On Mon, 8 Apr 2013 17:57:57 +1000 Manu <turkey...@gmail.com> wrote: > > But yes, also as you say, the move towards 'casual' games, where the > performance requirements aren't really critical. > In 'big games' though, it's still brutally competitive. If you don't > raise the technology/performance bar, your competition will. >
I can't help wondering how big the "big games" world really is anyway, though. I know there's huge sums of money involved, both cost and revenue, and lots of developers, but...well, let me put it this way: Maybe I'm just projecting my own tastes into this, or maybe this is just because I don't have sales/profits/etc charts for the last 10-20 years to examine, but lately I'm finding it difficult to believe that "AAA" games aren't becoming (or already) a mere niche, much like high-performance sports cars. (Ie, big money, but small market.) Part of this is because, as I see it, the "big/AAA games" *as they used to exist* up until around the early 2000's don't seem to be around much anymore. The big business development companies have, for the most part, split their non-sports product lines into two main areas: 1. Mobile, Casual IP tie-ins, "Free-2-Play", etc. 2. Interactive movies. Note that *neither* of those two categories include the sorts of games the "big games/AAA developers" were commonly making from around late-80's to about 2000 or so. Those sorts of games are now almost exclusively the realm of the indie (Although there are still some exceptions, mainly from Japanese developers - which incidentally is why I still respect the Japanese games industry more than their western counterparts.) Now, of those two categories currently made by the big name developers, only the second category, "Interactive movies", are actually AAA/big-budget titles. So my question is, who really plays the current crop of AAA/big-budget titles, and can it really be considered much more than a niche? First off, they cost $60. Plus $100's for hardware (a standard "email and MS Word" machine isn't going to cut it). And often either no or minimal demos. And it typically takes at least half-an-hour to even reach any core gameplay (Yes, I've timed it). So right there it's already looking a bit more "muscle car" than "sedan". High cost-of-entry. So is it the "core" gamers buying the modern AAA/big-budget titles? Honestly, I'm not seeing it. From what I can tell, these days they're mostly switching over to indie games. As for why that's happening, I figure "Core" gamers are core gamers *because* they play videogames. Modern AAA/big-budget titles, are *not* videogames except in a very loose sense, and core gamers *do* frequently take issue with them. Modern AAA/big-budget titles are interactive movies, not videogames, because their focus is story, dialog and cinematics, not gameplay. So core gamers have been moving *away* from AAA/big-budget titles and towards indie games. So is it the "casual" crowd buying the modern AAA/big-budget titles? Definitely not. They're the ones who tend to be intimidated by 3D environments and game controllers and spend their time on Words With Friends, Wii Waggle, PopCap, etc., rarely spend much money on gaming and rarely venture outside iOS, Android and Web. I know there is and will always be an audience for the modern AAA/big-budget cinematic interactive-movie "games". But I don't see where there's a *large non-niche* audience for them. There's maybe the multiplayer-FPS enthusiasts, but that's a bit of a niche itself. And I don't see a whole lot else. It's the "Italian sports-cars" of videogaming: Just a big-budget niche.
