It has already happened.

RazorDragon said: It has already happened.

OK, I updated thread title. I think it is confusing what the topic actually is :/ I am talking about a TOTAL shift, not just if you agree mainstream has influenced industry or not.

If that was what your comment meant, then that's my own misunderstanding.

I don't think there will ever be an absolute shift to Mainstream. We will always have "Indie" Developers and we will always have First Party games (like Pikmin) that don't want to cater to the Mainstream crowd.

Yeah I think indie will take over where that left off. However, if money is to be made, it will be put where obviously it can get the most return... so mainstream to me means most of those bigger projects going to things like triple AAA titles. However... my husband has been showing me some kickstarters that have been getting a lot of money. I can't remember the name, but I wanna say it was a space travel/flight simulator MMO game? They reached into the millions...

Of course, this is assuming that game design/costs are still pretty much the same. If some technological improvements are made, that perhaps more people can make games easier and have a good network to distribute it, then perhaps mainstream will not necessarily always be the status quo and indie/direct purchase will be the way we continue to play our games...

Just some ideas.

This is a good question. Back in the discussion about the controversy regarding Mojang's shindig at GDC, and Mark Rein's gaffe, the general immaturity that permeates the industry. The problem is that the industry seems to have only 2 kinds of people in it: gamers and suits. The suits are largely irrelevant to the discussion, business mercenaries whose short-sightedness cannot be blamed on anything but the dogma of business school teachers.

The gamers, now, are an important factor here, because what you're getting feeding up into the industry are people who play games. This means that the relatively narrow bounds of the industry are feeding back into itself: people who grew up playing certain kinds of games, want to make those games. Sure, they've got bloom lighting and tesselation and dynamic physics, but fundamentally they want to make bigger, badder, and better versions of Doom, Ultima, or Tomb Raider.

What we need are more non-gamers in the industry. People who want to make games, but who do not have gaming as we know it as their frame of reference.

Good question Marucha and yes it very well could happen. We have been seeing this shift in recent years but it doesn't necessarily mean bad. We could argue that Uncharted is for the everyday person since anybody can like it because of the cinematic approach. Then there is Assassin's Creed which runs fluidly through the environment, or Call of Duty's ease of jumping into a game with chaotic fun. Even though these are all hardcore games they are still designed for a wide variety of people to like them. Even though gaming is going mainstream I dont think that will stop them from being good. They may make them easier to understand or bring realistic scenarios rather than over the top stories like we have seen in the past but that may not be a bad thing either.

As long as there is a crowd for hardcore gaming we will continue to see hardcore games. They may start changing to bring in more customers but on the surface they will still be very much like we are use to seeing.

I would say that is just you.  And me.  And other dedicated gamers.

On the other-hand, when I try to play NSMB Wii with one of my friends or my niece, they can't even make it out of World 1 before they are out of lives.

It's not even about skill required, it's about the ability to *appeal.* Crossword puzzles often require a good bit of skill, but the appeal is nigh-universal. The educational software that Nintendo and Ubisoft picked up for DS, like Cooking Navi or My Word Coach, that was some real expanded market stuff. Wii Relax, if Nintendo had managed to get the Vitality Sensor working right, could have been gargantuan.

Sony and Microsoft have glimmerings of the right idea too. A working version of Milo, Wonderbook, and the works of Quantic Dream, each in a different way. I do dearly wish that Quantic Dream had more gameplay orientation, but their idea is out there to the degree that they're really acheiving something unique.

Sorry, I wasn't really responding to the broader point.  Just the idea that Mario games have gotten easier.  For seasoned gamers in the genre, sure it fairly easy.  For inexperienced gamers, or like some of my friends that just play mostly sports games, they are still difficult.

Its funny that you mention mainstream/casual. For me mainstream games are games like Call of Duty most people would kill me for saying call of duty is casual.

For me there is gameplay wise no difference between lets say Wii Sports and Call of Duty. The singleplayer in COD is way to easy and the game itself is no challenge the other players you meet online are.

Wii Sports lacks online functionality but with some luck and time you will always find people that will beat your ass when you invide them to your living room.

The whole casual/hardcore debate is nonsense since former hardcore games magically turned into casual games.

Its more about accessible games VS unaccessible games (that need 15 min tutorials with tons of text to even explain the simplest things)

And then there is mainstream which are games like COD etc. Games that can be compared to mainstream movies like Transformers. They are okay not great and their biggest selling point is sensory overload Graphics/sound/BOOOOOOM etc...

And sadly we are already punished with way too many mainstream games and yes it will become even more annoying because studios with "rising" development costs will not risk to fail so they will go mainstream and the gameplay will suffer.

Thats why so many people feel that there is only a handful of developers making "real" games and that indie games are fresh etc.

The industry f*cked up itself and we can just pray that it will drop all the short term profit mentality etc...