Nomax:
Microsoft & Sony, large companies with "We want to be everywhere!" as motto. I'm afraid for the next-gen gaming world. They spend lots of money to get exclusivity on this or that game, Microsft acquires small gaming crew, ... They screw up the whole thing! I'm nostalgic of the Nintendo vs Sega war. They had each a different range of games, different souls, different point of view. Each with their own carefully chosen licensed developpers and as gamers, we had the choice. Now X-box & PS2 are the same to me, a certain game will go to the company that will put the biggest amount of money on the table. That's sad. crying [...]
I hear ya man, but let me tell you that Playmore, Capcom, Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony are in it for the money. For OUR money. They don't release a good game to satisfy us gamers but to maximize their profit. The fact that certain games/companies created a cult following doesn't mean shit to anyone in the gaming biz management as long as it doesn't pay. Ppl responsible for sales, marketing or controlling in such companies couldn't care less if their games are considered crap among hardcore gamers (Pokemon comes to mind) as long as these games sell well. They'd sell poo in a carton box if ppl would buy it.
Now, there's the developer side. Back in the early 80s, there were a lot of one-man companies, guys that developed games for various 8-bit hardware and did all the work by themselves, graphics, sound, code, playtesting, etc. Over the years, these one-man shows disappeared in favour of small dev teams of two to five ppl. Most of these developers worked in 'normal' IT jobs before, mainframe programming, operating, all that stuff. None, or almost none of them started their careers as game coders.
Nowadays, we have huge dev teams, sometimes with more than 50 ppl, and game designer has become a regular job, but the coders of today wouldn't move a finger for the weekly salary of a game developer of yesterday; another reason why it's difficult to develop a game with a reasonable budget now. For ex. in 1982, developement cost of a typical arcade game ranged between $10,000 and $25,000 (not counting custom arcade hardware projects), but now you couldn't even create a game intro or a motion-captured animation for that money.
Lastly, there are the game buyers, and perhaps it's just me, but everytime I see sales figures charts I can't help but shaking my head because of the crap that's usually on the first five spots. So, if one game of a certain type was successful, companies will pump out sequels and adaptions as long as the sheep buy all the stuff, anything else wouldn't make sense in the eyes of a game company's CEO. Tasteless, yes, but profitable, and that's what they want.
It's up to us to break this circle. If ppl would stop buying short-lived, run-of-the-mill crap games that were released to get a quick buck, companies would think twice before re-hashing the same ole' junk over and over again.
