What cau$ed the decline?

[Kattze]

Decline is a social construct. R\

 

[Trotsky]

There is no decline, most of the old games that you guys praise aren't that great when looked under the non-sentimental microscope. In 10 years people here on this forum are going to be talking about the golden age of DA and Skyrim and how TESVIII and DA: Morrigan's Revenge totally don't compare to their predecessors.

Its true that people are wearing rose colored glasses while drooling over the past however there does seem to have been a noticeable decline as well.

Codexers are right but not for the reasons they think. Where there is broad consensus here and elsewhere is the decline of gaming from 2010 onward.

 

[Jick Magger]

I think there was a decline, yes. I just don't think that there was any singular event or change that we can point to and say with any certainty: "If that didn't happen, then the decline wouldn't of happened", or "At this point, the decline was inevitable". Industry-wide changes aren't brought on that simply.

 

[Trotsky]

Capitalism caused the decline. Or to be more accurate the fundamental contradiction that is inherent in all capitalist systems, aka suffocating human creativity in favor of global market conformity while reducing its ability to evolve the relationship between base and superstructure. This in turn causes "the forces of production to come into conflict with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto" (marx), causing a social revolution (sic) or, in the case of computer gaming, the evolution of kickstarter projects that can be seen as an alternate form of self-organized anarcho-collectives, in a very limited sense.

As holywood continues to spew copypasta shit for more revenue, so will the computer gaming industry that has bloomed over the last 10-15 years. The more capital invested the more crap will be produced. It's in the system.

Marxist analysis will always be superior to bourgeois historical discussion.

 

[Xenich]

There was a decline, those who claim otherwise are just trying to justify their acceptance of mainstream development. The codex suffers from social change and conditioning. The newer generations don't remember the older games from the perspective of the times. They judge them by standards of these times and no matter how "objective" they attempt to be, they have different expectations, different tastes to which the older generation of gamers had. Some see the combat heavy grind of many games of old as being poor design, pointless filler. What they fail to understand is that this was a tactic of play that tested your characters development. If you did not balance correctly, you could get yourself in some very bad situations. It was not uncommon to have a string of encounters that ended up with you running into a boss and having to manage an encounter with a party that was in bad shape.

Many elements of play these days are considered mundane, pointless, inconvenient, etc... and yet the had subtle effects on gameplay that resulted in memorable situations. MMORPGs had this progression that I think due to the years of their attention and obvious changes are a good example of how such features being removed completely changed game play. The early MMORPGs attempted to strongly mimic the style and play of the single player RPGs of old. They had difficult and vague puzzles and exploration (wizardry) and contained many elements of attrition through combat (most of the early era cRPGs), there was inventory management, class system limitations and focus which required cooperation with other classes (ie the party system of old cRPGs), etc... The point is, over time, many elements of difficulty, of consequence, of attrition style obstacles that often resulted in major feelings of accomplishment with the victory over them were removed. Small things like inventory space management, lack of maps/radar, vague investigative quest dialogues, puzzles, etc... were all tossed aside because later generations believed them to be what was wrong with RPG gaming. Rather than treating cRPGs like games, they were treated as story books, movie like entertainment. Games became less about games and more about entertainment.

Now don't get me wrong, I respect that people like to be entertained in different ways. For me, it is the "game" that is the entertainment. That is, to have obstacles placed before me to which I must test my skill in party/character selection, development and management, combat strategy, puzzle/riddle solving skills, etc... That is a "game", that is why I play a "game". Now I see nothing wrong with entertainment and there are a lot of games out there that are not really games as much as they are just entertainment. People who like such, well... that is great, enjoy, but... I think this is part of the problem. That is, when they started trying to appeal to mainstream, entertainment became their focus. Now think on that a moment. A developer making a "game" (ie an set of obstacles you are to best) makes them to test you, challenge, you, stump you... to ultimately best you. After all, you are playing a "game" because you like "games" and so shouldn't it be a "game"? It is a different perspective. That is, the developer talks about how they wanted to really catch you here, to push you into a corner, to really test you in various ways (ie "we wanted to force the player to have to make tough decisions and to deal with the consequences of those decisions"), that is a game developer.

