The video game industry needs new product

Forbes

Recent gains aside, game makers have become far too reliant on existing commercially successful franchises to drive profit and prop up other lines of business. This has led to an all-out effort create additional game franchises.

For awhile now i have been trying to get into this industry so that i might produce some of my original game designs and break into this market. When you take a peek at the games coming out in the next few months, as well as the titles planned for release with the new batch of consoles soon to hit the public, you can easily see that they are simply replicating what has already worked.

Maybe it's time i try a different tactic, and so i turn to my fellow ATS followers.

Is anyone interested in making the next big thing in the video game industry?

My ideas will blow your mind.

Umm.. I recently downloaded Unity and was interested in making indie games, actually.

If I could design a game it would be an expansion of the sandbox idea but make it highly detailed and create a massive living breathing universe where loads of players from around the world can join and do what they want.

Man, it just seems like everything has been done. You have your FPS games, which I am a big fan of but theyre all the same, just different scenarios.
War, Space, Aliens, The Future, The Past, Zombies, etc etc..
CoD, MoH, Battlefield, Halo, Res Evil (Third Party) but still..
One game I did love though was BioShock 2, I beat that game using every different scenario I could think of.

OculusRift

VR is coming my friends.

Were now in the next 'tick' of technology. It just started and over the next 2 years, advances in processing will lead to a host of new products that are going to change the way developers make games.

Don't think Google Glasses will have games? Of course it will. Think of geo-tagging or live role play type games where the 'hud' of google glass provides markers and helps you find people etc.

Don't be sad, I know it seems like were getting nowhere, and that's obviously because of the consoles market. I'm sorry but it's ruined gaming. Building games for devices that have 10 year old hardware and never evolve past basic software upgrades dumb the entire industry down.

But there's a silver lining. A whole new set of technology is really just around the corner.

~Tenth

reply to post by Johnny76


Not a bad idea, but it has largely been over done by this point.

I still believe that multiplayer is important, but i don't think it should be the main focus of games.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


It is interesting that you mention that as i made a similar post to this one in the thread.

I even went so far as to contact the developers of the Omni about a game for their system and got a decently interested response.

Oh, and this set up runs about 400 dollars for the Treadmill and goggles.

I call the concept i presented a FIRP game, Fully Immersive Role Playing complete with RFID sensors embedded in nerf style weapons.

reply to post by Thorneblood


Meh, it won't be long before VR and holograms are dominating the advertising industry. Then it'll be affordable to you and me as regular consumers.

You know the sad part, the people who will most profit from new gaming technologies, are coming like Microsoft, who will DRM the hell out of it.

They want not only the 'next big thing' in entertainment, they want it locked down.

i bought an Ouya, and I'm underwhelmed. I think were perhaps another 5 years from a platform that will become 'the norm' like consoles are today. I just hope they don't do as sloppy of a job.

Here's an idea for the next ' thing in the meantime' though. Create a console with upgradable part kits. A chassis that can be fitted with a certain variety of parts from big name manufacturers.

People routinely spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on games that have little value in real play time. I bet the odds are pretty good that they would pay for upgrades to their 'consoles' that allow them to keep up with PC gamers.

!Tenth

reply to post by Thorneblood

Sounds awesome. However, how much physical effort does it require from the player? We know there have probably been lawsuits in the past regarding health and safety. Not that I'm stereotyping gamers as overweight nerds or anything

Depends on the player really, i wouldn't advise playing a game like this for 8-12 hours straight but then i never have that kind of time. That being said, i would imagine you could just cover your ass with a proper legal disclaimer on the box/start screen.

Ya know, those things most people agree to but never read.

reply to post by Thorneblood

Yes, like the photosensitive epilepsy thing?!
So is it designed specifically for one game or one genre. Just RPG is it?

No the game is designed specifically for the Omni rift combo, to take advantage of the whole tech set up but ideally it would run any First person game released in the past few years. Since this system also works in conjuction with computer and the Xbox you could easily play Skyrim, Call of Duty, whatever.

The game i am speaking of would essentially be a launch title.

I think that most video games actually have a disclaimer in the booklet that comes with most games warning people not to play for extended periods just to cover legalities like the ones you mentioned.

I for one would like to see the gamers getting off their butts and "earning" their achievments.
Actually running and breaking a sweat to capture that flag would be much more of a rewarding experience

I think so too, i am actually one of the few people i know who enjoy "motion" games but i have found that most of them simply lack in any real playability. Hopefully this title would address that issue.

If you actually check out the unit itself it isn't any bigger then a La-Z-Boy.

maybe a holodeck

From what i can tell we are at least 10-15 years away from any sort of "holodeck" technology being available to the general public.

But when it is, we could be there making the first bad ass games for it.

reply to post by Thorneblood


call of cthulu on holodeck? with cheats? excellent

Originally posted by Thorneblood
Forbes

Recent gains aside, game makers have become far too reliant on existing commercially successful franchises to drive profit and prop up other lines of business. This has led to an all-out effort create additional game franchises.

For awhile now i have been trying to get into this industry so that i might produce some of my original game designs and break into this market. When you take a peek at the games coming out in the next few months, as well as the titles planned for release with the new batch of consoles soon to hit the public, you can easily see that they are simply replicating what has already worked.

Maybe it's time i try a different tactic, and so i turn to my fellow ATS followers.

Is anyone interested in making the next big thing in the video game industry?

. [color=gold] My ideas will blow your mind.

I've been programming since 1982,
gone through every iteration of the technology,
and seen many great ideas die.

Stuff way better than what we have now.

It's not ideas that are in short supply, it's two things.

And effective team
A positive customer experience.

Children of my friends have come to me for decades,
all excited and overflowing with ideas.

What I'm am about to say
is not just the voice of decades of experience,
not just the voice of a graphics programming tutor,
and not just the voice of a gamer.

It is the simplest single statement to explain the gap between expectation and reality.






. [color=gold] It takes and entire Civilization to program a game.


Hundreds of people,
sometimes thousands.

Millions of man hours.



Aside from that,
if one wishes to talk about how to make money
in the gaming industry as an individual
I recommend becoming a 3d Graphic Artist.

They make all the money because of the way Copyright law is structured.

The art is protected by copyright. Not the idea.

Actual programmers are treated like mushrooms,
kept in the dark, fed manure and paid slave wages.


Mike

reply to post by mikegrouchy


Hi that's very interesting. However, surely "ideas" have copyright also. It's called a patent. ie. Bullet-time owned by Warner Bros

Originally posted by Johnny76
reply to post by mikegrouchy

 

Hi that's very interesting. However, surely "ideas" have copyright also. It's called a patent. ie. Bullet-time owned by Warner Bros

Thank you for raising that very real scenario.

Yes.

And it folds into experience this way.

As soon as Blizzard put a trade mark on the "Question Mark" over a character indicating that
the character had a "quest" for the player,
every other game company in the world stopped using it.
So they wouldn't have to pay patent royalties.

As soon as Bullet time was patented,
every other game company started looking for other ways to stand out.
So they wouldn't have to pay patent royalties.

As soon as a driving game patented using a large 3d Direction Arrow
to show the player which way to go, every other game company wouldn't use it.
You guessed it.
So they wouldn't have to pay patent royalties.




Have you ever noticed that every single game
has a different FONT than any other,
and none of them use the standard fonts of the operating system?

That's right.
Someone owns those fonts.

Several great games,
games far better than anything on the market
have been sued into oblivion
because the team used a standard font.

All their creative work
their art,
their ideas,
and code was lost.

Because they had one single piece of someone else's property.


Mike