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Anyone notice that there are about a million games out there but only 25% of them are actually decent?

Considering the number of 'here today/gone tomorrow' games with little to no support like MMOs - it looks to me like developer's mass spam the market with many different titles hoping that just one of them will sell and make up for the uselessness of all the other games that most people don't even know about or can purchase from their region.

I think this is why there are so many Call of Duty players. Not many people really care too much for the obscure and underground titles because who wants to be left with a dead game, no one has heard of and is only supported or made available for purchase for only a few months?

Thoughts?
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carnival73: Anyone notice that there are about a million games out there but only 25% of them are actually decent?
How many films are there, and how many are "decent"?

How many books are there, and how many are "decent?

How much music is there, and how much is "decent"?

etc, etc.

It's a fact.
Post edited June 18, 2011 by WBGhiro
25% is too generous

Around 10% of games that come out in today's market are worth playing through once

less than 5% are worth paying full price for and keeping in your collection

This might sound a bit harsh but unfortunately it's the truth
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carnival73: it looks to me like developer's mass spam the market with many different titles hoping that just one of them will sell and make up for the uselessness of all the other games that most people don't even know about or can purchase from their region.
I thought that the exact opposite was a popular theory - that publishers don't take risks and only release games that will sell well ;)...
Government is the most wasteful industry. Games are the most awesome.
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carnival73: Anyone notice that there are about a million games out there but only 25% of them are actually decent?
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WBGhiro: How many films are there, and how many are "decent"?

How many books are there, and how many are "decent?

How much music is there, and how much is "decent"?

etc, etc.

It's a fact.
Films, books and music usually remain in publication or are fairly easy to access and don't require continued patching, tech support or participation of other consumers.
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carnival73: it looks to me like developer's mass spam the market with many different titles hoping that just one of them will sell and make up for the uselessness of all the other games
That is known as the slate of 10 and it's not exclusive to video games.
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carnival73: it looks to me like developer's mass spam the market with many different titles hoping that just one of them will sell and make up for the uselessness of all the other games that most people don't even know about or can purchase from their region.
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Vestin: I thought that the exact opposite was a popular theory - that publishers don't take risks and only release games that will sell well ;)...
With films and books maybe - but with games - I really don't think that they care.

My latest complaint with the Marvel Trading Card game - the dude Ellis that made the game made an awesome game but Konami let it fly and die and like a cheap tampon smacked to a tile wall in some abandoned women's restroom.
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carnival73: it looks to me like developer's mass spam the market with many different titles hoping that just one of them will sell and make up for the uselessness of all the other games
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Darling_Jimmy: That is known as the slate of 10 and it's not exclusive to video games.
It's aggravating - there are a fair number of indie games on Steam that are not even fully functional and the developer's ran and hid the day after they released on Steam.
Post edited June 18, 2011 by carnival73
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carnival73: Films, books and music usually remain in publication or are fairly easy to access and don't require continued patching, tech support or participation of other consumers.
Actually once out of production books, films and music can be just as hard to get hold of as out of production games. Once its phased out you're totally reliant on the second hand market and just as game CDs can get damaged so can books and music and mostly anything else.

The new shift toward electronic distribution is slowly presenting a possible change to this - since it costs the developers tiny amounts once the initial digital conversion is done (and most will have to do that anyway for printing) however even then licence agreements can run out of date - if a publisher only holds the licence for so long then once that contract is up unless its renewed it again falls out of distribution.

Games are somewhat at a problem with regard to tech support - however the same is again true of older, more hardware based things - cars, boats, old radios etc... If you go back far enough in what you want you've got to either learn the support skills yourself or find communities/specialists to tap into. At present the games industry is a little behind in the regard that there really are no specialist firms that deal with older game support outside of what they distribute - even GoG is limited in the support it can provide to older titles (and that isn't even getting anywhere near the fact that the vast majority of support problems for older games are linked to shifts in software licences supported by OS systems and also changes in the hardware and software of graphics and processor tech
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carnival73: Anyone notice that there are about a million games out there but only 25% of them are actually decent?
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WBGhiro: How many films are there, and how many are "decent"?

How many books are there, and how many are "decent?

How much music is there, and how much is "decent"?

etc, etc.

It's a fact.
Ok, i just browsed that wiki link.

This is another thing that I'm trying to point out - Sturgeon's law wouldn't be as relative because a lot of these crap games wouldn't be crap games if the developers would just keep supporting, expanding on or at least making available.

Here, on GoG, we're shelling out ten dollars a piece for games made fifteen years ago that, back then, were not even considered worth pirating because the games were not supported or kept around long enough to gain the popularity that they are now fifteen years later.

Consumers should not be expected to love or have passion for products that developers themselves do not love or have compassion for.
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carnival73: This is another thing that I'm trying to point out - Sturgeon's law wouldn't be as relative because a lot of these crap games wouldn't be crap games if the developers would just keep supporting, expanding on or at least making available.
I think you are vastly underestimating the support costs associated with a game. Further the games industry itself is not very stable for developers - yes we have out big few, but many (even successful ones) have merged or broken up over the years (GoG has problems with this when hunting some licences for distribution as they end up being lost in a paper-trail of changing hands or even broken up between multiple parties).

We'd all love for games to be long term supported; but the thing is unless its like Eve or WoW, where the long term support can be paid for with fees to play the game or something like Starcraft which generated masses of income from fan events and the like (heck in S. Korea its pretty much a sport) -- then its a dead duck for the developers. The game won't sell anywhere near the volume of units to continue supporting it and paying the people to work on the support.
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carnival73: Films, books and music usually remain in publication or are fairly easy to access and don't require continued patching, tech support or participation of other consumers.
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overread: Actually once out of production books, films and music can be just as hard to get hold of as out of production games. Once its phased out you're totally reliant on the second hand market and just as game CDs can get damaged so can books and music and mostly anything else.

The new shift toward electronic distribution is slowly presenting a possible change to this - since it costs the developers tiny amounts once the initial digital conversion is done (and most will have to do that anyway for printing) however even then licence agreements can run out of date - if a publisher only holds the licence for so long then once that contract is up unless its renewed it again falls out of distribution.

Games are somewhat at a problem with regard to tech support - however the same is again true of older, more hardware based things - cars, boats, old radios etc... If you go back far enough in what you want you've got to either learn the support skills yourself or find communities/specialists to tap into. At present the games industry is a little behind in the regard that there really are no specialist firms that deal with older game support outside of what they distribute - even GoG is limited in the support it can provide to older titles (and that isn't even getting anywhere near the fact that the vast majority of support problems for older games are linked to shifts in software licences supported by OS systems and also changes in the hardware and software of graphics and processor tech
I think the support that I'm referring to is that, before they ditched their game completely, they polished it up the best that they could (Marvel Trading Card Game was left windowed and they never implemented a full screen feature which I assume would've been easy enough to do.) and kept the game in publication. Konami should've still, at least, kept digital forms of the game on hand to sell to those whom were still interested in the game.

But because they never went back and polished it with a patch, because they stopped selling it after a few months and gave up on it., anyone that does have a copy will be hard pressed to set up a LAN game because no one else can acquire the game anymore.

This results in people seeing the production and going 'meh.'

The games that succeed and keep getting sequels released are games that the publishers stood by long enough to acquire the fan base to result in supply and demand of future releases and profitable franchise.
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carnival73: This is another thing that I'm trying to point out - Sturgeon's law wouldn't be as relative because a lot of these crap games wouldn't be crap games if the developers would just keep supporting, expanding on or at least making available.
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overread: I think you are vastly underestimating the support costs associated with a game. Further the games industry itself is not very stable for developers - yes we have out big few, but many (even successful ones) have merged or broken up over the years (GoG has problems with this when hunting some licences for distribution as they end up being lost in a paper-trail of changing hands or even broken up between multiple parties).

We'd all love for games to be long term supported; but the thing is unless its like Eve or WoW, where the long term support can be paid for with fees to play the game or something like Starcraft which generated masses of income from fan events and the like (heck in S. Korea its pretty much a sport) -- then its a dead duck for the developers. The game won't sell anywhere near the volume of units to continue supporting it and paying the people to work on the support.
But not even long term tech support is not necessary, just long term availability. If Konami wanted to throw MTCG in the toilet, couldn't they at least host a free downloadable version of the game so that new players could find it and join in LAN games with the original supporters whom invested in the game during its release?
Post edited June 18, 2011 by carnival73
Ahh but your argument hinges on there being money to patch up the game after release - if the developers miss the marketing boat or messup on the development, of if the game simply does not catch on then chances are the company will see additional development time on patches as a waste of resources - throwing good money after bad.

In short many get axed and the company chooses to invest in a new title instead of still supporting the original game.


In the end we can all wish that every game was made to the best of the developers ability and I'm sure many of those working in the industry would love to polish off the games they work on. However the cold hard fact is we all need income to support of lives - and if a company is to make money it has to focus on the profits - they simply can't all afford to chase after all the bad titles (as much as we all wish they would).

There are options of course, some will release the source code to the community and there are several examples of this (Warzone 2100 and Mech Warrior 4) where the community is then able to support the game further through fan work. However many developers don't want to go down this path. They've invested a lot in the game engine and the game franchise and don't want to jeperdise a future source of income by releasing it for free = so its a very rarely occurring event.
Even for old games the companies will still hold onto the rights if they can
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carnival73: Anyone notice that there are about a million games out there but only 25% of them are actually decent?
Amusingly, that 25% of games is different for every gamer. BTW, Barbie Fashion Designer is the bestest game evar!
Post edited June 18, 2011 by Snickersnack
At some point look at the romance section of a large book store...

There is some romance fiction out there that is good, but it's about as hard to find as a good 8/16 bit platformer, a good 32 bit RPG, a good... What was the generic genre of the ps2 era?, and as good a chance of finding a modern good FPS.

I don't think there is as much crap as you'd expect, a lot of what's on (non Wii/DS) shelves is actually quite decent. How you define 'worth full price' is more a reflection on the issues with game cost in general, as opposed to quality of the content.

And then there is probably all the content you are just ignoring... Sure, the EA sports games might not be your thing, but they are hardly worse than say, Fast and the furious 5 or the Sword and the seer chronicles (a very 'just passable' fantasy fiction series).

It's always tempting to say "everything sucks" but mostly, there is a huge amount of good quality stuff that percentages tend to be hide well.

5% of games are truely worthwhile... And with at LEAST 500 games a year released that 25 games, a year, that are truly amazing. Thats one every 2 weeks of a year, almost.

And that's only if you take the very best, which lacks things like monster hunter, Tsukihime, , everything tell tale makes, Segagaga, GunGage, FFX-2, Killer7, King's Field The Ancient city, The Red Star, Eternal Sonata, Folklore, NIER, Resonance of Fate, Z H P, the Ys series, Another Code series, Trauma Centre, and so much more...

Games that aren't the very very best, but are still excellent yet overlooked because they aren't as good overall as some of the 'best games' but excel at what they DO do.