The amazing phenomenon of video gaming

Kyleran · March 2019

Look, I am old. So old I remember when video games did not exist in any form. (Someone invented fire just before I was born, pretty sure my parents knew him)

I've witnessed many incredible revolutions and evolutions in gaming but only now am I truly coming to appreciate how this hobby for "children and nerds" has become an absolute phenomenon.

Let's look at THQ Nordic, a studio I've read about, often here on these forums, but have never played any of their many games.

They are a big studio, but certainly no TenCent. How many new games do suppose THQ has currently in development?

77. No, not a typo, here's a quote from their CEO,

"we had a record 77 games under development. 48 of these are still in the pipeline waiting to be announced, including a few that are scheduled for release in 2019."

These are being created by 1100 or so employees which includes roughly 613 developers. They also work with 871 developers in third party studios.

They've also raised $255M in new investment to help fund everything.

This is just one studio, I can't imagine how many games must be in in development industry wide, could be in the thousands even.

Where will I ever find the time to play even a sliver of them?

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-13-thq-nordic-net-sales-rose-713-percent-to-usd447-6m-in-2018

AlBQuirky · March 2019

That's really cool!

Unfortunately, for every THQ Nordic, there is Electronic Arts.

It's good to see a company doing so well with high hopes for the future

Quizzical · March 2019

And that's just one company in an industry so big that, without looking it up, I couldn't name anything that THQ Nordic has ever made.

Mendel · March 2019

Fortunately, @Kyleran, a large number of those games in development will never see the light of day, and grey heads like us won't have to make that "Play or Not?" decision for ourselves. I am going to assume that the developer that wrecked the budget with marginally legal behavior or absconded with the project director's wife did these horrific acts with the intent of making life easier for the rest of us.

Then there will a host of games that anyone can see are going to be crap, and that same host of people will fill the gaming forums and social media of the world expressing that opinion of crappiness to the world. There will be a host of people glomming onto any game, regardless of promise, streaming countless hours of banal development talk and somehow turning vague words which would be otherwise lost in the mists of time into concrete promises of impending absolute brilliance. And a cottage industry will grow up around these people to monetize their ministry. Someone has to pay for all that Kool-Aid.

Then posters like @delete5230 or others happen. Can't help it. They're a force of nature, I guess. Or a consequence of life. I can't really decide. Well established conventions, such as punctuation and spelling, simply don't apply.

So, games in development won't equate to finished games. The numbers just don't match. It leaves us oldsters more time to admonish the younger generations to 'Get off my lawn!'

To conclude, allow me to summarize with a non sequitur, cherish the games you like. Or not.

/end rambly, soapboxy, rantish thingy

Wizardry · March 2019

The fact they have 77 does surprise me a bit but not entirely.It just shows the current trend in game design,tons of 6 month game designs and even if they take a bit longer they still release them in 6 months anyhow.

I can't get into the mindset of the majority,i look for certain ideals in games while the rest seem to just be buying a new game every week and then that is the flavor of the week.Most of the crapo i see would drive me to quit gaming if that was my only choice.

It is because i was teaching myself at a very early stage in gaming how it was all done,i was taking computer engineering in school as well.So i was looking at games differently than most,i was dissecting every piece of the design.

I would give a high majority very low scores,like how could you score a game "not worth playing?"a 1/2/3?
A small % are playable if you have ANY criteria/standards for your games,if not then i guess everything is playable.

Then i feel less than 1% are really well done and that would be the same amount of HQ studios,the rest are all Indie,fly by night,bandwagon jumping studios.I was honestly never totally ecstatic about gaming,nothing ever looked GRANDEUR,it has always been ok.....nice start,hopefully next time we see better.
"hopefully see better"has been an ideal i have waited for over 30 years,it seems we have stopped taking giant leaps and now we either remain stagnant or go BACKWARDS,sadly yes backwards.

How many studios right now can you say are taking what .DLL's are giving them,what technology/software is ging them and putting it all together to make a great game?NONE? maybe 1-3?Not many that is for sure.Darkest Dungeon,Battle Royales,Auto chess,yeah pretty much utilizing 1980's tech and selling it in 2019.

Scorchien · March 2019

THQ Nordic has quietly aquired quite a nice library over the past 5 years , and has been quite active in purchasing ips the past 18 months , KOA(Kingdom of Amalur) should be seeing a sequel soon from them

Vermillion_Raventhal · March 2019

Being the younger brother they are 10 months apart and I am 11 years from them. I started at God knows what age playing video games. I think the first game I was playing was Pong on a system that had like 3 built in games. This was early 80s at like 3 or 4. Didn't even have a joystick. It was roller type thing.

I feel like the old man going 5 miles in the snow to school. My son never played a game off a tape that load time seemed to be 2 hours. I remember programming disk just to boot games. The stiff joysticks with one button. The struggle to remember which sound card option works for sound. 30mb being a big game and taking up a ton of space.

Gaming is in a good place. More games than ever at your finger tips. Biggest problem is AAA greed and microtransactions.

