Would the gaming industry be coming into crisis again?

Figure 1: E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (Atari 2600, 1982)

Despite the exaggerated title, there is a reflection that has been tormenting me lately. The idea of the 1983's episode happen again.

It is not from today that many companies prioritize money more than anything. For those who don't remember what happened in the 80's with Atari, here's a brief summary:

In 1982, Steven Spielberg was about to release his newest film, no less than the long-awaited "E. T ". That year, the game market was already very large in the United States, raising millions and with several consoles emerging in the market. Atari then resolves to buy the rights of Spielberg's film, by investing "a few million dollars" and planning to have a much higher return by releasing the game a few months after the movie premiere, specifically at Christmas. The problem is they have given a 5 week deadline for a single programmer (Howard Scott Warshaw) to develop the entire game alone. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Obviously, there was no way to the game be good, and the result was justly that. Not only by the total loss of direction that the player feels to try follow a path, but also in the graphics made hastily and few bugs here and there. In the end, the company had a huge loss, from 4 million of cartridges produced, at least 700,000 were literally buried in a "dump". As if it were not enough, the dissatisfaction of many Game developers, due to the great devaluation of their work, make them resign from the big companies and found the third-parties (outsourced companies) in the area, highlighting the arising from Activision. As soon as his first games were released, they had a great success. Thanks to them, several yard-fund companies began to emerge, with the idea that it was very easy to make money making any game. It was obvious that everyone wanted a piece of that cake. With this, the game market was full of consoles, not to mention the various and various games, which provided a huge saturation in the market. It was only a matter of time before the bomb exploded. All this made people discredit in video games, especially on Atari who, until then, was the market leader. Which ended up generating a crisis in our beloved industry the next year and the company's almost bankrupt.

* I want to leave a note of consideration: Despite the consequences, Howard struggled very hard for the development of his game and, being good or not, give life to him in 5 weeks, doing everything alone! That's not for everyone.

Going back for today, this huge profit ambition seems stronger than ever, and in Brazil it is no different. To better understand, we need to look at some numbers. The PGB ¹ (Game Brazil Research) this year confirmed that of 2853 Brazilians interviewed, 84% of them play on smartphones, 46% in consoles and 45% on computers. This represents two things: first, the speed with which technology advances is so fast, that where once having cellphones was luxury article, nowadays practically every human being has a smartphone (and often better than the desktops themselves or notebooks ). Second, precisely because of this abundant accessibility, many people who dreamed of developing games, can now have their dream transformed into reality, due to the availability of resources that exist today and the ease of producing them in various Platforms, especially on cell phones.

The reflection of this is in the amount of games released that has increased absurdly over the last few years. According to the site statist (2018) ², in the first quarter of this year, was registered (be surprised) 677,560 thousand apps of games in Google Play. Already on Steam, were released 7,672 games only in 2017 (Polygon, 2018) ³. And that's just the registered games of Google Play and Steam, not counting those of consoles, IOS, VR and other platforms.

And where am I going with all this? After all, it only shows us that opportunities have grown, right? And that the industry is increasingly fomented. Why would that be bad?

No doubt, opportunities have grown absurdly and this is very good. The problem is, the market is very saturated again! That is, it's possible that a new crisis is emerging in the video game industry. Maybe it just hasn't burst yet, due to a very important factor, the digital media. In 83, the bomb burst in fact because the industry had a huge loss due to the overcrowding of games in physical media in the stores. What led the shopkeepers to be forced to drastically decrease their price, causing a very large loss in the investment of companies. Already with the digital media you do not have this problem. But I believe that the reason for today's saturation is widespread among some reasons, for example:

• Casual games: as seen earlier, hardly a person now lives without a cell phone. It's practically a member of our body.  This brought a new audience for the games market, which come in through simpler and more casual games. And that's pretty good. However, with the ease that we have today to make a game of this, many "developers" end up throwing anything on the market, hoping that some of them become "viral" in order to earn easy money with it, as happened with the Flappy Bird. This ends up filling the market with poorly made games, due to the factors that correspond to the next item.

