In my case, that depends on how I look at it.
If I'm looking at PC games, both "major" and "indie" games, it's all looking bloody brilliant here. My purchases are just as frequent as ever, and there's plenty of things i"m looking forward to, and plenty to play right now. Almost too many.
If I'm looking at the consoles.... no, I dont have good expectations whatsoever. Despite my dislike of Nintendo as a company, the Wii U is, to me, currently in the best position, as it has the most creative selection, but there's still only so many games I would want for it, and I have nearly all of them at this point (which is about 5 or 6).
The PS4... well, I bought this for LittleBigPlanet 3, and that is what it gets used for. Too bad that's ALL it gets used for. It has literally no other purpose. That's IT. That's everything. There's nothing else for me to buy. Particularly since what few games there were that did look good... such as Evolve... came out on PC also, so I just bought them there; but those are very few and far between indeed. So right now, it's looking like that's it for that console for the foreseeable future. There's nothing else now, and there's nothing on the horizon.
The Xbone I have no use for whatsoever.
The Vita I also have no use for.
The 3DS is okay, I guess, but still has the usual problem of having not much that I actually want (not counting VC stuff). What it does have is nice though; I'm not a fan of the fact that the blasted VC emulators dont let you change the controls, but that's fine I suppose. The games are there, and they include old gameboy games even, so it's a big plus. I only have a few games.... Tomadachi Life turned out really well, as did Smash on the 3DS (though I dont play that version very much), Monster Hunter 4 looks grand, and I havent started on Pokemon Y which I do have, but that one appears to promise a bazillion hours of me obsessing over stats and builds as I tend to. There isnt much else though that interests me beyond the Mario games.
All in all, with the consoles and handhelds, there's just too many annoying trends (like cutscene overload) that repeat themselves over and over and over and over and over, and because people obsess about graphics so freaking much, the cost to make games for the consoles is WAY too high. It's far too late now for the major publishers to dig themselves out of the rut they're now in. Cant be done. It's just too risky to produce something genuinely new, or to take an already existing thing and try to push it OUTSIDE of those trends.
And people dont understand that bit. For example, Evolve, which just came out, has been constantly criticized about not having enough content. Not enough monsters, not enough hunters, and so on. What people dont realize: The cost to make a game like that is REALLY FREAKING EXTREME NOW. Each individual piece costs so dramatically more than what most players think it does, and takes dramatically longer to make. In other words, a genuinely new game that isnt a sequel or something and has nothing "prior" to draw on will now probably ALWAYS ship with "very little content", when the truth is that it really is pretty much maxed out on the budget the game had. It doesnt help that the actual publishers behind these are dumber than a sack of hammers. In prior generations, that same budget would have generated much more content, as the cost of each bit was much lower. As games get more hyper in terms of graphics, they now begin to shrink due to graphics funding overload. Among other things. Only Nintendo escapes this to some extent as their system doesnt go even nearly as far in terms of "pushing the envelope" in a technical sense as the others do, and because of this, they dont HAVE to obsess with the technical bits like the others do. They can rely more on actual artstyle and creative design.
And really, things do seriously cost ALOT to make. So much more than I ever thought, is what I found out once I'd gotten an inside look at development a number of times with smaller indie studios. What surprises me is that things that seriously seem inexpensive are really freaking pricey. Example, I was contacted somewhat recently by a developer called Arcen Games to work on something for their newest game that they wanted to have in there, but that wasnt their forte, and wanting it done RIGHT, they came to me, as they were aware that I was an expert on the specific thing they wanted. What they wanted was complicated, balanced, good-looking bullet-hell patterns for all the new ships in the combat side of that game's expansion. As well as stat balancing the new combat-side content. So that's what I did: Made bullet patterns, smashed ship stats into each other until I got effects that didnt anger me somehow. Came out wonderfully. JUST for bullet patterns (done in a scripting language) and balancing, I was paid about $1300; the developer is an extremely fair group of people, and while I personally went into the whole idea not having the foggiest clue (and not caring) about how much pay would be involved, they went by average amounts for that type of contracted work, calculated an estimated number of hours (about 60) based on content (and paid me for that amount despite that I finished it in about half the time; not counting the "OMG how did that bug get in there, gotta fix it" moments that came during testing by players), and BAM, that huge blob of cash. JUST for those couple of things, which have nothing to do with graphics or deep coding or anything like that. That just shows how some things just cost sooooooooooooo much more than they might seem. Imagine then how it is for the big guys!
So... yeah. That's my rambly thoughts on that.
27 Feb 2015, 7:06 am
