[Ed. Note: this is the 3rd part of a longer article, "Who Killed Children's Software".]
Virtually all of the same mistakes that killed the software industry are at work in today’s game market.
Online Edutainment Software still relies on Macromediocrity’s toolkit. Disney and Knowledge Adventure have both launched web-based virtual worlds that still feel very evolutionary to their disk-based ancestors. Neither gets beyond “drill and kill” type lessons; teaching as opposed to repetitive practicing is beyond their goals. They are dressed up versions of mimeographed worksheets we had as kids. This kind of program has its place, but it shouldn’t be the entire universe of informational, educational software for kids.
Retail shelving space is at a premium with fewer slots available all the time. Yet, fewer and fewer games (particularly on the pc) are worthy of purchase. Many – if not most - are sold buggy requiring patches to run successfully. My experience with most games is that if I don’t wait until those first patches come out before investing in a game, I’m in for hours of lost time with technical support. After a while, the whole process of upgrading drivers, patching games, and dealing with new operating systems discourages purchases. Can the industry, particularly the PC gaming industry, remain viable while putting so many obstacles in the way of fun?
Sales may be gangbuster for a few titles at the top, but after the cream is lifted, is there enough to keep the industry afloat? This is a critical question not just for the software manufacturers, but also the PC industry. Take out the gaming market and there are precious few that really need to constantly upgrade their machines. You don’t need much to run a browser and word processor. Gaming continues to help push the development of new technology.
Cookie cutter programs reuse the same tired ideas over and over. RTS, first person shooters, racing games are all being recycled. Sometimes the enemies are Nazi’s, sometimes they’re aliens or orcs, but underneath they’re all the same. Introductory skirmishes lead to bigger battles, lead to boss levels. Been there done that.
Reliance on graphics over game play. As production costs for making video games approach that of moviemaking, small programming houses are forced to merge or go out of business. This has lead to …
Consolidation and Mergers: But, this hasn’t saved the industry. Large companies adverse to risking millions of dollars on new ideas replay the same ideas over and over, relying on “brand names”, licenses, and sequels – while not advancing game play or new ideas. So, have improved graphics come at a cost that creativity has been largely sapped?
The Verdict: The Children’s Software Market wasn’t Murdered…it was Industry Suicide. Predatory pricing, failure to think creatively and design new kinds of programs, overreliance on graphics and over-used genres, killed the industry.
There is a case to be made that it is happening again, now on a wider scale to the rest of the boxed software industry. In launching their next-gen platforms Sony and Microsoft stressed graphic performance over innovative game design.
Consumers are smarter than the industry had given credit: The Nintendo DS and Wii broke the paradigm of the gaming industry. It rejected the idea that graphics were the key to the next-generation of gaming machines. Instead, Nintendo focused on new kinds of games, new ways to interact with the gaming machine (whether by keystroke, speech, whisper, or gesture), and a range of gaming options that goes beyond the merely violent. Nintendo designed outside of the box, and consumers have voted with their checkbooks. Its time that the rest of the computer industry took heed.