On the other side of the fence, you have the development goals that say "well, we want to make sure people have fun", "We really wanted people to enjoy this feature...", "We wanted to avoid people getting frustrated, because isn't fun, so we... ". Their focus is entertainment, not a game specifically. This is what I think resulted in the decline. Not a decline in entertainment (though that is a subjective topic of its own), rather a decline in "gaming" in general. People forgot what games were and why we played them.

 

[Zep Zepo]

November 24, 1999
Ultima IX: Ascension

The day......the incline......died.........And they were singin'......

Zep--

 

[belowmecoldhands]

(...)
Now don't get me wrong, I respect that people like to be entertained in different ways. For me, it is the "game" that is the entertainment. That is, to have obstacles placed before me to which I must test my skill in party/character selection, development and management, combat strategy, puzzle/riddle solving skills, etc... That is a "game", that is why I play a "game". Now I see nothing wrong with entertainment and there are a lot of games out there that are not really games as much as they are just entertainment. People who like such, well... that is great, enjoy, but... I think this is part of the problem. That is, when they started trying to appeal to mainstream, entertainment became their focus. Now think on that a moment. A developer making a "game" (ie an set of obstacles you are to best) makes them to test you, challenge, you, stump you... to ultimately best you. After all, you are playing a "game" because you like "games" and so shouldn't it be a "game"? It is a different perspective. That is, the developer talks about how they wanted to really catch you here, to push you into a corner, to really test you in various ways (ie "we wanted to force the player to have to make tough decisions and to deal with the consequences of those decisions"), that is a game developer.

On the other side of the fence, you have the development goals that say "well, we want to make sure people have fun", "We really wanted people to enjoy this feature...", "We wanted to avoid people getting frustrated, because isn't fun, so we... ". Their focus is entertainment, not a game specifically. This is what I think resulted in the decline. Not a decline in entertainment (though that is a subjective topic of its own), rather a decline in "gaming" in general. People forgot what games were and why we played them.

I will hesitantly agree, with reservation (if hesitantly isn't strong enough). You know, a part of me is exactly like yourself. I'm nodding my head as I'm reading the post. Yet other times I'm pausing and thinking "No, that's not how I see it."

It's the difference between Demon Souls (and spiritual successor Dark Souls) and most other games. One wants to kill you, to outdo you: to make it hard to finish the game. The others, well, unless you increase the difficulty (whatever that means), you'll finish the game in X hours. This doesn't mean Demon Souls or Dark Souls are good games, or good RPGs (they're not even). Neither does it mean you can't play on an easier difficulty. What I'm trying to highlight is the mentality. One is there to test your limits and the other is there to just have fun. One you might not be able to finish and the other you're guaranteed to finish.

I think there's something to that. Some games are just harsh, even on normal difficulty.

I'm not going to talk about game features which some do or don't like: like inventory management or aggro management or maps/radars or quest markers or similar things. Those're BESIDE THE POINT.

I also think discussing gameplay mechanics/features is too subjective and flamey. Broadly, I think everything is fine in the industry. I've already said this. Everybody can get what they want. There's no problem. I don't think there was a decline. There was just some mainstream games I didn't want to play, so I didn't. I played older ones or I found niche games. Niche games existed before Kickstarter. And that's something which still bugs me. Kickstarter is not where niche games were born.

Niche games are just games which were unpopular but didn't necessarily know it yet.

I'll give some examples of niche games I played over the years:
1) BC3000 AD
2) Terminus
3) X: The Frontier
4) Loads and loads of MUD MMORPGs (I was playing MUDS even just a few years ago)
5) Loads and loads of less popular computer games
6) Free games I found online

I als oplayed lots of military simulation games early on and those were probably not popular:
1) M1 Tank Platoon
2) Silent Hunter (I played another one too I think)
3) Jetfighter II
4) Red Baron
5) Some random combat flight/etc simulators

I can't remember it all. Suffice to say Kickstarter is just an old thing in new garb. Nothing new under the sun.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

(...)
There's no problem. I don't think there was a decline. There was just some mainstream games I didn't want to play, so I didn't.

Your Honor! It's not like those bruises were caused by my husband beating me. I just ..... tripped and fell. Multiple times.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

(...)
There's no problem. I don't think there was a decline. There was just some mainstream games I didn't want to play, so I didn't.

Your Honor! It's not like those bruises were caused by my husband beating me. I just ..... tripped and fell. Multiple times.

