Almost: I have studies in Advanced Psicology, Psichoanalisys (i dont know if its the same in english) Economic Teory, Advanced Marketing and Human Social Behaviour I was studying game desing, but i find out by a contact in Epic games how the industry is goin. So after a lot of reflexion i decided to go and study something else. Back to the topic: games arent worst than before, in fact the ratio of good games over bad games has improoved since the 16bits. Although, the number of work hours in AAA games has indeed decreased. The problem is what i call "market overhype". Is the same that happened to the movie industry: suddenly the production costs went sky high and nobody wanted to get involved with new and challenging projects (thats why we see the same crappy action movie over and over again). Then the hype came in: today most of a movie`s budget its spent in marketing: ads, merchandising, etc...That, summed to an absurd increase in executive wages is trowing the movie industry into the toilet The same is happening to the videogames: now we have programmers who are underwaged and experiencing several types of exploitation. Corporate excecutives keep increasing their own revenues and game development cost are increasing too (some by the increasing complexity, most for the marketing campaigns) making impossible for small and medium independent studios to keep up with the market. I could explain why most of you feel like the 8 and 16bits were better, but thats some complex psicology teories, ill talk on that later. The basic problem is: this industry is being taken to its limit, and when it falls it goin to be even worse that the 84. Think that, for many investors, this could be the next .Com
i think it's a mixt of alot of factors, i'm no proffesional and i'm sure i'll be missing some, but anyway: -we where all younger at that time, for most of us, the 8 bits/16bits era where we've all started. most of us never played games before and we were young, so we couldn't really critisize anything. we've seen all our curent favorite characters (or most of them anyway) at their debuts (mario, zelda, samus, sonic, the dragon warior serie, ff,...) but they had no real personality, no voice, no concrete image and all, so we had to invent everything by ourselves, just like when we read a book. but in the 3d era, our lovely characters that we've defined by ourselves in our heads, started to get their personalities, that you liked it or not, just like when they're doing a film based on a book. sometimes it just doesn't match what you were thinking, while other times you miss the days when you could imagine your video game characters and the story they were involved in. People like to imagine, to dream, but if you remove their rights to dream, and give them something already made, by someone else, they'll begin to look at the past and think about how great it was, and they're not wrong, in a way, since you can't hate what you've imagined, the fruit of you own tastes. So in fact, you played the game of the character you've created, it was his adventures, but the thing that was great is that you didn't know what was going to happen, you always wanted to go deeper in the game to know what's happening after this level, were you character would be and all. and you even started to develop a little story while playing at your game, why the hell was mario in a dark, snowy level just by now? how does it felt? why is there a crab in the sixth dungeon? why is the 3rd and last sword below a tomb? who the hell is ganon? who made the raft? Now, games give you a pre-made character, you can't imagine anything about it, because everything is already done, and not by yourself. There's some games where you can't even change the name of your charcter, so you're not watching and helping your creation anymore, it feels less personal, less like a dream, you have no, or at least, less connections with the character, there's no ''magic''. -I'm sure you where thinking about the good old days when i was talking about mario and zelda, when you played the game and all, or even just watching someone else playing it. the mind always make things looking better, greater, funnier, that's how it works. Apart if it was a special moment, you probably won't think about the fights you or your brother started to take the controller, when you parents removed your video games for an undetermined time because you weren't kind with you sister and all. you'll think about you and your friend betting the crap of the last bowser though, how happy you were when you've finally killed that though boss, when you've found the best weapon of a game and all. you'll almost never remember bad things related with the old days when you where playing video games, memory will always associate good things with good things. sometimes playing your games you've played will make you remember other things that aren't related with video games at all. it will be associated with the past, your past. your favorite pyjama, your favorite meal, your best friend, what you did with them. it makes a link with the past. and when you're replaying these games, you're not only remembering the maps of a dungeons, the secret treasures and all of your game, but you also remember your past, and apart if you had a difficult past (your father beated you,..) your past will always looks better than what it really was. because like i said earlier, you'll mostly remember the good things, not the bad ones. so playing your old machine is like a link with your own past, it creates nostalgia, and everytime you'll open your nes (by exemple), you'll always hope that somehow something from your past will pop in your head, 'cause you like to remember things from the past, and everytime you will, you'll like you games more and more. because you'll link your past with the game. -Like i already said, when you think about the past, you'll most of the time forget about the bad things. When you think about the snes, you'll think about mario world, a link to the past, super metroid, final fantast 2 and 3, chrono trigger and all, right? buy you won't think about shaq-fu or time trax though. (sometimes, you'll think about bad games because they're really bad, but think about more mediocre games, that aren't the worst games, but not the good ones, you'll forget about those too when you'll think about the snes, by exemple. that's also why you think the ratio of good games where higher in the old days, because you'll also forget about the bad games. though you can't really forget about the bad games on this gen, because it's in recent memory, it's still in the market, you can see it on the shelves when you go at the shop. that's about it, i'm sure i'm missing some, but anyway.