Hatefull · March 2019

I am also an older guy. I did not start gaming until my 30's. I never even could conceive having a device in my hand that I can literally run my entire life with. From banking to scheduling entertainment, I can do it without ever having to speak to another human.

At times I sit back and look at how far games have come. D and D was the best thing I had ever seen when I "discovered" it in my early teens. I never spent much time playing it as I was far too involved in sports and other activities, but it did set a hook in me. Many years later I was banged up from a bike wreck sitting on the couch not going to work and my roommate asked me to play his SWG toon for him. That weekend I bought a computer and SWG and have been gaming since then.

At times it can be hard to appreciate the advances and how enormous this hobby has become. Waiting to get my hair trimmed the other day 15 people in the place waiting to be seen, all on their phones most playing some sort of game. This hobby has truly become mainstream and it won't be going anywhere soon.

I laugh when I see the complainers on here talking about this studio, that studio, that will never work because of blah. Does anyone know when EA was founded? I didn't have to look that up. 1982. I knew that from other stuff I have written. You see we compare everything to how it affects our world, MMORPG games. While people certainly have some valid complaints on this specific topic as it pertains to EA, they seldom realize that EA publishes several sports titles (21 pages of games listed on their site). The point being, they are not a shitty studio, they just do not specialize in MMO or RPG games and they won't be going anywhere, anytime soon.

So instead of complaining why not try looking and see what they have brought to the industry, it might surprise you. Any idea what the most sold game was to this point? Tetris, as a matter of fact, MMORPG games aren't even in the top 5. HERE Our part of this hobby is still very niche comparatively speaking. Probably should not use Wiki but here

It is not hard to see why in a boardroom the nod is given to all these "silly games" and MMORPG games are shelved or just trashed. The bang is absolutely not worth the buck.

Do you wonder why studios do not listen to us? Because we bitch louder and longer than any other genre and our games are expensive as hell to make combined with tiny player bases. Why the hell listen to the complainers when a studio can put out a simple game that takes a few months to make and rake in several million? Maybe we should stop shitting on indie studios and start supporting them as they are becoming the only people interested in even trying to make proper MMORPG games.

Then there are the straight-up loonies...enough about them.

My point is; it is a pretty amazing time to be in this hobby and if your current flavor of gaming is not doing it for you, then maybe now is a great time to explore other types of games and see if anything hooks you. With all the free to play it's pretty easy to explore around and see if there is anything out there. Don't keep doing something for fun if it isn't.

zaxxon23 · March 2019

Well, 77 games sounds ridiculous, unless you consider the mobile market and realize that so many games are skins of a basic concept. Like right now I see ads for this Raid Shadow Legends game all the time, but I've played enough games that I can see it's the same game as Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes and Marvel Strike Force. I'm sure there are many other variations of that same base game I haven't seen yet. The unfortunate reality is that good games are stagnant as ever, except you can play whatever crap base game you want to play in the universe of your choosing.

As much uproar as D4 on mobile got...I'm actually curious to see what happens with it. As an old school mmo and arpg player, I actually spend the vast majority of my gaming time on my phone nowadays. And most of these games ultimately suck and are huge p2w cash grabs. Now I'm not at all against real money in games, in fact I hate the WoW socialist gaming virus that has infected most every game out there....however I also hate devs building games that require significant spending with zero recourse to make back that investment. This means there are still unexplored territories economically, and D4 would be in the perfect spot to capitalize on that...assuming there's anyone left at Blizzard who can make a game without applying WoW's loot system (like they did with D3 after their horrid itemization scheme at launch sunk the game).

Imagine D2, greatly expanded, with updated graphics, that you can play in base form on mobile, and an extensive background follower system like you see in Star Trek Timelines. Players could sink all kind of money into the game for followers and RNG crates of goods, utilize that for treasure hunting, and then see if they can get good enough (and lucky enough) to make money back on their investment by treasure hunting in the game. I mean that's only scratching the surface of the subsystems you can have that are both extremely fun and profitable.

But knowing Blizzard nowadays...we all just know they're gonna screw it up royally. It'll just be WoW on mobile with a Diablo skin.

Amathe · March 2019

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

Kyleran · March 2019

Amathe said:

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

Or going into the video store (late 80s) and finding no new PC games to play this month.

On another note, showing the incredible phenomenon video gaming has become, Tencent announced due to the freeze in China which limited them to releasing 7 mobile games and 1 PC game since it was lifted, they "only" made $19 B in revenues for 2018.

I wonder how many games they have in the queue?

Tencent apparently owns lots of other stuff, their revenues in total were $45.6 B with about $11.6 B in profit.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-22-mobile-strength-pushed-tencent-past-usd19bn-games-revenue-in-2018

Mendel · March 2019

Amathe said:

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

I'd have loved it if Williams had transitioned from the arcades into PC game development. (The PCs were indeed that far behind the arcades in performance at the time. And mouse-keyboard? What kind of controller system was that?)

Theocritus · March 2019

Never heard of THQ Nordic....

