Japanese gamers discussing what they consider to be the worst tragedy to have befallen the gaming industry agree on an number of unfortunate events it seems.
The exchange:
“The gaming industry has been around for decades now.
What’s the worst thing to happen to it in that time?
Excluding death, accidents and so on.”
“Sega’s withdrawal from the hardware business.”
“That Final Fantasy XIII was crap.”
“The demise of the Dreamcast.”
“The merger of Square and Enix.”
“Sega and NEC’s withdrawal from hardware.”
“The loss of free company networks for gaming.”
“There’s only really the Atari Shock, surely?”
“PS3.”
“That the DS and Wii became popular…”
“When Sony entered the gaming business.”
“When Sony killed Sega and then Sega started meekly making games for Sony game consoles like nothing had happened.”
“When the PS3 flopped – everything started going wrong for Sony then.”
“RROD.”
“When they got full of themselves and started releasing trash like the 3DS.”
“Obviously the moment the Wii became a big hit.”
“When Square Enix decided to betray the PlayStation; the price of the PS3 at launch.”
“The Virtual Boy.”
“When development costs suddenly increased and game releases slowed.”
“When this barren console war started.”
“The PlayStation Network is currently building its own tragedy…”
Strangely, “the advent of DLC” seems to have escaped any opprobrium.
| 
Dead or Alive Ero-SFM Doubly Dirty
Flying Witch “Cute But Boring…”
Phantasy Star Online 2 Phantastic: “What About the West!?”
Shounen Maid “A Fujoshi Delight”
Terra Formars Live Action Web Drama Announced
Dragon Quest Heroes II Quite Monstrous
KumaMiko Lovingly Innocent
Aqua Onahole Parody Hopefully Moist
A-Size Classmate Profusely Petite
One Day With Maria Raunchy & Romantic
The Reject Demon: Toko Chapter 0 Raises Its Voice
Hai-Furi in Troubled Waters
Star Fox Zero “Pandering To Kids!”
Kiznaiver Shares Its Pain
Love Live’s Koi ni Naritai Aquarium PV “Will Sell Thousands!”
Skimpy Kataigou Figure
Ellen Baker’s Illustrator: “Keep It Clean!”
Bullet Girls 2 Goes At It From All Angles
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization A Real Grind
Koutetsujou no Kabaneri Immensely Gruesome
Goddess of 2ch “Another Bathing Beauty!”
Tantalizing Hestia Cosplay Busts Out
Kashiwazaki Sena Cosplay Pure & Innocent
Minami Kotori Casino Girl Cosplay Takes No Chances
Shimakaze Cosplay by Ema Sakura
Harley Quinn Cosplay by Miyuko Colorfully Crazy
Sonico Ero-Cosplay by Yuka Hoshikage Super Sexy
Kasugano Sora Bunny Girl Cosplay Absolutely Admirable
Goddess of 2ch: “Barely Legal Beauty!”
Highly Yuri Tenryuu & Tatsuta Cosplay by Garo & Usagi
DRM.
especially the ones when you have to be online to play them. Assassin's Creed 2 had no online features D:<
That flopped too.
1. Wii and all that motion crap.
2. Pre-order bonuses and DLC.
3. Call of Duty
aiming is cool and using swords is cool, but there's still only about 15 good wii games. Not acceptable
1.Nah motion can be ok when done right.
2.Yes on the DLC bullshit. Especially day 1 DLC.
3.That and the "realistic" modern warfare games
Also I would like to add DRM UP YOUR ASS and facebook integration EVERYWHERE
PLEASE MARRY ME
me too >_<
I still don't get why people bash on Call of Duty. If you want 'realism' then go join the army. If you want fiction in its purest form, play CoD. I still enjoy it as much as I enjoy every other fps out there.
I agree, I play Call of Duty: Black Cocks and I don't see what the bitching about is.
Go play more shitty rehashed RPGs with the same plot and worse characters if you want.. I'll just play what I feel like playing, when I feel like it.
Says the person with a smiley pink haired loli girl icon.
Lolis make EVERYTHING better.
Make a big budget FPS with lolis shooting each other and everyone will be happy
"smiley pink haired loli girl icon" Can "play .,#@#@,. Black Cocks"
At least in FPS you can blow every others players characters heads; in RPGs you only blow head PERIOD.
COD actually revatilize the gaming industry..:)
"Go play more shitty rehashed RPGs with the same plot and worse characters if you want"
LOL. Call of Duty is just rehashed FPS. I don't hate on CoD too much because I played up until Modern Warfare and then stopped but, by the Gods, its the same shit as the RPG's you think are rehashed.
There's a difference between good fiction and "USA is dominate, I am crying tears!"
Agree motion crap looks exausting, boring & silly, all at the same time; not to mention it was a way to make dumbasses spend a shitload in pheriferical devises.
You know, I live in Russia and I still enjoy killing russian soldiers in CoD. It's just a very good game, who cares if the plot is believable or not. What's important is that it's awesome.
Isn't modern warfare played from the POV of British marines?
Sorry, but as far as my knowledge goes, all FPS are about USA/UK being dominant. That's why I like CoD most, they bring hollywood-ish blockbuster-ism into a game, up to the point, when you no longer care who's fighting who. As long as you know something epic is happening and you're in the middle of it.
I'm sure however, that when Russians will start making kick-ass FPS with anti-USA scenarios, they'll be bashed for spreading propaganda. - something that the US's been doing since ages, and no one cares about.
The U.S. soldier dies in both Modern Warfares, no?
Fiction in its purest form? Maybe if you're like 12. Although I have to admit that CoD4 was decent, it's all been downhill after that.
I liked mw2 the best. No idea what you're talking about.
CALL OF DUTY IS THE NEW POKEMON BELIEVE THAT
The motion control would be fine if it would fulfill everyone's god damned wet dream and let us have a realistic first-person sword fight against Ganondorf. Until then, yes, fuck it.
true true. All these things are terrible, I find no reason to argue this list.
The Wiimote like the kinect has lots of hacker uses and motion can be good if done right.
Unfortunely, most third party gamedevelopers turn motion control into "waggle" which is as worse as button smashing in games. Real motion control can be fun!
actually COD helps to to revitalize the gaming industry :)
Until it dies like Tony Hawk Pro Skater series and Guitar Hero.
Guitar Hero is only on hiatus ;)
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/711783/guitar-hero-franchise-just-on-hiatus-according-to-activision/
Wait, if the question has no year limit, why is it getting answers relevant to 20xx? One of the worst tragedies was ET for the 2600. Shit was so bad that it nearly killed the gaming industry.
Console gaming, but still..
One of the more recent tragedies IMO was DRM up the ass. Ubisoft even forced its customers to stay online at all times while playing (or else the game will stop working) at one point.
Remember these are Japanese gamers, and ET and the gaming collapse in the States had no real effect on the Japanese gaming industry, so it wouldn't register over there.
aah, forgot to consider the industry back then are quite secluded, thanks :)
agree, the crash of video game industry in 1977~ and 1983 for North America
that almost like the dark ages for the industry and we probably would just got PS-ONE if they didnt revive the industry soon after those dark time
the industry will continue on even with those petty issue such as RROD and such, it wouldnt affect too much of the industry and crash it
seriousness aside, i say the decision of companies going "Family Friendly" >_>
I would consider the great videogame crash to only be relevant to American console gaming, and not overseas, home computer gaming or arcades, where everything was way ahead of the Atari 2600's catalogue in quality already.
But perhaps I should revise this stance. Nintendo becoming dominant so quickly after that was certainly the point when games became thought of as toys for children. Previously almost all games advertising was directed at adults.
Even with the average gamer said to be in their early 30s now, and female gamers matching male gamers in number, there's a feeling that every publisher's main demographic is still 13 year old schoolboys.
That is because the people in their 30s have the same taste in games as a 13 year old schoolboy. They even act the same whan playing online...
And those people are idiots for doing as such, acting beneath their age, for shame. I just laugh at people who talk that way, shows how intelligent they are when they cant think of any words but profanity and insults to say..
Yes, true enough comment. Although I suspect most 30+ gamers aren't online all that much, and it's a minority that make the rest of us look like kids that never grew up.
I don't play online, but I know I buy more more games than practically all of the people I know who are online practically every day. Mainly because they get by on COD alone.
That, or the boys of 13 of this age act like 30 years old men
well, if they can sell games targeted towards 13 year olds to 30 year olds, then why would they change and risk alienating the 13 year olds? (Or the 30 year olds for that matter). Some companies see the market for a different gaming experience (look at the explosion of Cell phone development, it's cheap and you have a chance at making an incredible amount of money). Almost EVERY game that has been truly targeted at adults, trying to tell a true, mature story, has been a failure. we have some successes (Heavy Rain being a huge trend bucker, but then how many copies did Indigo Prophecy really sell?).
