"the games industry is dead" - seemingly

uberpixie

"I really can't imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there."

Read and be amazed by the stupidy.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784989,00.asp

KdjaCL

Cos a 5 billion a year industry just disappears....right....



kdjac

-oRnein9-

uberpixie wrote:

"I really can't imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there."

Read and be amazed by the stupidy.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1784989,00.asp

pure manure

Ciaran500

And nearly everyone that replies in the forum agrees with him.

FFS :rolleyes:

Horsefumbler

Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play

aye like those fps games on the PC where you have to use your mouse and keyboard

Illuvatar

Spider Solitaire sucks!

D

Oh please as long as good games come out then there will be a market. The writer seems to be ranting about having to buy a new games console/accessory every few years. It was never about the hardware it's about the software.

grimloch

Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play—unless gaming is your so-called life

i cannot think of one such game, apart from cs 1.6 or the likes which take a while to get into, hardly "ridicoulsy hard" unless your an uncoordinated oaf

TerrorFirmer

While the kids who are used to this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be repulsed and skip these new generations of machines altogether.

I cant believe its someones job to write this muck. :rolleyes:

Games have been steadily progressing since the days of the NES, and although the level of complaints rise with more violent and graphically superior games, the fan rate practically triples.

Some of today's games are ridiculously hard to play—unless gaming is your so-called life—and so daunting to casual players that they will quickly reject them. Who needs to devote themselves to a game just to play it once in a while? I'll take Spider Solitaire instead.

Hey - this article just HAS to be written by an elderly man. There is no other logical explanation....

angelofdeath

i think he meant rediculously hard if you want to play against other gamers ala counter strike, but utter tripe other than that, the games industry has tonnes of scope left for invention

grimloch

when i started cs i found it quite hard, but thats because i was a beginner at it, his logic seems to say if its too hard just dont bother

uberpixie

Ciaran500 wrote:

And nearly everyone that replies in the forum agrees with him.

FFS :rolleyes:

Did you see the guy who was giving out about GT4 being too hard for his 4 yr old son to play?

And why do you have to unlock cars and tracks? Why can't you have instant access to them all at the start?

A lot of those guys seem to be after games that offer instant gratification.

hal9000

ahh hes just b!tchin because his four yr old can kick his a$$ in every game! sore loser. He naturally cant blame himself, hes got to blame the games industry

ObeyGiant

Most of these tech pundits get paid on a page-view basis, so by writing something controversial like this, he gets a lot of clicks very quickly as it spreads across the internet. I'm doubtful that he actually believes any of this nonsense - his reasoning is ridiculous and smacks of luddism, something strange for an otherwise smart tech guy.

However, he's not as far off as you'd thing. Even games developers have started predicting the end of the industry, at least as we know it. Most recently, Greg Costikyan delivered a speech at the Game Developer's Conference which included the fantastic line My friends, we are fucked. We are well and truly fucked. I suggest everyone read what he has to say instead of Dvorak's trolling/whoring.

angelofdeath

good read, but maybe a bit sensationalist, for years now mediocre titles have been rolling out by the bucketload, it's the few innovative titles that come along every now and again that keep the industry going and give it a base to work off of, personally i don't see anything changing in the near future

BloodBath

I'd say we are 15-20 years off true photo realism in pc's and consoles on a mass scale. Fair enough we won't need as much hardware upgrades as we do now but most companies at least in the console market make all their money from the games, not the hardware. That's like saying the film industry is dead because everyone has dvd players. Truely truely stupid. Big games are making more money than big movies these days. The scale of it can be seen by the likes of xtra-vision having almost half it's store dedicated to games. I can never see it happening tbh. As games become more realistic they will only attract larger audiences. That article is utter tripe and the writer should be completely discredited for writing it.


BloodBath

Dinner

Ciaran500 wrote:

And nearly everyone that replies in the forum agrees with him.

FFS :rolleyes:

Thats the saddest bit about it.


I think I'm right in saying that the author is "older" than the average age of people who play most games. So, just because he cant see the huge jumps between mario cart and GT4 doesnt mean the games industry is dying.

BlitzKrieg

anyone notice similarities between the games industry and the late studio system in hollywood (1940s)?


similarities include

-self censorship.

-owning the product and hardware (nintendo).

-mass production of medicore titles.

-little control of creators over their product.


The studio system fell apart and the games industy is looking to go the same way. Wont mean the end, will just mean a rethinking of the industry.

projectmayhem

-self censorship

i thought PEGI was industry-funded, but indipendant?

-mass production of mediocre titles

the same could be said of movies, music, tv shows, and so on... that is happening in every industry.

BlitzKrieg

the censorship is not by a governing body though (despite both industries were threatened by government censorship)


hmm on your second point you could be right. but the game industry has a much more laziness to it that can be seen in a similar fashion to the studio system. You stick whatever selling icon that is available and you tag the game on to it later.

Sand

The studio system fell apart and the games industy is looking to go the same way. Wont mean the end, will just mean a rethinking of the industry.

Actually, if anything it might get a lot worse. As games reach photo realism you need armies of artists, animators, programmers and so and so forth. Economies of scale mean the smaller developers are either bought out or squeezed out by the likes of EA. Independant developers stand relatively little chance - they need to develop an outstanding game in absolutley every respect to beat the big boys. And even then, they lose - Sega bought out Creative Assembly, makers of Total War. Now theyre making some ****e Total Warrior crap - some beat em up or rubbish for the console market using name recognition to sell- instead of devoting their time to the best RTS ever.

hmm on your second point you could be right. but the game industry has a much more laziness to it that can be seen in a similar fashion to the studio system. You stick whatever selling icon that is available and you tag the game on to it later.

Agreed, If a game has a film or book licence then 99% of the time its ****e. Developers just dont bother. Dave Perry got the Matrix licence and said "grand, if we packed dog **** into the boxes they'd still buy it - we can relax and not bother here". Last decent movie tie-in I can think of is AvP2, and that wasnt even tied to the movie at all really.

Retr0gamer

Sand wrote:

And even then, they lose - Sega bought out Creative Assembly, makers of Total War. Now theyre making some ****e Total Warrior crap - some beat em up or rubbish for the console market using name recognition to sell- instead of devoting their time to the best RTS ever.

Well it's not even out yet and was in developement long before Sega bought them out.

BloodBath

Actually, if anything it might get a lot worse. As games reach photo realism you need armies of artists, animators, programmers and so and so forth. Economies of scale mean the smaller developers are either bought out or squeezed out by the likes of EA. Independant developers stand relatively little chance - they need to develop an outstanding game in absolutley every respect to beat the big boys. And even then, they lose - Sega bought out Creative Assembly, makers of Total War. Now theyre making some ****e Total Warrior crap - some beat em up or rubbish for the console market using name recognition to sell- instead of devoting their time to the best RTS ever.

That's not true. Modern development software makes it easier and easier to achieve outstanding results and this will continue into the future.

Agreed, If a game has a film or book licence then 99% of the time its ****e. Developers just dont bother. Dave Perry got the Matrix licence and said "grand, if we packed dog **** into the boxes they'd still buy it - we can relax and not bother here". Last decent movie tie-in I can think of is AvP2, and that wasnt even tied to the movie at all really.

This is usually true but I can think of a couple more good tie ins Star wars galaxies, lotr -battle for middle earth to name 2. This has always been the case though, right from the start of consoles, et on thee atari 2600 anyone? Anyone that buys a game without reading some reviews deserves to be stung.


BloodBath

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

That's not true. Modern development software makes it easier and easier to achieve outstanding results and this will continue into the future

Are you kidding, or just really, really naive?

I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that (commercially successful) games are getting anything but insanely difficult to make.

BlitzKrieg

do you think we might get a blockbuster system? Less games during the year but 5-6 huge titles (with insane number of people working on it) at peak moments during the year?

Illuvatar

I'm sure we'll run out of console technology before we run out of idea's for games. They can keep making trilogies and most likely sell. Most people are idiots lacking common sense to see this. And Sony, Microsoft, ect. will keep adding things to consoles because they can't improve graphics, ect.
Who even knows? I could be talking out of my a$$. I can't tell the future and I haven't met anyone who can. This is all my best guess.

BloodBath

Are you kidding, or just really, really naive?

I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that (commercially successful) games are getting anything but insanely difficult to make.

There is no doubt they are getting more difficult but it's not exactly at epidemic proportions. Sure the likes of HL2 took a long time to make. Implementing the havok pyhsics into a game engine i'm sure took a hell of a lot of work but this will get easier. 3d models will get more complex. Textures will be of higher quality but it's not exactly a whole lot different from what they are doing now.I haven' heard any games companys moaning about how hard it is to make new games. If anything they are technology limited. They could release games of much higher graphical quality if the technology was there.


BloodBath

Gizzard

american press are retards

monument

BloodBath wrote:

There is no doubt they are getting more difficult but it's not exactly at epidemic proportions. Sure the likes of HL2 took a long time to make. Implementing the havok pyhsics into a game engine i'm sure took a hell of a lot of work but this will get easier.

I've been told that Havok (v2?) was built on the back of feedback from Valve... pretty much Valve saying 'can you make it do that', and the Havok team doing so.

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

I haven' heard any games companys moaning about how hard it is to make new games.

Well, obviously you haven't been listening. Recently, Oddworld Inhabitants quit the games industry completely, heading off to pastures new (Hollywood), claiming that the unrealistic demands on developers in a risk-averse environment drove them from games.

Similarly, Elixir shut down last week because they couldn't afford to keep making 'innovative' games - the high cost of development meant that no publisher would back their original IP.

Hell, I even posted Greg Costikyan's speech at GDC, which also explained how hard it is to make new games. From that same GDC talk, Warren Spector also talks about how hard it is to make new games. There are hundreds of examples of games developers moaning about how hard it is to make new games. I don't know how you haven't heard any.

BlitzKrieg

got a linky for the oddworld one please?

ObeyGiant

Here's the Slashdot article

BlitzKrieg

publishers want more sure bets because with rising costs come rising risks.

and

and that is that the publisher pays for the entire game; it handles the manufacturing, the marketing, the distribution, the advertising, practically everything, much the way it used to be in Hollywood pre-United Artists. But, as the film industry matured, it took on a more sophisticated financing structure. Today, for example, studios don't pay for a movie by themselves. They pay a percentage and then other parties pick up the other 66%; it's usually a three-party investment package. But not in the games industry

if this is not indicating games are going the way of hollywood i dont know what is. Who wants to start a dogme 95 for games...rules would be?

Kazaanova

Are you kidding, or just really, really naive? I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that (commercially successful) games are getting anything but insanely difficult to make.

A big thing about the PS3 is that its really developer friendly. I'm not quite sure how it works, but its something along the lines of the PS3 doing the grunt work, like rendering a tree and stuff like that.

But I'd agree that it has gotten a lot more difficult. There are a lot of games that are in development for 2 or more years. Thats insane when you think of it. Take Snake Eater, the production values on that were amazing.

Similarly, Elixir shut down last week because they couldn't afford to keep making 'innovative' games

Thats terrible news. Elixir had some really class different games. Its only recently I've started to notice when a game company closes down, because recently they've started to be good ones.

Worst case scenario would be games getting so hard to make that there begins a decrease in the number of games made. But then I think they'd stay at that level(they'd have to), and over time new game developers would catch up and there would start to be as many games as there are today.

It can be done, its not impossible. Look at Bethesda Softworks, 10 years ago they were producing this:



Do you think that 10 years ago if someone had told them that they would be producing something like
Oblivion that they would of believed it? They wouldnt even be able to imagine it.

Ciaran500

Kazaanova wrote:

A big thing about the PS3 is that its really developer friendly. I'm not quite sure how it works, but its something along the lines of the PS3 doing the grunt work, like rendering a tree and stuff like that.

The PS3 will not be developer friendly. It use a proprietary chip (cell) which devs will need to develop code for, just like the emotion engine it will take year to refine.

Kazaanova

The PS3 will not be developer friendly. It use a proprietary chip (cell) which devs will need to develop code for, just like the emotion engine it will take year to refine.

Cell uses the same code that the PS2 chip used. So devs wont have to develop new code for it. Now, whether or not the current chip is dev friendly, I don't know, but I know that Sony are aiming for it to be easy on devs.