[Deleted User] · March 2019

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Hatefull · March 2019

DMKano said:

Kyleran said:

Look, I am old. So old I remember when video games did not exist in any form. (Someone invented fire just before I was born, pretty sure my parents knew him)

I've witnessed many incredible revolutions and evolutions in gaming but only now am I truly coming to appreciate how this hobby for "children and nerds" has become an absolute phenomenon.

Let's look at THQ Nordic, a studio I've read about, often here on these forums, but have never played any of their many games.

They are a big studio, but certainly no TenCent. How many new games do suppose THQ has currently in development?

77. No, not a typo, here's a quote from their CEO,

"we had a record 77 games under development. 48 of these are still in the pipeline waiting to be announced, including a few that are scheduled for release in 2019."

These are being created by 1100 or so employees which includes roughly 613 developers. They also work with 871 developers in third party studios.

They've also raised $255M in new investment to help fund everything.

This is just one studio, I can't imagine how many games must be in in development industry wide, could be in the thousands even.

Where will I ever find the time to play even a sliver of them?

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-13-thq-nordic-net-sales-rose-713-percent-to-usd447-6m-in-2018

MMO studios (not that there are many left at this point) have a lot less in development due to scope of the mmo games.

Example - Gazillion had 4 games in the pipeline before shutdown.

Trion had 4 game in the works before their collapse

Carbine had 3

Etc....

Most of those wouldn't have panned out, but maybe 1 or 2 out of all of those would have seen a launch day.

I wonder why? As I pointed out earlier, the bang is not worth the buck when it comes to MMO's. I am curious though, "Not that there are many left at this point" compared to when?

Blizzard
EA/BW
Cloud Imperium
Artcraft/Travian Games
Mark Jacobs
WWW Partners
NCSoft
Facepunch Studios

There are more, I just got bored looking them up. I know a few have shut down or switched to making profits in other genres, but how many were around in the hay day?

Kyleran · March 2019

Mendel said:

Amathe said:

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

I'd have loved it if Williams had transitioned from the arcades into PC game development. (The PCs were indeed that far behind the arcades in performance at the time. And mouse-keyboard? What kind of controller system was that?)

Superior obviously. Console controllers...pbbbbt...

Asheram · March 2019

Amathe said:

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

Man those have come so far these days.

Asm0deus · March 2019

THQ did the Red Faction games also....fun fact THQ went bankrupt in 2012 and Nordic bought the THQ trademark in 2014, along with some of their game right from auction and renamed themselves THQ Nordic in 2016.

Amathe · March 2019

Asheram said:

Amathe said:

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

Man those have come so far these days.

Many decades ago I took a girl on a date to Dave & Busters. I do not recommend doing this unless it is your date's idea.

Note the video above is a bunch of dudes. Yep.

Asheram · March 2019

Amathe said:
Many decades ago I took a girl on a date to Dave & Busters. I do not recommend doing this unless it is your date's idea.

Note the video above is a bunch of dudes. Yep.

lol what happened many decades ago?

Amathe · March 2019

Asheram said:

Amathe said:
Many decades ago I took a girl on a date to Dave & Busters. I do not recommend doing this unless it is your date's idea.

Note the video above is a bunch of dudes. Yep.

lol what happened many decades ago?

I liked games. She did not. Too much noise to hear each other over dinner. We didn't hit it off. All in all a crummy evening. But it's not Dave and Buster's fault. My bad.

Scot · March 2019

Kyleran is reminding me of my dad telling me he can't keep up with all the new TV channels now.

Well who can? There is a deluge in entertainment of all types, a waterfall cascading over us that we can barely stay afloat in. There was a time when TV was a social glue which everyone talked about, now that's gone; gaming was once a niche glue which I like to think holds some of us still together but that may just be wishful thinking.

We have quantity but you can't judge an entertainment industry by that alone. Even if we had good quality as the norm in gaming and we don't (no entertainment industry does) we would fall foul of the same problem that the entire entertainment industry has. People get jaded.

The only answer to this they are ever found is to push the boundaries so "heroes" like Dexter, sex like in Spartacus, women who can't just be strong they have to be psychotic as well like Dr Foster; more gore, violence and sexy stuff for games. More, more, bigger, bigger, crazier, crazier...it just accelerates how jaded we become. If anything I would say gaming has been less effected than TV.

Is anyone out there as impressed with the new heights in graphics as they once were (and this is a hyper-realistic fanboy speaking)? My tenth game with fantastic graphics this year...yawn.

Theocritus · March 2019

Well good, released MMOs aren't too hard to keep track of......

Kyleran · March 2019

Theocritus said:

Well good, released MMOs aren't too hard to keep track of......

These days if we are talking MMORPGs we can count on one hand, and probably have some fingers left over

laserit · March 2019

Amathe said:

I remember when you could see and experience about 90% of the entire gaming industry by going to any decent sized arcade.

I love the place with all the antique arcade games in San Francisco/Fishermen’s Wharf

Howdy, Stranger!

The amazing phenomenon of video gaming

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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The amazing phenomenon of video gaming

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Comments

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV