Things The Gaming Industry Will Regret In 10 Years Shutterstock By /Updated: Aug. 14, 2021 12:57 pm EDT Gaming has come a long way in the last few years. What was once a niche media platform strictly enjoyed by the sort of geeks you'd only find in a bad '80s high school movie has now become a form of blockbuster entertainment (and, in many cases, an art form) revered the world over by millions upon millions of players. And as the industry has progressed and advanced, so too has the technology and the culture behind it. Despite this, there's plenty of room for improvement. Gaming today is fraught with issues, and money-grabbing schemes by publishers are just the tip of the digital iceberg. These are the failures, the tricks, and the schemes that the industry — and all those who are a part of it — are going to really, really regret in just a few years. Failing to diversify Say it loud, say it clear: gaming has a diversity problem. The industry is far behind its cousins, such as film, television, and literature (though they're hardly perfect either) when it comes to representation in its stories. Ethnic minorities, the LGBT community, the disabled, and women — who we'll come to in a moment — are almost nonexistent as entities in far too many releases, even now in 2017. The consequences of this have been quite clear. Studios pandering strictly to a white, male client base — the same one gaming catered to in the early days — has led to a toxic culture in which change, in the form of diversification, is fought against tooth and nail by many gaming fans as part of a larger culture war. Here, we end up with things like Gamergate, in which journalists, minorities, and women are targeted and harassed by other gamers. It's not a stretch to imagine that this environment came out of a failure of the industry to diversify earlier, and in taking until the internet age (with all its shiny new ways to harass and discriminate against people) to do so, the issue has been worsened spectacularly. Change is possible, and it is likely to come, but if developers and writers hadn't taken so long to bring about that change, things might not have gotten to this point. It should have happened sooner. Rampant sexism And then there's the sexism. Whereas a failure to diversify has been a passive failure on the part of the industry, in some cases akin to embarrassing negligence, this is an active failure on the part of creators who have no tact or sensitivity in portraying women in their games. Sexism in video games, of course, is no new thing. From skimpy outfits (RPGs, we're looking at you) to the exclusion of female playable characters to a weird insistence on following the male gaze, it's hard to argue that video games have been a bastion for feminist thought or progress. But as times change (and they will – the gradual and relative improvement in how film and television have portrayed women shows what will soon enough happen with games), there can be little doubt that we'll all look back on the old days, in the '80s, '90s, '00s and even the '10s, as a jurassic era in which out-of-touch makers couldn't stop producing games in which women were treated as jokes. What we have now and what we used to have is likely to be seen as nothing more than a shameful embarrassment. Cringy E3 conferences E3 conferences are a very strange phenomenon. Often, the excitement of being shown sneak peeks of new releases or watching announcements for future games is quickly supplanted by the secondhand embarrassment of watching some middle-aged dude in a suit prancing around the stage acting like a bona fide moron. In the past, we've seen Ubisoft trying (failing) to make a meme, Sony going down in gaming history with their awful PS3 demonstration, and Aaron Priceman committing a war crime by doing whatever the hell he was doing at Ubisoft's conference in 2011. The issue here is that the marketing and high-level production for many publishers is still handled by people who were born a long, long time ago. Many of these people didn't grow up with video games, and too many of them still don't really care about them — they're marketers and business people, first and foremost. As the years go on, however, the reigns of these companies will be passed to the generations who grew up with games and, crucially, the internet. They'll be savvy, they'll be clever, and they won't desperately try to act cool on stage. We can only hope the E3 conferences in the future will be better, but we can know for sure the ones of today will live on only in infamy. Day 1 DLC Day 1 downloadable content: the words alone are enough to send shivers into even the most hardcore gamer. The concept is simple — you purchase a new release, race home, and put it in, only to find that the developers have created extra content for you to enjoy that they left out of the game itself. And it's yours for only $3.99. It's a deeply irritating practice, and one that stems purely from a publisher's desire to make more money from a game. DLC began as a way for makers to keep making after their game had been released, and for new levels, modes, and maps to be added once you already had the game in your hands. With Day 1 DLC, however, it's become (for some studios) little more than daylight robbery. The good news, however, is that Day 1 DLC is actually bad for business. A franchise or publisher that gains a reputation for offering Day 1 DLC risks damaging its brand and future sales, to the point where, in the long term, they're going to start losing more money than they make. Once the industry realizes this, you can expect it to distance itself from the practice quicker than you can say "ripoff." The few publishers who stick with it will (hopefully) see their reputation damaged almost irreparably — and it's them who'll regret it