• Lack of caprice and INNOVATION: it seems the devs from today lost their "horny" to create well-made and innovative games, to focus only on how much they can earn with them. Of course, there are exceptions, but that's not the only problem, the amount of copies of game styles is so high that the player often don't know which play and/or gets bored a lot easier of them because they are all the same thing. Paragon is an example of this, and in this case the game was very well-made, but did not change the fact that it was "more of the same", another game MOBA style among many others that exists out there. Unfortunately, the result was the game's ending. Nevertheless, I do not judge developers who enjoy a style of play, make your own game in that style. I myself, as a big fan of the Dark Souls series, want to one day produce a game "Souls-like", as well as a lot of people already have. The detail is that you can't do a "faithful copy", need to innovate somehow! Make your game becomes unique.

• Games are the "Golden Egg's Chicken": all of it comes from the old view that the gaming market have, that is "games are the golden egg's chicken". An easy way to earn money without work. And, thanks for the society that influences everything, today there are niche markets that help make this situation worse, as is the case of the "video-gamers".

• New industry niches: there are certain video content producers, earning more views by playing horrible games and "pained" of poorly made, in which end up making your viewers buy and support these types of games. So, many "developers" (which sometimes don't deserve to be entitled to such) create bad games, without any caprice, just to take advantage of the "dumb niche" market.

Either way, the latter case can be considered as a marketing strategy. And as long as there are people to fund this type of game, even without realizing it, everything will continue the same way or worse.

But looking at saturation in a general way, maybe it's just a question of "fate." The industry starts with a great innovation, has its "boom" and then begins to saturate, needing a new great innovation, alternating only in the time that manages to maintain. Basically, it's an endless cycle. The problem is, this can be worrying, because the technologies are making the virtual so real that soon we will not know how to differentiate things, almost a "Matrix effect", and if the game is very real, then why would we be playing? We could just stick with real life, could't we? Unless, of course, this new fact is used in innovative ways, which leads us to discover "new horizons". Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we could, through games, feel the 5 senses ? Quoting here the Matrix itself or, why not, the anime Sword Art Online? Would't be awesome? At least until it is no longer innovative and maybe start saturating.

Complicated huh? Anyway, all this can also be an exaggeration. We would have to study more deeply. But one thing we can do is "do our part," the developer side: do not be ambitious enough to fill the market with horrible games just to try to make some easy money; and consumers: stop playing this type of game, in the end, more bungle that helps.

And you, what do you think of that? Do you agree that saturation is an endless cycle? Feel free to comment!

References:

[1] PESQUISA GAME BRASIL (Brasil). Pgb (Org.). Comportamento, consumo e tendências do gamer brasileiro: Sobre a PGB 18. 2018. 5ª Edição. Disponível em: <https://www.pesquisagamebrasil.com.br/>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.

[2] STATISTA. The Statistics Portal. Number of available gaming apps at Google Play from 2nd quarter 2015 to 1st quarter 2018. 2018. Disponível em: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/780229/number-of-available-gaming-apps-in-the-google-play-store-quarter/>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.

[3] POLYGON. Report: 7,672 games were released on Steam in 2017. 2018. Disponível em: <https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/10/16873446/steam-release-dates-2017>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.

ADRENALINE (Brasil). O Crash da indústria dos games de 1983 e que culpa teve o fracasso de E.T. 2014. Disponível em: <https://adrenaline.uol.com.br/2014/05/04/25433/o-crash-da-industria-dos-games-de-1983-e-que-culpa-teve-o-fracasso-de-e-t-/>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.

FONSECA, Luccas (Brasil). Site: Tecmundo. O retorno da crise dos consoles de 1983? 2013. Disponível em: <O retorno da crise dos consoles de 1983?>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.

OLIVEIRA, Sergio (Brasil). Site: Nintendo Blast. A História dos Vídeo Games # 10: A grande crise de 1983/84. 2010. Disponível em: <https://www.nintendoblast.com.br/2010/03/historia-dos-video-games-10-grande.html>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.

YOUTUBE. Documentário Atari Game Over: A lenda dos cartuchos enterrados !. 2016. Disponível em: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgyt8B78a2k>. Acesso em: 14 ago. 2018.