What cau$ed the decline?

[Gozma]

It's interesting to theorize about what would have happened to RPGs and PC gaming in general if this had not happened. I'd say it's still likely that some sort of "decline" would have occurred, but rather than existing PC franchises being ruined by multiplatform development, you would have just seen PC games dwindle down, to be replaced by console-exclusive games on the Playstation.

Kinda depends on how Sony vs. Nintendo would play out without xbox

 

[CyberP]

It's interesting to theorize about what would have happened to RPGs and PC gaming in general if this had not happened. I'd say it's still likely that some sort of "decline" would have occurred, but rather than existing PC franchises being ruined by multiplatform development, you would have just seen PC games dwindle down, to be replaced by console-exclusive games on the Playstation.

Kinda depends on how Sony vs. Nintendo would play out without xbox

The results would be a hell of a lot better than the status quo, surely.

 

[Mustawd]

I think it is weird little has been done to support game developers that want to make games as an art form, outside of Kickstarter anyway. If I wanted to make a game that completely disregards modern design and business practices where can I turn? I doubt I'd have much luck on Kickstarter as you ideally need a track record for that, at least to get a worthwhile amount of funds.

What's so weird about that? It's difficult to be purely artistic in anything you do. At the end of the day you have to support yourself (and maybe others) financially.

I also don't understand the "greed" aspect everyone keeps talking about. It'd be like me complaining that the fact that Budweiser exists is somehow responsible for making it difficult for me to get good beers at my local liquor store. I have to pay more and go to a specialty if I want to get a good ale or whatever.

The issue with decline has always been an issue with demand, lack of segmentation of the customer base, and a fairly hegemonic structure in terms of publishing a game.


All these things I mentioned are finally coming to a point where making a large number of good/very good niche games is possible.

1. Things like kickstarter are allowing the demand for these type of RPGs to be showcased. Before it was much harder to quantify that kind of market. Market studies be damned...still hard to gauge demand without an actual product.
2. The older generation of gamer is finally demanding more than the bland and overused tropes that work with kids.
3. Again, kickstarter and the indie movement along with tools are allowing games to be distributed to a more segmented niche.


If anything, the incline is happening due to this so-called "greed" to actually be expressed in a functional way.

 

[CyberP]

I think it is weird little has been done to support game developers that want to make games as an art form, outside of Kickstarter anyway. If I wanted to make a game that completely disregards modern design and business practices where can I turn? I doubt I'd have much luck on Kickstarter as you ideally need a track record for that, at least to get a worthwhile amount of funds.

What's so weird about that? It's difficult to be purely artistic in anything you do. At the end of the day you have to support yourself (and maybe others) financially.

Poor wording on my part; I didn't mean pure non-profit. A dedicated publisher of lower budget games that strives to do things the old way. But of course the type of person to found & manage a publishing company is likely to be someone aiming for riches more than anything, so perhaps it was a stupid thought.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Hasn't this been discussed to death? The launch of the XBox, at the time the first prominent western console in like forever, made formerly PC-exclusive developers abandon the PC to seek their fortune in the console market.

This notion is totally unfounded.

Independent publishers had been chomping a the bit for multiplatform releases as long as different gaming platforms had existed within the industry. Games like Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Wizardry, and Shadowgate all saw ports to Nintendo systems. Arcade to home console ports were commonplace. Baldur's Gate was slated to be ported to the Playstation, Diablo actually was, and Starcraft and Doom saw Nintendo 64 ports. And during the PS1 era, there were plenty of extremely successful multiplatform series, Tomb Raider most notable among them, though Resident Evil and Legacy of Kain were no slouches in the sales department either.

And with the runaway success of the first two Playstations, the bean counters could plan ahead with the knowledge that console gaming wasn't some kind of fluke; you don't sell over 100 million units twice by mere chance. Xbox or not, multiplatforming as the norm was inevitable. Every suit was going to ask their developer underlings why they weren't selling to such an enormous install base...and what were the devs going to say? "PC Herrenrasse, mein Fuhrer!" probably wasn't going to fly. Even if development costs weren't ballooning, no self-respecting manager was going to ignore a vast source of potential revenue.

 

[Telengard]

Investment Theory: In the 80s and 90s, there was a sea change in the way invested money did its its investments. No longer did people look long-term. Short-term investments, fast profits. This change was widespread, and actually came to computer games late since computer games were still largely small, self-financed businesses in those days. But as the push for graphics skyrocketed development prices beyond individual means and computer game companies began consolidating, investment money began entering the picture, along with their market theories.