most of all. Bullshots "Bullshot" is a word for video game marketing campaigns that include fake, pre-rendered screenshots that fail to accurately portray in-game footage and graphics. Characters might be posed, resolutions increased, and the whole look of the game generally polished up to look better than it is. Recent offenders include The Witcher 3, No Man's Sky (a particularly egregious example), Far Cry 4, and the Call of Duty franchise. There's already been a fair bit of backlash against the practice since it began in the mid-2000s, and it's entirely possible that, as in-game graphics improve, it will become less necessary to fake screenshots. When that happens, bullshots will probably become the great, sourly-remembered marketing shame of the gaming industry. Motion control Shutterstock Motion control is the gaming equivalent of 3-D movies. Like 3-D, it came onto the scene with a bang, was embraced by the vast majority of mainstream consoles (such as the PS3's Sixaxis controller and the Xbox Kinect), and even led to one or two successes, like the Nintendo Wii. Motion control is also comparable to 3-D in the sense that people are at last figuring out that it's really nothing more than a gimmick — a product of its time that inspired too few good things and too many cringe-worthy embarrassments. It made you look stupid, it was frequently broken or unusable and, outside of Nintendo, the only games we got out of it were monstrosities like Kinect Star Wars. The times they are a-changin' and the fad is coming to an unhappy end. By a decade's time, the only studio that will be glad they ever went with motion control will be Nintendo, and the catastrophic failure of the Wii U means even they will regret sticking instead of folding on this particular piece of technology. Failing to protect customers' personal details Shutterstock Personal security is as vital as ever in the tech age, where the wrong hacker at the right time can lift the details of thousands of people and cause a major security breach in the system of even the largest companies. Sony is the main culprit for this. According to The Guardian, in 2011, Sony fell victim to a cataclysmic security breach that led to the data of 77 million users being accessed, including personal information such as passwords, birthdates, names, and addresses. In the wake of the attack, Sony insisted they would tighten up and take steps to protect their customers. In 2017, however, as Business Insider reported, customer information was successfully hacked by a security company attempting to prove to Sony that they could get in. The saying is supposed to go "once bitten, twice shy," not "once bitten, shrugs, and carries on." Hopefully — but not certainly — future companies will be inspired to implement proper security measures to prevent stuff like this. If that's the case, then the major data losses and brand damage that resulted from these attacks will be seen by these companies as lessons to learn from. Hopefully. Neglecting the PC Shutterstock As consoles have slipped ahead in the race for mainstream appreciation, the PC has been left behind a little, both by casual customers and by creators. As a result, major releases are too often excluded from the PC. Other times, the port is a buggy, unplayable mess — if it plays at all. Rockstar is a particularly famous example of a studio that neglected the PC, most specifically with Red Dead Redemption, which never saw a PC release despite a major backlash from fans. The problem is, the PC isn't exactly a niche platform. Rockstar itself learned this when its release of Grand Theft Auto V for PC turned out to be a gargantuan hit, bringing in two million copies in the first month of release. Once the console industry realizes how much money it can make with a little more effort in PC ports, they're going to regret not having done so earlier. MMOs Getty Images MMOs are not a safe bet for a studio to release. With one exception (if you've read this far in the article, you know the one), every single MMO that has ever been released has either been absolutely woeful or, despite being decent, has fizzled out and failed shortly after release. This is the case for a variety of reasons — partly because of World of Warcraft's monopoly on the market, partly because developers try too hard to emulate WoW, and partly because they're just too damn difficult to get right in the first place. Fewer are being released these days than, say, in the late '00s, and the genre is already starting to decay. Considering the crazy budgets publishers have pumped into MMO releases over the last decade or so, however, it'd be a wonder if any company (except Blizzard) still thinks making an MMO was a good idea. God knows what they'll think of the genre in a decade, when even WoW could be gone. Crazy budgets Shutterstock The Grand Budapest Hotel cost $25 million to make. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind cost $20 million. Baby Driver cost $35 million. Do you know how much it cost to produce Destiny, the so-so Activision game you probably haven't heard from since it released? Try a reported $500 million, including marketing. Too many games these days cost too much to make, and make too little of a return to justify their existence. Releases like Destiny or The Old Republic (reportedly $200 million) funnel in huge budgets and often fail spectacularly on launch. It's entirely possible, however, that the growing popularity of low-budget, indie games will lead to a scaling-back of budgets on the part of most (but not all) studios. Smaller will become better, and games like Destiny and The Old Republic will be remembered as the gaming equivalents of that giant hotel in North Korea that nobody ever wanted. Or, you know, it might get much worse. But here's hoping.

Things that the gaming industry will regret in a decade.

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It’s amazing how far video games have progressed in the last few years. Before, video games were only played by the kind of nerds you’d see in a horrible high school movie from the ’80s.

Now, millions of people across the globe enjoy them as a kind of blockbuster entertainment (and even an art form). Technology and culture have also evolved with the industry’s advancements.

However, there is still space for growth. Gamers nowadays face a slew of challenges, and publishers’ money-grabbing techniques are only one of many. These are the blunders, ploys, and ruses that the industry, as well as people involved, will deeply regret in the near future.

Stagnation in the face of opportunity

Gaming has a diversity issue, speak it out loud and clear. Compared to other forms of entertainment, such as cinema, television, and literature, the business has a long way to go in terms of diversity in its narratives. There are far too many releases that don’t include minorities, the LGBT community, the handicapped, and women, who we’ll get to in a bit.

Since this happened, the implications have been obvious. A poisonous atmosphere has been created by studios catering only to a white, male customer base — the same one gaming catered to in the early days — that many gamers see as part of a bigger cultural war. As a result, incidents like Gamergate occur, in which gamers bully and attack journalists, minorities, and women.

We may reasonably assume that the current climate has deteriorated due to the industry’s inability to diversify earlier, and the internet era (with all of its bright new tools to harass and discriminate against individuals) has only served to exacerbate the problem even worse. […] Change is feasible and probable, but it may not have reached to this stage if developers and authors hadn’t taken so long to bring it about. Things could’ve moved forward a lot faster.

sexism in its most blatant form

Then there’s the racism directed at women. It is an active failure on the side of developers who have no tact or sensitivity when depicting women in their games, as opposed to the industry’s passive failure, which has been likened to humiliating incompetence. Of course, sexism in video games is nothing new.

Whether it’s the lack of female playable characters or a strange emphasis on following the male gaze, video games haven’t been a beacon of feminist ideas or advancement.

But as time passes (and it will – the gradual and relative improvement in how women are portrayed in film and television shows what will soon happen with games), there can be little doubt that the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and even the 2010s will be looked back on as a Jurassic era in which out-of-touch developers couldn’t stop producing games in which women were treated as jokes. What we have today and what we had in the past are both likely to be seen as a source of shame.

E3 televised events are abysmal.

The E3 conventions are an oddity in the world of conventions. The thrill of seeing a first look at a new game or hearing about upcoming titles is often immediately overshadowed by the humiliation of seeing some middle-aged male in a suit behaving like a bona genuine idiot.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Ubisoft attempt — and ultimately fail — to create a meme. Sony has gone down in gaming history for their terrible PS3 presentation. And Aaron Priceman committed a war crime during a Ubisoft conference in 2011.

Market research and high-level production are still handled by persons who were born decades ago for many publications. As a result, a large number of these individuals have never ever played a video game in their lives, and many of them still have no interest in them all. ‘

These enterprises will be taken over by younger generations who grew up playing games and using the internet. They’ll know what they’re doing, and they won’t strive too hard to be cool on stage. Even if future E3 conferences are better, we can be sure that today’s events will live on only in the annals of gaming history.

Day 1 of DLC

Even the most ardent gamer gets goosebumps just thinking about the concept of Day 1 downloadable content. When you buy a new game, you rush home and put it in, only to discover that the makers had added more material to the game that they didn’t include in the original release. And you can have it for for $3.99.

It’s a vexing behaviour motivated only by the desire of a publisher to maximise profits from a game. After a game was published, DLC became a method for developers to continue creating it and for players to get additional levels, modes, and maps after they had owned the game.

For some firms, Day 1 DLC has become nothing more than daylight thievery. It’s a good thing that Day 1 DLC is terrible for business, however. In the long run, a series or publisher that establishes a reputation for selling Day 1 DLC runs the danger of harming their brand and future sales to the point where they start losing money instead of making it.

You should expect the industry to disassociate itself from this behaviour as quickly as you can say “ripoff” once they understand it. Few publishers will be able to recover their image if they stay with it, and they’ll be the ones who regret it the most.