Well, what you`re saying is something that was discovered 50 years ago, in a marketing lab. A number of companies were interested to consolidate their future consumer base, so they finance a study about how to make a "easy to convince" consumer. They find out that if a kid had some kind of sentimental link with a company, when he grew up the link would remain in his mind, and like humans tends to remember only the good memories, all the good things that happened to him while being young would pop in as sudden as he sees the campany`s brand or logo. It doesnt wonder me that sony had such a success: the whole "My first..." line of electronics was made with that purpose in mind: printing the brand in the kids head. Now you have ground-ups buyin all kind of sony stuff (even when is more expensive) and the playstation. I always tough that the marketing dept. in SEGA were a bunch of retards: they never saw the value of the Genesis/MD brand. The DC should been called Genesis instead. Bringing back such a brand from the past would`ve created a bigger impact that trying to create a new one. A guy that played with the Genesis at 10 would been in college by the time the DC came out, what a better public can you ask for? Plus, the Genesis is considered by many the only commercial machine from SEGA that didnt suck, and thats adds more value to the brand
Hey, as long as the dreamcast wouldn't have been named 128X ! There's some truth in your fiction, and some fiction in your truth, JTI2K. But now that I think of it, Mexican kids loved Nintendo back when I was a kid - but the Gamecube is still not as popular as it should be if that were the only theory. But it's respected, for sure. It was, I think, a coming of age thing, moving on to the Sony PSX in 95 or 96, at the same time most of my generation was starting highschool. Was it our geek-way of growing up? On the other side, I'm a sucker for the Atari name. I know it's no longer the same Atari - but I just... have to get Atari stuff. Most of the games I played on my Commodore back in the day were Atari-made games, played with an Atari joystick. Perhaps the 80s were happier times? They sure were for Atari, I'll tell you that. Most of the games I buy today are either used or sequels from the 32 and 16 bit era. Maybe it was that era that got imprinted in my mind - and maybe that's why I can't find much enjoyment from today's games. This is food for thought, for sure.
The nintendo thing is different. Te begin with, nintendo had a HUGE public when the N64, even though a lot of ppl was piss off for the constant launch delays. But even with the nintendo brand on it, the N64 couldnt do anything agaisnt its high prices (80$ for StarWars? :smt1069) low amount of AAA games (lets be honest, after Mario64 theres was little to play with) and the constant delay of critical titles like Zelda. And lets not forget the 64DD: 3 years of pure hype and then, nothing. Plus, in mexico you`ve the same situation that in most countries of europe: becos piracy isnt ilegal (or at least not like in the us) nobody is goin to pay for a GC original having Xbox and PS2 copies for free (or in your case, some pesos) :smt082
Hey, can I hire you to write the scrolltext for my next demo? What you wrote was so similar to what I wrote in one of my NES demos, it's uncanny.
Yeah Jt2k, one thing the gaming public seems to hate is to be let down, when a console or a game is hyped and all this excitement is generated over it then it turns into vaporware. Makes people tend to not trust whatever brandname attached to it. A lot of my friends got pissed off at Sega for not supporting the Saturn as much as Sony's PS1 and refused to get "burned again" when Dreamcast came out (too bad for them,) same with N64 and Gamecube.
The "overhype" made by agressive marketing strategies is destroyin what made videogames great. I laugh at those guys (that dont know shit about games) tryin to convert this market in something like the movie and music market. Lets be honest: games are never goin to be like the movies, like the movies are never goin to be like the music. See the PSP and the iPod: the 1st only sells for its game capacity, and its UMDs sales are stagnated, while the 2nd cost a lot more (even more than a lowend PC) and still managed to sell almost 10 millon units and almost half a billion songs. Thats becos listening to music isnt the same that watching a movie. Now music industry has managed to mantain its unstopable grownth even when the P2P appeared. Movies on the other hand, loss a little more everyday. Thats becos they used the same market strategies that the music industry, but they product is very different. At the same time the production costs of music industry are low as hell: the mayor expense is the propaganda. Movies have all kinds of expenses, but they brought this marketing scheme from the music ind. and that cost money, a money that sometimes revenues cant afford, thus getting studios into debt. Now the same is happening to the game industry. If i had to give a clear explanation i say its a matter of attention span. Today ppl are less akin to pay attention and think, thats why the world is such a fu*** up place. Music requires almost no attention at all: you can listen to music even when you are deeply focused in something else (like studying for your midterm) Movies require you to pay attention to the image and the story, thus needing almost 80% of your time (you can always talk in a movie) Games require your full attention, becos they dont have a straight foward movement (like music and movies), you`ve to move em. That requires your full attention, and to be totally focused on it to solve the puzzle. Thats why games cant appeal to the whole community, becos 80% of all the humans are dumb as hell, a bunch of stupid retards...........
JTI2K is, once again, right. Trying to pander to this lowest-common-denominator will be the downfall of the industry - because they will move on to something else once the flashy lights and gangsta thugs bore them, but by then the original gamers will have been snubbed and let down for too long to actually forgive the industry. And yes, the stupidity and lack of thought is exactly what makes this world be fucked up as it is.
Speaking of Madden, I had a strange dream last night. I went to Gamestop and saw the newest Madden game strategy guide on sale for $159.99, and the title was Madden: Alien Arena. I flipped through, and it was a futurisitc football game with Alien teams. They all had lazers and tanks and crap, and the goal was to take the ball and score without dying. It sort of reminded me of Halo 2. Then I woke up.
Junkfood gives people strange dreams. I made some ham/pepper paté that gave many of my friends, and myself, nightmares. I dreamt of infidelity and the black market in a wooden city. Another friend dreamt of the Power Rangers and the Dukes of Hazard in cars with very large wheels, like monster trucks. But I'd SO buy something like Madden Alien Arena... for like... 29 dollars. And if it were a game by Sega. You know, like... NFL 5K5: Arena of Death, or something.