Wh ydoes everybody have to be buthurt. Look, the gaming industry evovled to serve more customers. The outliers, like some of us here, were sort of left behind. Yet why the f*** should I care if there're games I can play? This thread seems to be just a thread to talk s***. Come here and make this thread when there's something to actually complain about.

(There're so many games I'm interested in playing my lifetime would be over long before playing them fuly.)

It's really no different than walking into Dairy Queen and acting shocked and dismayed when they serve ice cream or their salad bar isn't impresive. Like get some brain cells and go somewher else. Let Dairy Queen be Dairy Queen.

And also I sometimes like ice cream. Skyrim, for example, sometimes does cool things. Like if a player is up high and shooting at a monster, the monster will try to find cover. I think that's going in the right direction. And perks, I think those're cool too. For many, they're an improvement over number heavy games. Then again, perks can be about numbers too. Without actualy playing Skyrim, I can't say if its perks do that. Ye the concept of replacing nubmers with english is worth trying.

I also used to play Diablo 1/2, even as I had played many much deeper RPGs. And yet years after a diablo 1/2 marathon you'd catch me playing one of those deeper RPGs or playing a MUD mmorpg. One doesn't negate the other. Sometimes we just have tojduge a game on its own merits and realize we sometimes want something different deepending on what strieks our fancy.

 

[Xenich]

It's really no different than walking into Dairy Queen and acting shocked and dismayed when they serve ice cream or their salad bar isn't impresive. Like get some brain cells and go somewher else. Let Dairy Queen be Dairy Queen.

Actually, the problem is that everywhere you turn there is a Dairy Queen. There used to be steak houses, but they have all closed or adjusted their menus to be more like Dairy Queen. Occasionally, DQ or those restaurants will advertise that they have quality steak, but after sitting down to eat you realize it is just some processed compressed beef shaped into a T-Bone. Whenever a real attempt to open a steak house comes around, the DQ folk rush over to demand they get their ice cream and tacos or they will throw tantrums.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

It's really no different than walking into Dairy Queen and acting shocked and dismayed when they serve ice cream or their salad bar isn't impresive. Like get some brain cells and go somewher else. Let Dairy Queen be Dairy Queen.

Actually, the problem is that everywhere you turn there is a Dairy Queen. There used to be steak houses, but they have all closed or adjusted their menus to be more like Dairy Queen. Occasionally, DQ or those restaurants will advertise that they have quality steak, but after sitting down to eat you realize it is just some processed compressed beef shaped into a T-Bone. Whenever a real attempt to open a steak house comes around, the DQ folk rush over to demand they get their ice cream and tacos or they will throw tantrums.

That's BS and you either know it or you haven't actually done any looking.

Stop trolling me. When I said have a list of gmes I'd like to play, I wasn't BSing.

This is a quote from my first post in this thread:

Mainly, the effort has been to eliminate "particular" things. That's why a lot of angry fed-up (/lol) gamers refer to the "common denominator." The idea behind this is to find all the common things between gamers and compile a list of them which constitutes the highest population. In principle, this means if you abide by this list then you'll be able to produce a game desired by the largest population. Note this means the players will LIKE the game. However, if the things they desire from a game star to conflict or diverge too much from the common denominator then they'll not enjoy it anymore and get left outside cold and wet.

As this was happening, the indie market grew to fill this niche. This is why you see games still being made which have "poor gameplay" or "bad graphics" according to the authorative game review sites. Some of these game started coming out first from foreign countries. If you lok at Japn, for example, the average japanese gamer was still ok with grindy technical gameplay, but the same can't be said of most western gamres. In fact, I recall reading on a website that asians learn best after failure, whereas westerners learn best after succes. I guess this is somehow supposed to explain it.

So the word you're going to get from me is a positive one. Everybod is geting what they want. The players who fit under the largest classification are having fun and the outcast gamers are having fun. Kickstarter is a reasuring sign too.

I also want to add the indie industry and the mainstream industry benefit each other. Any innovation in one is bound to find its way into the other, obviously with more or les mainstream eleements attached to it. If it gets moved from the mainstream to the indie, the indies cry "We have what they got and more!" If it's indie and moved to the mainstream, it's "100x better!"