Annualization: Investment Money changed a lot of things, but the big elephant in the room is annualization. Under annualization, every game IP needs to produce 1 game per year. Thus, one COD per year, one Madden per year etc. Why? Because of investment money. Because investors in, say, a small RPG company are largely there as lovers of RPGs. Investors in a large computer game conglomerate, on the other hand, on there for profit. So, even if the suits in the company like particular genres, they still have to keep the investors happy. And here's where the elephant in the room comes in. Large and complex games, like RPGs, or games that demand a high level of detail per screen, like adventure games, these kinds of games demand long development times. 2.5 years for RPGs. So, the publisher has to go to the investors not once, but two or three times, and explain why this one division is showing a 5 million dollar yearly loss of their money. You're hurting their investment portfolio. They demand to know why you're messing with their money, throwing money down this large hole. Now, a game like COD is easy to reassure investors with, because the rate of return is so high and the profit margin as close to guaranteed as it could get. RPGs lack such protection, because:

Lack of Market Potential: As wonderful for RPGs and other ignored segments as Kickstarter is, it doesn't actually show anything publishers didn't already know. They're not stupid. They know very well how many traditional RPG buyers are out there - budget tier game development numbers. Keep in mind, anything under 5 million is a budget title. The kind of knock-off game located in a separate bin that nobody wants to associate with. Kickstarter produces a lot of money in the public's mind, but it's chicken feed in terms of actual game development budgets. The picture that most people get in their heads of the kind of RPG they want, that picture is a mid-size development game, or 10-20 million. So, to make a budget title, you picture your ideal game, and you start ripping pieces out until you cut down enough to be 2.5 millions dollars. The issue here is, the market for traditional RPGs stalled out. The number of sales for Diablo clones grew steadily, the number of sales for Bro-shooters grew astronomically, while the numbers for RPGs inched up slowly. That, while people demanded ever more complex graphics from every genre. In such an environment, high-risk, low-reward genres like RPGs get sidelined for something with a forseeable growth future. Because remember, this is investment money that is looking for a good return on their investment. A low-growth market that has increasing costs is kind of loser investment.

Consoles: The console shift happened when it did not just because of Xbox. It began with the Playstation. The Playstation made it "okay" for 20-somethings to use consoles. Not only was that a huge market who had lots of disposable income from groups of people who grew up with consoles, the Playstation shifted the demographics. Huge numbers of people bought Playstations, causing a massive install base of people who are there for only one thing - unlike PCs - to play Playstation games.It's a fixed market with assured numbers, which investment money loves. They know exactly how many Playstation games they could potentially sell, since the final number is equal to exactly one for every Playstation sold, and that number is big. Once the road was paved by Playstation, Xbox is the logical end. Xbox is just a Western company using Western methods and production to reach the people Sony was doing with Playstation. Thus, Xbox is the most visible symptom of a much larger disease, and it happened when it did because that's when the Nintentdo generation grew up mixed with cheaper products and graphics becoming advanced enough to attract a broader audience.

3d: 3d graphics were once heralded as the cheap way to do things. It was going to save everyone money. But costs quickly spiraled way out of control as people demanded higher and higher quality, thus quickly stripping 3d of its advantages. Many quality companies didn't survive the technical demands of shifting to 3d, and the quick spiral of costs put more marginal game companies out of business, forcing them to sell to large conglomerates. Conglomerates which use investment money.

 

[mondblut]

Windows 95 giving apes a chance to use a computer.

 

[Infinitron]

Xbox or not, multiplatforming as the norm was inevitable.

Why multiplatforming and not straight-out console exclusivity, shutting PCs out completely?

I'm imagining a much more Japanese-flavored gaming ecosystem, where PC gaming becomes a full-blown MMO and RTS ghetto. Implausible? Perhaps, but there was a moment in time where it seemed like that sort of thing might happen. Ever played Call of Duty 3 on PC?

 

[Kane]

the decline was caused by and large by microsoft entering the console business, doing what they do best: power slamming the actual, possible and hypothetical competition WWF style while dropping nukes on the amazonian rainforest. biotope is kill.

 

[Outlander]

Consoles. Consoles. Consoles.

- Publishers want to put PC games into consoles, especially the incredibly popular FPS genre.

