Xor said:
Hardcore games are getting harder to sell, so companies are cutting back on the more "experimental" offerings they used to release - the kinds of games that are usually underfunded wannabe shit, but can sometimes be really good. Psychonauts comes to mind as an example. There's no way in hell a publisher would take a chance on that game in the industry today, it's just too out there.
That is just plain wrong. In absolute numbers, they still sell anything between 10.000 and 500.000 copies like they did in the ninetees, depending on how well the production values are. What has changed is that the companies think that without an overpriced 3D engine and corresponding amount of 3D models and textures the game won't sell at all. Also the much higher sales numbers on the consoles induce the illusion that the market has grown and relatively, the PC marked has really shrinked. But not really. These big companies are getting proved wrong by the smaller companies over and over again (see SotS, SoaSE, paradox games, etc.). What has also changed is that the big companies think that only teens buy games, whereas the real market of
paying people is with people who actually have money to spend, those 25 years or older.
It's also mostly teens who pirate, because they only have barely enough money for their alcohol excesses, with alcohol being much harder to pirate than games... Someone with a job and a family doesn't want to hassle with cracks, patches, cracks for patches, etc. in his one hour of free time that he has left between the job, taking care of family and some sleep. He simply buys a game and expects it to be entertaining. And here is the third misconception in the industry: People do have only perhaps an hour to play. But the wrong conclusion is to assume that they want to play some flat, quick game in that time. No, grown-up gamers want a game that they can look forward throughout the day of playing one more hour of. Something that catches their imagination even when not playing it. Only more interesting games do that (Civilization, BG, etc.) which either have interesting story lines or other overarching mechanisms that last from one gaming session to the next.
In essence, this is the same as with books. Only because we can't read a book in an hour or two doesn't mean that books went extinct. Quite contrary, despite the advent of computer entertainment, books still exist and they still take at least 8-10 hours to read through. And life is still more bearable when you are working, but looking forward to the evening when you'll proceed in that one very interesting book you are currently reading.[/b]