That was my feeling then and now. The only thing I'll add is nobody was really left out "cold and wet". The only thing cold and wet were the buthurt gamers - and yes I was butthurt at one time. I was cold and wet by choice. There were still plenty of niche games to play back then. Back then we didn't call them niche, we just knew we liked them. Games like MOO/MOO2, Privateer, Darklands, Daggerfall, BC3000 AD, X: Beyond The Frontier, XCOM: UFO Defense, Fallout and many others, including the military/flight simulators. This list is much larger, but should also include MUDs, since graphical MMORPGs were far more populated. The indie industry didn't have a name back then, it was only recognized in substance.

Visit gog.com to get a feel for what "niche" used to mean. Some aren't offered yet on gog, but it has a lot.

 

[Xenich]

You really are full of shit.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

You really are full of shit.

You're not seeing the forest through the trees.

I have so many options available to me to get what I wnat:
1) Play old games on gog (more than I will play in a lifetime)
2) Buy games or get abandonware (which is currently freeware) which isn't on gog
3) Play MUDs or one of the hundreds of small mmo's (if it's small it's almost always niche)
4) Play new indie games offered on gog or elsewhere
5) Play one of the games which sprung up from kickstarter
6) Make it myself or install a mod for one of the mainstream games like Skyrim
7) There're TONS of open source niche games being made which're too small to be indie productions

And you know even the "mainstream" has games which're more niche than others. In all my years of gaming there were many, many games which differed from the norm. The norm were linear and relatively easy on normal and anti-simulation. The "niche" games didn't necessarily follow that pattern, so distinguished themselves to me. Nowadays those games might be run on kickstarter or be known as 'indie," but I think there will stil be big companies puting out products which're nicheR than normal.

You saying there're no options and everything is Dairy Queen flies in the face of the facts.

This is why I don't see a decline. I always had options. If there were no options then I'd understand.

 

[Xenich]

You really are full of shit.

You're not seeing the forest through the trees.

I have so many options available to me to get what I wnat:
1) Play old games on gog
2) Buy games or get abandonware (which is currently freeware) which isn't on gog
3) Play MUDs are one of the hundreds of small mmorpgs
4) Play new indie games offered on gog or elsewhere
5) Play one of the games which sprung up from kickstarter
6) Make it myself or make a mod of one of the mainstream games like Skyrim

You saying there're no options and everything is Dairy Queen flies in the face of the facts.

1-3 are invalid supports as they do not support your claim there has not been a decline. The fact that people can go back and play old games from 10+ years ago does not establish a valid premise that there has not been a decline. MUDs are a very specific style of play, I played a ton of them in the 80's and going back in technology is not a valid support that there has not been a decline.

Indie development has only recently in the last few years made a solid competitive showing. Before that, what you got was Spiderweb Software games, which... not terrible, but that is still not an argument to say there was not a decline.

As for number 6? If you can't see how badly mainstream has destroyed TES series, well... then I don't know what to say. You just don't understand.

I watched games progress from their inception and played them up to now (I was playing games in the 70's). There has been a decline and while even during the decline there has been an occasional title released that was not entirely consumed by mainstream, you can see how mainstream has had an effect on them. Up until the recent indie successes and that of KS, the games in the last decade have been weak gimmicks attempting to appeal to mainstream. So no, not a lot of choice out there in the cRPG area.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Well I'll stop this talk with you after this because it's not going anywher.

Do you expect the mainstream to cater to your needs? They won't. This is why there're not dozens of new offerings every year. If you're not playing old(er) games, you're restricting yourself to a very small pool which is to me like trapping yourself in a toilet, complaining madly then drowning. The mainstream is goign to continue to find ways to get more customers and this means hte "decline" will continue. But evne as all that's hapening, there will be smaller companies and groups of programmers around the world putting out niche games. And as I mentioned above, even the mainstream puts out nicheR games. They're not all equal.

Another thing.. The mainstream games wil always have better technology. The graphics and cinematics wil always be better. The ease with which one can make a MUD is what makes them so niche-friendly. The fact you and others don't notice this irritates me. IMHO, I'll play a MUD if I don't have to wait around for it. And there're tons of them. The very fact we're niche means the people who make our games are goighn to be in short supply. And small teams aren't going to be making 100 million dollar games with the latest technologies. You can forget that dream. And the best talent is going to be taken up by the biggest companies more oftne than not, so you can also forget super geniuses indie game makers. Becaouse our options are fewr, we have to be flexible

As for TES Skyrim... You apparently don't understaned it can be modded. Ya, there're some things which can't be moddd out or added, but there's still a lot modding can do. To outright dismiss it as you do, leads me to believe you've never modded? I've modded before so I have some faith ijn it. Modders are as much a part of the niche industry as kickstarter is.