- Compared to computers, consoles are: A) underpowered, B) far more easy to use (read: kids and retards friendly)

- Kids, retards, shit hardware and shit input methods can't deal with 'complex' stuff, so devs have to progressively dumb-down and streamline all the games (hand-holding, simplified levels, less content overall) until a point where today it's considered a standard practice.

- Budgets skyrocket because kids and retards are mainly interested in good graphics, all other aspects of a videogame are almost irrelevant.

FIN.

 

[Morality Games]

All of us.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Gaming became too big for its own good, I guess. Big companies don't like risks, fear of risks leads to samey products that were proven to be successful in the past, which leads to blandness.

Consoles. Consoles. Consoles.
- Publishers want to put PC games into consoles, especially the incredibly popular FPS genre.
- Compared to computers, consoles are: A) underpowered, B) far more easy to use (read: kids and retards friendly)
- Kids, retards and shit hardware can't deal with 'complex' stuff, so devs have to progressively dumb-down and streamline all the games (hand-holding, simplified levels, less content overall) until a point where today it's considered a standard practice.
- Budgets skyrocket because kids and retards are mainly interested in good graphics, all other aspects of a videogame are almost irrelevant.
FIN.

I think there's a contradiction here. Graphics whores would want the most powerful platform available, no? Complexity shouldn't be a problem because you can always ask a Cripsy to install a graphics card for you.

 

[Outlander]

I think there's a contradiction here. Graphics whores would want the most powerful platform available, no? Complexity shouldn't be a problem because you can always ask a Cripsy to install a graphics card for you.

Actually, the majority of people prefer the hassle-free alternative if available, especially the parents who certainly don't want their brats busting their balls every time c:\windows gets deleted. And retards are, well, retards.

Add on top of this both Sony and Microsoft's PR speech 'consoles are as much or more powerful than an average PC' and there you go, hello present times.

 

[Jick Magger]

It's like asking "What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?". There's no real singular event that caused the decline, it's a series of different events, some related and some unrelated, some avoidable and some unavoidable, over the course of years which slowly chipped away at the foundations so that it gradually toppled over.

 

[Ellef]

Spoiler

 

[Mustawd]

Xbox or not, multiplatforming as the norm was inevitable.

Why multiplatforming and not straight-out console exclusivity, shutting PCs out completely?

If you can multiplatform why leave out PC at all? After all, one could argue that you're just leaving behind an untapped source of revenue if you do that. I mean, designing a console game to work on a PC is much easier than the other way around.

Besides, some households, especially during those years, could many times only afford either a console or a game PC. Not both.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Actually it's the consumerization and commoditization of the industry, leading to profits over art.

 

[CyberP]

Actually it's the consumerization and commoditization of the industry, leading to profits over art.

Put simply, yes. But we are trying to point fingers here!

 

[Mustawd]

Actually it's the consumerization and commoditization of the industry, leading to profits over art.

Are we saying the older games weren't for consumer purposes?


For me it seems that the fact that video games have gone mainstream is what's really killing the artistic qualities of these games. When you cater to the masses you get a bland and sanitized product.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

And who caters to the mases more than those who value profits over all else?

 

[Athelas]

This notion is totally unfounded.

Independent publishers had been chomping a the bit for multiplatform releases as long as different gaming platforms had existed within the industry. Games like Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Wizardry, and Shadowgate all saw ports to Nintendo systems. Arcade to home console ports were commonplace. Baldur's Gate was slated to be ported to the Playstation, Diablo actually was, and Starcraft and Doom saw Nintendo 64 ports. And during the PS1 era, there were plenty of extremely successful multiplatform series, Tomb Raider most notable among them, though Resident Evil and Legacy of Kain were no slouches in the sales department either.

What on earth does this have to do with my post? when a) I didn't say a word about multiplatform releases and b) there is a pretty significant difference between some PC games getting ported to consoles in the past and what actually happened during the decline - those PC games not being produced anymore.

And with the runaway success of the first two Playstations, the bean counters could plan ahead with the knowledge that console gaming wasn't some kind of fluke; you don't sell over 100 million units twice by mere chance. Xbox or not, multiplatforming as the norm was inevitable. Every suit was going to ask their developer underlings why they weren't selling to such an enormous install base...and what were the devs going to say? "PC Herrenrasse, mein Fuhrer!" probably wasn't going to fly. Even if development costs weren't ballooning, no self-respecting manager was going to ignore a vast source of potential revenue.

