Is anybody else think gaming has just became a complete train wreck recently

I remember the good days in the 90s when i personally thought gaming was at its peak!

now look at it! its one of my biggest hobbies and its a great media but truthfully, i beleive that in around 10 years all of gaming will just be causuals jumping around to play cooking mama 5 or some crap

anyone esle just think that its went totally downhill

My problems mainly are:                                                                           

Gaming has benn completely taken over by causual gamers and now lots of companies like MS are trying to get into the causal market nintendo has created but at the expense of bascially there entire lineup

Aswell, all companies are just out to get profit: puting online passes in games(EA sports), releasing unfinished games(Assassins creed 2),Making pre-owned buyers pay extra(mass effect 2), putting dlc on the disc(bioshock 2),releasing yearly sequels which start to ruin the series(NFS and call of duty) ect

And games are just getting worse: PEOPLE NOW TAKE A 6 HOUR CAMPAIN FOR GRANTED!, games are also starting to just focus soley on he multiplayer side of games and all the franchises that were started last gen and were successful are now being milked like guitar hero and call of duty

And my final complaint is just the lack of originality or new ips. I remeber in the 80s and 90s there was new ips being created all the time and now basically every game people are hyping are sequels. Even earlier this week ubisoft said it is going to stop making new ips for the rest of this gen which is just rubbish

Now i know no-one is going to read this and ppull out a magical wand and improve the gaming industry in a flash but i'm just wondering what people thought of the curent gaming industry and what they think of it as compared to previous gens especially the the ps1 era

I agree with you about dlc and sequels. These things are getting out of control, and at some point people dont realize that they are paying much more for something that should be already included in a game, like the old times (so much joy unlocking new features, maps, characters... good times).

 Now... the "casual market" is required for this industry to survive. As much as I love gaming and has been my main hobbie for 12 years, companies cant just sit down and wait for the "hardcorz" to keep them alive. Development costs went up, more time is required to develop a "decent game" and much more for a great game, and so on. Nintendo has begun to balance between "casual market" and their "loyal market", expanding to the "veteran market", which are mostly on the PS3 and XBOX360. Now, Microsoft and Sony just want some of the profits that the "casual market" can generate, which is not bad, remember: nothing is wrong as long as balance exists

I think you have a point that people (gamers) are much too whiny about "short" games these days.  $60 for a 6-hour campaign isn't a bad deal when you think about the following two ways:

Back in the 80's and 90's, we paid $50 for a game that could be finished in 20 minutes (like Contra).
And
We pay $20-$30 for a DVD/Blu-Ray movie--most of which are only an hour and a half--and no, I don't believe most of us watch the special features.  The value of entertainment versus dollars clearly goes to video games as the better deal.

I'm not quite as offended by a focus on multiplayer--I'm far more offended by the growing lack of off-line co-op gameplay.  Maybe I want to play Transformers: War for Cybertron or Crackdown 2 with, you know, the person sitting in the room with me.  Fucking stupid.

I think you're way off about "the casuals" taking over, though.  Casuals joining gaming is good because it brings in more revenue and keeps the industry alive.  There are still ooodles of "hardcore" games being made.

Gamers are the ones to blame for sequelitis--they (we) are the ones that buy sequels in numbers that blow away new, original titles.  Look at some of the worst Nintendo fans--some of these kids never ask for anything new, they ask for more games with Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon.  For that matter, they never ask for new takes on games, just returns to "glory days" like yet another Donkey Kong Country.  Nevermind that there hasn't really been an original Zelda title plot-wise since Majora's Mask.  Hell, a remake of Ocarina of Time is actually being made, and I've still seen one (so far, only one, thankfully) lackwit Nintendo fan whose only hope for the successor to the Wii was to see an Ocarina of Time remake on the thing!*

*not this site.

You could finish Super Mario Brothers in twenty minutes if you wanted. It coould be the same, or some more, it just depended on how you played the game. That's why I laught at some people complaining about and 8-hour game.

People said this 5 years ago and nothing happened, Gaming will always stay alive and well.

We can only blame ourselves for multiple sequels since we keep buying them.

We can only blame ourselves for DLC since we keep buying them.

We can only blame ourselves for Online passes when we keep paying for online.

Almost everything you mentioned isn't only to be blamed on these companies, but more so on ourselves as gamers for allowing them to do these things and not voting against it with our wallets.

We are going to end up in an age where renting games from services like GamFly will be useless since renting a title effectively shuts down half of it's features, mainly online play.

Blame yourself.

Lucky for us theres still a couple of righteous companies that care for games first. We should support them more and support the other ones the least possible. Between, this gen, theres no difference with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft as publisher. Nintendo is doing as usual, same IP for the same audience. Sony is also doing as usual, releasing new IP and financing/helping smaller devs in their projects. Microsoft is also doing as usual, meaning not doing much :P. (as publisher, compare to the other 2)

Well we have to give credit to sony this gen. I think PS3 this gen has the best new ips- LBP, Uncharted, Valkyria chronicles, Deomns souls, infamous, Heavy Rain, etc.

I guess the main problem is that 1st person shooters became super popular.  Last gen it was more about platforming but this gen shooters dominate all.

The only place where I dont agree is DLC. I mean, the basic of DLC is awesome, it can prolonge the game you paid full price for. If its a game you really enjoy you can enjoy it even more. The thing is, devs may decide to release an uncomplete or less complete game in order to sell DLC, thats where it can becomes a problem. As consumer, you dont know if its the case or not, so its hard to blame ourselves on that one. After all, the basic idea of a DLC is all good for both consumers and devs.

As example, I didnt purchase dragon age DLCs because there already was on release date, WTF! But I did purchase DLC for other games like borderlands or little big planet. Maybe there was content left out of borderlands in order to sell them as DLC, I surely dont want to encourage that, but how am I suppose to know?