Lastly, while many players hated BC 3000 AD, I loved it. Derek Smart was an ass*** and he sucked at some things, but his game did things you wouldn't see elsewhere, just because nobody was as crazy as Derek. For you to say everything before kickstarter was a mainstream wannabee and not worth palying, is an immediate signal you're not here to engage me honestly.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

And the best talent is going to be taken up by the biggest companies more oftne than not, so you can also forget super geniuses indie game makers.

 

[Lilura]

If you can't see how badly mainstream has destroyed TES series, well... then I don't know what to say.

Starting with Morrowind, right?

I watched games progress from their inception and played them up to now (I was playing games in the 70's)

Incline would have been steep from 70s-90s, no?

 

[Xenich]

If you can't see how badly mainstream has destroyed TES series, well... then I don't know what to say.

Starting with Morrowind, right?

Not entirely, I would say it subtly began before that with the consolidation and removal of skills after Arena, though after Morrowind it was a rather large decline IMO.

I watched games progress from their inception and played them up to now (I was playing games in the 70's)

Incline would have been steep from 70s-90s, no?

I saw those times as the better era of cRPG gaming. That isn't to say there weren't some rare gems later on, but you could really start to see the change in the market in the early 90's when the console market started to have an effect on the PC games. It was also around the time when I was working at a software store and the "genre" labeling began to be blurred. Games that used to be categorized as action/adventure, etc... started being pushed into the RPG category. We got orders from HQ to categorize a certain way as per the publishers request. It got to the point where you couldn't tell what game was what because they were all apparently "RPGs" now. /shrug

 

[Xenich]

Well I'll stop this talk with you after this because it's not going anywher.

Do you expect the mainstream to cater to your needs? They won't. This is why there're not dozens of new offerings every year. If you're not playing old(er) games, you're restricting yourself to a very small pool which is to me like trapping yourself in a toilet, complaining madly then drowning. The mainstream is goign to continue to find ways to get more customers and this means hte "decline" will continue. But evne as all that's hapening, there will be smaller companies and groups of programmers around the world putting out niche games. And as I mentioned above, even the mainstream puts out nicheR games. They're not all equal.

Doesn't change the fact that there is a decline.

Another thing.. The mainstream games wil always have better technology. The graphics and cinematics wil always be better. The ease with which one can make a MUD is what makes them so niche-friendly. The fact you and others don't notice this irritates me. IMHO, I'll play a MUD if I don't have to wait around for it. And there're tons of them. The very fact we're niche means the people who make our games are goighn to be in short supply. And small teams aren't going to be making 100 million dollar games with the latest technologies. You can forget that dream. And the best talent is going to be taken up by the biggest companies more oftne than not, so you can also forget super geniuses indie game makers. Becaouse our options are fewr, we have to be flexible

Never argued that. D:OS wasn't made on a massive AA budget and yet it blows away all the AAA titles for nearly a decade. Money isn't the issue (it is to an extent). You can make a good game without compromising your design principals. The problem with the mainstream market is that they don't give a shit about games, they care about fad markets and profiting off them. There was a time when a group of 11 people produced quality games of amazing innovation on shoestring budgets. Money doesn't make a good game, vision and talent does. Mainstream has no vision, and certainly no talent which is why it takes them hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to make their games.

As for TES Skyrim... You apparently don't understaned it can be modded. Ya, there're some things which can't be moddd out or added, but there's still a lot modding can do. To outright dismiss it as you do, leads me to believe you've never modded? I've modded before so I have some faith ijn it. Modders are as much a part of the niche industry as kickstarter is.
.

Really? It can be modded? Wow... I mean, I didn't know that Skyrim could be modded, I mean... I never knew they had the TES construction set, I mean... it was in Morrowind, Oblivion, and you say they are using it Skyrim? Really? Oh Wow.. I mean... NO FUCKING DUH MORON!

Like I said, you don't get it and if you couldn't connect the dots that I know that skyrim can be modded, then you really just don't get it.

