Flodus Florentis, The Turning Point of Games.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2821-Ludus-Florentis

theres the link. sorry for the embed

Thats the biggest goddamn video ive ever seen.

wtf...i hate it when they fuck with embedding codes. URGH IF THIS SITE DIDNT HAVE GOOD CONTRIBUTORS, I WOULD TELL IT TO FUCK OFF.

Only one problem with this video...

The diversification of the industry will actually not cause niches to form. What is most profitable is to sell games that reach the largest audience. To this end, there will be no niche gaming, ever.

Also, the centralization of the gaming industry will remain, they are too powerful for any one startup to cut down, simply because of the possibility of predatory pricing and their strength in numbers and money, just what happened in the US during industrialization.

Also art and profit will never successfully FULLY mesh, art is created from an intense personal desire, not the pursuit of monetary ends. Money doesn't make someone stay awake at night and diligently work for months on end, est ars gratia artis. Look at all the famous pop stars of today, they could all retire, but they can't, they love what they do, ars gratia artis. Although art and profit can and often do play together to make good things.


Other than that, spot on analysis, in my opinion.

First off, you assume the gaming industry will follow paths taken by other industries using their paradigmas. Wrong move. Go to steam. watch what happens to Indie games there(hint: they get successful more n more these days). Thats one clue to the future. Another thing is that game industry is shaped and seeks out things in a different way. Activision and EA and Blizzard will prolly be around in 10 years, but even that is unsure because this industry has crashed once, and nearly crashed twice. It is VERY VERY dynamic. And to say the most profitable is make games that reach large audiences? You know nothing about their clientele then. A CoD fan will not buy Wii Sports. If you try and mix them, you wil not sell to either CoD fans or Wii Sports fans. This is possibly the most informed audience ive seen. There are rare occasions where this has happened, but mostly, the industry doesnt mix genres. It just doesnt happen Nihil.

Second thing. Art and money.
First off











yeah...sure...money and art cant mesh....

Dray, I'm not ENTIRELY disagreeing with the points you just made: let me expound upon my points. Cock of Duty has seen numerous spin offs in that many games try to emulate it now.
After further though, I've decided that niches, as a subcontract kind of thing, will form, that is, a bigger company contracts a game developer to make a game, and that game developer may be especially good at making some kind of game and they make that kind of game. I didn't mean mixing genres, per se, but the mixing of elements that would induce a larger audience to buy.


But again, money and passion don't fully successfully mix, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Michael Jackson, Michael Phelps, Albert Einstein, Newton. It isn't about money with these groups of people, most often, it is about a passion, and I can describe it, physicists don't make as much as my father does, biostatistician and research fellow at P&G, but the desire that burns within shoves monetary means off to the side, the pursuit of discovery drives scientists, not money. To illustrate, my favourite Mozart Quote:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote:Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Or even more suited to this particular occasion:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote:I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

I think you misinterpert what they said about money and art. Art fuels the creators, who create a symbiotic relation with the money making CEOs. And what do you mean mixing of elements? What do you mean companies who are only good at one thing? There are very few developers who are only good at ONE specific development. There are very few games that aside from major gameplay genre, you can narrow down to a set piece of element or elements. Like i said, this industry flows differently. There is no Hollywood for it, no Detroit. There is a crapton of platforms and overall ANY kind of audience with a profit for it. There are copies of stuff and spin offs of the same thing over n over, but for every spin off you see, there is another piece of artistic merit coming out as well.

Off Topic, 2011 is gonna be sequel year, but its the Half Life 2 kind of sequel year. You have the expansion of a universe and differentiation and diversity in Dragon Age 2, you have the fully complemented polished end from what was a small experimentation in Portal 2, you have the unholy benchmark of elite physics and graphics in Crysis 2, then the arrival of the hopefully worthy MUMORPEGER of Star Wars, and then the return of the King in Duke Nukem Forever. Oh and another Elder Scrolls.