Future of video games, big budget games finished?

I've been saying games are becoming more and more like movies for a while now.

Whether it's because of movie based games, or even campaign style playings such a COD's more recent games (WaW, MW2, BO, MW3) or Battlefield 3. They employ this cinema style to help keep a decent story line captivating instead of making a really kick ass story.

If they keep games with a balance of actual game and cinematic styling, games are usually best then. The more they try to make a game like a movie, the more it becomes too exaggerated in my opinion.

All I really ask of a game is a few things:
-Good graphics, for it's time of release.
-Either a story you can play over and over again, with little-to-no multiplayer. Or a decent storyline, with excellent multiplayer. I don't even need both.
-Really takes use of sound capabilities of the system.

And I do think most games are insanely over priced. I'd like to see the average video game cost come down to $40-$45. But that probably won't happen. If they're making good money, then by all means, let them. But if they're just using this crazy budget to make interactive movies; bring my games back. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd go to my living room, or the theater.

well i feel like he is a axtreamist trying to push a point to the edge and throw it over and YELLING IT IS ALL GOING TO FAIL EVERYTHING!

My 00.02$ if they are sending the money and MAKING THE MONEY... who cares how they do it ...

I just wish the companies would put more money toward development rather than advertising.

Although I guess since every game out today on the consoles are just reskin's (i.e. modern cod games) they only need to pay some guy $10/hr to put different colors on stuff and call it a new game. Then they spend the rest of the budget on advertising their craptastic rehash of a game.

If you have a good product, you don't need that many advertisements. Hoever, you do have to spend a lot of money on advertisements to persuade people to buy your bad products though.

A very interesting read. The article makes a lot of good point about how AAA game devs/companies piss away money on a lot of unnecessary stuff in an attempt to go "hollywood". I do find it a bit funny however hearing devs whine about having to make higher poly characters and textures for durango I mean common making a 2048 texture is not much harder then making 1024 or a 512 and devs have made super high-poly sculpted meshes for normal mapping for years. That's the time consuming part not raising the base model poly count from 15k to 30k.

Also there is no mention of how much better all the tools have become over the years. Its now much easier and less time consuming to do a lot of the stuff now then even in the PS2 days.

A quick googling turned up that Crysis 1 Cost 22 Million to make (I'm guessing that includes engine development) and that's about as high detail and cinematic as anything on the market (Crysis 2 looks better but that's just improvements to the engine and don't affect assets making, animation or any other part). With a pre-made engine a gaming company should be able to make a good game for far less then 20 Million even for the next gen consoles.
Edited by Bit_reaper - 7/10/12 at 10:44am

Movie tickets though were much cheaper in the past. now they are expensive, if you also add the food and drinks you buy. also small cinemas and drive-in cinemas are a thing of the past in a lot of places, substituted by multiplex conglomerations with expensive tickets.

People should also read this article to know what happens when a great company ends up holding just the name and nothing else since all its soul was drained.

http://www.allowe.com/Larry/DeveloperLookback.htm

No mention of FFXIII? That movie was amazing!!!! All those flashy cut scenes and interesting story.... would have been a nice game if there was any gameplay with it, other than walking to the next cut scene.

Oh, give me a break!

What do you have against an interactive game? Have you ever played one? I bet not. Cause there isn't actually a perfect one yet. They are only getting started. Games need to be much more film-like because in a game where there isn't a cinematic experience, you just shoot tons of tons people. How realistic is that? And most of all what's the point of that? Even in a Call of Duty game which you disserviced a lot, there are many endless shootings. I remember getting into White House in Modern Warfare 2 or so taking a lot of my time.

Aren't you bored of this? What is it do you want? More empty games like Bulletstorm? And stop this "if I wanted to watch a film i'd go to living room" nonsense. You just have no taste. You can't possibly find anything in a film as vivid as in a great game. I'm not against films here, there are always good films that are being made, I'm just stating that, different, unique, not-entirely-drama-focused stories meet very rarely with films. And they last only 2 hours! Do you know how many successful sci-fi, thriller, mystery films are made in a year? Almost none! I'm a huge film buff who aims to be a (successful) director one day, and I tell you, the greatest story I have seen in my life is from a game. (Mass Effect)

I don't know about you but "gameplay" doesn't mean shooting, walking and running for hours to me. That's just filler for people who likes to kill things to relax who also are multiplayer gamers, which is a plague of this industry.

What is it that bothers you? It's up to companies to adjust their finances and believe me they know better than you about managing their money. A company's last thing you need to worry about is their finances, especially when it's an industry-level prediction. I'd understand "one" company, but how on earth can you possibly claim that all companies are going to fail at the same time because they're following the same mistake? A company is like a demon. Weather they make diapers or games, they do everything in their power to make profit, and they do make profit. If they don't, and if they get downsized and even bankrupt one day, it's only because of their bad management. Not because of following an industry-level mistake.

And what's up with the movie ticket comparison? You're supposed to compare it to a Blu-ray. And their prices are about the same. A "day 1" Blu-ray film is about 30$. The little difference is perfectly normal since films are being watched by much more people.
Edited by Some1Smart - 2/22/13 at 4:39am

OH GOD, RUN!! IT'S UWE BOLLE!!!


Seriously though kid... If Mass Effect is the "best story you've ever seen", then you have a LOT to learn. Do you have any idea how many people I went to school with who were "going to be a director" or some variations thereof? And how many of them knew ANYTHING about film? I'll give you a hint: the number is the same...

Video Games =/= Film

And by the sounds of it, you end up watching the movies that mimic video games rather than the films that were created as art.
What about the classics? I can give you a list of 500 films right now that all have a better story than ME1/2/3, because IT'S A DIFFERENT MEDIUM! Mass Effect had a fantastic storyline, for a video game, but there's a reason there are NO good "film adaptations" of video games; they don't work!


And to this day I still think the best story-telling in a game is the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2.... Valve knows how to let you LEARN the story, rather than shoving it in your face

LOL "Mass Effect is a great story" obviously you have no clue :



Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 craps all over Mass effect's story line and then some.