Skyrim - Collector's Edition Announced

If you want money and you're getting money - it makes all the sense you'll ever need.

Grimlorn said:

Anyways, I'm sort of getting tired of the gaming industry these days. It's just so blatantly corporate and greedy now. I just don't get it. It's obviously affecting games negatively. The quality is lower but the industry is thriving. Doesn't make sense.

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I don't understand that viewpoint. There were some terrible quality games in the past.. and there are some terrible quality games now as well. On the other hand the best games now are so much more complex, immersion, user-researched and high quality that they couldn't possibly have been made in the past by people not-supported by the billion dollar industry it's become.

That's not to say modern games are more fun compared to the time than older ones are, but pit an older game against a newer one (as indeed, the free market allows us to do) and people while go for the newer one out of choice (as indeed, they do).

Games, since they first started being made, have been about making money. Even your favorite indie darling wants to make money. I don't get why "in it for the money" is thrown around so casually as an offense or whatever.

The people who made Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Morrowind, Ultima VII and whatever other game you hold dear were doing it to make money. Sure, if they can make a game they like at the same time great! Money was the reason they went to work everyday though.

kalniel said:

On the other hand the best games now are so much more complex, immersion, user-researched and high quality *snip*.

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I think it's safe to say that's debatable. Things like graphics and sound FX are certainly higher quality now (from a technical standpoint), but everything else is subjective. I definitely don't agree that recent games are more complex, especially in the RPG genre.

DoctorNarrative said:

Games, since they first started being made, have been about making money.

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Well, in my opinion, that view is a tiny bit too much short-sighted.

SOME games breathe some kind of "vision", some kind of "art style", some kind of ... the people behind it wanted to express at least something ...

Nowadays, the only expression I often see behind games is : "we want a wider audience", "we want more money" or "our corporation wants more money".

The non-materialistic points are almost gone nowadays. Things like ... Spirit ... Vision ... Ethics ... Art direction ...

Homeworld is such an example of a game that evolved through having a distinct vision. They wanted to do immense, immersive Space Battles. IOnspired by one George Lucas.

Geiorge Lucas is - by the way - another good example or it. His first movies voice out a distinct vision. Like "THX 1138", for example. Or the original "Star Wars" movie.

The original Star Wars movie was fresh, was new ! Fans say, the so-called "special edition" was the beginning of the end.

And even "programming for a living" might lad to an evolution of adapting one-self more and more to what might produce the best amount of money. Because it is needed there.

But the very first games, the very first music albums etc. ... They all have a distinct vision !

JDR13 said:

I definitely don't agree that recent games are more complex, especially in the RPG genre.

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Really? I've not seen much code, but I would have thought that with the size of the programs the code was much more complex in modern games compared to older ones, hence the need for teams of coders and resources for a AAA title.

kalniel said:

Really? I've not seen much code, but I would have thought that with the size of the programs the code was much more complex in modern games compared to older ones, hence the need for teams of coders and resources for a AAA title.

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Ahh.. I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to gameplay.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Well, in my opinion, that view is a tiny bit too much short-sighted.

SOME games breathe some kind of "vision", some kind of "art style", some kind of … the people behind it wanted to express at least something …

Nowadays, the only expression I often see behind games is : "we want a wider audience", "we want more money" or "our corporation wants more money".

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That could be accurate, but I would argue that is based on different audiences. When Torment came out the audience they were selling it to wanted much different stuff than a modern audience does. The way you made money then was by making a good and unique RPG for CRPG nerds. The way you make money today is to bleed the mass market dry through sequels and micro-transactions.

DoctorNarrative said:

Games, since they first started being made, have been about making money. Even your favorite indie darling wants to make money. I don't get why "in it for the money" is thrown around so casually as an offense or whatever.

The people who made Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Morrowind, Ultima VII and whatever other game you hold dear were doing it to make money. Sure, if they can make a game they like at the same time great! Money was the reason they went to work everyday though.

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I'm not against companies making money. I am against corporations trying to make money in this industry and consumers getting exploited. Because when it comes to corporations, they will try to do the minimum with maximum profits. I don't believe that's a good environment for gaming or RPGs at least. That environment doesn't encourage creativity or trying something new and interesting. Just same old tried and true mediocre crap we've been getting.

It's why nothing is creative or interesting in the genre today. They are trying to put out games like DA2 that are made in a year and a half and rushed out the door. I'm aware this has little to do with Skyrim though. It just seems like this is where it's heading.

When I first started using the internet, it was totally text based with a very obscure language set, and it took real knowledge to use it. This slowly morphed into something along the lines of usenet, and then had a massive change when it became the World Wide Web. That change totally revolutionized the way the internet was used. Now, any idiot could share music, files, and information. It was no longer reserved for intelligent geeks.

The same thing happened with computer games. Originally, the first games were on mainframes and you had to be smart enough to use a mainframe to play one. Then we slowly got Texas Instruments, Apple, and Commodore to release a more user friendly device that still required some smarts to run, but wasn't nearly as complex.

(Tongue in Cheek)
Nowadays, we have i-idiot devices that allow someone with a negative IQ to be able to figure out how to play a game. Naturally, the process of adding lower and lower levels of intelligence to the gaming public has both increased the size of the group and, as a side effect, changed the dynamic of what games will appeal to the lower standard. The new group couldn't handle Infocom or Ultima, they need Angry Birds

P.S. Did you know that the "i" in i-tunes, i-pad, i-touch was originally code for idiot? That's what Steve Jobs wanted. A device that any idiot could use

And guess what, he's been successful!!

DoctorNarrative said:

Games, since they first started being made, have been about making money. Even your favorite indie darling wants to make money. I don't get why "in it for the money" is thrown around so casually as an offense or whatever.

The people who made Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Morrowind, Ultima VII and whatever other game you hold dear were doing it to make money. Sure, if they can make a game they like at the same time great! Money was the reason they went to work everyday though.

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Do you have some hard data backing this?
What about raw creative urge or urge to participate in creating something you can be honestly proud of ?
Money may be the must, but that doesn´t necessarily mean people are "in it" for money, "it" being whatever. One can be also be "in it" thanks to the money.
As in, thanks to being paid for "it" one can succumb to "raw creative urge" or simply doing something one deems fun to do full-time, which without payment wouldn´t likely be viable.
Imo, the motivational causality isn´t as straightforward as you suggest in your post and I´d wager it wasn´t in the case of at least some of the games you mentioned.

DoctorNarrative said:

When Torment came out the audience they were selling it to wanted much different stuff than a modern audience does. The way you made money then was by making a good and unique RPG for CRPG nerds.

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What do you mean by "good" anyway? Was an cRPG back then "good" even before it sold to "CRPG nerds" or did it become "good" only after it was sold to sufficiently large crowd of these?
Maybe more accurate assessment would be the audience was more demanding and marketing tools weren´t as effective back then?

DeepO said:

Do you have some hard data backing this?

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That people go to work to make money? Uh, yeah... all of capitalist society.

My core point is that in the end these people make games to make a profit. Some of them might sacrifice some profit to make something they are more interested in, rare as that may be, but ALL of them wouldn't make a game they didn't think would pay the bills. Corporations are just a large extension of that really...

DoctorNarrative said:

That people go to work to make money? Uh, yeah… all of capitalist society.

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That´s not what I asked for and you most likely know it .
So no data, just as I thought.

Grimlorn said:

I'm not against companies making money. I am against corporations trying to make money in this industry and consumers getting exploited. Because when it comes to corporations, they will try to do the minimum with maximum profits.

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While the general idea of "minimum costs, maximum profits isn't bad at that -

- it becomes bad when this means exploiting customers.

And this is basically where I see almost any huge company going to, sooner or later.

DeepO said:

That´s not what I asked for and you most likely know it .
So no data, just as I thought.

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I'm not sure what you're asking for data on, no.

Everyone in the industry goes to work to make money. Every indie developer is expecting to make money from the game. If you can make something creatively satisfying that's great, but making money is the top concern and always has been. I don't really know how you could argue otherwise in any way.

10 years ago the industry was such that you were making games and marketing games to an audience that wanted different things than today's audience does. You could make Planescape Torment and reasonably expect to make good money off of it. You can't do that today.

… Or "the industry" wants us to believe it … Because ALL systems are always dynamic -
influence - influence
co-evolution - co-evolution

In the animal and plant kingdom, predators and "victims" are adapting to one another … Some plants "developed" thorns, meanwhile some acacias are able to just poison their "predators" : http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717361.200-antelope-activate-the-acacias-alarm-system-.html

Similar things go on for animal predators and their "victims" : The predators develop techniques and body parts to effectively "get" the other animal - meanwhile the other animal develops techniques and body parts to avouid this (Porcupine, Clown-fish).

So : The customer - seller relationship also influences each parts within it, because all systems are dynamic.

At least that's how I see it.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

But anyway, that's just the way of capitalism : The constant try to maximize the profits …

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Aye. 'Tis sad to see where things are, and worse where they are going. Forced online, $10 DLCs that give you an hour of linear play, preorder incentives that try to get an uninformed purchase by offering a CrackerJacks electronic trinket, preorder beta access that is far from a real beta, a release that would not even have been deployed out of Alpha testing 10 years ago ….

/whine = off

Vox

It's worth pointing out none of that stuff would work if people didn't accept it. The problem is not companies, the problem is what people accept.