Commercialization of the Music Industry- How Much of this Will Happen to Video Games?

[lordgdavid]

I think it already happened. We can hope for a few AAA gems, other than that I grew to love indies. So many to choose from and some are really great. Also it is funny to see a single dude or lady write stories/caracters so good that AAA titles should hide under a rock, ashamed of themselves. Consumers in general have to become more able to filter good stuff from garbage, news and any kind of product alike.

[Canaris]

Judging how fucked the AAA industry is already i would say IT ALREADY happened AND its much much worse than music industry. 

[steelpanther24]

On 8/26/2018 at 3:11 AM, shencereys said:

Aside from a special niche of gamers to attract companies, another fix to KoolHndLuke's fear is a quality brand.  A company that never sacrifices quality or creative integrity for wider appeal.  A video gaming version of.. i dunno.. Ferrari or Lamborghini.

 

So you can create a niche of gamers with shared tastes that is exclusive but large enough to attract developers, or a company can create this niche themselves by staying private and striving to not deviate from a certain genre.  To make the game they say is great and let the people come play it, not to make the game people say they want.

 

Thats two ways i guess I can see to defend against homogenization of the gaming industry.  Maybe there's more

 

Isn't modding and the existence of this site just that?   The only unmodded games that I have played (for more than a "test run") recently was "Papers Please".   However, it wasn't the game itself that got me to play it,  but a video (in the spoiler below). So, there are still great gems being produced by indies, while the commercialized AAA games let modders make the game unique.   FO4 is a great example, where the mods have  made the game to my tastes.    I even bought crap DLC because of some of the mods require those DLCs packs.   So from Bethesda Studios (BS) point of view, I hope they see it as a win/win.  They get the gamer kiddies (trigger warning, anyone who plays on console I consider a gamer kiddie) and the OGs (original gamers). 

 

So  as long as we have great and dedicated modders out there, and game studios continue to allow modding, I don't think we have to worry.   The movie industry will eventually be consumed  by the gaming industry.  After all, games are just movies where you get to play the lead role., basically a Choose your own adventure E book.  

 

Some mega game companies can still afford to be "different" like Rockstar with LA Noire, or Sega with Alpha Protocol, both of which got mixed reviews from "critics" .  BTW, Chris Avelione is working on a remake of System Shock according to Wiki.   Another slightly different game  that I enjoyed.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Guest]

On 8/16/2018 at 11:53 PM, KoolHndLuke said:

I very often have thought to myself while listening to "modern" music- or music made in the last few decades- "Oh, great....another one of these cookie -cutter type jingles that was put together in about an hour." It seems to me that the musical offerings of today do sound very much alike in too many instances. The formula- if you will- seems to be a catchy beat, some cool sounding effects, a few witty lyrics and a chorus of one line or maybe even one word! and it's over in about three minutes. I listen to these songs and just cringe while thinking of the spectacularly talented musicians of the past that had very distinctive styles, thoughtful lyrics, intricate song structure, and sheer musicianship or talent with many types of instruments.

 

"Where did it all go wrong?" I think as I hear one bland, easily made song after another. I mean- I could make this shit!!!!!!! That's with me not knowing the first thing about how to write or put together a song!!

 

  Commercialization of the industry- that is where music has gone. But, when and where did it start? It started- I think- way back in the 1970's when record labels started to put together "The Formula". The aim was to make musicians agree to write their songs with the goal of much better record sales, totally ignoring much individual style or any kind of experimenting in favor of what some office executive that knew nothing about music had put together in a presentation of charts and graphs to show where the money was. Bands and individual artists were pressured into this formula calling to make an album with "x" number of potential hit single songs, and if the artists album did not meet sales expectations- they were given less money to produce each subsequent album and cut after their contract had been completed. Many labels did allow artists more leeway about what songs they made, but, slowly they all turned to the money making music machine that we have today that produces artists and songs with as little experimentation or creative freedom as possible. The record labels don't give a fuck about music anymore.

