['Commentary] Are we on the brink of another video game crash?

Any gamer who has delved into the history of the culture knows that there was a "crash" in the video game industry in 1983, attributed to factors like an over saturated console market, poorly developed games, and the rise of the ever-more-user-friendly PC. The link above is a video that explains the crash rather well. To sum it up, video games were produced and sold as incomplete or falsely advertised products, many unintuitive console were being produced and sold, and companies were trying to crank out video games as fast as possible, under the assumption that gamers want quantity, not quality.

The Problem with Major Publishers and Developers 
It is kind of odd how familiar everything I stated sounds. The year 2014 is being remembered as a year of terrible and disappointing video game releases. A lot of the games that were released last year were extremely hyped and then flopped incredibly hard on release. Looking at Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed Unity, and Total War: Rome 2 at launch, we see that these games were published too early; they had many bugs and glitches or weren't even close to what the developers promised. We have to be a little critical of ourselves: pre-ordering has been around for some time now, and while there was the occasional "Why did I pre-order? This game is shit" moment, but for the most part games were released as advertised with a few bugs here and there that would get patched out in time. As we go farther forward though, more and more games were more and more broken on launch and required more and more patches to fix. However, pre-orders didn't really stop, so video game publishers continued to publish these unfinished games and patching them later on. We finally get to where we are now; an industry that publish games that are obviously not completely functional, with an insane amount of bugs, glitches, and functionality issues. Many gamers that I have talked to this year have told me that they will not be pre-ordering games anymore and will just wait for either the meta-score to give it a good review or for the patches to roll out. I was absolutely flabbergasted by the statement. Sure, waiting out the meta-score is something I've done for a while now, but saying that you will just have to wait until it is patched into a working condition sounds inherently wrong. Gamers shouldn't have to wait until a game is patched to be playable, it needs to be playable out of the box. As mentioned above, older games had their fair share of bugs and glitches, but it was nothing that made the game completely unplayable. With the drop in pre-orders, some companies are waking from their undisturbed and selfish slumber. However, by still buying the games (sometimes at full price or maybe 80% of original price) after they are patched and working, we are supporting the developers and enabling them to continue what they are doing. The biggest problem is that even if you buy the game on a later date, the publishers will continue to release unfinished games.

The Solution
To the publisher, we (the people who buy games once they are patched and playable) are only a certain percentage of their market. There are still gamers who will choose to pre-order or buy a game on the first or second day on release, only to find that they can't fully enjoy the game. To a game publisher, this doesn't really matter. Sure, as they are still developing the game they won't get nearly as much income from just pre-orders, but by buying a game that was released unplayable and waiting for the patches to roll out we are enabling the industry. We have to let companies know that we do not condone their behavior. It sounds difficult to not buy the latest installment of Call of Duty, or Battlefield, or Assassin's Creed, since to many of us, they are our favorite series. It is necessary for us to give that game up completely for the sake of future games. The first step was taken last year in showing the industry that we won't be pushed around by people asking Ubisoft for a refund on Assassin's Creed Unity under threats of lawsuits. Ubisoft offered owners of Unity a free game, valid until March 2015, as an apology for Unity, hiding in the fine print that accepting this free game means you cannot sue Ubisoft over content in Unity or any of its DLCs. We cannot really know how Unity impacted Ubisoft but I am hoping that game publishers and developers are finally gewtting the message that we will not be led along any more.

The Problem with Indie Developers
This needed a separate section. Any PC gamer worth his weight in XP knows that Steam's "Early Access" and video game kickstarters are becoming a problem. Take a look of this shining example of what Steam let through to the consumer. This game was taken down by Steam and was a wake-up call for many people on the severity of the issue we face with early access. The concept of early access is not ill-conceived: you pay what is essentially a pre-order, and you get to play games as they are being developed. The problem is that this limits the creation of a game; it means that the developers are required to create a game that is "functional" from the very beginning, meaning that they have to create a character and a world and make it somewhat playable almost immediately. This means that the developers have less time to test the game themselves and have less time to fix bugs. That statement may not be a problem is Early Access was used the way it was intended, to Alpha and Beta test games. However, many gamers have come to expect versions of the game that completely work with little to know bugs and will get extremely upset if their Alpha game is not playable. The issue is that if a developer wants to change something large, then he needs to reprogram a large portion of code, which could inherently change some functionalities of the game, making large patches unstable and often leading to both consumer and developer frustrations. To delve even deeper into the problems of Indie developers is that many of these small companies involve of a group of maybe two or three people (of course, some companies are larger than others) and these few people need to create the game, often still go to work to their regular jobs, deal with transactions, update their social media, keep a webpage and forum working, and answer questions and concerns from players. Furthermore, they also have to deal with disgruntled customers who want refunds. This small group of people are basically working two jobs while also maintaining an entire company. Sure, their company is small, but they are still a company. This is where many Indie titles fail. By limiting themselves to an early adaptation into a playable environment they are reducing the amount of changes possible without affecting the game too much, which is why many features are often "left out" or "falsely advertised". Of course many Indie developers promised something that they just cannot deliver, but many of them just can't add things they promised do to the stability of the build that is required for consumers to access. Promising  features that cannot be delivered is another problem that is mostly seen in Indie titles. Games used to be developed from start to finished, and then advertised, meaning that companies could choose what features to add or omit before the product was almost complete. Crowdfunding and support are only possible when knowing what you are getting. If someone began a kick-starter with a description of "Bethesda-like medieval co-op RPG" with no specs, features, or pictures, then people would not fund it. And rightly so. Indie development must be insanely difficult to pull off without crowdfunding and extremely stressful with Crowdfunding. In the end, we as the gamers are as much of a problem to the Indie scene as the developers are.

