Life After the Video Game Crash

Alan directed my attention towards the Pointless Waste of Time blog, where there is a very interesting article about Life After the Video Game Crash (Post E3 2006 Edition). Only that the article doesn't in fact speak at all about the "life after" part, but only why there could be a crash of the video game market in the not so far future. Interesting read, with a style based on first listing counter-arguments, and then dismissing them.

Now I don't believe in an imminent video game crash, but the author, David Wong, makes some good points that I'd like to quote.

Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back ho-"
Turret laser bolts tear his X-Wing apart.

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Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home!"
Turret laser bolts miss by inches. He skims along the trench.
A Tie Fighter drops in behind him and blows his ship to ten thousand flaming pieces.

----------------------------

Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home!"
Turret laser bolts miss by inches. He skims along the trench.
A Tie Fighter drops in behind him, shoots and misses. Luke approaches the exhaust shaft... fires a photon torpedo...
...and misses. The Death Star destroys the rebel base.

----------------------------

Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon ba-"
Turret laser bolts tear his X-Wing apart.

---------------------------

And:

The first time you play a level, the monster around the first corner is a surprise. After that, it's homework. It's memorizing, via pure repetition, bad guy placement and ammunition deposits and card keys. "Okay, kill the mutant behind the crate. Duck behind the dual doors. Wait for guard to walk out. Kill him, take his key. There's two Hellgoats in this next hall. Pick up the rockets."

And:

We Original Gamers, the hard core, bought every machine that came on the market for two decades. But for most of us OG's, the game consoles we own now will be the last we'll ever buy. There are millions of us, and it's just a matter of time. Literally. I'll pop in a DVD because a movie only requires two hours from my busy schedule of work and home repairs and chasing kids off my lawn. Getting to the end of a video game, however, requires hours upon hours of play. Not because the story is hours long, mind you, but because getting through each scene requires practice and repetition and repetition and repetition, all in the hopes of seeing that exploding Death Star cutscene at the end.

Replace the scene from Rogue Squadron with the last time you got wiped several times when tackling a new World of Warcraft raid boss, and you'll see how the author is a soul mate of mine. Game content taking too much time due to endless repetition is exactly what bugs me about raiding and other WoW endgame content.

The reason why I don't believe that this will cause a video game market crash is ironically World of Warcraft as well. Because the reason why WoW has over 6 million subscribers is that a large part of the content, leveling up from 1 to 59, is *not* too repetitive, and can be done in 2-hour chunks instead of watching a DVD. With one such example on the market, sooner or later other game developers will find this secret formula, and simply make more games for the 2-hour crowd.

And these games might well be MMORPGs. Even David Wong believes that online gaming will change the future. Although some of his arguments for this are more cynical than realistic in the current political climate:

Just think of how porn changes when the user also gets to go in with the toned body of an underwear model. It'll make our current online porn look like just the tip of the assberg.

While the "assberg" made me laugh, I think the political opposition to massively multiperson online porn will be hard to overcome.