I think the commercial industry is no where near crashing. Companies come and go, but we still get huge AAA titles that do nothing for gaming or gamers, but still rake in boat-loads of cash. They stopped taking risks, like Hollywood, and stared making money, like Hollywood. This suggests to me that in a capitalistic art industry, this is what's stable. Even books have done a similar thing. I don't think things will get worse, but if books, movies, and music can tell us where the industry is headed, it won't be getting better either.

In some ways, maybe the whole model is wrong. Maybe studios shouldn't expect to survive more than a single title and instead adopt Hollywood model. Not because it's better, but over long term no real-world alternatives evolved. And there are considerable parallels.

I think you're absolutely right. Think about it. You're a studio, spending two-five years making a game, 100 million dollars (Rockstar's estimate for Max Pain 3) going into it, and you sell it for 60 bucks so i can take your product home and use it for a few tens of hours. The business model of the game industry is insane and it's mind boggling that it's even possible!

Plus, while i believe the comercial aspect of gaming has a tendency to make studios take only safe projects, what enables indies to take risks is the lower investment. Give Notch (Minecraft) 100 million to make a game and i bet you he'd pretty much HAVE to make a generic FPS. Gamers demand this because many only want to play games with distinct AAA qualities--meaning there is no lack of demand.

I certainly don't think we need the Hollywood model, but i do think that we need to focus on smaller investments in games that take less money to produce, offer a shorter but more detailed experience. If the indies can do it while living off ramen noodles, you'd think the big cats could do it and be even more efficient at it!

Interesting that someone mentioned school - I don't know if games have ever been a nerd thing among kids. When I was at school in the 80s/early 90s, everyone played games. On the contrary, the problem back then was that games were only viewed as a kids thing.

It was in the 90s that games started to be marketed as an adults (I remember Sony doing this with the Playstation; also probably helped by the children now growing up, and still wanting to play games.

In the 2000s, we've seen games become more common for a whole range of adults. I'm not sure that WOW counts as an example - no offence, but it's not clear people who can't come out tonight because they've got to dig holes in WOW is seen as any less nerdy that anyone playing any kind of single player PC game before that. To me, the more mainstream games are the more casual games.

I think Nintendo are a significant factor here - their DS and Wii were marketed towards mainstream casual players, and as a result they beat consoles that were technically better. More recently, online games such as those on Facebook. These are far more significance that a tiny minority playing on an Ipad, which only came along years later. (And in phones, well, J2ME smartphones have been the biggest platforms, giving games years before Apple - since then it's been evolution, not revolution.)

But yes, I do agree with the point that the market has continued to grow, and that the idea of more casual games means that perhaps you don't have to worry about writing a cutting edge AAA game with hundreds of developers and years of development to succeed... (But equally, I agree that it doesn't seem that the existence of cheap/free games will cause the market for AAA high cost games to crash - as long as the people who liked the latter keep buying those games. Even if the market doesn't grow further, that's not the same as a crash.)

Interesting that someone mentioned school - I don't know if games have ever been a nerd thing among kids. When I was at school in the 80s/early 90s, everyone played games. On the contrary, the problem back then was that games were only viewed as a kids thing.

It was in the 90s that games started to be marketed as an adults (I remember Sony doing this with the Playstation; also probably helped by the children now growing up, and still wanting to play games.

When I was in school during the same time period only 3 of my friends played games enough to really be considered gamers by today's standards. Everybody played games, but there were very few "gamers".

In the 2000s, we've seen games become more common for a whole range of adults. I'm not sure that WOW counts as an example - no offence, but it's not clear people who can't come out tonight because they've got to dig holes in WOW is seen as any less nerdy that anyone playing any kind of single player PC game before that. To me, the more mainstream games are the more casual games.

WoW counts not because it's socially acceptable, but because it had an extreme impact on the PC gaming market. My mother in law has an account..............

On that note, my mom purchased a Wii. If you asked me a decade ago if my mother would ever have purchased a gaming system for her own personal use I would have laughed at you. If you told me my MIL was going to be playing an MMO on a PC I would have had you committed.

The entire market has changed from a niche market to mainstream.

Bummer, I didn't realise some of the local dev houses went under, particularly THQ.