34 réponses à ce sujet

[VictorVonPresper]

Captain Cornhole wrote...

To be honest I would hardly call farmville a game. The thing is Facebook is easly accessable compared to picking up retail EA games, not to mention the platform Wii, PS3, Xbox, PC. The reason that more people play farmville is that facebook is simply more acessable and has millions and millions of users. Not to mention it's free and we are in a recession.

Very good points there..

But I'm wondering, what's to stop companies like EA from just creating things like Farmville, which would make more money (allegedly) than ME?

Is there a critical factor I'm missing?

[Sinister-starfeesh]

I'm a hardcore gamer, i think it's dying out though if i'm honest.

Farmville is blasphemy, all those ville game are rediculous ¬.¬

But I reckon it's judged on what the kids of today prefer and most are bound to choose the free game they can play on their facebook to buying a console or a game.

[Merci357]

Obviously the "hardcore gaming" market isn't going anywhere, I guess that's the point some may overlook. Yes, lot's of B games won't sell at all, and yes, people are way more picky these days, because they have lots of options. But honestly, a game like Mass Effect 2 had production and advertising costs that rival any mayor hollywood movie - but in the end of the day, if they make profit with it, how could that business model be wrong? Also, if you just look at paid DLC models, if you look at the MMO market, almost all gaming companies try to explore different revenue models besides shipping a retail game and be done with it. I'd say, you see far, far fewer titles in the future, but those are supported far longer.
There is a demand for "interactive movies" - and that's a valid way for a company like BioWare to last for the next decade. After that, the lines between movie and game will start to blur, anyway.

Modifié par Merci357, 15 février 2010 - 08:53 .

[banshee768]

Hardcore games or gamers will never die. The companies just need to shift focus.

When motion pictures were first introduced, they were all the same. But now, a good 70 years later, movies have great variety. There are literally a movie for everyone out there. Games has this as well, with the different genres. But movies still have something that games lack. Elitism.

Whenever elitism is brought up in gaming forums, it leads to flamewars and hostility. Just look at the World of WarCraft forums. It's hell on the Interwebs. But Elitism is a good thing.

I don't know if you've heard of them or even seen them, but in Denmark we have a director called Lars von Trier. Quite famous I guess. Won a fair number of international prizes for his films. I have never seen any of his films and probably never will. I don't know how to describe them, but they're over my head.

But I mention him for a reason. Him and a few fellow directors, writers and whatnot have established a foundation for the "Preservation of Elitist Films" or something like that. Their purpose is to preserve movies as they were intended before they went mass-marked. Those movies that receive critical acclaim, but will never be blockbusters. Simply because most people don't get them. It goes without saying that they don't do it for the money. They do it because they love making movies. They love pushing the boundaries, they love pushing themselves to be better and they don't really care about what you want from a movie. They do it for themselves or to make a statement.

Games needs this. Right now, the only games that are truly innovative are indie games. Made by a few guys in a basement and are not made for profits. They are made because these guys love games. Big companies like BioWare, Blizzard, EA, Obsidian and all that lot have a problem. It's called "share-holders." And these share-holders are not gamers. They are businessmen and -women and they have invested their money in these companies for one reason and one reason only: to make money. They don't want them to make 'risky' games that might not make a profit. I guarantee you that if someone wanted to make Planescape: Torment today, they would be forced to reduce the complexity in order to appeal to as many potentiel costumers as possible. And the game would not be the same as a result. It would be just another fantasy RPG that would be forgotten within a year.

As it is now, games need someone brave enough to risk their money producing games with a more focused design, more complexity and more elitism. Else we'll end up with a whole host of games catering to the lowest common denominator. It would be the same if Paramount Pictures and the rest of the gang only wanted to produce movies like Transformers, Harry Potter and the next superhero movie and wouldn't dare take a risk with movie with a bit more meat on the bones.

Sorry for the wall of text, but there's no easy way to explain how I think hardcore/elitist games will survive.

[Panderfringe]

lol "hardcore" and "casual" need to be removed from your vocabularies. It's so damn embarrassing.

[Statulos]

Under the name of "Elitism" lots of crap are excused as something else as crap. Above mentioned Lars Von Trier has lots of that especially for the part of "Dogma in-Dogma out" thing.



I saw Antikrist and it was pretty much an excuse for grusome content. Wich I love, sure, but that´s not far better than Braindead.

[Dr Metzger]

VictorVonPresper wrote...

Cybernetica wrote...

wth is farmvill

FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and raising livestock.[2] Since its launch in June 2009,[3] FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook, with over 75.2 million active users and over 18.1 million fans in January 2010.[4] FarmVille started as a clone of the popular Farm Town on Facebook.[5]

Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVille

But it doesn't mention how many people have multiple accounts for those games, most people I know who play games on FB have 3-4 accounts to gift themselves stuff and what not.

[KethWolfheart]

Many folks who play Farmville never played games to begin with. They do it because it is there in Facebook. They aren't detracting anything from the playerbase. With anyhow they may find they like games and start to look for something more complex. On the other side, those who do play more involved games are not going to stop, most likely, just because they play Farmville.



I think games will become more simplistic and do well, which encourages that type of game (just look at ME2) but at some point, I would hope, it would stop when people no longer find them entertaining.



I think Farmville, and similar games, has a lot of users as it takes no effort and is a simple way to kill time. That hardly means that is all people want though.... at least I hope not.

[RetrOldSchool]

IMO the writer has a couple of interesting points, but I think the article is a little exaggerated, probably to create debate.

The writer points out that GTA IV costed a $100 million and that it's no longer selling at $20. Well that could be because the game has sold over 13 million and it made a $500 million reveneu the first week only...

Mario Kart Wii is still selling though and has probably outsold GTA IV by now, but that's simply because Mario Kart Wii can be played by any gamer, from toddlers to grown ups while a lot of parents would't dream of getting GTA IV for their kids (which IMO is very reasonable). With a bigger target audience it's not that wierd that it's selling more.

And a game like FarmVille will probably never compete with real games, does anyone think the 74 million people playing it would've bought it for $60?

Free online (and especially social) gaming will be a strong factor in the future, but I highly doubt it will replace console gaming.