 

Don't you think games are headed in the same direction? How diverse is the offering of games today as opposed to a decade or two ago? And most importantly, what can we as consumers and artists alike do to stop this quickly moving over-commercialization of the video game industry? Is it too late?

Good musician-artists (the three or so I know about) diverge from what made them famous, and they're never heard from again (no, that's not it).....

They're famous and rich enough to specialize, and....far be it from me to judge, but....they lost it somewhere.

Note to self: ask someone *why* those singing shows where they belt out a note for 12 seconds, going up and down the musical scale, is so damn popular.

It's like bug-repellent to me.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!

 

 

Games Like witcher 3: They're about to come out with a witcher 3 for Gwent aficionados.

And That's great....I guess.

I mean, I hope they're happy, playing cards.

They have an entire series of cartoons based on cards.

"I will beat you"

"No, I will beat you, for *I* am superior"

(narrator) The iggie card! More powerful than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!!"

 

[shencereys]

21 hours ago, steelpanther24 said:

Isn't modding and the existence of this site just that?

I think it's certainly true that modding helps stave off the homogenization of gaming but I think it's important to consider that these highly-moddable games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim are very, very much the exception rather than the norm.  Also, the advent of creation club (and its frequent updates breaking mods seemingly without any hesitation or consideration on bethesda's part) tells me this era of free-love in modding is possibly entering its twilight years.  It seems like bethesda has different ideas for the future - ideas I won't be any part of if they play out as badly as I fear.

 

So, while I hope, obviously, that modding will allow little non-homogeneous enclaves to thrive far into the future, I'm not really expecting this era to continue.  And even if it does, modders and people who want to install mods are only one subset of gamer in our non-homogeneous gaming diaspora.  Many more and many more kinds of niches beyond us are required, I think, to achieve the kind of quality in craft and fidelity of creative intent that we'd want to find to be common in the industry rather than the rare exception.  

 

To keep gaming nice and diverse and to keep games from continuing to be the samey-copy/paste safely-uninspired formulas which everybody likes, but only well enough to go "meh", you need a bigger ecosystem of niche titles that appeal greatly to small subsets of people - a big enough ecosystem that most gamers have a niche or three, and seldom come out of them.  Little caves of interest developers have to develop into if they want to get any money out.

 

How to get there idk, but I do know we'd be happier if we were there already.

[steelpanther24]

11 hours ago, shencereys said:

How to get there idk, but I do know we'd be happier if we were there already.

With gaming exceeding all other forms of entertainment (including movies), I think an open market will preserve the niche markets......if...........Steam and GOG do not end up going the way of movies (with excessive political messaging reboots of older successful movies/series because this PC world cannot allow dissent in messaging) then we stand a chance.   When Steam announced that they would not ban games based on legal, but non PC content, I was happy.   BTW, the game that featured a school shooter FPS game was a trashy game that did not deserve to be on Steam.  Steam still carries Postal and Hatred.

 

Now, if this is the twilight period, I don't think so.    A whole generation of new game developers who have never lived their lives without computer games is upon us and is much more numerous than those of us who trace our gaming roots back to pen and paper gaming or board gaming.  I am looking forward to the games that they will come up with, as they won't be tied to a "standard" pen and paper set of stats and/or other concepts from AD+D.

[Nazzzgul666]

On 8/18/2018 at 12:14 AM, gregathit said:

Command and Conquer 4 illustrates this perfectly.

I'd rather say it happened when EA bought Westwood. Or like the second post put it "time warp to 1983?" Imho gaming industry is already far beyond everything that music industry ever did, at least i can't remember that i bought a song and was supposed to pay additionally for the last minute, and then additionally for 3 ten second parts they cut out from the middle of the song before release, plus throwing money in a slot machine that might or might not include something i'd like.

