The gaming industry is not unlike Lennie from John Steinbeck's 1937 classic Of Mice and Men.
For the unfamiliar, Lennie is a gigantic mountain of a man with the temperament of a cheerful toddler, who traveled Depression Era California with a close friend, George Milton. These displaced migrant ranch hands were searching for some stable work, and a place to call their own. At several points in the story, Lennie's strength and power, of which he is unaware (much like the aforementioned toddler) leads to tragedy, culminating in the accidental murder of a woman, Curley's Wife, while he was trying to stroke her hair.
The connection I am making here is that this industry (developers, publishers, journalists, and consumers) has grown so fast and has become so diverse and pervasive culturally that it has the strength to hurt itself, or enable itself to flourish, but lacks the self-awareness to choose a proper direction.
We exist in a market where: new products are shoe-horned into a set price point of roughly $60, regardless of quality or amount of content; developers and publishers work according to budgets that make it next to impossible for all but a few quality titles to recoup their investments; journalists become so tied in with the game marketing and development processes that they no longer represent the views and opinions of the consumers; and new modes of content delivery have not existed long enough for there to be reliable and fair pricing points.
The explosion of the Nintendo Wii's motion controlled gaming console attracted so many casual gamers that the other two big companies, Sony and Microsoft, tripped themselves up trying to emulate their success. Much of that rush came at the expense of the core gamer, whose purchases over time allowed the industry to climb to the heights it had reached in the first place.
And so here we are...
As a core gamer myself, much of the noise surrounding the industry is frightening at best. The advent of these motion controls depict a potential shift away from the classic way that games have been controlled and designed. We have been raised for twenty-five years on analog buttons, d-pads, and control sticks. Now we are being shown "ice cream cones" and controller-less games that all look the same. The constant
threat of a shift in the pricing point creates a situation where the core gamers who keep the industry alive by purchasing five or more (definitely more) games per year are going to soon be faced with the hard decisions between rent and food, or the next big game.It is discouraging at best, and so wide spread that it is difficult to pin down. And what makes it even more difficult to swallow is that there is no "magic bullet".
The gaming industry was built on the backs of the consumers. We were the ones who allowed for different chances to be made. Without our support of Super Mario 64, for example, there may not have been a big push into 3D and polygonal environments. Without our support of Gears of War, the 3rd person cover shooter, would not be a genre at all. But we are also the segment with the least amount of power and influence.
When EA announced Left 4 Dead 2 and released the game not even a year after the original was released, there was an uproar among the consumers who made the first Left 4 Dead such a success. Fans of the series put together a, surprisingly effective, boycott (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/L4D2boycott) in hopes that somewhere in the industry existed someone who cared about the gamer's and their pockets. Ultimately, this boycott failed, when the developers of the games, Valve, flew the boycott's organizers out to their studios to look in on the game in progress (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3176490).
What was the result of this internet phenomena? Record sales for Left 4 Dead 2 (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3176779), a title that, while quality, never resonated with the community the same way that the first one did.
Look, the morale of this winding and twisting tale is that this industry develops so quickly that it seems unfair to everyone involved. The consumers are taking the brunt of the blow here, as we are only able to consume what is out there. The media, which is supposed to exist to serve and protect our interests is so intermarried with the development and publishing area of the industry, that we are not necessarily heard, or fought for.
This industry needs to develop standards and quickly. It needs to recognize its core who created the buzz, and will remain after the casual consumers have moved onto something else. And it needs to be fair about how content is delivered and priced.
Without cooperation and understanding from all parties, there will reach a point where the industry accidentally murders its bread and butter, leading to a mob that chases it off the ranch with pitchforks and torches.
