Will there be another video game crash?

[Allanon]

I still play Doom on DOSBox today. I also play Myst and Wing Commander, XWing vs Tie Fighter.

But would you buy and playing them if they were new games just released today? I think you play them because you already know they have good game play and when they were released the graphics were good enough but by todays standards those games have awful graphics and wouldn't get a second look by most people if they didn't have such a good reputation.

[GMer]

Never did I know that stating my opinion here would cause this much controversy.
What I am really looking forward to is when game animation becomes the same cg animation used in movies.
Think that is too much to hope for? Look at the first cg music video (the name of it eludes my mind at the momet) and compare it to today's games...
Just games I see don't really say "Hello! I'm awesome!" I guess that I prefer games of historical (in the gaming industry, that it) importance.
And to think, in 10 to 20 years there will be XBox 360 emulators, and Xbox 360s sitting in yardsales!
Wing Commander is awesome (I found the original with the box & everything in a yardsale for 25 cents, yay!) Dosbox is good too, along with the oodles of "abandonware" sites. My old 486 windows 95 died a few years back , forcing me to use an emulator
Just to let you know, it was one of the founding fathers of games who said "Gameplay is one third, graphics another third, and music the final third"
In Gears of War, it is not Earth.
"Combine" in half life? That the name of a worldwide conspiracy in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey - nice touch.
Though I have somewhat hit the nail on the head in some places, haven't I?
I'm just impatient for the future of gaming
when is there going to be free-standing holograms?
Here they are coming close:
http://www.jaxracing.com/forum/archive/ ... 33444.html
http://weeklywire.com/ww/08-10-98/austi ... ture1.html

Sorry if I offended anyone, or any feelings of resentment I may inspired.

[MakerOfGames]

I think that there will be another video game crash in the sense of a lull in the number of games sold per game simply because there is a lack of original games. It seems to me that games are becoming too much like eachother. In the days of the N64 games had all sorts of different ideas that were solid games. All of the original titles have either died, or are into a many numbered revision like Quake, Doom, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, any James Bond game (trying to compare to Goldeneye), Halo, StarCraft, WarCraft, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, GTA. All of these are the games that everyone else copies. It seems that the market is flooded with carbon copies. It frustrates me that I can't find a good solid FPS that isn't based off Halo, or Half-Life or Doom. Yes they were good games, but I want originality. I want it so much that this thread bringing light to my carbon copy tendency and has made me redesign the entire story for my game project as to not follow the human vs alien scenario that has been played millions of times before. Also, no one tries to be inventive with gameplay mechanics, if it has what Halo has its good. Not much else. If its a GTA style game, if there is a sandbox world, it is enough. It seems to me that developers are becoming so afraid to try new that the tried and true will make gamers tire of the same thing. I already am tired of all FPS games as they are nothing more than walking down a hallway shooting things. If you take away textures in any FPS, a hallway appears and the size may vary, but its still a hallway. The only time its broken is in multiplayer maps. Half-Life 2 is what brought this to light for me, its literally just interconnected hallways with no choice but to move forward. I want to move sideways and up and down and move all sorts of other strange directions. Either way, the game industry is becoming too afraid to try new ideas that eventually everyone will be tired of playing a space marine shooting aliens, or saving the world as the "chosen one". Sooner or later it will happen unless more creative games hit the core gaming market.

[GMer]

Maker of Games, I think you are the first to agree with me outright.
One twist that really messes up an "Aliens Invade Earth" would be if some humans joined the aliens... hope that helps you, Maker of Games.
The reason old games are fun is the simplicity of it. The controls seem to flow easily, almost naturally (even Halo: CE did somewhat), but the modern FPS on computers have so many controls it is almost as if they were meant for consoles.

History Lesson:
The game crash of 1983 was what got Atari lost (besides not buying the rights for the NES), they believed (figuratively) that if they threw any game in the air, money would fall. This confidence led to Intellivision getting the rights for making games for the Atari 2600, which opened the doorway for many other companies, such as "Chuckwagon Dog Food". All these companies flooded the market with mediocre and repetitive games (such as different variations of "Pac-Man"), which people couldn't tell the difference between games. And with even more horrible games, this dubbed the summer of '83 (at least I think it was the summer) as the video game crash, with the icon the ET game (which there were more cartridges made than consoles) for the Atari 2600.

Allanon seems not to like DukeNukem 3d because he is so used to the advanced controls that today's games utilize, and compares it to modern games. But the games from the 90's are actually their own breed (um, programed with DOS?) since they were pre-windows.

I do not single out games because I can see polygons, pixels, or bumpmapping (I still play Alone in the Dark- the original- The FIRST 3D GAME, it is creepy at times). I just make a note to myself and see if I could theoretically accomplish that with Reality Factory. (Hey, its free!)

The last part of Destron's second post (in the last 10 posts thingy) just confirms my theory: games are becoming clones of each other, with not many different variations.

[paradoxnj]

I wouldn't call them clones. They are different games in a genre. Resident Evil's genre is Survival Horror. There are a couple of stand-out series that are in this genre namely Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark (probably the first SH game), Clock Tower, and the new one from EA called Dead Space. While there is not much you can do in a specific genre that hasn't already been done, you can come up with an original cast of character's, an original story line, etc...

If someone created a game called Evil Lives Here, had main characters named Chris and Jill, and the evil entity was a corporation named Raincoat (instead of Umbrella ) that would be a clone/ripoff.

The video game industry is still a 4 billion dollar a year industry. The big 3 (Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony) need to focus on ease of development and not technology for the next generation of their consoles. Nintendo had the right idea with the Wii. They need to seriously expand on that idea for their next console. MS needs to eliminate the Red Ring of Death with their next console. It's keeping the XBox360 from becoming what the PS2 was to us...the must have console. Sony needs to lower the price of their technology. The only thing stopping me from buying a PS3 is the price. I simply refuse to pay $500 for a console. Maybe when Final Fantasy XIII comes out....

[Destron]

The last part of Destron's second post (in the last 10 posts thingy) just confirms my theory: games are becoming clones of each other, with not many different variations.

How far do I have to break this stuff down until you will understand it?

Following the "downfall of humanity" type:

Bioshock:

Game type: Linear FPS
Game engine: UT3
Time: 1960
Location: Rapture, an underwater city in the Atlantic ocean
Player Character: A mentally conditioned denizen of Rapture made to believe that he arrived there by way of a plane crash
Main story adversaries: Andrew Ryan, the president of Rapture and his rival, Frank Fontaine
In-game enemies: Splicers, Big Daddies
Weapons: Plasmids, vintage firearms and cobbled-together contraptions
Game currency: Dollars
Game ending: Different based on whether you saved the Little Sisters or not

Fallout 3:

Game type: Open-world RPG
Game Engine: Gamebryo
Time: 200 years after nuclear war following an alternate timeline from the 1950s onward
Location: Post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C.
Player Character: Male or female Vault 101 escapee
Main story adversaries: The Enclave
In-game enemies: Raiders, Enclave soldiers, wastelanders, civilians
Weapons: Sledgehammers, baseball bats, pistols, rifles, laser weaponry, heavy miniguns, etc
Game currency: Bottle caps
Game ending: Different based on many different aspects of how you played the game

[Allanon]

The only thing stopping me from buying a PS3 is the price. I simply refuse to pay $500 for a console. Maybe when Final Fantasy XIII comes out....

It's coming to Xbox 360 also.

[paradoxnj]

Well....there ya go....another reason not to buy a PS3. Resident Evil 5 is coming out on XBox360 also. I'm left with no reason to buy a PS3. Metal Gear Solid 4 is not that great. I prefer to play my games...not watch them.

[GMer]

Calm down, Destron.
You filed those games under "fall of humanity", which proves that those games follow that catagory (by no doubt you could come up with more), and that intensifies my point. Even though they have small swists, the first impression you get from them is not very different from each other.
I was more drawn to look at the new Max & Sam game more than the other games, because it had very different characters, and wasn't something everybody has seen for a while.
Now, I guess you are going to say "He still doesn't get it!", and that's ok, I am only stating my opinion, and seeing what others think.
Come to think of it, there is a new Friday the 13th movie coming out... Maybe the lack of ideas is not just in the videogame market. (this last statement will cause an uproar, I can tell )

[MakerOfGames]

I agree with you GMer, this lack of creativity extends beyond gaming. As much as I can tell, the dawn of everything we still see in games and movies today was created back in the mid to late nineties. There are still a few movies and games that do break the mold, but when it comes down to it, most of the things that are spewed into the market are just rehashes to make guaranteed money. In my opinion this makes the games and movie industry almost out of the category of art. Art to me is the creation and formation of a specific vision from a creative body(meaning one or multiple people). Most media is not art. However, back in the day, it seems that there were a lot more artists who wanted to make their vision a reality and were willing to bet it in the market. Because of this lack of artistic vision games will fall by the way side from their true potential.

[GMer]

You have hit the heart of it, Maker of Games. I wonder when others read this they will see.
There is an occasional jewel (like you said) put into the market, but otherwise it is flooded with very similar stuff. (How many Saw movies are there? My point), So theoretically we are in a crash, but no one notices...
A completely different-looking Reality Factory game could wake people up. RF 1 is not all that outdated, because some of the games I've seen for sale have similar polygon count (I won't go so far as to say Doom III, because has a little higher polygon count-maybe 5,000-7,000 but I'm no judge, and bumpmapping plus lighting make up for it) for good prices. If one can get the publicity, a game with Reality Factory that destroys the mold could turn the industry to better.


About the Wii, the url below says that Dead Rising will be coming out for the wii. Finally a violent game for that redressed gamecube (with a new remote), that thing needs some FPS if it wants to attract the teenage crowd.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168849

[Destron]

Calm down, Destron.
You filed those games under "fall of humanity", which proves that those games follow that catagory (by no doubt you could come up with more), and that intensifies my point. Even though they have small swists, the first impression you get from them is not very different from each other.
I was more drawn to look at the new Max & Sam game more than the other games, because it had very different characters, and wasn't something everybody has seen for a while.
Now, I guess you are going to say "He still doesn't get it!", and that's ok, I am only stating my opinion, and seeing what others think.
Come to think of it, there is a new Friday the 13th movie coming out... Maybe the lack of ideas is not just in the videogame market. (this last statement will cause an uproar, I can tell )

You seem to want to boil any game's premise down to one line, so I was just trying to show you how different games can be even then.
However, you are completely incorrect about the first impressions one gets about these two games. The text on the backs of the boxes are distinct between the two, moreover the beginning sequences are completely different and unique.
But I'm pretty much done arguing now... you have your opinion and I have mine. And I do still think you don't get it.

[ardentcrest]

On a lighter note.

My "video games crash" always. I now use Vista..

[GMer]

Good pun, Ardentcrest.
I sense that Destron is a little... agitated... I am just stating that games seem to be branched off (or would derived be a better word) from older games.
By first impressions I mean browsing the video game shelf (which for console games, you can't look at the back of the box without going through the vendor).
Vista... The vista tower I have has weird ram chips (need to be taken out, probably just a slight overload, only has 1 GB ram). I wonder when Windows 7 is coming out officially...

[ardentcrest]

Well If anyone needs an new idea for any type of game, go here and download them.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/

These are the best type of games because most of them WERE the first of their kind


And if RF is too hard for you, you can always try this

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek ... id=0001956