Computer games - Market failure The modern computer game industry is example of market failure. Games lack depth and mechanical challenge, the stories are lame. Everything is designed around a 90 IQ impatient teenage brat that will be unable to consume any advanced content that games of 90’ies had. The result? Games that sell well and reap profits, but lack artistic value and will be forgotten in a few years unlike the classics 15-20 years ago. The case is evident - the situation is that of a failure of free market: corporations reap profit and short term enjoyment of consumers, but long term social value and replayability is diminished and artistic value eroded. Solution? State appointed committees that determine and finance production of games with deeper artistic value. The long term enjoyment of consumers of this product will compensatae the financial cost of it, and provide the solution of quality game production that market forces have failed to maintain.
cool story, bro.
QFT
Surely you’re trolling, Mr. Xarthaz!
QFT
I guess you never played Doom on SNES.
Anyone else waiting on Skyrim? Looks beautiful
Nostalgia doesn’t remember the failures…
http://www.cracked.com/article_16824_6-most-retarded-gaming-consoles-ever-released.html
No, I need a new graphics card for that. I think there should be a government planning committee to stop the rampant advance of technology faster than my wallet can keep pace. /s
I’m actually still playing an extended realism mod for a realism mod for Rome Total War, which came out like six years ago. It’s about as niche as you can possibly get, and all thanks to the free market. 
NPCG - National Public Computer Games…
Clayton -
The government is involved in a lot of those military games. Those always have a lot of artistic value.
And NASA made that game Moonbase Alpha.
To argue in the spirit of the thread:
Computer games - Market failure
In fact, government failure. The state prevents an exploration of reality by setting us up in a utopia. Anarchy (obviously chaos) should be instituted so that we get to learn first hand what real life survivalism is like so that computer gamers can make better games. The government is out of touch with the consumer. Regulation is hurting the industry by protecting it from tribal warfare.
Anyone else waiting on Skyrim? Looks beautiful
YES!
Didnt Mises write a nice little book debunking this whole premise that: ‘we have shitty stuff now compared to back then because of the market.’
Anyone else waiting on Skyrim? Looks beautiful
If government was involved in the games industry it would be a lot worse. On what do i base this ? On the evidence from other industries where we see government involvement. I would like to know on what industry do you base your opinion that government would increase artistic value? Artistic value is subjective and that is definitely something that would be thought up a tyrannical democracy. Low standards and high prices is synonymous with socialist/fascist service.
This is probably what parents in the late 80s were saying about their kids’ leisure preferences. “Why aren’t they going outside or reading? Why is my kid playing as an Italian plumber that powers up by eating mushrooms that stomps on mushrooms with teeth and fights a dinosaur and fights plants and goes through tunnels to rescue a princess who is surrounded by little guys with mushroom hats? Society is in peril!”
I think there’s plenty artistry left in games. Nintendo still churns out interesting games with their main characters (granted I haven’t played them lately, but things like Paper Mario are creative). Bioshock would be an example of a deeper game. The Halo series was very popular and had a compelling story line. Games like Sonic the Hedgehog were popular in the 90s and isn’t a “thinker’s game” whatsoever; it’s a hedgehog with super speed that tries to defeat a Mad Scientist. It doesn’t mean it’s not fun or that it’s not worthwhile to play.
I can say that games today are crazy. I don’t own a new system, but the graphics on games for PS3 and Xbox are nuts, and I’ve seen my friends play them and they are getting more life like with more in depth plots, but I don’t plan to spend any money on new games except for new cartridges. I just beat Super Mario 64 about 2 weeks ago and I’m disappointed, I thought when I get 120 stars I’d get to ride Yoshi, not just meet him.
As far as games being intelligent, I do believe there’s a certain level of thinking involved, but keep in mind they are games. They are for enjoyment and entertainment, and the skill and level of thinking all vary. To this day my favorite video game is Super Mario RPG for SNES. You don’t have to be an intellectual titan or anything to beat it, but I love the story line and it’s fun.
Right now I await the day they put Doom on Wii… Maybe I’m just jaded or something when it comes to this stuff.
Clearly someone hasn’t played Portal 2.
(…yes, I just played Portal 2 this weekend. It freaking rocks)
Obviously this is (intentionally?) stupid, but there could be an interesting discussion concerning the current gaming market, particularly the console market. Essentially, most all of the large developers believe that the demand for their games is due in part to graphic capabilities, but according to my own subjective interpretation, there are rapidly diminishing returns when it comes to graphics. Production times expand and/or content is squeezed, budgets explode, there is increasing reliance on downloadable content through shady practices, etc. I think we see consumers reacting as expected to these circumstances, as indie games through Xbox Arcade and PSN are quite popular, and of course there are cell phone and browser games. I wouldn’t be surprised if the big gaming corporations are starting to feel the effects of bigness and bureaucratization, worsened by the technological reality at this moment.
I thought I was the only one who ever wondered about this. I could count the number of games worth giving a damn about produced since 2005 on my own 10 fingers, and the number of good modern simulator games were I a quadruple amputee. I’ve heard the “nostalgia” excuse a lot, but while, yes, there were crappy games produced in the 1997-2002 and 2002-2005 periods, the actual good games were far more numerous and orders of magnitude better than the good games of the post 2005-period. Compare SimCity 3000 to SimCity Societies, Majesty to Majesty 2 or Heroes of Might and Magic III to the excuses parading around as “sequels”. You don’t need any of the hacks parading themselves as gaming “journalists” (not that most real journalists aren’t hacks either) to tell there’s something deeply wrong with an industry where the only thing on the market is mumorpugers and first person shooters, and where $20 expansion packs that gave you 30% more content have been replaced with $10 “downloadable content” that gives you 0.01% more.
The thing that confuses the issue a lot is that people are always thinking of console games when they think of famous games from the past, and (due to the aforementioned stagnation), they think all PC games are Doo.. dang it, Call of Duty and Everq.. World of Warcraft. But then you miss out on every other genre under the sun; RTS games (Command and Conquer, to it’s credit, seems to have emerged from the 90’s almost like Austin Powers from cryogenic suspension), simulators (SimCity is one, but there’s also Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital, and the whole Impressions city-builder series) and I’d be here until Exit Mundi calls me if I tried to describe RPGs.
I put this down to a combination of IP-stagnation (most modern day mods are far better made and well written than the games they base themselves on) and the overall dumbing down of Western culture by multiculturalist ideologues, the creation of a permanent welfare underclass and egalitarian fanaticism. There has been a similar stagnation in the film industry since 2008, though that one’s obviously a bit easier to explain.
