The Sale of EA is just the beginning -
Whole gaming industry Suffers a Crisis
As you may know, big gaming industries like Activision and Electronic Arts mentioned above are in a big crisis. Activision has recently responded to the attempted sale of financial instability. However, the problem remained unresolved, given the fact that they have not found a single buyer. To be more precise - not one that would be willing to pay an amount that would satisfy the owners of the troubled publishing giant.
If you think that only Activision has trouble selling games, you are wrong. The entire gaming industry suffers of a gradual, but inevitable fall for a long time .
Does this mean that playing video games has finally emerged out of the trend? Hell, no! Mobile gaming has never been stronger. Social gaming is also experiencing a renaissance.
And what about the triple A titles? What's with big publishers and their multimillion-dollar franchise? Well, despite EA's popular Battlefield, Need for Speed and a few titles
that you will probably be able to count yourself, it is in a financial bind.
This costs a lot. Really.
Specifically, during the first half of 2012 Electronic Arts' stock price has dropped enough that a lot of company's bosses began heating up armchairs. Specifically,
it was not even half a year, and the value of the shares is degraded from 68 to 18 dollars, which caused the company to fall in such a crisis. Yes, it's not the end of fall, and that
there is still half a year to continue to dive. Why gaming today runs in a crisis? Why have large publishers issued beautiful titles for gamers and with totally unclear reasons fail and cause the
cancellation of the entire fiasco as developer teams? The reason for this are, dear readers, everyone. From you, through the publisher, to the media.
Why gaming developers themselves dig a hole under your feet? Because doing triple A titles. Because they realize that they make the most money that way. And ironically, even if one of them receaves an epipfany and says "hey, lets not work only Call of Duty or Warcraft or whatever." he can not. Why? Because their competition is at the same time for the hundreth time upgradeing their franchise in the hope that it will hit the fanbase, add a couple of new fans and perhaps justify the investment. You see, making games like CoD, Assassins Creed, Battlefield, and Final Fantasy costs. A lot. In fact, it costs so much that the companies that issue them often risking their existence solely to the year after the contractions finally pushed out in front of all that insatiable audience. Every game these days has to be better, brighter and more realistic than before. And all that costs.It costs so much that your brains would boil up. Why not go to work cheaper interesting titles? Because it does not lie in the massive money to a company that feeds the audience. They have to go to a "slam dunk" and have to work tried headlines because it's the only sure factor in the industry. It's easy to tell us that we should Move their ass and work better games with better maps of the fantastic new franchises. The problem is to make such a game and sell it well enough to cover herself, and at the same time justify why its developer is not the time spent producing something better like NEW CALL OF DUTY.
The General problem with people today is that they do not realize what the gaming industry has become. the Industry in a full, impersonal, raw, manufacturing sense. Manufacturers of consoles literally puke out new devices in the hope of covering those losses before. Wondering why Nintendo is doing well? Because sales of hardware go before the software, while triple A software is worth mentioning it mainly comes from the company (and 3rd party developers generally work ports and mediocre titles). Wondering why Xbox is doing well? Because their consoles can make crack and because Sony's online service has been paralyzed for several months due to hacker attacks. All these mechanisms are raw. Creativity and imagination in new titles are a part of the job, but do not be fooled that this same work is something fabulous. A large number of creative teams, each one from LA Noire, to the recent Darksiders 2 have a lot to say about the work under brutal deadlines and delusional standards to be achieved. To sumarise, big-gaming is in a crisis today because it is literally incapable of doing something different from what it has worked on for the last six years.
LA Noire: Great game, but a bad developer
And what about you, the players? You are still part of the problem. Why? Because first of all do not support titles by buying them already, so you download the for pirate sites (at least a part of you, judging by what we read on the forums). Secondly, it supports insanely punching one and the same title by buying them (ironic, I know). Each sold Diablo 3 or Call of Duty or Battlefield guarantees you that the company will make at least one such product, to shake him an impossible amount of money and hope, that you, a year after purchasing the unit, would still want to buy two. Buckles have this circle of life philosophy? And finally, a trend that we have noticed lately is the one which literally affects how the game ends. Do you remember maybe one game called Mass Effect 3? And its end. It does not matter what it ended up de facto third gamers. It is essential that they all chocked when the end did not give them the satisfaction they expected. Before us the classic manner didn't pour in difficulty one to mention one thing - remember how the game worked ten years ago. Have you had an impact on how the fallout ends or (hell) Star Control? Have you ever had the urge to write essays to the developers dictating to them how you have the right to get satisfaction from the game if you bought it. No. Then the things may have been less than in the day, but games are still played. Someone would say even with greater pleasure than today. In the context of the collapse of big developers, players or more, you have the following role: continue to buy the game and secure the future of triple-A titles. If that does not work ... well, we hope that you have a Facebook or a mobile platform, because it seems that the water is flowing in that direction.
The future?
To summarize the current state of the gaming industry, it has not fallen from the sky. An unhealthy combination of big-budget productions, piracy and a lack of promotion of alternative development is a reason why the big players may not be there for a long time. Games will naturally be ... just it will not be the people who are willing to invest a massive amount of money just to make something that would ensure sure shot profit. Because it' surely slowly losing momentum. Ask Electronic Arts and Activision what they think about it and you'll get some adequate answer.
Actually, who knows ... maybe that's a good thing.
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