Before you read this, you should know I’m a bit of a curmudgeon. But I’m having a much better day than her. ^^ See, she works for a casual/social game studio.
I consider myself an old-school gamer, but I like new games too. I like games on PC and consoles that are complex, like RTS, MMOs, RPGs and shooters that a) make you think and that b) entertain you instead of the usual run-and-gun. I like that Chris Roberts wants to bring something of meaning to the PC again. And I get sheer joy coupled with the usual emotional highs and lows from sneaking or blasting in a shooter like the Borderlands series.
Our industry is leaving behind the players like me to chase its tail, and continues its wobble into casual, social and mobile. While waiting for a haircut, I recently tried an iPhone freemium car racing game that ripped off the night time, urban drag racing portion of a game I worked on a few years back. After six races, I had to either wait for 4 hours for gas to refill, or pay cash to buy gas to race again. I received great emotional reward for deleting this game from my iPhone. Did the marketing team really do their homework on this one, or am I simply a relic?
Wasn’t anyone around in the 1990s with the internet boom? The companies everyone gasped about were the dot-coms that a) made nothing, b) had no clients or revenue and c) got upwards of 80 to 100 million dollars in venture capital. Why? Market speculation and “CEOs” (quotes intended) that were useless business managers, but phenomenal talkers speakers that used their cult of personality to motivate otherwise smart people to stop thinking about P&L. Am I exaggerating? Possibly. The documentary film Startup.com may disagree with that.
Everyone talks about console taking a dive on the revenue side. Doesn’t this happen in the last period of every console cycle? I remember the last two console cycles. It’s just like now. Why is everyone panicking? Why is this considered news?
Casual/social is making big bucks in the short term, or rather, it was, but it is on the way to a quiet exit. A lot of good developers, from artists to engineers to managers, left traditional console and PC dev to join the social/casual game revolution, only to be marginally employed today, and those that are left are making mobile games because social’s dying.
Microtransactions are profitable in the long term, but only in a larger game that has deep gameplay. Market speculation is trumping numbers and common sense. The result is sweeping change in our industry, after which we’ll all settle back to making engaging console and PC games. The casual/social market will return to where it should be, a respectable sub-area in its own right, but not making the news and not a major player.
What say you? Is this curmudgeon/grump right, or out in left field? Bonus points for excellent arguments, big words and marketing-speak like ‘cloud’ instead of ‘internet’.
IMG Consulting 