The Decline of Game Sales, but not of Games

Game sales have been steadily dropping over the past few years, or rather, it should be said that retail sales have been dropping. The social game and app markets are as strong, if not stronger, than they were when they first bloomed a little under half a decade ago now, but they are not directed at the hardcore gamer market. The lionshare of game making has always been the AAA title games, the 'God of War's the 'Grand Theft Auto's, the 'Warcraft's and 'Age of Empires' and 'Mario's of the game industry have always been the goal of all game makers. We want to tell stories and make vast sweeping games that give hours of enjoyment, not piddly little things that people play while on the bus or the toilet.

A rather interesting article came out yesterday from Daily Finance. The author gives some ideas on how one might produce results, and all of his ideas have pros and cons, but I think he's missing a fundamental point: The age of retail in video games has come and gone. It is a mockery, a false choice, an idiot's choice. Why would we ever want to pay for a physical object when the product is actually just bits of data that can be given to use over a line of copper and zinc and rubber. The online game market is where sales are happening now, where it is quick and easy and the purchase can be made right from the system you'll play it on, and a record is kept so that if you ever lose the data you can just download it again. You lose a disk? Your disk is lost, you have to buy a new one. Beyond this fact, he makes some very good points.

The game industry does need to lower it's prices, or more specifically, the retailers and publishers need to do so. So much of game sellers seem to forget that there are more poor people than rich people, and poor people are more likely to spend their money on things that will distract them from how hard life is, after all, their lives are usually harder than those of rich people, they need more distractions. I'm not saying drop the prices enormously, but dropping them to 30 or 40 dollars rather than 60 dollars is probably a good idea, you'll get more sales, and more sales means more investor confidence, and that'll help business all round, not to mention that you get yourself out there.

The next issue he brings up is a better kind of controller, and he might be right there, but at the same time putting in a new controller would alienate older players. I personally cannot stand many of the ways some games use touch screens, but there's no reason that they couldn't work. By using a small touch screen device that communicated with the game, one could alter the specifics of the control for the game.

The last point is the most important. Games need to change. They need to change and transform to be better for casual audiences, without losing their hardercore audiences. Games such as Mass Effect 3 with radically different player modes (narrative, rpg, shooter, plus the normal difficulty level system). Similar tactics will be necessary to keep games nice for both casual and hardcore players.

The point is that games are changing, our audience is changing, our methods of sale need to change. The way we think about and use and make games all need to change, but most of all, to change how we sell and distribute game. If we can handle that change, we will bounce back from this small dip in game sales and profits from retail.

Romney's Latest Comment

For god's sake, just when I think the far right can't get any more racist, Mitt Romney Spits out a comment like this: "In fact, I can relate to black people very well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, ..." I mean, it takes a SPECIAL level of stupidity or racism to spit out a comment like this and then think you've done well. In my experience, a lot of what we typically see as racism is actually just classism, I've had personal experiences in that respect where you end up with people being perfectly friendly despite race when they realize the person of the race they thought they hated, were scared of, etc.etc. is actually intelligent, middle or higher class, and isn't a crook. Then there's stuff like this absolute gem.

I'm serious, where the hell can someone get off thinking that saying something like this is a good idea? Is Romney just THAT oblivious? Is he stupid? Does he not think that dredging up wounds that -still- tear into our nation is a good idea? I mean for god's sake, sure, my family once owned slaves, I'm from an old plantation family in southern Louisiana,  but I don't choose that as my basis for being able to relate to African Americans! Note that he doesn't claim to have any African American friends, he doesn't claim to speak for them, he doesn't even claim to be sympathetic or even empathetic towards the general treatment and conditions that most of the Black Community in our nation live in today, no, he somehow convinced himself that the best thing to say was that his family once owned slaves, and that somehow made him able to relate to African Americans.

