Why the gaming industry is going to crash

Just stumbled across this article about the impending crash of the gaming industry. Interesting read to say the least....

http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-reasons-video-game-industry-about-to-crash.html

Stupid, stupid, stupid article. Here are two reason why the industry can't crash:

1. Publishers are not necessary anymore, thanks to the Internet

2. The industry is more varied than ever, reaching all the way to your phone.

Edit: I need to stop clicking on cracked links. The vast majority of the time, they make me want to bang my head on the wall.

Interesting points but at the end of the day it all revolves around budgets. The budget for games are so high these days and the risk of bankruptcy is just one commercial failure for small publishers. The indie scene is going to see a surge in games due to this and kickstarters are more common now a days.

Is the vg industry going to crash? From what I've seen not yet, but those microtransactions getting in the way of games such as Forza, GT6, Ryse and upcoming games ( you can bet on it ) could be a factor depending on how intrusive they are in the game. I think we'll see fewer games.

Cracked.com? Are you fucking serious?

When you google it the websites actual self advertisement says "Americas only humor site. A funny website filled with funny videos, pics, articles, and a whole bunch of other funny stuff. Cracked.com, celebrating 50 years of humor."

You do know that cracked is the poor mans version of mad magazine right? Whats next will you be quoting the onion as a legitimate news source?

I think it brought up some good points. We'll see what happens with it.

So in other words console gaming is going to crash?

LOL ok

Thanks for the heads up, it was also way too far out there so if it was a serious site i would question the sanity of some of the people on that site :)

What part of the list was a good point?

Console gaming is bound to disappear, but when it does, it will be because people play games on other platforms, not because of an industry-wide crash.

@Jacanuk: Did you not read it? Most of the points made sense.

In what world did they made sense?

We can take 2 of the points "Lack of innovation and driving creative people away" and just slap an INDIE title over that. Because if anything the amount of indie titles disproves both points.

Also we can take one more just for the heck of it and thats the stereotypical view on gamers as mindless sheep who are controlled by the mass-media, because i don't know about you but i myself have never let a review decide a game-purchase decision for me and neither have any "gamers" i have talked to.

Cracked has been predicting an industry crash on and off since about 2007. I'd say we're about as close to a crash now as we were back then.

In any case, I really don't think people should be looking at a crash as some kind of magical reset button that'll fix everything wrong with the industry today.

There wont be a crash, this is not the 70-80´s where what we know as the internet was just a giggle in some harvard/MIT/Oxford/e.t.c. guys pants or where people actually talked to each other and didn´t use texts or other Im´s and its not for fun that the gaming industry have grown and grown and outdid the movie industry in terms of Sales/income awhile back.

So does that mean that there won't be changes of course not, its still a living business and things will come and go like always. But i am willing to put my head on the block that we will never see a crash in any of the current userbase of gamespot's lifetime.

Not only has the gaming industry outdone the movie industry, but it's out-grossed both the movie and music industries combined... in the early 80's, i.e. not long before the 1984 crash.

Video games weren't just a niche hobby back then, but it was already a huge industry in the early 80's. When taking inflation into account, the North American gaming industry back then was comparable in revenues to that of the North American gaming industry today, in fact.

If it happened before, then it can happen again. The reason why it hasn't is because the post-Nintendo gaming industry has learnt its lesson, to make sure it avoids repeating the mistakes of Atari & Co.

People have been predicting this for years. Still waiting.

Its great that you know a bit about the crash which was in 83.

But you have some misconceptions here.

First home gaming was a niche market what wasn't was arcade machines which you could find almost everywhere and who all had charge for each turn. So yes it did have a higher revenue than Music and movies(without tv).

As to the crash what happened was a mixture of a lot of things, the move from arcade to home-console the early problems here, a overflowed market because everyone and their grandma wanted to cash in on this. Games that was poor crap , ET anyone? So in the end we had what if it were mother nature would be a "perfect storm" and as everyones knows those happen pretty seldom.

