they just get emulated. Long live the original Contra!

There''s a Dreamcast CD image you know, with several hundred NES games, all perfectly emulated at 100% speed with 2 player support functioning also.

I played Contra co-op with my cousin, but it got old real fast.
Why ?
Because it IS old ! Ha ! Ha ! H.. cough...

"duckilama" wrote:

If by ""ninjas"" you mean ""suddenly curvy and bumpy 13-year-old girls"" then I think you are exactly right.

Girl ninjas! 8)

"mperrin" wrote:

Just my two cents but I think that in 5 - 10 years PC gaming will be dead or limited to just the hardcore enthusiust. Developing for consoles is just too cost effective for companies. Why develop a game that has to run on millions of different hardware/software combinations when there''s an opportunity to develop for just 2 or 3 console platforms and still have a large consumer base.

I''d agree with this because it seems logical, but people have been saying this for YEARS, and yet nothing has really changed. As long as a company can turn a profit developing games for PCs, they will continue to do so. In fact, if developers start pulling out of the PC market, those that remain will get a larger and larger market share, increasing their profits and making PC development appear more profitable, thereby causing developers to come back into the market. The ease of developing console games also counts against it--the market is saturated with titles and many releases fail to get noticed at all. The more developers that focus on console games, the worse that situation will get.

Also, not every game requires a cutting edge PC, and in fact your ""average"" PC owner doesn''t care about the cutting edge. They''re perfectly happy to keep playing the Sims even though Doom 3 just came out. Your average Dell computer can easily run 90%+ of the games out there, and your average Dell owner is fine with that. The only people who care about having cutting edge hardware to play the latest games at ultra settings are the hardcore gamers who are more than willing to shell out that kind of cash.

I''m willing to concede that PC gaming might have a cycle of ups and downs tied to market changes, but PCs aren''t about to die, and neither is gaming on the PC.

Hey, Microsoft has a vested interest in keeping PC gaming alive. If PC gaming dies out, we''ll all buy Macs