3 ms·

Ask HN - it's clear, status quo in gaming is f'sckd, how do we improve?

• sfrechtling 14y ago
  Thats a very big question. I think the first step to understanding this is outlining what is happening in the industry: i) casual gaming is growing (iphone all the way to wii) ii) piracy is growing iii) social gaming is growing (attached to facebook's growth) iv) game studios merged in the 90s and 00s and now are too big v) in app purchases actually do work vi) kickstarter games and indie games are growing in popularity. My summary of this is that larger studios are sticking with what works (makes money) and are looking more and more like hollywood - they want low risk games and are mostly only concerned with money. Games in this category: COD, NFS etc. Piracy is growing, and taking a large cut of revenue. Diablo III and other games made a lot of money, but implemented quite strong DRM - maybe they are taking Diablo's lead and ensuring revenue (or at least making it hard for widescale pirating. Casual and Social gaming is growing introducing new places to play, leading to different types of games (Temple Run, Farmville etc) that are built on a different revenue model - FREEMIUM. This means that in app purchases support the development and support of the game, along with advertising. There may be a merging of hardcore games and casual games in terms of business models, but I think even the games themselves may become more similar. The growth of indie games will ensure a large scope of game level/immersiveness.
• fusiongyro 14y ago
  The biggest problem with the gaming industry is that they think they should give a shit what vocal gamers say on internet forums. They've hemmed themselves into a weird little violent, misogynistic, anti-kid, anti-family, hyper-competitive corner because the loudmouth bullies that play the popular games are loud about it. Computer gaming is basically a counterculture trying to run itself as if it were Hollywood. You can't keep alienating larger and larger segments of the marketplace and just raising the price of admission. Eventually you have to lower your costs. The news lately is that they're noticing they can't throw Hollywood budgets at high-speed Germanic thrash metal markets and make back the investment. You can, however, throw Metal Blade budgets at them and do quite well. They just need to relearn how to do that, and the indie gaming industry is showing them how. Look at everything the indie gaming industry is getting right. They're focused on polish, family-friendliness, low stress, low risk, low investment fun. That's the real takeaway from Angry Birds. Angry Birds doesn't need high pressure, extremely realistic death, a complex story, voice acting, a new 3D engine with photorealistic cloud shadowing or any of that other shit. It's a simple, fun game, and it's $1. It cost so much less to make than the big-ticket games it's ridiculous, and it made way more money because everybody could buy it for themselves, for their kids, for their friends' kids, and nobody had to wonder if it would be socially acceptable or get them into trouble. In-app purchases are not the problem. The problem is that over half the marketplace won't go near a modern game, but will happily spend a dollar or two (or ten or a hundred) on non-confrontational, unrealistic distraction. Gaming is fundamentally entertainment, and the whole country gets bored. The problem is emphatically not lack of a market, it's just lack of understanding what the market wants and will bear.