The Solution
It may sound odd, but the solution might be for game developers to seek out the help of a small-company sized force. Developers at Frontier Developments and and Cloud Imperium Games are making crowdfunded games with a very large feature list: they are both open world space games. Both games are available to play right now if you wanted to (Elite: Dangerous from FDev is already "released" and Star Citizen from Cloud Imperium Games is up for pre-order with an Early-Access style plan), and as someone who has played both and dealt with the forums and people in their company I can tell you that they are both going about things in the right direction. However, even smaller Indie games should try to acquire people to do split the work up. I'm sure that most Indie Developers out there want to make more than just one game; that first game sets up a profit margin to continue making games; so why not create a small company to produce games under? Another problem, as I've mentioned before, are we, the consumers. We are currently funding a game with a list of features, when we should be funding Indie companies that produce games. Think of the last 10 Indie games you have played, do you know who developed them? Do you know any other games they've developed? Crowdfunding seriously needs to go towards a company rather than a game. Don't get me wrong, I would not invest in a company either unless I knew what they were publishing, which is why Devs should let us know about their projects and ideas and which they want to do first, but in the end, it shouldn't be the game you are funding; it is the promise of multiple games and a consistent release you are funding. The big dogs at the top will hopefully learn that releasing unfinished games will cost them, but if they don't why not replace them with new companies?

Conclusion
We have a lot of the same problems that caused the video game crash of   1983, but I don't think a "crash" will happen in the same way again. The industry might suffer some really heavy problems in the future and we could potentially see  a string of badly released games, followed by a large profit cut in companies and quality of games going down even further. However, I don't think the next "crash" will be as severe on the consumer, since many people still play their favorite games from a few years ago. Aside from that, the fall of giant companies like EA, Ubisoft, etc, will enable the rise of much smaller companies. So, a crash is possible and maybe imminent but it won't be nearly the same as the crash of 1983. However, let's not wait to find out and try to actively change our community.

[Commentary] Why Video Games?

No way around it; life isn't that great. Even if you are someone who is happy with their life, in the end, life was not that great. There is not enough time to do everything you want, and see everything you want, and live through all those great moments you dream about. This is where video games come in; they let you live the life of someone else, but only the moments that are worth living*. Imagine being able to tune out for an hour or two, or maybe five or six in many cases, and be the hero who slays dragons and becomes a legend, the commander of an army desperately holding on for control of a town, the best formula 1 racer in the world, or the creator of an entire world, limited only by your imagination. In the most simplest terms, it takes boring moments, moments not worth experiencing in our real life, and turns it into moments worth living in another world.

Why the Stigma?
We have all heard it before, and we all know the stereotypes: Gamers are anti-social, unhygienic, overweight men with scraggly, pube-like beards sprouting from their necks. Others say gamers are violent, and many say that we are wasting our lives. Since we choose to spend our time in a world or a setting that doesn't exist to escape reality occasionally we are labeled as some sort of out-cast. The reality is, we are spending our time the same way everyone else is, but it is less accepted.

What is a movie? It is a 2-hour break from life where the viewer gets to experience the lives of other people.

What is a TV show? It is a half-hour break from life where the viewer gets to experience the lives of other people.

What is a book? It is a 500-page break from life where the reader gets to experience the lives of other people.

What is a video games? It is a break from life where the player gets to experience the lives of other people.

We all do it.
We all do it, but no one wants to admit it. Regardless if you watch TV to avoid doing dishes, read a book to spend some time before work, watch a movie because you don't want to cook dinner yet, or play a video-game instead of studying; we are all trying to experience moments when there aren't any moments to experience. Of course, books and reading have been around for far longer than Movies, or Television, or video games, and they are all things that weren't really accepted at the time. When books were first able to be printed and mass distributed, the Bible became a book nearly all people had. It often wasn't read for leisure but for guidance or faith. When people began writing books of fiction**, it was uncommon for someone to just be reading, since reading was not a common past time of a previous generation. Movies, similarly, were not nearly watched as much as today when they were first screened. Not many people owned a Television when it first came out, and it was something people thought was a waste of time.

We finally come to video games, which have only been around for half a century, and commonly only since 1972 with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, or more probably in 1977 when the Atari 2600 was released. Even though this was the introduction of "commercial" video games, in the sense that anyone at home could use it, not too many people were playing games. The "best" games were usually still in arcades, since the large machines were able to hold more content. With the introduction of powerful gaming hardware, with consoles like the PlayStation 1 and the Ninendo 64 (honorable mention for the NES and SNES), we opened up a path for games to move exclusively to the living room. This is the generation that begins seeing video games as a common past time. The thing is, I'm not sure if we are the generation that saw video games as a common and acceptable past time. It was common, yes, but I know many gamers who don't just openly talk about games because of the stigma that comes with it. However, I think that the current generation will be the one to begin normalizing video games through the help of us and older generations of gamers. E-sports is becoming huge thanks to Counterstrike, Starcraft, and League of Legends; video games are becoming a learning tool for elementary teachers by using games like Minecraft or educational games to make learning more interesting. However, I might just be wrong, and it might all just be a fad. In the end, just remember that video games are a past time like anything else and it is not something to be ashamed of. Of course, sitting in front of the computer or TV all day, every day, is not a healthy habit; everything needs to be done in moderation. Remember, we are replacing moments that offer no experiences with a reality that does, we are not replacing our reality altogether.