The AAA Games Industry Collapsing in on it's Self

[1magus]

BTW I wrote all of this because my dream was to develop games, not all dreams come true. I'm hoping that in time I can get to know you all again and you all me.

So For the past couple years I have been trying my best to break into this industry and learn how to make professional 3D Art. I focused so hard on getting it right that I ignored several forums I used to frequent ( mostly this one .)

Game Art and in turn Movie Art is too advanced for most people to keep up with.

In the end I failed to see some down falls that half the Games Industry has and it's biggest issue is Art. Video games cost up words of 120 million to develop and it's just going to get worse ( By Video Games I mean teh biggest ones that you hear about, clearly iPhone games and mobile ones don't cost even 10 thousand to develop lol .) But my point is that the AAA Games industry , the one that makes God of War, our Assassin's Creeds and Call of Duties has no where else to turn and they are at huge risk of crashing and burning quite literally.

Game companies are failing left and right as they fail to adapt to the changing market, meanwhile selfish gamer's are after nothing more than better graphics, always pushing the limit when they don't realize that this limit was reached. The PS4 will not look much better than the 3 and games on it will probably cost 70.00 bucks or more. Games now require 2 million + Sales in order to break even at 60 bucks a pop. ( 60 x 2 Million = 120 Million for the average games budget )

Sorry not the best written post, but I guess my point is the part of the games industry that I tried to join, well there is no place for me there and if you are a gamer hoping to join it than be careful.

For now I need to try and find a skill and a job and hopefully I could possibly design 2D games which are not going anywhere. 2D Games are booming even.

But Hopefully I can start posting more on these forums and start sounding more positive. I'm not depressed just a bit down that I tried so hard ( 8+ hours a day for 3 years - School and the occasional break ) and in the end it did me no good.

I still enjoy playing games 2D or 3D but if you are hoping that the next generation of games will look like what our eyes see as reality and that this will give us deeper games with more fun than ever, than sorry but you will be pretty disappointed.

Hopefully though we can all learn to adapt, move on and get used to a newer industry and newer games while some big companies fail ( THQ not doing so well ) and others learn to adapt. I don't mind personally sacrificing graphics for game play.

BTW on a side note the problem is development, so don't think that digital distribution or cloud gaming can fix any of this

[AprilSeven]

You've got my full sympathy, 1magus, and I sincerely wish you the best of luck!

My husband has always been an illustrator, and every year gets more and more difficult as companies get bought up, and the chase after "the latest software" pushes the cost of doing this kind of work for a living ever higher.

He happens to be a an artist who "SHOULD" be working for the film industry and gaming industry because his drawing skills are at such a high level, but the attitude is that most of these companies hire "babies" (i.e. interns) who are college age, and they get 2 or 3 "junior" artists for the cost of one seasoned professional like my husband.

In spite of having contacts at both Dreamworks and Blue Sky, he couldn't even get an interview. So the industry gets less than the best, and skilled artists are scrapping around for work when they should be earning incomes respectful of their talent and years of experience. When I first met him, Steve would get "residuals" (royalties) any time one of his illustrations appeared after the initial use. Not any more. Just Google Steve Karp illustration and you see a whole bunch of his work on websites - most of which he did not give permission to, or get paid for. Today's commercial artist is VERY poorly treated unless you are lucky enough to land one of a handful of high-paying jobs.

Plus he is now expected to do work that used to be done by art directors and editors and authors in terms of research and reference materials.

As for myself, I have my art-related job (graphic designer) because I can also do "secretarial stuff" - so my advice for you is to team up your art skills with something more "mundane" like office skills or mechanical skills or business skills or teaching skills. I hate to have to say that, Imagus, but I'm afraid all the younger folks who now think they are going to continue to earn decent livings are just one software change away from being out of step with what is in demand, and therefore OUT OF A JOB. There IS no retraining -- only if you do it yourself, and then - as in the case of animation studios -- you could be astoningly good, but you won't be considered unless you come in as an intern (and what middle-aged person is going to be able to do that?!)