I don't think it's a coincidence that both fallen-from-grace RPG developers Bioware and Bethesda got their console start on the XBox with Kotor and Morrowind respectively. The XBox was almost entirely home to western developers, a lot of which were former PC developers. Yes, it was increasingly harder to ignore the potential money that could be made to customers, but it was the XBox that provided the foothold for those PC developers to finally make the jump. I believe Steam was launched shortly after the XBox - who knows what effect it would have had if PC gaming had still been thriving instead of on its way out.

 

[tuluse]

To understand the decline you have to back to another time. When PC games were sold by mail order and 256 colors on screen was the height of technology.

Let's play a hypothetical game here. You have the means and skills to make a PC game. You have the ideas to do something novel, and are confident people will enjoy it. How do you sell them the game? How do you even tell them it exists?

In the modern day, these problems are essentially solved. Find large online communities to tell them, put the game on steam and other big portals to sell it. Think back to 1985 and try to picture how you would go about selling a game. The answer back then was often put an add in a magazine and sell by mail order. Then get into some specialty shops and sell there.

Eventually selling in specialty shops was the primary way to sell. Customers don't want to be bothered with finding games only through magazine ads, writing, sending checks that can get lost etc. So the obvious thing happened, game sales moved entirely to stores. Now you can just walk into your computer shop and see a nice display of 20 or maybe even 100 games. Browse through them, ask the clerk. It's all much more convenient. This is so convenient that PC games are moving into regular stores, not just specialty shops.

So this was happening for games and providing much more funding and opportunity for game makers, and thus we saw an incline from the mid 80s through the late 90s. However, at the same time there were other things happening. One was that PCs were being rapidly more popular and costs were being slashed. What was once the province of the wealthy or the very committed hobbiest was making it's way into every home. While this meant many more PCs were being sold, it also meant a race to the bottom in price. Specialty shops existed from very high profit margins on items. They were not equipped to be high volume pushers.

So the specialty stores started to die, but this was ok since PC games had moved into more mainstream stores. You can just go to Best Buy or Toys'R'Us to buy your games, and it's even a little bit more convenient since they have games for other systems and physical toys too. Now, we meet the console. Unlike the Playstation being some super seller like people here claim, each generation of consoles was pushing into more and more places, and games for the systems were flying off the shelves. This would have been fine as the markets were actually rather segmented, except because of the events detailed above PC and consoles games were now in competition with each other. As a store owner, you'd rather carry the console game that's gonna sell 100 copies over a pc that's gonna sell 15.


I was going to keep writing to get to present day, but I'm already tired of writing this and it seems tl;dr territory already. You can probably fill in the rest yourself.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

So this was happening for games and providing much more funding and opportunity for game makers, and thus we saw an incline from the mid 80s through the late 90s. However, at the same time there were other things happening. One was that PCs were being rapidly more popular and costs were being slashed. What was once the province of the wealthy or the very committed hobbiest was making it's way into every home.

Change a few words around and you could argue that the decline started when PCs started dropping in price and the cultured and intelligent Amiga generation was subsumed. I know, but it still hurts...

 

[rezaf]

stuff

Excellent post, would read again. Since I can't brofist (yet?), I hope it's ok to show my appreciation this way.
_____
rezaf

 

[Jarpie]

Consoles: The console shift happened when it did not just because of Xbox. It began with the Playstation. The Playstation made it "okay" for 20-somethings to use consoles. Not only was that a huge market who had lots of disposable income from groups of people who grew up with consoles, the Playstation shifted the demographics. Huge numbers of people bought Playstations, causing a massive install base of people who are there for only one thing - unlike PCs - to play Playstation games.It's a fixed market with assured numbers, which investment money loves. They know exactly how many Playstation games they could potentially sell, since the final number is equal to exactly one for every Playstation sold, and that number is big. Once the road was paved by Playstation, Xbox is the logical end. Xbox is just a Western company using Western methods and production to reach the people Sony was doing with Playstation. Thus, Xbox is the most visible symptom of a much larger disease, and it happened when it did because that's when the Nintentdo generation grew up mixed with cheaper products and graphics becoming advanced enough to attract a broader audience.

This, so much this. Playstation changed the playing field so fucking much, Sony brought the respectability and credibility into the console markets with their name alone. Like Telengard says, it made it "okay" to own the console by the plebs. XBawks was just the killing blow, but it all started IMO from Playstation.