So…
2010-2011, when the game industry exploded. Again.
The Wii went down, hard. Guitar Hero died, the 3DS? Who really cares about this 3D fad. I can’t track the numbers of AAA games with bad to abysmal sales, cancelled projects and people laid off. The Wii2 has been announced and nobody really cares either.
Apple’s market is more than tough (huge competition, prices too low) and for some reason success is always based on birds. Android doesn’t generate as much money and is a development pain in the ass.
In 2008 I couldn’t imagine that three years later game development would look this way.
Future exciting games? Spyparty, The Witness. I can’t wait for these two and I admire the amount of sharing Chris and Jonathan are doing, along with great game designers like Daniel Cook. I mean these guys are sharing so much information and knowledge and being open about their development, it’s so great. It’s inspiring. It makes me want to play their games. L.A. Noire? 3D actors and missions annoy me. Six years of development for that, now you see how it doesn’t really make sense financially. Portal 2? Well I could have played this one but I didn’t because I know it’s a good game (and I don’t have a machine to run it, that’s true) but it is still a sequel and I can’t just get excited over a sequel anymore.
Still reading Gamejournos to persuade myself to not care about big computer game news websites.
I’m really happy to see success stories online, onSteam (yes, it’s a word now). Platform agnosticism is gaining traction. Frozen Synapse is out. Terraria sold 200K in nine days (Terraria Vs Minecraft). Of course word of mouth is better on a network like Steam or Facebook –automatic status driving attention- but we can think about making games that connect to Twitter/FB/IM accounts out of walled garden too. It’s up to us.
I see a trend where indie games are finally, giving up the 8bit-nostalgia-hardcore-nerd aesthetic. As one would say, ‘bout time.