Sorry for the rant, but I hate to read about this stuff. Also your best bet is with a smaller, more unconvential firm who will evaluate you on your TALENT not your age or degree or what software you are currently using. Wishing you the best of luck!!

[1magus]

I doubt 3D art is my future, but making basic 2D games does not seem too difficult on my own I just need to find a way to get sprites or make them lol.

[1magus]

As for your husband maybe he could get a job drawing comics? I know that they often hire people to just do black and white images and than the inking is done later by someone else.

[Fuzzy Pickles!]

I think the thing that's most disappointing about gaming is that game companies are getting away with backstabbing consumers. Capcom has been doing it with forcing consumers to pay more for the full experience then they should have to and Nintendo lied to the fans who have been with them for generations about returning to the core gamers (E3 2012 indicated anything but that). Unless Super Smash Bros. 4 can live or beat it's predecessor (and the Smash Bros. series is excellent, so it has a high standard to live up to), I will not be buying an 8th gen video game console and what gaming I do end up doing will be before that gen, so it's not like I'll need anymore of those anyway. And by this method, companies don't get any money, so I'm not helping fueling their practices.

[1magus]

I think the thing that's most disappointing about gaming is that game companies are getting away with backstabbing consumers. Capcom has been doing it with forcing consumers to pay more for the full experience then they should have to and Nintendo lied to the fans who have been with them for generations about returning to the core gamers (E3 2012 indicated anything but that). Unless Super Smash Bros. 4 can live or beat it's predecessor (and the Smash Bros. series is excellent, so it has a high standard to live up to), I will not be buying an 8th gen video game console and what gaming I do end up doing will be before that gen, so it's not like I'll need anymore of those anyway. And by this method, companies don't get any money, so I'm not helping fueling their practices.

You and I should IM , Capcom uhhh well they really messed up with Megaman and lost the brain child behind it so Capcom is mostly dead to me. BUt I will say this they made this random RPG that does look interesting the Dragon one.
Nintendo lied a bit but its a delicate situation, the core gaming audience is large but the other audience is larger and again staying at Casual gaming is one part of the solution to over budgeting games. I love Core games but not when they cost so much money that the gameplay starts to suffer . Also Nintendo has been quite stupid with the 3DS for numerous reasons:

http://www.geekosystem.com/nintendo-killed-3ds-interest/

[Astro Forever]

Hello 1magus! Nice to see you again! It's too bad it didn't work like you were hoping for. I don't know what to say, since I've never gone through something like this, but I can imagine the disappointment. I think it's a good thing you tell of your experience, perhaps it could help others who are aiming at the same goal to be prepaired and develop as many skills as possible as AprilSeven suggested.

I'm not a gamer anymore, and I've never been a difficult one. I've always been happy with simple graphics. I'm not sure players have more fun today than we had back when I was playing.

[fafner]

To be precise, I don't think the gamers really want so much graphics in the first place. However, if a game has better graphics than another one, people are more likely to go for the one which has better graphics. That means that the ones who want better graphics are the game publishers themselves: if they don't have better graphics, they don't sell as well. Given the current trend of having to best the competition at all cost, that gives the multi-millions developments we have now.

[1magus]

To be precise, I don't think the gamers really want so much graphics in the first place. However, if a game has better graphics than another one, people are more likely to go for the one which has better graphics. That means that the ones who want better graphics are the game publishers themselves: if they don't have better graphics, they don't sell as well. Given the current trend of having to best the competition at all cost, that gives the multi-millions developments we have now.

I still think gamers are addicted to better graphics which no one can provide anymore past a certain point. So what will they do? Bigger Resolutions and TVs, they already tried the 3D thing and it only half worked. But Any Resolutions past 1080p requires more RAM and most games do not use anymore than 2GBs at any given time. So that is going to be interesting, that or that part of the industry will just crash and we will move on :d oh: