Where Does Video Gaming Go from Here?

Video games has grown to be a massive industry. By most estimates electronic gaming generates over 4 billion dollars in revenue a year, and by all accounts the industry keeps expanding. Leaving behind their stepchild status, video games are now one of the most important sectors of the entertainment industry. Video games are stronger than ever before, but the future is not without its pitfalls.

The current generation of video games has seen a massive step forward in hardware capacity, advertising budgets, development times, sales and general interest in the media. The introduction of High definition graphics has lifted what is possible in video games to a new level. Games are better looking and the environments are more detailed than ever before. While this is great from a gamers point of view, it is not necessarily paying off for video game developers.

With the massive increase in power, game development is now more expensive than ever. Development teams are bigger, often numbering in the hundreds for marquee projects, and development times are longer than ever. It is not uncommon for games to be in development for several years. A look at the list of the most expensive video games ever made is completely dominated with current generation games.

It is a natural process that as the industry grows the newest games will also be the most expensive, but it should be a concern for the industry how much video game budgets have been inflated this generation. The most expensive video game to make is Grand Theft Auto 4 with an estimated development budget of $100 million. While Rockstar Studios made their money back within days of the game releasing, it is still a monumental number. It pushes video games well into the realm of big budget movies.

The video game industry gas definitely grown up, and in more ways than just inflated budgets is it starting to mimic the film industry. The long evolving concept of story driven games is getting closer and closer to becoming interactive movies. While there is a definite market for story driven games, it is difficult to see how video games can thrive if they become too similar to movies. Traditional movies are still a much more popular way for people to experience a story than video games and this is not likely to change. Success for video games contra movies is based on offering a different experience. If video games get to similar to movies they will lose one of their strongest competitive advantages.

Another an much more worrying trend is creative deadlock. This is already widely observable in Hollywood where budgets are now so huge that the cost of failure is catastrophic. The result is almost total loss of creativity. The movie industry is recycling old successful ideas to the point where it is almost getting embarrassing. It is almost impossible to find a high profile movie today that is not based on either a book or comic or is a remake of an older movie or TV-show. With the skyrocketing costs of producing video games this trend is more than likely to hit gaming as well. In fact, the problem is already starting to manifest itself. We are seeing more and more sequels and rehashes of popular concepts than ever before. This is still being offset to some degree by a vibrant independent game development scene, but if the current trend continues small game developers will find it increasingly difficult to find a sustainable market.

As the video game industry keeps growing, it is getting more important than ever to preserve and protect the basic premise behind video games; to deliver fun and rewarding experiences to gamers.