[tcaudilllg]

Square... Capcom... Nintendo... names that used to mean something. Now... just looking at their list of new releases shows how far they have fallen.

Games haven't been this unfun since the mid 80s. Half of them have controls too complex for many to master (Dark Souls is a nice game, but I will probably never manage to beat the first boss with that control scheme).

Zelda reached its apex in OoT, and never again reached those heights. Megaman... is dead. It's no wonder Inafune left when he did... clearly Capcom was sunk from within, not without. Square faced the same fate: the top talent was derided and insulted by top people and forced out, and now Square, despite all its properties (or because of them) is a walking dead man.

I think a major aspect of the decline is a result of the merger between PC publishing and console publishing philosophies. The PC always catered to hardened realists -- the people who bought computers to work at home and file their taxes with -- and has never really been about anything but escapism. With a few exceptions, you don't "play" PC games -- you work at them. This detailed play style has penetrated the console games market and is "PC-izing" the big games. Part of this was inevitable: conservatives want to make everything around them serve a familiar and well-understood purpose (the antithesis of creativity) and conservatives are always the long-term winners in business. Whatever new idea comes along, they will eventually come to dominate it because their leaders lack the scruples that limit the more intelligent. By hook or by crook, they will succeed in obtaining control of the IP, and when they do, they will give control of it to people who do not understand freedom, do not understand creativity. The only treatment for encroachment by the champions of mediocrity is continuous innovation and entrepreneurship, so as to outpace the corruption which surrounds and emanates from conservative leaders. It took them a while, but conservatives now dominate the big publishing firms. Now comfortable in their positions, they feel the confidence to express their contempt for creativity by showing their top talent the door.

So there are new companies created by the departed talent, which are quickly taking the wind out of the sails of the old companies, which now thrive only on name recognition. But there is potential for new talent, too. No one should be able to get rich in the games industry. Games require little startup capital to make because all that is required to make them is a computer, software, time, and knowledge. There is lots of opportunity to make new games, a new "golden age" of game making with many, many players. Not worse graphics, just "different" graphics. Simpler play. Community spirit, but many communities.

[RampantCoyote]

Man, it must suck to live in your world. I'm sorry.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz