Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
Gaming is a fairly young industry. The market will probably thin as it gets older.
DISNEY has bought 21st Century Fox
- Thread starter Lulcielid
- Start date
Gary Caelum
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- Gary Caelum
Monopolies aren't really a product of time at all. Google and Microsoft became monopolies within 20 years of their industries starting.
Whereas other industries like cars and oil have been going for 100 years and are still incredibly competitive.
It's usually about the nature of the product itself that determines it. Like whether it's a long term service vs a short term consumable, how much it benefits from economies of scale and network effects, how much it's geographically concentrated. Etc etc.
The thing that might mess up the competition in the games industry is service-based gaming and an increase in multiplayer. That reduces the amount of turnover and adds network effects.
Whereas other industries like cars and oil have been going for 100 years and are still incredibly competitive.
It's usually about the nature of the product itself that determines it. Like whether it's a long term service vs a short term consumable, how much it benefits from economies of scale and network effects, how much it's geographically concentrated. Etc etc.
The thing that might mess up the competition in the games industry is service-based gaming and an increase in multiplayer. That reduces the amount of turnover and adds network effects.
- AKA
- Yop
The games market is very skewed though, with the big publishers getting a HUGE amount of money - and they're not happy with it, because it's not enough (or, "doesn't meet expectations"), even while applying as much scummy practices as they can get away with - nerfing the progress in the game to try and sell XP boosters for money is one scummy practice they're trying. Failed with Shadow of Mordor and they eventually backtracked on it, leaving a pretty good game behind. Did it with the last AssCreed game and there's not been any outrage about that as far as I can tell.
There's a mention of innovation, I'm not sure about that. Ubisoft is famous for not having changed their mainline games' main formula much since the first AssCreed, they're all the same game (open world bajillion mini quests + collectables) in different settings. EA is reskinning their mainline games every year (CoD and co), or just updating some internal database and MAYBE change some visuals (Fifa and similar sportsball games).
I'm not saying they're bad games, but to call them innovative is IMO not accurate. Mind you I'm probably biased and shit; I haven't been into CoD for forever (and never the multiplayer). I have played a few installations of the Battlefield franchise, but they were often different enough (I played BF2, Bad Company 2 and BF3 which was one or two generations after BF2 IIRC).
er. Stuff. While the big publishers don't have a monopoly, they still own a huge portion of the games market. Which would, I guess, be fine if they were good publishers, but they're pursuing scummy tactics so they can earn more money off of less games. And they're being scummy against the companies and people that make the actual games, going for big firing rounds both after a game's release and in case of less-than-hoped-for profits - which, mind you, still exceed the development budget ten times over.
There's a mention of innovation, I'm not sure about that. Ubisoft is famous for not having changed their mainline games' main formula much since the first AssCreed, they're all the same game (open world bajillion mini quests + collectables) in different settings. EA is reskinning their mainline games every year (CoD and co), or just updating some internal database and MAYBE change some visuals (Fifa and similar sportsball games).
I'm not saying they're bad games, but to call them innovative is IMO not accurate. Mind you I'm probably biased and shit; I haven't been into CoD for forever (and never the multiplayer). I have played a few installations of the Battlefield franchise, but they were often different enough (I played BF2, Bad Company 2 and BF3 which was one or two generations after BF2 IIRC).
er. Stuff. While the big publishers don't have a monopoly, they still own a huge portion of the games market. Which would, I guess, be fine if they were good publishers, but they're pursuing scummy tactics so they can earn more money off of less games. And they're being scummy against the companies and people that make the actual games, going for big firing rounds both after a game's release and in case of less-than-hoped-for profits - which, mind you, still exceed the development budget ten times over.
Gary Caelum
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- Gary Caelum
That's not specific to the games industry. That's just the Pareto Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
It applies to pretty much every industry with only a few exceptions. It seems to be caused mostly by human psychology rather than anything to do with any particular business though. People just like things that are already popular. Which creates a kind of chain reaction in popularity for some things, at the expense of others. There aren't many ways to really fix that.
The best you can hope is that there's high mobility between the bottom and the top, so that it's not always the same people getting the majority of the revenue. I think the games industry is better than average in that regard, although definitely room for improvement. But some of the biggest and most lauded developers today were basically nobodies a decade ago. CD Projekt and FromSoftware being the best examples. Even Epic games were quite minor developers 10 years ago.
In terms of innovation, unfortunately most of it is in terms of graphics and hardware power. That's still innovation. It's just not the kind that people on this sort of forum will care that much about (including me).
It applies to pretty much every industry with only a few exceptions. It seems to be caused mostly by human psychology rather than anything to do with any particular business though. People just like things that are already popular. Which creates a kind of chain reaction in popularity for some things, at the expense of others. There aren't many ways to really fix that.
The best you can hope is that there's high mobility between the bottom and the top, so that it's not always the same people getting the majority of the revenue. I think the games industry is better than average in that regard, although definitely room for improvement. But some of the biggest and most lauded developers today were basically nobodies a decade ago. CD Projekt and FromSoftware being the best examples. Even Epic games were quite minor developers 10 years ago.
In terms of innovation, unfortunately most of it is in terms of graphics and hardware power. That's still innovation. It's just not the kind that people on this sort of forum will care that much about (including me).
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