Am I the only one who is floored that ANYONE would think that is an okay comment to make even off hand? Let alone at a political rally where he almost certainly has had someone going over his speech before hand? That no one caught that? I can't tell whether it's racist that they think "well we're over the whole slavery thing, they should be too right?" or just ignorant to the point of

Social Society

We live in an increasingly social society, even as there are those who defame the internet as decreasing social behavior amongst human beings. The truth is though that we are discovering new ways to be social. In American Society, introversion is treated as if it were some kind of disease, some kind of failing that needs to be stamped out. Introverts now have a method of being social that does not involve physical contact or presence, and the internet is simply how they express that. The internet does not discourage social behavior, it simply gives new options for such behavior for those who prefer different methods of social interaction, ones that are less draining for their personality type.

Internet chat rooms, e-mail, and forums are just one method of this. New games, such as The Way, and Journey, as well as games such as Dark Souls have interesting ways of communicating, often by the complete LACK of normal communication methods. In none of the above games can a person voice chat, or use text to speak with other players directly. In The Way and Journey, both are completely lacking, with only a limited selection of in game gestures and emoticons permitted for the use of the player to communicate. In doing so, we have an entirely new way of socilizing, one that I feel, goes deeper than the normal spoken and written communications. When playing The Way, for example, I was surprised and frustrated by how quickly or slowly different players picked up on my gestures to guide them along invisible obstacle courses that I could see, but they were unable to. We communicated without using words, without using symbols, only gestures our characters could make. "Happy" "Angry" "Confused" pointing in various directions, both arms up, or both arms crossed, with this limited set of communications, we could engage in a meaningful dialogue.

This, to me, goes far beyond "Social Games" like Facebook's Farmville. In those games, you use an existing network of friends, rarely ever communicating with them through the game at -all- you use facebook to communicate, and they occasionally pop into your game to assist with various chores and such. It is beyond comprehension to me that these be called social games because they have no social interaction in any meaningful sense. There is NETWORKING, there is COOPERATION, in a limited sense, but nothing SOCIAL about them really. No, these games are networking games, not social games. Dark Souls has more meaningful social interaction, with the Casandraic warnings left etched into the walls by other players in their own games, and the ghosts of other players invading and helping you in your own world when you call upon them.

Friends in the most unlikely places

I waited to post this until tonight (rather than on Saturday as I usually do) due to some pretty important things. Mostly, it would be my first night in a Hostel, and I'm now staying there for GDC, the Game Developer's Conference. I'm absolutely blown away by the comradery of this place, it's unbelievable. Today after a short conversation with two people, I was invited to the Tonga Room in a nearby hotel, a pacific island themed resteraunt. Had an amazing time, and discussed numerous topics ranging from sexuality, to morality, to how to identify with people, to race politics and culture. I'll probably post on these things at a later date, but it is not the topic I wish to pick up tonight. No, tonight I wish to talk about the natural ability of humans to make friends. Even in completely random situations.

Why is that? Why can we humans make such quick and fast relationships? Especially in places that are, by their very nature, places of transition. Buses, planes, trains, and here in a hostel where people stay only temporarily. It is an amazing experience. I think it has something to do with the break down of ideas and boundaries, in this place with four beds per room, each a cubical without a ceiling to separate it from the other bunk rooms, each in one of the single floor bunk rooms (2nd, 3rd, and Fourth, with the 1st floor being a Chinese restaurant). We have so little in the way of normal boundaries, that to become at ease with these complete strangers, we are, in a way, forced to learn more about them, to become friendly, to establish friends, and to live as best we can given the circumstances.

I wonder if that's not always the case during transitions for humans. Times of transition are periods where strange things happen, where our normal laws and rules are obliterated, and the only constant is change. We find that the conventions we can normally depend on in an artificial area, are no longer applicable, privacy is a luxury, not a right, and we cannot be sure of anything that we own will remain our own without protecting it (both in padlocked lockers, and in forming bonds of friendship with those around us so they will not attempt to steal from us).