Is the multi-billion dollar video game industry crashing?

Picture from: http://philopractice.blogspot.ca/2012/12/philosophical-concepts-in-some-ios.html

While it is sad to say, it is evident that the video game industry is slowly crashing.  Why? It is due to the large video game  companies  caring more about money, than the millions of players that buy their products. Back in the 80's when the gaming industry was still growing large after its birth, gaming companies began to sacrifice quality for quantity. Even food companies such as "Quaker" and "Cool Aid" made video games just to advertise their product. The gaming industry almost died from people not spending money on games, (they were that horrible) until Nintendo came and saved the day by creating more quality games. 

In the early and mid-2000's, video games were reaching an amazing level of quality. From the many personal memories from my childhood, I can remember many timeless classics such as Star Wars: Battlefront, to Star Fox Adventures. (Yes, I enjoyed it). Everything was perfect until 2008 when the economy collapsed. The gaming industry was very largely impacted, and hard at that. Even super giants such as Ubisoft, Bioware and EA fell to their knees. This is when the gaming companies made the worst mistake of repeating the past: Instead of continuing to make amazing quality video games, they decided to, once again, sacrifice quality for quantity in a last ditch effort in raising sales. To this day, game makers are loosing their hard core fan bases due to them publishing horrible games, not listening to their fans, destroying multiple classic franchises and caring more about making money, than making something that is worth making. Today, games are often on their third game of their series. Games such as Battlefield 3, Dead Space 3, Mass Effect 3, Rock Band 3, Modern Warfare 3, and plenty more are pretty much the same game , just copied and pasted with a few variations in story line (some more than others). A  REALLY effective example is Call of Duty, that uses the exact game engine and textures for every single new game. Apparently, the number 3 is an unlucky number for games, due to the fact that nothing original has come up that often in the industry within the past few years. The game companies are spending no money on creating more original ideas, and are just recycling the same ones over and over until they die. A real reverse of philosophy from before the market crash of 2008.

Probably the worst part the game makers are doing though is creating crap quality games, and posting a price tag on it. The LARGEST disappointment by far, and possibly the worst game launch ever is the new Sim City 5. For ten years, players have been waiting for this game. People were drooling over the thoughts of having their dreams coming true and having a new Sim City to replace their dated Sim City 4 from 2003. When the game came out in February 2013, The game sold over 1.1 million copies, however, this figure is actually DROPPING due to people asking EA games for a refund. Millions of fans were let down by the Maxis / EA games game due to its horrible bugs, server issues and many other significant problems. However, the facts that people are most angry about are the DRM (Digital rights management) and EA not being transparent at all with their customer base. Also, rumored DLC (Downloadable Content) are rumored for the game, to create better cities and more. In the end, they want you to spend even MORE money on an incomplete game, something that, once again, never seemed to be an issue before. (This is true for most modern games, you never really get to buy a game knowing you have the FULL experience anymore.)

Game trailers have a few VERY good rants on the above comments of Sim City (Here and here)  and there are a few amateur youtube videos here  and  here. Lastly, there is an online amateur documentary that summarizes, if not provides more information on everything I have just ranted about right here.


Overall, It really is sad to see such a remarkable industry in such a horrible state. However, hopefully the game industry will wake up before it is a repeat of the 80's, or maybe, another industry crash is just that they need to wake up. 

If you have any ideas or opinions, please share in a comment bellow!