Bullshots

Game marketing efforts that use pre-rendered images that do not adequately reflect the actual gameplay and visuals are known as “bullshot.” This means that characters may be posed, resolutions boosted, and the overall aesthetic of the game improved. Recent examples include The Witcher 3, No Man’s Sky, Far Cry 4, and the Call of Duty series..

Since its inception in the mid-2000s, the practise has drawn much criticism, and as in-game visuals improve, it may become less essential to create images. Bullshots may become the game industry’s most infamous marketing blunder if that occurs.

Involvement of the subject’s muscles

The gaming counterpart of 3-D movies is motion control. As with 3-D, it made a big splash, was adopted by the great majority of popular systems (such as the PS3 Sixaxis controller and the Xbox Kinect), and even led to a few successes, such as the Nintendo Wii. [*]

As with 3-D, consumers are now realising that motion control is just a gimmick, one that has led to far too few positive outcomes and far too many embarrassing moments.

When it didn’t work, it made you seem foolish, and the only games we were able to get out of it were abominations like Kinect Star Wars, which weren’t even produced by Nintendo.

The craze is coming to an unfortunate end as the times change. Only Nintendo will look back on their decision to use motion control ten years from now and regret it. The Wii U’s failure shows that even Nintendo will come to regret their decision to use motion control.

Neglecting to keep confidential the personal information of consumers

In the era of technology, when the wrong hacker at the right moment may steal the personal information of thousands of individuals and create catastrophic security breaches in even the greatest corporations, personal security is more important than ever.

This is Sony’s fault, to a large extent. Personal information such as passwords, birthdates, names, and addresses of 77 million users were compromised in a catastrophic security incident at Sony in 2011.

The assault on Sony left the company vowing to enhance its security and take actions to safeguard its consumers in the aftermath of it.

However, in 2017, as reported by Business Insider, a security firm attempted to show to Sony that they could get in and successfully accessed consumer information. “Once bitten, twice shy,” not “Once bitten, shrugs, and continues on.”

We can only hope — but we can’t guarantee — that future businesses will be motivated to put in place appropriate security procedures to avoid incidents like this.

If that’s the case, then the significant data losses and brand harm that followed from these assaults will be considered by these organisations as lessons to learn from. Hopefully.

ignoring the computer

As consoles have gained popularity, PCs have lost some of their lustre among gamers and content developers alike. The consequence is a lack of significant releases on the PC. In other cases, the port is an unplayable mess that can’t be used at all.

A notable example of a company ignoring the PC is Rockstar, in particular with Red Dead Redemption, which never saw a release on the platform despite significant fan outcry.

It’s just that the PC isn’t exactly a speciality platform. After releasing Grand Theft Auto V on PC and selling two million copies in the first month, Rockstar learnt this lesson the hard way.

Console makers will regret not making more effort to move their games to PC sooner rather than later when they learn how much money they can make.

MMOs

The release of an MMO is not a sure thing for a firm. It’s safe to say that every single MMO launched to date has either been terrible or, although being great, has faded and failed within a short period of time following release.

Because to a multitude of factors, including World of Warcraft’s market exclusivity, developers’ overzealous attempts to replicate WoW, and their sheer difficulty to get right in the first place, this is a problem for third-party developers.

Fewer are being published now than in the ’00s, and the genre has already begun to deteriorate. ” In light of how much money publishers have spent on MMOs over the past decade or so, it’s hard to believe that any firm (besides Blizzard) still feels that building an MMO is a smart idea.

In a decade, when even World of Warcraft is no more, what will people think of the genre?

Budgets that are out of control

The construction of the Grand Budapest Hotel amounted to $25 million. Cost: $20 million for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” $35 million was spent on the film. Activision’s so-so game Destiny, about which you’ve probably forgotten since it came out, cost how much to make? Try an estimated $500 million, which includes marketing expenses.

A large number of today’s video games cost too much to produce and generate too little in profit to justify their existence. Big budget games like Destiny or The Old Republic (reportedly $200 million) typically flop horribly on debut.

With independent games becoming more popular, it’s probable that many developers (though not all) may find themselves forced to cut down on spending.

If Destiny and The Old Republic were North Korean hotels, they’d be regarded as the gaming versions of a hotel no one ever desired. You never know what may happen. But let’s be optimistic.

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