So again as i said before, will there be a crash like in 93, of course not, the industry is too big and too flexible. But there can be changes the huge indie market can collapse or consoles can disapear but there will always be something else.

So you read it too eh? Well...I wouldn't go too far as to question a poster who has worked in a work environment that is unsustainable, and too much of that may certainly see more industry and internal decay but decay is as far as it goes.

With the amount of internet press that titles like the Stanley Parable can now receive, and the rise of these trans formative PCs and platforms who seek to find new formats for play, it seems gaming will continue. It's like for every death, another hopeful 'child' is born.

I think only the modern mega-publishing of much entertainment games, film, tv and music is what's in danger of the internet. Intellectual media needs no houses of middle men for distribution, or promotion with the internet in its current state. So we'll see how all that pans out in years ahead.

Pedro got hired to write for Cracked?

Seriously though, that's a pretty shitty article. Most of the issues the writer cites have been around since the inception of the industry, and a few were, in fact, worse back in the day. I don't think the guy that wrote this has been alive for long enough to realize that. I LOL'd while reading it, however.

lol at people getting mad at a comedy article. imo, the only think that could make the industry crash would be going all digital too soon.

Console gaming is going to disappear but gaming is too far entrenched in our culture, both mainstream and corporate to ever just die.

Are we taking an article from Cracked seriously now?

Those points are true. But the gaming industry isn't going to die as a whole at least not for thousands of years unless gaming was made illegal (but even then).

That article has a point with about 'Flying Blind'. Games like BIoshock Infinite with a whole misleading E3 2011 gameplay demo that never made the final cut in the retail version. There's nothing worse than false advertising.

I don't think its going to fail, but i think your going to see a readjustment in the industry. As it seems this year its been more indie hits than triple a's and that i think will be the trend. Indie will do great, and publishers will have fewer high quality games.

I don't necessarily agree with his supporting paragraphs... but his 5 main points are all valid. Video games are VERY exploit-prone, the budgets ARE insane, and there is so much debacle with reviews and scores and critical press. How can anyone disagree with these notions? They are all true as ****. Not just true. Grand Theft Auto's budget was what... 250 million dollars? That's gigantic. 60$ is just too high of an amount to risk on any poorly reviewed game, so now there are "review embargos" (such bullshit if you ask me). The costs of games are so high that the bar for entry is either Indie, or you're out. How can you possibly risk a new IP if the budgets are enormous, and no one will take a risk on a 60$ game? You won't, and you can't.

I know Cracked is a humor website, but this was NOT a junk article.

Right, it is unlikely for the entire video game industry to crash, which isn't what I was suggesting. The point is that it's very well possible for certain sectors within the industry to crash, like you mentioned, and/or for the industry to crash in certain regions.

Yep, you are correct but when you use crash it makes it seem like the big thing.

One area i expect we will soon see a change in is indie and crowdfunding games, just looking at steam lately its begun to become a bit stagnate with the same kinds of games being done again and again

No to this article - Indies will save the industry. Games like Minecraft started with practically no budget and morphed into monsters.

Publishers are no longer necessary. You can make a great game in your basement these days with a little scripting knowledge. Many games are also being fan-funded and then distributed without publishers on Steam, etc. The industry is far from crashing.

Hmmm i don't think so , it's actually vice versa !

@Beagle050: Actually Minecraft didn´t really do anything new.

What Notch and Mojang did was fill a huge void that have been neglected and forgotten by the industry. which is funny since EA have Sims and if anything that kinda proves that people really really really enjoy creating and building.

And its still being neglected and no one seems to get that a lot people really enjoy being creative.

didnt they say this last gen? did you see the sales? there are more gamers than ever. one may not like the quality of the games, but sales dont indicate that

There's always 'more x than ever' before a crash, that's what a crash is.

I think the AAA side of the business will crash really, really soon but then again I also find it really, really hard to care. They've brought it on themselves and I've no sympathy for any company that flat out refuses to rein in budgets and set realistic targets.

I didn't read the article but I wish for a crash. This industry needs a Ctrl-Alt-Del STAT.

@ReddestSkies:

I really do think console gaming is doing great (this is coming from a person who does own only a ps4 but you know...) the sales are off the charts and sony is making money rain. Now yes they are only making $19 per console but they're making a killing off of killzone knack and just selling the dualshock 4 controllers. I don't see why pc elitist pc is the only way to go for gaming. yes you do get more graphics, but in todays economy not that many people have enough money to buy $1000+ pc to max out games. consoles are great alternatives to pc gaming for more casual players and for the more poor-middle class people. I mean the graphics on both ps4 and xbone are doing quite well. And I know a lot of people are complaining about only some games not running 1080p, but that's because devs who created the launch games truly didn't have enough time to utilize the full hardware of both consoles. Later games coming out like Dying light and watch dogs will be running at 1080p 60fps on ps4 (probably xbone too but cant guarantee it). and an 8-core jaguar processor will last for decades so we know that's up-to-date. but you know who knows if or when consoles will end.

Project Spark will be awesome *crosses fingers*

Although the 5 five are interesting and worth discussing in their own right, I dont see how any of them will lead to the industry crashing TBH

Yes, but the 1984 crash wasn't that big either though, but it specifically referred to the North American retail market crashing. However, while the arcade market didn't crash, the retail market crash did have a knock-on effect in the arcades, which began declining in North America (though that may also have something to do with laserdisc games like Dragon's Lair flooding the arcades at the time) before it picked up again with beat 'em up and fighting games some years later. And on the retail side, the home computer market was still growing, but not enough to offset the losses of the console market.

The point is that, while only one sector of the industry crashed, it did negatively affect the other sectors as well, at least in North America. However, it wasn't just North America either, but I remember reading somewhere that Japan also had its own crash some time in the early/mid-80's, though the Japanese crash isn't well documented in English sources and so I don't really know that much about it.

Anyway, if either the console or PC sectors were to crash on one of the major gaming regions (i.e. North America, Europe, or East Asia), I believe that would have a negative, knock-on effect across the industry, like it did in the early-mid-80's. Nevertheless, looking at the successful launches of the PS4 and X1 lately, I don't think there are any signs that there's going to be any crash any time soon.

How can that happen when most Indie games are just reskin games with snake oil sales men working for them? The Indie games are not going to save the industry when when they cause just as many problems if not more as the rest of the industry.

Who has ever taken Cracked.com seriously?

That's like saying 4Chan is a site with serious intellectual discussions.

This just will happen if things don't start to change drastically.

Again i was in a "fight" in some Tomb Raider reboot discussion, where i just showed all the flaws of the unfinished generic buggy reboot and literally got attacked by these brainless people who just seem to worship that game. They apparently have no idea of the previous version's quality gameplay and experience they offered.

I will tell you that if we get rid of these factors, then maybe the game industry stands a chance of surviving without a crash.

Get rid off DLC in the current exploitation form (if there is DLC, add it to 100% fully completed game, not to half-assed garbage)

Get rid off the ridiciolous handholding and bring back the challeging games. (FPS games with this ridiciolous linearity http://i.imgur.com/QcHWDqq.jpg , and pretty much any genre game nowadays with healthregen..)

Get rid off the day 1 patches (the game development time is meant to be developing the game)

This is towards the above line. If you have to get rid off the suits inorder to be able to properly develop an game without being breathed on your neck, then Suits have to go.

Get rid of 2hr games. Bring back the longevity. DooM (1993) lasts longer than any Call of Duty game. Original Tomb Raider games last longer than TR reboot..

I'm sorry but if these things aren't fixed, then i'm fine with the crash taking place. Atleast Valve has post crash unbeleivable freedom and profit with Half-Life 3..

edit: Since all this what i've talked about is directly connected with greedyness and poor low quality products, it's pretty much the same thing that was in the 80's. You think that a game which has DLC as some content that was intentionally left out of the game, is not about greedyness and walking towards shovelware? Then you are just plain wrong.