| noname2200 said: It's that "continued" part that concerns me so much. Prices need to go down, and now. I knew full well that those saying that development costs would decrease to reasonable levels when developers finish making their engines/tools were full of it (have those methods ever halved development costs through a generation?), but the thought that they're still going up is bad mojo indeed. |
There's definitely a herd mentality in a lot of the entertainment industry, and video games are no exception. Every time something hits big, you've got a dozen companies rushing to make copies of it with varying successes that usually (but not always) fall below the original's. Look all the super-heroes movies that have come out after X-Men and Spider-man made big money, or all those damn Boy Bands, or all the GTA III knock-offs last generation.
A big part of the current herd mentality in a lot of the gaming industry seems to be make more expensive and pretentious versions of traditional games in some sort strange attempt to deny video games simple entertainment roots and transcend into interactive art. I know it sounds weird for me to suggest that stubborn pride is a big contributor to this rampant spending, but look at EA. They have a reputation has unimaginative company who purely viewed games as business only, and even they ended up blowing a lot of money to compete in this bizarre interactive art arms race. They bought BioWare, they made Dead Space and Mirror's Edge, they bragged about how their Metacritic scores of their games was much higher then last year.
Think about how many more companies list Metacritic scores in their financial reports, as if it somehow means the game will sell better. Think about all the traditional game developers who act like the Wii is some sort of abomination because it stands in contrast to this herd ideal. Think about all the lofty unrealistic promises that come with a lot of high-profile HD games. Remember all the talk about Euphoria and DMM before The Force Unleashed came out? Or Bethesda talking about “radiant A.I.” in Oblivion? It can't just be something fun anymore, it also has to be amazing and unique in every aspect.
Look at Midway. Rumor is that Midway spent about 30 Million dollars to make Stranglehold. It sold poorly, but it didn’t deter their desire to make the next big game on the HD consoles. They released Area 51: Blacksite on the HD consoles during the same time period. They published Unreal 3; they made Mortal Kombat Vs. DC, and were going on to make This Is Vegas. All on the HD consoles. What did they have on the Wii? Cheap dirty rehashes of old games and a blatant copy of Wii Play? What did they have on the handhelds? Anything? They spent themselves into massive debt for what looks like a claim to fame.
I think it’s why there’s such a huge push on DLC for big HD games. It’s the most efficient way to drum up revenue on costly games built on unrealistic expectations without compromising the original concept.
It just seems crazy to me. Did Sony really spend four years and a lot of money on Killzone 2 because people pointed hour their E3 Demo in 2005 was CGI? Because if they did that's just insane. Would most people who don’t frequent gaming forums have cared if it didn’t look better then Gears 2, or whatever?
