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1997-04-16
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4KB
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72 lines
--SitComm-May-1990--------------------------------------------------------------
... And that's just my opinion
STeVeN's comment on the state of the computer games industry.
No one can help but notice that despite the proliferation of
games available for the Atari ST, there are very few high
quality addictive playable games amongst them. Most of them are
either poor quality arcade conversions, film licences or some
other pointless tie-in or endorsement. Most games are also very
expensive being between £20 and £30, with some costing even more.
The high cost is generally put down to low sales caused by piracy
and the longer development times that 16 bit software needs
compared to 8 bit. I'm sure everybody reading this has their own
theories and complaints about the so called "money grabbing
publishers".
As a veteran games creator myself (I'm not keen on the terms
programmer or coder, because creating games is a lot more than
just coding), I may be a little more aware of the facts than
those outside the industry. Licensed games outsell most new
original games several times over, despite lacking entirely in
gameplay and even getting bad reviews in the magazines. Thus the
only people who who can really be blamed for the situation is the
consumer who goes out and buys them!
Any publisher with a business sense is going to continue creating
what sells rather than what is good, so the only way to improve
the quality of games is to only buy the good original playable
games and leave the awful arcade conversions and film licences on
the shelves. Do not be tempted by the misleading adverts and
back-of-the-box screenshots (they are probably loading screens or
faked up screens). Read and take note of magazine reviews (not
previews).
Also piracy does account for a loss of revenue and the people who
lose out here most are the developers and the consumer. The
retailers, distributers and publishers just increase the retail
price to cover this.
Many people seem to think that because thay can not afford
software then they are entitled to copy it for nothing. This is
completely wrong and is the same as saying that you should be
able to steal anything you think is too expensive.
Many people seem to still be under the impression that games are
still developed by teenage millionaire wizz kids in their
bedrooms at weekends, but the reality is that games are written
by a professional team of developers over a period of many months
on below average salaries.
Many people think that computer game technology has not changed
since Space Invaders and that all there is to producing games is
to bang in a couple of numbers into your machine and stick it in
a pretty box. The reality is that a similar amount of creative
effort goes into a computer game in terms of concepts, ideas,
graphics, music and algorithms than into other media types such
as Books, Films and Music, yet you don't go and photocopy the
latest novel!
Few developers can afford to spend years on original programs
when they will sell far fewer copies than a simple 3 month arcade
conversion or film tie-in and publishers are only interested in
what they can sell.
- STeVeN.... And thats just my opinion!