True. It's only that once upon a time the profit didn't matter as much.
Yes, but the market was completely different then. There's an interview with Ken Williams on the Roberta Williams collection where he says something to the effect of "In the old days, we all went on picnics and canoe trips together. But today, [1995] it's considered a smash success if you have 1% market share." My point is that up to 1985, most games sold well because the market was open. 1985-1993 saw things get crowded, and after that it all went downhill.
You could singlehandedly or in a duo write a game and find a publisher easy enough, even if your game was totally obscure. Nowadays profit is the prime directive and who knows better about profits than the suits?
Pretty much. The only way to make money on games nowadays is to have a runaway shareware hit, and I haven't seen one in a while. Roller Coaster Tycoon is probably the last "one man wonder" game we will see in our lifetimes that makes a profit.
Those managers sure know a thing about finances, but apparently not much about how the creative side of this industry works. For example, whoever adviced EA to ship games in DVD cases immediately cut down production costs, but failed to realize it'll lower the number of units sold, as there won't be much left that distinguishes a bought game from a warez version.
That is only true in your country. Here in the US they still ship in boxes (small boxes, but they're still boxes :)
Boyzone, Westlife, Backstreet Boys, N'Sync et. al., and no real talent in the charts for some time. Imagine Meat Loaf trying to get a record contract these days.
I'm not a Meatloaf fan so that was a bad example :) but I understand completely.
There are a *few* sequels, maybe 5 a year, that are indeed worth playing. I just recently finished Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, and it was a surprisingly deep game with a lot of replay value. But that is the exception.
True again. What also irks me as a PC gamer these days is that we are mostly given gruesome console ports. Most recent example there being "Deux Ex: Invisible War." The game may be perfect for the Xbox and its audience, on the PC the graphics, the simplified story and character generation, the idiotic UI and the lack of any depth is horrifying.
Don't say that! I was so looking forward to playing the sequel after having finished the original twice...
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Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
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