 

 

[shencereys]

6 hours ago, Nazzzgul666 said:

I'd rather say it happened when EA bought Westwood. Or like the second post put it "time warp to 1983?" Imho gaming industry is already far beyond everything that music industry ever did, at least i can't remember that i bought a song and was supposed to pay additionally for the last minute, and then additionally for 3 ten second parts they cut out from the middle of the song before release, plus throwing money in a slot machine that might or might not include something i'd like.

 

 

It's sad isn't it?  The digital revolution we all looked forward to in the 80s (those of us alive yet) - what a letdown.  I'm finding myself turning back to analog and lower tech more and more as everything gets monetized to the gills and rotten with ads and censorship and everything interesting homogenized down to a bland grey sludge equally consumable by everyone.

 

My e-reader has started showing me ads, my games break themselves if I let them connect to the internet, my PC's OS comes preconfigured with unremovable spyware, and my phone is spying on me probably giving blackmail material to the highest bidder.  What a great future this has turned out to be.  I want a fucking do-over.

[Nazzzgul666]

To add something positive too: it's not all bad. Maybe not even worse than 30 years ago. I mean, look it that way: Most likely there were always really crappy games produced and marketed as a miracle, it's just that we (or at least me) forget about this shit with a few exceptions that earned a place on our "worst thing ever" shelf.

 

One might say, the only thing i really regret because it changed even good games the come out these days is how (a majority of) gamers sort their priorities, and that companies follow them. But a few games like the  witcher series are able to keep up. TES too, although i'm not sure if i should count Skyrim as a modern game.^^

 

I never really liked playing online much, so for me the worth of a game is defined by the single player campain, that's one point where my taste seems to differ a lot from other people, the other is that i don't care that much about graphics, just give me a good story.

Now look at the length of starcraft campaigns and compare the original vs wings of liberty. Yeah, maybe it's due to commerzialisation but they can do that because they get great ratings and money anyways. The length of a (high quality) campaign, the amount of content,... it's just not really the important criteria, but that's at least partly because we let it happen.

Or one could say that i have the wrong taste for these days and many people are happy with starcraft 2 because of the multiplayer mode, dunno.

[shencereys]

48 minutes ago, Nazzzgul666 said:

Or one could say that i have the wrong taste for these days and many people are happy with starcraft 2 because of the multiplayer mode, dunno.

I think this is largely the case, although I'm in your camp.

 

There's still single player experiences to be had but they're all dinosaur sequels from 10 or 20 years ago.  Far Cry 5, Assassin's Creed 15 (or whatever we're on), Final Fantasy, Fallout 4, Elder Scrolls V,  Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age inquisition (3), witcher 3 (Witcher series is 11 years old alreadt, think on that!) etc.  I'm having trouble thinking of a new, modern, successful single player RPG-style IP that wasn't concocted a decade ago.  Of course these are all AAA titles, and many people are ok with indie games - I CAN be but I have never gotten over the desire for amazing graphics and effects.. so for me, personally, the promise of indie devs coming along and saving the day isn't very encouraging because I've had my fill of pixel art 20 years ago.

 

Multiplayer-only is just the new typical I think. These younger generations are extra interconnected and that's what 'play time' means to them - go find some random people and battle for 20 minutes.  Nothing too deep or too immersive.  Fortnite/PUBG, Rocket League etc - imo this is the future as far as I'm able to see it. 

 

So, I don't think there's an abundance of these age groups interested in the genres we're accustomed to.  At least for now.  Maybe interest in single-player goes up once you've popped out a kid or two and hit your early-middle-age, who knows.

 

It's not the end of the world if I'm right, because as long as us old farts have money to buy single player RP games some dev is gonna show up with their hand out to take it, but my hunch is I think the Skyrim/Fallout genre dies with us.  

[Nazzzgul666]

Assasins creed is one of those examples i can't stand for another reason: Ubisoft hates PC players, and i totally experience that with every single game they release (well, the last few i tried at least). Support for mouse + keyboard is bad to non-existant. That's not the only but main reason i'll never play a game from Ubisoft again, i don't even want them anymore for free.

 

One game i played recently that was at least ok, but probably due to good graphics rather short too (both compared to old fashioned D&D games) was Tyranny. Another game in the same direction from an Indie studio is Torment: Tides of Numera. I played it for free for a weekend and it looked great but somehow missed the time it was on sales and spending the full price for any game is beyond my possibilties... if i'd new it had the length of baldurs gate i would especially because it's indie, but i seriously doubt that.

[shencereys]

13 hours ago, Nazzzgul666 said:

Assasins creed is one of those examples i can't stand for another reason: Ubisoft hates PC players, and i totally experience that with every single game they release (well, the last few i tried at least). Support for mouse + keyboard is bad to non-existant. That's not the only but main reason i'll never play a game from Ubisoft again, i don't even want them anymore for free.

 

One game i played recently that was at least ok, but probably due to good graphics rather short too (both compared to old fashioned D&D games) was Tyranny. Another game in the same direction from an Indie studio is Torment: Tides of Numera. I played it for free for a weekend and it looked great but somehow missed the time it was on sales and spending the full price for any game is beyond my possibilties... if i'd new it had the length of baldurs gate i would especially because it's indie, but i seriously doubt that.

AC I find tolerable for no more reason than historical interest - and although the history is usually of the 'fast and loose' variety, I will never walk around paris in the 1700s and AC is as close as I'll likely ever come.  The game itself is secondary to me - mostly I play for semi-immersive history, as a history junkie.

 

Tyrrany I found fantastic.  I discovered I am a natural born dictator.  I think..people were supposed to struggle with the awful decisions?  At least I heard that. My ego made them without a second thought.  God help the world if I wind up in charge of it; I think I'd give stalin a run for his money.  But it's graphics were very year-2000; good enough to play but... well not so great overall

[KoolHndLuke]

14 hours ago, shencereys said:

So, I don't think there's an abundance of these age groups interested in the genres we're accustomed to.  At least for now.  Maybe interest in single-player goes up once you've popped out a kid or two and hit your early-middle-age, who knows.

I always have preferred playing games in a single player, with a decent story, and fucking challenge! And I don't mean how fast you can mash a button, I mean where the game has areas\enemies that require you to use a certain style, strategy, timing instead of just going in guns blazing and OH BOY! I WIN AGAIN.

 

There have got to be plenty of teens and young adults that are looking for that gem of a game- that they can mad mod like hell - just as hard as us. The studio's are just sticking to guaranteed money makers and that will ultimately spell each one of their's doom I think.

 

No, there is a very healthy audience for single player games (RPG!!!!!!)- especially now since we are all starving for a new one.

[shencereys]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

I always have preferred playing games in a single player, with a decent story, and fucking challenge! And I don't mean how fast you can mash a button, I mean where the game has areas\enemies that require you to use a certain style, strategy, timing instead of just going in guns blazing and OH BOY! I WIN AGAIN.

 

There have got to be plenty of teens and young adults that are looking for that gem of a game- that they can mad mod like hell - just as hard as us. The studio's are just sticking to guaranteed money makers and that will ultimately spell each one of their's doom I think.

 

No, there is a very healthy audience for single player games (RPG!!!!!!)- especially now since we are all starving for a new one.

I hope you're right, because that's what I enjoy as well - a challenging RPG that makes me have to expend effort and use my head and work for it to get a win.  If it's so easy I'm practically guaranteed a win, I'm not even sure why I'm playing.  That's actually been my biggest trouble with bethesda games in general; they're too easy if you're a pack-rat item hoarder.  But thanks to mods I can make skyrim a decent challenge.

 

I still think younger players are into more casual mobile-esque games, and big-name AAA rpgs are going the way of the dinosaur once CDPR decides to hang up it's hat.  But if I'm wrong I couldn't be happier.   The fallouts, skyrims, and witcher like games have been far and away my favorites, and a feeling that this kind of game will keep being made would be very reassuring.  So let's hope I can eat my hat someday.

[Nazzzgul666]

2 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

 

Stellaris was/is also a great game. Although it does have a multiplayer option to it, it doesn't really need one, one map (1K star galaxy) can take you over a month of constant play to complete. It is a strat game, so if your into that, I'd say go for it. Also, Stellaris has some adult mods you could check out here on LL. PDX tends to update pretty regularly. Subnautica devs have alluded to an expansion, possible arctic biome, so it may get an update as the expansion gets closer to completion. They used to update Subnautica every 3 months or so, when it was EA. 

 

One problem i had with both Stellaris and Sins of a Solar empire: if i go for a lengthy game which i prefer, after mid game it starts stuttering really bad. I'm no FPS fanatic but a 1-5 second lag every 5-10 seconds really more or less killed both games for me. I've discovered Endless Space 2 instead, it's turn based which i guess makes it easier to keep up a good performance late game.

 

Subnautica is... well. Different.^^ I enjoyed it for a while, but honestly never finished it. This "there is something killing you and nothing can really change that" just isn't my cup of tea. I hate to die in games so i started to build bases everywhere i might need to go for a save place to save and then i became tired of the grinding... totally my fault but as i said, not really mine although i agree it's a great game.

[dharvinia]

On 8/17/2018 at 2:53 AM, KoolHndLuke said:

Don't you think games are headed in the same direction? How diverse is the offering of games today as opposed to a decade or two ago? And most importantly, what can we as consumers and artists alike do to stop this quickly moving over-commercialization of the video game industry? Is it too late?

Great paragraph, well worded, to the point, with the facts as you knew them.  Yes, you are approximately right, that you could write this stuff.  Let's look at Grace Vanderwaal a twelve year old girl who won the AGT simply because she was able to write and sing her own songs in her own unique style. She wrote and sang from her heart without the interference, or the box. People are starving for something original that is not based on the culture of Hip hop, or Rap.  When did commercialization start? When did it become the total package put together by a CEO? Well, Milli Vanilli was a German R&B duo from Munich. The group was founded by Frank Farian in 1988 and consisted of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. They were totally talentless frauds, who lipped synced their way to music awards.  It was I believe the first time the industry was actually caught with their "hands in the cookie jar."   In the music industry we have been dragged down to the lowest denominator where getting into fight on the red carpet at an award show is the order of the day.

 

The Gaming industry is practically an infant compared to the music industry, but it has grown up fast.  The industry using new techniques like "Data mining" knows every key click, button push, and word uttered online and yes even "offline".  They have put together "profiles" of the average gamer and design everything for that niche. That is combined with research into brain chemistry looking for things that stimulate the neurons to produce pleasure and reward gratification. You know, flash a few lights, blow something up with slow-mo  effects, and there' s your new game.  Just wait until VR becomes the norm.

Imagine if you will the Holodeck.  A place where you could go where you were part of the simulation, all the smells, sounds feelings, everything you see is as real as it can possible be.  All your senses are engaged, because this is real.  So you go to where you are happy, probably the happiest you have ever been and to your knowledge, ever will be.  Now, right at the peak of this pleasure stimulation, we tell you it is time to come back to reality.  Could you do it, have you considered the withdrawal effect on the brain? 

  Yes, there are small groups of purest, who will spend the money to get the "real deal", but these games are aimed at the elite of gamers those with the intellectual power to learn and continue to learn what it is like to actually fly a plane.

  What can you as a consumer do? It is like going to a store with only two kinds of bread, if you want to eat you need to pick one.  The dirty secret is that both loaves are the same one has added colour.

So in effect with today's controlled markets that is essentially the "illusion" of choice you have.

  As an artist, well,  you could withhold your talents, but in a few years someone would write an algorithm that can program a game from start to finish including all artwork .   Artist have no choice either they must produce what sells to make a living. 

    Is it too late? Brilliant question.   All you have to do to stop this, is convince the mind numbed populace to turn off their devices, even if just for one day, so that the people will finally realise that they do have the power "in their hands"

 

[Jazzman]

2 hours ago, dharvinia said:

[snip]

It's the age-old question on who actually controls existing markets, the producer or the consumer, taking into account that both factions are inhomogenous, driven by diverse motives and strategies to reach a single goal - (personal) profit. Now, it's far easier for the consumer to switch products and producer to react to changing conditions with a different 'diet make-up' strategy than for a producer to switch his limited product palette or the markets (i.e. class of customers) to adapt to change. Guess Bioware was the latest case of a respectable game developer (producer) shot off his high horse b/c of it. Arrogance and stupidity comes at a price on the markets. Always. And it goes both ways...

 

Flexibility matters.

[KoolHndLuke]

7 minutes ago, dharvinia said:

in a few years someone would write an algorithm that can program a game from start to finish including all artwork

For some reason I just have a hard time believing any game made like this would be worth a shit. Creativeness to a computer is just randomizing numbers, cold calculations to produce "art". It will never be quite the same as what humans can make- or nearly as good imho. If for no other reason than because humans make mistakes and sometimes our "mistakes" are what lead to great scientific or artistic discoveries. This whole idea that computers can replace humans in everything just makes me want to smash my keyboard. Well, maybe not my keyboard but you get the idea.

[Nazzzgul666]

43 minutes ago, dharvinia said:

  What can you as a consumer do? It is like going to a store with only two kinds of bread, if you want to eat you need to pick one.  The dirty secret is that both loaves are the same one has added colour.

So in effect with today's controlled markets that is essentially the "illusion" of choice you have.

 

I disagree on that part. There are still a couple of godd studios, with different degrees of what i consider "still ok to great" which try both to release a high quality game without seeing me as their customer as their milk cow that has to be cashed as far as possible. I do agree that those become less, thanks to the downward spiral capitalism enforces on quality, but they are still there. 

I'm also not entirely sure how tight the bonds are between studios developing games and their current publishers. As mentioned earlier, i wouldn't play any game anymore that has Ubisoft anywhere. I don't care which studio actually produced it, if they are involved i'm out. And i'm not the only one... so Ubisoft may provide marketing campaigns with a lot of money, but i hope some studios working with them will recognize that the downsides might be bigger than the advantages and either chose a different pulisher or do their own thing.

And that's a hope that may be small, but it's definitly entirely in the hands of us as customers. 

So it may vary on taste, but for most genres there are definitly more choices than in your bakery, even real choices.

 

10 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

For some reason I just have a hard time believing any game made like this would be worth a shit. Creativeness to a computer is just randomizing numbers, cold calculations to produce "art". It will never be quite the same as what humans can make- or nearly as good imho. If for no other reason than because humans make mistakes and sometimes our "mistakes" are what lead to great scientific or artistic discoveries. This whole idea that computers can replace humans in everything just makes me want to smash my keyboard. Well, maybe not my keyboard but you get the idea.

Disagree on that either - well, not definitly but creativity for AI or something alike is actually a thing that is in research and might be done. Which honestly gives me some hope, but at the same time it scares the shit out of me.

[joemonco]

3 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

For some reason I just have a hard time believing any game made like this would be worth a shit. Creativeness to a computer is just randomizing numbers, cold calculations to produce "art". It will never be quite the same as what humans can make- or nearly as good imho. If for no other reason than because humans make mistakes and sometimes our "mistakes" are what lead to great scientific or artistic discoveries. This whole idea that computers can replace humans in everything just makes me want to smash my keyboard. Well, maybe not my keyboard but you get the idea.

 

Not a fan of Rogue-likes?

[shencereys]

2 hours ago, joemonco said:

 

Not a fan of Rogue-likes?

Those aren't made by AI, which is the point he was addressing.

 

But to this point, procedurally generated anything is usually hollow and devoid of creativity, except where the developers have specifically intervened (at level xyz npc abc will show up and offer n quests, which I have preformulated).  A pure roguelike with no human interventions would be essentially a slot machine with more interactive outcomes.  While those appeal to some, they don't to others.

 

I have played my fair share - dungeon crawl, FTL, Dwarf Fortress, and the appeal of the faux-randomness only goes so far as the creativity of the humans that designed the system. 

 

I also have no doubt that a true ai-intelligence could eventually create something original and creative as a human, but -as someone who has some small experience in this field- we are so far from this it's not even worth considering as a possibility.  Barring some unforeseen, incredible breakthroughs in both technology and theory we aren't even approaching this level of complexity in AI.  While of course I've seen many examples of AI performing specific tasks ('let's have it write a symphony in the style of Bach'), these tasks are all parlor tricks - they seem impressive until you've seen behind the curtain.  While we'll be able to do some very fantastic things very soon, creativity that isn't just a cleverly disguised perumuting heuristic is not in the cards for a very long time, due to the 'dumb' way we create AIs in the first place.

[KoolHndLuke]

4 hours ago, joemonco said:

 

Not a fan of Rogue-likes?

Not really. I play Civ 4-5 a lot and set up scenarios on a random map with random opponents and I usually have to go through at least ten or so of these before I even get an interesting map. If I put leaders like Napoleon or Gandhi in the game and they are on another continent- they always get ganged up on by other countries/leaders. The technology paths that the a.i. picks are predictable, etc. War strategies by computer opponents are very simplistic (attack this ONE city or area with overwhelming force and then sit there defending it with a 100 units for the rest of the game.- my culture will flip in so many turns anyway so the whole thing was pointless.

 

Put simply, no A.I. can simulate human creativity. Aspects of it maybe.

[dharvinia]

9 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

. Creativeness to a computer is just randomizing numbers, cold calculations to produce "art

What is on the way will change the world as much as the invention of electricity.   Artificial intelligence is in the fetus stage it is being tested daily right in front of our eyes.

When it comes into its own the rise will be exponential.  No, we will not see a terminator like scenario, Those developing it are trying to ensure they have complete control.

The applications are endless from farming, medicine, finance, and driving.  All shipping in the world could be handled by a single entity, it would treat this task as a single memory chip.

Driving is a simple as navigating from point A to B while avoiding obstacles totally within the realm of a supercomputer (or less)

 

a computer can learn, and duplicate at this point, but what will come will have the ability to "think" outside the box drawing on information pools that the human mind could not imagine.

it could combine techniques from all known art that has gone before and come up with something totally unique.    

[27X]

On 9/12/2018 at 4:05 AM, Jazzman said:

It's the age-old question on who actually controls existing markets, the producer or the consumer, taking into account that both factions are inhomogenous, driven by diverse motives and strategies to reach a single goal - (personal) profit. Now, it's far easier for the consumer to switch products and producer to react to changing conditions with a different 'diet make-up' strategy than for a producer to switch his limited product palette or the markets (i.e. class of customers) to adapt to change. Guess Bioware was the latest case of a respectable game developer (producer) shot off his high horse b/c of it. Arrogance and stupidity comes at a price on the markets. Always. And it goes both ways...

 

Flexibility matters.

Nope. As per usual there is not pat single sentence answer that defined what happened to BioWare when ME2 started I had 6 close friends working there, now I have two, and that wasn't anything that the public had anything to do with except in one instance where someone quite literally drank the purely only always political kool aid kinda like you do on occasion and quite literally lost his fucking mind, going from bro-dev to tumblrina snowflake ultimus maximus to the point where people that put "patriarchy smasher supreme" in their twitter handle cross the street to avoid having to talk to him and getting yelled at for not "fighting hard enough".

 

As for the rest, there's a very long and very recognizable chain of decisions and the ramification thereof that led to the current BioWare, and the linchpin decision had nothing to do with sales, it had to do with allowing scheduling restrictions to be put in place by people completely outside of the company. The moment someone who didn't work at BioWare began mandating release timing, the end was nigh, and this was when the Doctors still owned the company, and ME2's schizophrenic content quality reflected this, much less anything that followed.

 

Kinda like when Michael Jackson started thinking he was above Quincy Jones' tutelage and expertise cause he had sold 75 million albums and started listening to his sycophant lawyer for music advice.

 

While yes, you're right people could still prop up the company or artist under the weight of zeitgeist, that says jack shit about the working conditions or mindset of the people in the trenches, and without content creators, there is nothing for consumers to buy; so one side of the equation simply matters more, and always will, no matter what Wall Street or Michael Pachter wants to believe.

[Jazzman]

2 hours ago, 27X said:

Nope. As per usual there is not pat single sentence answer that defined what happened to BioWare when ME2 started I had 6 close friends working there, now I have two, and that wasn't anything that the public had anything to do with except in one instance where someone quite literally rank the purely only always political kool aid kinda like you do on occasion and quite literally lost his fucking mind, going from bro-dev to tumblrina snowflake ultimus maximus to the point where people that put "patriarchy smasher supreme" in their twitter handle cross the street to avoid having to talk to him and getting yelled at for not "fighting hard enough".

 

As for the rest, there a very long and very recognizable chain of decisions and the ramification thereof that led to the current BioWare, and the lynchpin decision had nothing to do with sales, it had to do with allowing scheduling restrictions to be put in place by people completely outside of the company. The moment someone who didn't work at BioWare began mandating release timing, the end was nigh, and this was when the Doctors still owned the company, and ME2's schizophrenic content quality reflected this, much less anything that followed.

 

Kinda like when Michael Jackson started thinking he was above Quincy Jones' tutelage and expertise cause he had sold 75 million albums and started listening to his sycophant lawyer for music advice.

 

While yes, you're right people could still prop up the company or artist under the weight of zeitgeist, that says jack shit about the working conditions or mindset of the people in the trenches, and without content creators, there is nothing for consumers to buy; so one side of the equation simply matters more, and always will, no matter what Wall Street or Michael Pachter wants to believe.

It's a widespread mistake (especially among the military) to believe that the (producing) subordinate would be dismissed when the die is cast and the shit hits the fan. The subordinate is the first to get sacrificed, not the 'share holder', the puppeteer, not EA, just sayin'. Cling together, swing together is for the most part wishful thinking.

 

People that spontaneously change their behavior don't define the current zeitgeist but act against it, eventually creating a new one in the process. That's the definition of change in the making in the first place.

 

So, either the producer reacts to massive changes in the markets caused by changing consumer behavior immediately or the company is history in the next fiscal year. Don't offer the impression as if consumer behavior that runs contrary to established company policy would eventually lead to an empty market w/o products. That's foolish. The consumer need didn't perhaps fade away, it just changed direction. The winner is who satisfies the needs. Follow the profit...

 

By the very reason we (among others, my family) deliver gmo-free beef to Russia as evil 'blockade runners' (O-tone EU faggots) and in this way took over former West-European market shares as the result of Western sanction policy. We weren't even measurably present on the Russian market before autumn 2014, nor intended to become in the near future. New ranches will be established by the Russians to satisfy their market needs, slowly but steadily, eventually trying to reduce our market share in Russia down to the status quo ante at the end of the day. It's causality. Like it or not.

 

So expect the same phenomenon on the gaming market in case of a trend reversal from below... minor companies that adapt become relevant and new ones will be founded. Old ones that don't adapt by means of arrogance go down the highway. Creative employees will be on the move, if you get my meaning.

 

Have a good one!