Great post and welcome to the new world of gaming :)
Its fun watching the gaming industry drown in mediocrity and greed, isn't it...... :(
I too remember the good ole days which makes it even harder for me to watch this industry go down the path it is.

I have one concept for you that keeps hope alive for me:

- Modding and Independent
Here is the answer to your problems my friend. Sure they will never get as big as the disgusting mega publishers now but they do things the old way. They listen to the gamers (gasp) and get feedback that goes directly into the game. They provide alphas, betas, and demos to show you what the game will truly be like without forcing 'pre-orders' or any other bs. They are games made by passionate gamers which leads to quality gameplay and not just some dressed up pig ;)


I personally think game development is getting too expensive and something will have to change sooner than later. 2 interesting development models that are just starting to get traction.
- Open Development: This is basically an indie team that shares all steps of their development with their community. They develop rich tools for the community to use and help make mods and other extras to get the community involved and change the game for the better. 2 quick examples would be Overgrowth and Natural Selection 2.

- AAA Indie: This is basically an indie team that funds their project through the community and not some publisher that takes over the game. They create a strong community that they listen and work with to help develop their game. They use self funding and pre-orders from fans to finish the game. I think more and more indie teams will try this route since publishers take so much of the cut and usually force changes.

Thanks for the read and glad to see others are opening their eyes as well ;)

Great read I enjoyed the article a lot. That was a fantastic write up. Certainly expresses some thoughts I have had, but never formed or talked about. It was great. This is an article worth blogging about or up the VGChartz article sections. Sometimes it seems that bland forum worth news get's put into the Headlines :\

I only have 2 comments. They don't change the article focus, but I wanted to point the out.

1.

2. Shovel ware is not a PS2 era thing. It dates back to Atari( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_2600_games) . Though I can't find it I had heard even a cereal company had a game made on their mascot. So I assure you SHOVEL WARE( http://www.gamespot.com/atari2600/action/mastersoftheuniversepoh/similar.html ) is not a new thing. By from what I hear Custers Revenge is NSW game play.


ooh check this game out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_(Atari_2600) (Nintendo infringed on a name :P )

Haha well thank you for that.  I think I'm going to try and contact Gonintendo see if I can get them to link it up on their site.  I mean they put everything else up there.  Might try to get it put up as an article here but that's fine.

And yea I know shovelware existed before this, which actually hurt the industry long ago.  But it did see quite a resurgence once gaming started to get big again with the late GB early PS2 era.  And then really exploded in the Wii and DS stages.  And it does seem that it is starting to come to an end as "bulk games" seem to be replaced by less iterations or more "focused" titles.  Mainly from Ubisoft themselves who ended up being the biggest loser out of all of it. 

I want my 5 minutes back lol.

That was probably the longest way of saying "beware of marketing".

Kidding a little, Zucas. You're a smart young man.

Haha welll if you did break it down that much you could get that but it's more of a warning to those who are doing this rather than the consumers.  So I guess for short, "beware of short term mistakes that destroy the future".  Or something like that.  But thx for the feedback.

Yeah I know there was more to it. It got me thinking, especially about the long-term trust thingy.

I can't honestly say which strategy is more worth it from a dev/publishers point of view. In the case of AvP I can see that when (if) you already know your product is sub-par, and I actually heard this first hand from one of the developers - he openly said to me that AvP 3 will be bad - then I understand that it makes sense to put all your resources on cheap, effective marketing (shock value) rather than build long-term trust.

But guys like Call of Duty/IW might risk their brand trust a little by too much shock value marketing rather than have the product speak for itself.

Well yea that is very true.  I believe I stated somewhere in that wall of text that shock value does have its place, but it can't be everything.  I mean everyone needs that little edge every now and then to give it the boost it needs to be be better than the rest.  But it can't be nice wrapping paper on an empty box. 

Now for games that are already bad and trying to market its shock value to at least get something out of it, it does have its place.  What I'm just tryign to argue against, is not everything can do that because it is rather risky.  Because if every game started to do that then you'd have a lot of flops and a decent amoutn of huge successes with little to know middle ground.  I don't mind anything in a little moderation, but when it starts to become an epidemic, that's when the problem occurrs. 

I... really can't say much, because your main post is spot on. It's part of the reason I've become so jaded against graphics and FMVs: all it does is make it easier to advertise, but you put it so much more eloquently. And I'm also already looking forward to your post on the review system, since it's something else I have issues with. (And I feel it feeds nicely into this article, also.)

I mean the guys do unique downloadable stuff.  Guys who make original games that aren't based on popular designs, but their own thing.  Of course they want the money the big guys have, but still make games that entertain them.  On this end, I was also think smaller studios also who also go off a bit different.  I am thinking stuff like Puzzle Quest.  Yes the Bejewelled part was borrowed, but the mixing of genres was new.  I would comment the original tower defense folks also, eventhough they were ripped off in excess now.

God, I wish films died after all the Romantic Comedies took over and I wish there were no more Sci-Fi films that were dumbed for mainstream consumption.


Oh wait..