BloodBath

Well, obviously you haven't been listening. Recently, Oddworld Inhabitants quit the games industry completely, heading off to pastures new (Hollywood), claiming that the unrealistic demands on developers in a risk-averse environment drove them from games.

Similarly, Elixir shut down last week because they couldn't afford to keep making 'innovative' games - the high cost of development meant that no publisher would back their original IP.

Hell, I even posted Greg Costikyan's speech at GDC, which also explained how hard it is to make new games. From that same GDC talk, Warren Spector also talks about how hard it is to make new games. There are hundreds of examples of games developers moaning about how hard it is to make new games. I don't know how you haven't heard any.

It's becoming more expensive. Development teams are getting bigger, production times longer and the risks are larger. The flipside of the coin is that good games make massive amounts of money. I'm not surprised the oddworld team has gone belly up. They are a bit of a one hit wonder. Developers can choose to make their own engine e.g. valve taking 5 years to make hl2. Another company can come along and use that pre-made engine which is very scaleable to make their own unique game in less than a year. Most of the hard work has been done already. There is a relatively small company that's willing to take risks in a saturated market. They spent their entire profits from HL1 and more to fund the production and it paid off. With the amount of competition a lot of the small guys will suffer. How is this different from any other entertainment market though?


BloodBath

Ciaran500

Kazaanova wrote:

Cell uses the same code that the PS2 chip used. So devs wont have to develop new code for it. Now, whether or not the current chip is dev friendly, I don't know, but I know that Sony are aiming for it to be easy on devs.

Link?

The cell is a completly unique chip. Theres no way the PS2 code will just work on the cell processor.

Retr0gamer

Ciaran500 wrote:

Link?

The cell is a completly unique chip. Theres no way the PS2 code will just work on the cell processor.

The PS2 chipset is very small at the moment. i wouldn't be surprised if the chipset is part of the PS3 and could also be used as a means of PS2 emulation. They did the same with the PS1 chipset as part of the sound hardware for the PS2.

Kazaanova

Ciaran500 wrote:

Link?

The cell is a completly unique chip. Theres no way the PS2 code will just work on the cell processor.

http://news.com.com/PlayStation+3+to+be+easy+on+developers,+Sony+vows/2100-1043_3-5606515.html

Ciaran500

Where does it say the cell uses PS2 code in that article?

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=1

"With Cell, Sony has effectively traded hardware complexity for programmer burden, but if anyone is willing to bear the burden of a complicated architecture, it is a game developer."

"game development houses often develop and optimize for the least common denominator when it comes to hardware, and offer ports with minor improvements to other platforms. Given Cell’s architecture, it hardly looks like a suitable “base” platform to develop for."

Kazaanova

Ciaran500 wrote:

Where does it say the cell uses PS2 code in that article?

I'm not saying that developers wont have to develop new code, just not completely new code.

promising that Cell would adapt many existing development tools rather than force developers to learn whole new languages.

Retr0gamer

I think we are going to see a lot more developers relie ever more on middleware since they just won't have the resources to make an engine from scratch.

BloodBath

The flipside of the coin is that good games make massive amounts of money.

I quote myself. Even bad games make massive amounts of money. Look at the sims :rolleyes:


BloodBath

BlitzKrieg

worse the fifa series...

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

It's becoming more expensive. Development teams are getting bigger, production times longer and the risks are larger.

Since games development is becoming more expensive because games are getting more difficult to develop, and development teams are getting bigger because games are getting more difficult to development,a nd production times are getting longer because games are getting more difficult to develop... would you agree that games are actually getting more difficult to develop?

(note: In each of the above, I mean 'commercially successful games'. I realise that 20 lines of SDL code can make a 'game'. Just so we're clear.)

BloodBath wrote:

The flipside of the coin is that good games make massive amounts of money. I'm not surprised the oddworld team has gone belly up. They are a bit of a one hit wonder.

Er.. better make that a 7-hit wonder. Each one of their games did well both critically and commercially. And this is part of the problem - in the most recent example of "Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath", they had a fantastic game (seriously, play it.. it's a lot of fun), reflected in the almost unanimously good response it got from reviewers that would have sold a lot more copies if EA had actually gotten behind the product and given it the kind of marketing they claim it deserved. This would have turned a $20million game into a $100million game.

And this is another part of the argument. Good games, even without a decent level of innovation, are being left by the wayside in the current system as publishers hype the latest sequel or MTV-friendly piece of pap.

BloodBath wrote:

Developers can choose to make their own engine e.g. valve taking 5 years to make hl2. Another company can come along and use that pre-made engine which is very scaleable to make their own unique game in less than a year. Most of the hard work has been done already. There is a relatively small company that's willing to take risks in a saturated market. They spent their entire profits from HL1 and more to fund the production and it paid off. With the amount of competition a lot of the small guys will suffer. How is this different from any other entertainment market though?

I've read and re-read your post, and I'm not sure you're fully aware of the situation.

Yes, the middleware market is now bigger than ever, with all sorts of game engines, physics engines, sound engines, animation tools available to developers. It's possible one could piece together something without the ability to write even one component from scratch. If you were so desperate, you could even throw something together using open-source technology (Irrlicht for the graphics eengine works well with ODE - the open source physics engine). But this does not make things dramatically 'easier'.

Even mods for Half Life 2 are slower to come and harder to program because of the complexity involved in getting everything working together. This is in spite of the fact that Valve have done everything they can to make it as easy as possible for people to mod their engine. Sometimes "easy as possible" still isn't particularly easy.

BloodBath wrote:

With the amount of competition a lot of the small guys will suffer. How is this different from any other entertainment market though?

Again, I think you're being terribly naive about this whole thing, for more reasons than I care to go into right now, so I'll just touch on one - currently, the 'small guys' are suffering because there is virtually no other distribution system. They are being held over a barrel by the distributors, who are the investors, meaning that if they decide something is too expensive, or won't provide a significant return, they can cancel it and the developer is out of luck.

There's a lot more going on here than just simple "games are getting too hard to develop for". Although most everything revolves around money, I don't think there's any way to sum it all up in one sound-byte-worthy sentence.

BloodBath

Since games development is becoming more expensive because games are getting more difficult to develop, and development teams are getting bigger because games are getting more difficult to development,a nd production times are getting longer because games are getting more difficult to develop... would you agree that games are actually getting more difficult to develop?

I agreed they were getting more difficulyt about 10 posts back.

There is no doubt they are getting more difficult but it's not exactly at epidemic proportions.

Er.. better make that a 7-hit wonder. Each one of their games did well both critically and commercially. And this is part of the problem - in the most recent example of "Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath", they had a fantastic game (seriously, play it.. it's a lot of fun), reflected in the almost unanimously good response it got from reviewers that would have sold a lot more copies if EA had actually gotten behind the product and given it the kind of marketing they claim it deserved. This would have turned a $20million game into a $100million game.

I meant the one type of game. Strangers wrath was a break from the norm though. There was no way in hell it ever would have made $100 though even if EA had pimped it.

But this does not make things dramatically 'easier'.

Your saying not having to make a games engine from scratch does not make things dramatically easier? Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was made in a relatively short period of time using the source engine and was a great game.

Even mods for Half Life 2 are slower to come and harder to program because of the complexity involved in getting everything working together. This is in spite of the fact that Valve have done everything they can to make it as easy as possible for people to mod their engine. Sometimes "easy as possible" still isn't particularly easy.

That's because most mods are made by a small team and the game is only out a few months. No mods make full appearences this soon after a release.

Again, I think you're being terribly naive about this whole thing, for more reasons than I care to go into right now, so I'll just touch on one - currently, the 'small guys' are suffering because there is virtually no other distribution system. They are being held over a barrel by the distributors, who are the investors, meaning that if they decide something is too expensive, or won't provide a significant return, they can cancel it and the developer is out of luck.

Again how is this different from any other media market? The film and music industry operate the exact same way. There are many distributers a developer can go to. There are even some other distribution methods arising. Again Valve are an example and at the moment it looks like HL2 and any expansions or mods will only be available through steam. Now this isn't ideal by any means. It requires people to have a fast internet connection which a lot of people don't have so they will probably hav to find another distributer seeing as they have settled with Vivendi Universal. What's stopping any of the other companys going to another distributer?


BloodBath

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

I agreed they were getting more difficulyt about 10 posts back.

Oops, my mistake.

BloodBath wrote:

I meant the one type of game. Strangers wrath was a break from the norm though. There was no way in hell it ever would have made $100 though even if EA had pimped it.

It was a unique, fun game to play with a broad appeal that sold modestly well in spite of a perceived lack of backing from the distributor. It's debatable whether or not it would have sold better with more marketing. Personally speaking, I thought it was better than Halo 2, which sold by the bucketloads, but that's just me.

BloodBath wrote:

Your saying not having to make a games engine from scratch does not make things dramatically easier? Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was made in a relatively short period of time using the source engine and was a great game.

Ironic that you choose that particular game, since Troika games (the developers of Vampire: The Masquerade) recently shut their doors.

And I didn't say that buying off-the-shelf components doesn't make things easier. It just doesn't make things as dramatically easier. It doesn't turn it into "slot in component A, a little bit of sound, a bit of physics, bingo bango - we have a game!". One of the major headaches involved with middleware is actually integrating it with your existing technology (or other middeware), which can often take as long as writing your own custom software. So yes, it makes things a little easier, but it brings its own difficulties.

BloodBath wrote:

That's because most mods are made by a small team and the game is only out a few months. No mods make full appearences this soon after a release.

Yes, yes - they are coming, just slowly. And it's taking more people to develop them than before. This is because of the relative difficulty of writing mods for Half Life 2 compared to Half Life 1.

BloodBath wrote:

Again how is this different from any other media market? The film and music industry operate the exact same way.

Not quite.

As Warren Spector points out: "We’re the only medium that lacks an alternate distribution system. All we have is boxed games sold at retail. This is changing a little. But think about our competition for your entertainment dollar. First run, broadcast, reruns, DVDs.. you name it. hardback, paperback, e-book. Theatre release, pay-per-view, video, DVD. We put our thing on the shelf at Wal-Mart, it sells or it doesn’t, and OMG you just blew 10m dollars."

BloodBath wrote:

What's stopping any of the other companys going to another distributer?

Well, often because they can't. I'm not saying this happens in 100% of the cases, but a lot of the time a developer locks themselves into a deal with a publisher based on early prototypes or concepts. When the publisher yanks the chain on the game, they keep all the rights to the game, meaning the developer simply *can't* go to another publisher.

Ri_Nollaig

BloodBath wrote:

I quote myself. Even bad games make massive amounts of money. Look at the sims :rolleyes:


BloodBath

there is nothing wrong with the sims sims 2 is a good laugh and was orginal when the first one came out
...granted EA have milked it to the end and still dont plan on stopping and have made it the biggest selling pc game of all time

Kristok

I dont know he could be right, i mean its not like the games market didnt already die once before. And I saw these game shots recently HERE and have to say if this is what games on the next gen consoles look like at launch it wont be that long into their lifes that photo realistic games start to appear and once you get photo realistic games its really the end of the road, I mean why buy another console when the one you have already plays games that look real. Ps2 is what 5 years old ? how long will ps3 be round, probably longer.

steviec

Kristok wrote:

I dont know he could be right, i mean its not like the games market didnt already die once before. And I saw these game shots recently HERE and have to say if this is what games on the next gen consoles look like at launch it wont be that long into their lifes that photo realistic games start to appear and once you get photo realistic games its really the end of the road, I mean why buy another console when the one you have already plays games that look real. Ps2 is what 5 years old ? how long will ps3 be round, probably longer.

Wow I've never seen those shots before, they're impressive!

Still though, I don't see how arriving at photo-realism is gonna kill the industry. As someone said, there's more and more parrallels with the film industry. And it's not like they need to keep making breakthroughs in special effects and things for people to keep coming to films(yes I know there's a lot of big films that ride on their special effects, but there's also a hell of a lot that enjoyed both critical and commercial success that could just as easily have been shot 30 years ago technology wise)

If the technology starts levelling off, developers will actually have to start resorting to innovation to keep gamers interested, just because you can't improve your graphics engine doesn't mean you can't come up with new features, new ideas, new control systems, a great story depending what type of game it is.