Lastly, while many players hated BC 3000 AD, I loved it. Derek Smart was an ass*** and he sucked at some things, but his game did things you wouldn't see elsewhere, just because nobody was as crazy as Derek. For you to say everything before kickstarter was a mainstream wannabee and not worth palying, is an immediate signal you're not here to engage me honestly.

Generally they have been. The point was that the trend of development focus and style in the last decade has been to appeal to mainstream. There have been some rare gems in that time, but generally most are of a decline. I would have hoped you would have understand I meant such generally.

 

[Xenich]

And the best talent is going to be taken up by the biggest companies more oftne than not, so you can also forget super geniuses indie game makers.

Yeah, that one blows my mind. It is like he is clueless about the practices of the AAA industry.

 

[Mustawd]

Do you expect the mainstream to cater to your needs? They won't. This is why there're not dozens of new offerings every year. If you're not playing old(er) games, you're restricting yourself to a very small pool which is to me like trapping yourself in a toilet, complaining madly then drowning. The mainstream is goign to continue to find ways to get more customers and this means hte "decline" will continue. But evne as all that's hapening, there will be smaller companies and groups of programmers around the world putting out niche games. And as I mentioned above, even the mainstream puts out nicheR games. They're not all equal.

No one is arguing this. Please see the thread title. We're trying to understand the when, how, why, and where of the specific events set in motion to begin the decline. Not whether or not it is a fair point to bitch about.

Another thing.. The mainstream games wil always have better technology. The graphics and cinematics wil always be better. The ease with which one can make a MUD is what makes them so niche-friendly. The fact you and others don't notice this irritates me. IMHO, I'll play a MUD if I don't have to wait around for it. And there're tons of them. The very fact we're niche means the people who make our games are goighn to be in short supply. And small teams aren't going to be making 100 million dollar games with the latest technologies. You can forget that dream. And the best talent is going to be taken up by the biggest companies more oftne than not, so you can also forget super geniuses indie game makers. Becaouse our options are fewr, we have to be flexible

While I agree with your premise that AAA games will always have an edge in recruiting talent, one can easily also argue that there is a large draw in recent years for indie developers to strike out on their own. In which case it would be assumed that some of these will be talented enough to create incline niche rpgs.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Do you expect the mainstream to cater to your needs? They won't. This is why there're not dozens of new offerings every year. If you're not playing old(er) games, you're restricting yourself to a very small pool which is to me like trapping yourself in a toilet, complaining madly then drowning. The mainstream is goign to continue to find ways to get more customers and this means hte "decline" will continue. But evne as all that's hapening, there will be smaller companies and groups of programmers around the world putting out niche games. And as I mentioned above, even the mainstream puts out nicheR games. They're not all equal.

No one is arguing this. Please see the thread title. We're trying to understand the when, how, why, and where of the specific events set in motion to begin the decline. Not whether or not it is a fair point to bitch about.

When:
Answer: When people first started selling computer games and the urge came to them to get more customers.
How:
Answer: Find out what people want in the largest market(s) and put it in your game. Also try to expand the market.
Why:
Answer: To be wealthy. If you have more customers, you make more money.
Where:
In the marketing or investor departments which then trickles down to the others.
What:
The perceived change or decline in computer gaming.

What's there to know? The decline happened because companies want more customers playing their game. So they find common denominators between large populations of gamers and produce games with those common denominators. They also try to find out how to expand their market by getting new people to start gaming. What else do you want?

Since modern games have huge audiences, it stands to reason most gamers think there's just incline.

I want to ask my own question. Are older games more niche because they served a smaller audience, or is nicheness not tied to the estimated customer base of a game, but to other factors? I think there's some relation between size of customer base and nicheness, I just don't know how strong it's. There must be because nicheR necessarily means smallER.

First, I want to establish older games served fewer people:
Baldurs Gate was released 1998. After about ~7 years, it sold over 2 million retail units worldwide.
Skyrim was released in 2011. In a little over 2 years, it sold over 20 million units worldwide (unsure if this is shipped or sold). It shipped 10 million retail copies and its PC sales ere 3 times higher than any other just one month after release.

There's no question many, if not all old games served fewer peole. I've read 500,000 units sold was a desired sales figure, but in today's world that won't do. The bigger question for me is whether the smaller user base in past times led to games being more niche, or at least serving a different audience than the mainstream audience which is common today.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Another thing.. The mainstream games wil always have better technology. The graphics and cinematics wil always be better. The ease with which one can make a MUD is what makes them so niche-friendly. The fact you and others don't notice this irritates me. IMHO, I'll play a MUD if I don't have to wait around for it. And there're tons of them. The very fact we're niche means the people who make our games are goighn to be in short supply. And small teams aren't going to be making 100 million dollar games with the latest technologies. You can forget that dream. And the best talent is going to be taken up by the biggest companies more oftne than not, so you can also forget super geniuses indie game makers. Becaouse our options are fewr, we have to be flexible

While I agree with your premise that AAA games will always have an edge in recruiting talent, one can easily also argue that there is a large draw in recent years for indie developers to strike out on their own. In which case it would be assumed that some of these will be talented enough to create incline niche rpgs.

The AAA grade companies will have better technology, but as we are already seeing, although technology gets better and better, the momentum of technology improvement is slowing down and having slightly better graphics doesn't translate into sales numbers so large as those it used to translate to, back when games used to look a lot better from one year to the next. Some concrete evidence:

1. 'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare' US Retail Sales Reportedly Less Than 'Ghosts'
2. EA blames transition to new consoles for lacklustre sales of Battlefield 4, not quality issues
   
3. Ubisoft Stock Plummets After Botched 'Assassin's Creed: Unity' Launch
   
4. Tomb Raider has sold 3.4 million copies, failed to hit expectations
   
5. More Evidence Activision’s Destiny Sales are Missing Expectations
6. Will 'The Elder Scrolls Online' Have The Last Laugh With Its Subscription Fee?

Add to that the soon-to-be-confirmed flop that DA:I appears to have been - maybe EA/Bioware critically misunderstood what sells an RPG and that Frostbite 3 doesn't guarantee the return on a 5-6 years development cycle, a period during which a AAA budget has been burned. My expectations aren't very high for the coming Fallout 4.

I believe this trend is here to stay and it's described in this interview ( http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/lucas-spielberg-on-future-of-entertainment-1200496241/ ) I referenced earlier, but I suppose it got lost for the people who just drop in to tell us "how it really is". It seems that ten years after the arms-race between AAA companies began, we are moving to a new phase where customers have a much stronger say in what gets funded, thanks to digital delivery + crowdfunding + by all means thanks to the experience that the audience has built up throughout those 10 years and the resistance it built up to various "marketing tricks" and gamification techniques.

I'd even expect this trend which we are witnessing in RPGs will be replicated in other genres - imagine how many people would finance the "spiritual successor of Half-Life" for example? The videogame audience will start getting wind that it is possible to get quality as opposed to shit gameplay without getting milked and generally treated like a moron by a AAA company. I'm an optimist for the future

So, if my expectation is correct and AAA-titles gradually stop being profitable, what would be the AAA companies' next move? Would they downgrade their titles' budgets, would they start taking more creative risks as a result of the reduced budgets, and would this attract talent that's currently leaving AAA?

 

[TheGreatOne]

Capitalism caused the decline. Or to be more accurate the fundamental contradiction that is inherent in all capitalist systems, aka suffocating human creativity in favor of global market conformity while reducing its ability to evolve the relationship between base and superstructure. This in turn causes "the forces of production to come into conflict with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto" (marx), causing a social revolution (sic) or, in the case of computer gaming, the evolution of kickstarter projects that can be seen as an alternate form of self-organized anarcho-collectives, in a very limited sense.

Games developed in capitalist economies:
Every single old CRPG, strategy game, space sim, Looking Glass titles etc.

Games developed in socialist economies:
Tetris

So far capitalism has the better track record

Marxist analysis will always be superior to bourgeois historical discussion.

Feelz not reelz

 

[Xenich]

So, if my expectation is correct and AAA-titles gradually stop being profitable, what would be the AAA companies' next move? Would they downgrade their titles' budgets, would they start taking more creative risks as a result of the reduced budgets, and would this attract talent that's currently leaving AAA?

They will do the only thing they know how to do... Buy up any IP success, gimmick market it and milk it or use political power to manipulate elements of the market that allow for such competition (ie heavy government regulation of the internet). It has worked rather well in some US states for the utility companies.