"Epic Gaming" -- is it ruining video gaming?

[Dodece]

While the logic seems flawed its not. While it seems like financial suicide. The reality is that epic games bring in epic levels of cash if they succeed. While the smaller budget titles might not lose much, and if they are surprise hits might generate substantial sales. They are no less speculative. You can lose money on small games in fact you can lose more money making small budget games then big budget games. Ask all the developers that make mediocre games that have gone under.

Epics and low budget games are basically too different strategies. The epics are smart bombs while budget games are carpet bombing. You have to use them appropriately. They each have their benefits and their detractors. Sure a epic game can fail miserably, but so too can five mediocre games. We just gravitate towards the high budget games that flop. We generally ignore the developers that put out garbage every six months. Who pray they will some day strike gold.

The industry needs the strategy, and competition will keep it in place. No big player wants to be out a epic in the holiday season. Meanwhile no large developer wants to neglect the flatter seasons. Each budget has its strengths. The same way during the fall, and early spring Hollywood puts out their low budget titles. While they save their big guns for the winter, and summer seasons.

What hurts the industry or more specifically particular developers is vision. This is an art form, and if your art is not up to snuff regardless of budget you will fail. Be it two shoddy epic games, or ten low budget flops. You will not succeed if you do not have that vision. You can't substitute quality for quantity, or vice versa. You can't be too dependent on either. You need to stay balanced.

A great example is network television. Where the formula evolved towards the cheaper, faster, conservative philosophy over the years. Now you can get the same programming year in and year out lest a fad forces them to make a money grab. You get a hundred sitcoms, fifty dramas, sports, and very rarely do you get anything outside of that. All well and good as long as your not looking for things like documentaries, science fiction, fantasy, or other lesser genres. Instead you get five Law and Orders, Four CSIs, Half a dozen medical dramas, and the same nuclear family sitcoms. The reason they are cheap in comparison its easier to fire out a dozen sitcoms rather then one decent science fiction series. Well the result was that while they neglected cable networks dared. The result their market share plummeted.

Honestly however most games have around a six hour play through. What matters is the comeback. Even the highly rated Mario 64 can be dashed in six hours. The length is less important then the consistency of experience, and the desire to go through that again. Sometimes the best games can be the shortest games.

Just my two cents.