To be honest, I feel the Japanese gaming industry has grown increasingly infantile in it's development sadly. At one point, Basch was going to be the main character of Final Fantasy 12, but the big wigs at Squeenix decided that they needed a 17 year old main character to give it a child's perspective. It's kind of sad really, but demand better story telling and you get better story telling, vote with your dollar.
I don't believe the issue is the demographic as much as just the respect given that demographic. Teenagers look for a hero, something with which to be a role model, whether they know it or not. The problem isn't so much that games are targetted toward the young, it's that they are targeted at what stupid people believe young people think.
If you think about the stories we were told to read in school when we were teens, the ones we didn't because we were lazy fucks in general. Dostoyevski, Hemmingway, Poe. These are not child's stories or even intended for a child, however at one time we trusted ourselves with the fact that young adults could learn from the tragedies and drama of these stories.
That is the problem. People make the argument that because there is voice, sound and graphics that it enhances the experience and therefore should be toned down. This may be true to some degree, but that doesn't mean we still cannot show teens things like Call of Duty, just as we'd show them Saving Private Ryan to show them the horrors of war in a controlled environment.
It's down to the fact that parents treat their kids like objects to own and invest in instead of actual human beings. And people have forgotten that parenting is basically being there to guide children through their experiences. And many of us can attest to how much certain videogames affected us emotionally. I have extreme difficulty being anything but a good guy in games because I was brought up in the NES and SNES era where everything had a base story about being the hero and saving the world. It is ingrained in my being because of videogames, as well as shows I watched when I was younger, anime.
imo, i think aiming at children are much easier to convince them that video game are cool than a rational mind of an adult, so over time VideoGames are stereotyped as a children entertainment rather for the adults and the violent and sex in the virtual games only boiled controversies and worries the parents.
so developers tends to get pressured to lessen the violences graphics or sexuality in games to be more "family friendly" One good example is Rockstar GTA:San Andreas Hot Coffee :P
i learn much of it from ExtraCredit: Sex in Game. more food for thought xP
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2505-Sex-in-Games
What the fuck was that bastard smoking when he wrote "ET THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL" The Video Game?
Its almost like he WANTED to destroy the 1980's Game industry when he wrote it!!
I've long since disposed of a magazine which had an interview with the guy, but the problem was that he had a stupidly short time to make it. Something like one week, on his own. All the bosses could see was the dollar signs, so it was terrible management really.
Exactly. If everyone learns nothing else today from this article, know that in every case, almost without exception, that if a shitty game is released, that it's because of time, money, management issues, or all three. Even incompetent creators have a team that balance them out as equals if there is nobody pulling the strings. The gaming industry as a whole is a very small, very closely knit collection of people, even at its current size. We may no longer know everyone by name, but reputation and capabilities are known at the click of a button.
Developers do make mistakes though, like I was part of a game that wasn't up to standard. Not horrible, just decent. But we knew it. So instead of release, the developers all agreed "Nope, more time, we need to make it more fun" but we were overruled by the money pushers. We couldn't blame them though, it's still expensive as hell. People like me just do everything we can to make every piece that we're responsible for look good or work well with the time we have allotted, which is why we got the job in the first place. If we try new, innovative things though, we need leeway to screw up, otherwise it's literally hit or miss. We no longer have that luxury anymore. So now you get the same stuff that was time tested from earlier games for safety, because there's no chance for the risks.
And all of those guys working for Atari got the shaft, cause they owned nothing that they released under the Atari logo.
I bet Shitihara had his fingers in this "Family Friendly" you're talking about...
touche my friend... touche..
Pausey, do you mean there was VIDEO games before 1977? I thought video gaming began in early-middle 80`s.
Yes. Maybe you might have heard of a little gem from '75 called PONG.
yea, it around 80s that home console start settled in front of the household TV, Atari and later NES, before that it was Pong, lotssss of Pong XD
and unofficially there a few video game are created since 1942~ most well known one are 'Tennis for Two' (1958) and Odyssey (1966)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_video_game#1942:_NIM
The DRM is worse then the video game crash as it forces people to become pirates just to have an enjoyable game.
Applications like securom are pretty much malware and you should not have to have such trash on your computer just to play a game.
I agree with the Ubisoft thing. I think you even have to be a paying customer, like Xbox Live gold and whatever the PS3 one is called. In order to access it, which is sad...its p2p. They are just trying to stop pirating..but going about it the wrong way.
Btw, the Ubisoft DRM is powered by SecuRom. Owned by Sony