Michael Foster-Sanders
senior producer

The video game industry might be heading for another historic crash like in 1983. Honestly, in my opinion, it’s needed.

There is no originality anymore. It’s monkey see monkey do these days, and the consumers are lemmings to the garbage being force-fed to the market.
When the first video game crash happened, it was a no hold bars open market in the industry. For every “Space Invader,” there was a gazillion other companies putting out trash like “Alien Invaders.” Blatant rip-offs with nothing more to offer than to fool parents and cash in on the craze that a certain game has garnered by bringing something new to the table.

Then it was shovelware due to there not being any regulation by the companies to make games for their system. Literally, anyone could make a game, and as long as they had the money to get it manufactured it was fair game. A bunch of trash flooded the market and soured the taste of gaming for consumers. Here’s looking at you, E. T.

The nail in the coffin was the hardware, which no innovation was being made on that front. The Atari 2600 was not the first game system whose honor goes to the Fairchild Channel F, but it pretty much set the standard of what a video game system should be. Atari tried to milk this system for six years, even handicapping its new system, the Atari 5200, since it had no backward compatibility and garbage controllers which were prone to breaking.
The industry could hold up much after that and crashed and burned. But a phoenix named Nintendo arose from the ashes in 1985 and corrected most of the sins of its forefathers, and the industry was back and healthy.

Back to the future, and the sins of the grandfathers showing up again in their great-grandchildren. A company named Rockstar set the bar of the sandbox-style game, with its title Grand Theft Auto III, and damn near every company is following this formulaic style of gameplay. Which is becoming a chore and a bore. Rockstar also is cannibalizing itself by letting this game live online for the past eight years through three console generations. I get it’s a money maker, but at what price? Do you really want to become an Activision-like company and become a shell of yourself for the almighty dollar?

Before I end this rant I would like to ask Sony and Microsoft what was the point of bringing out your new generation of gaming systems when you’re crippling the systems by releasing games that can’t take full advantage of the hardware? I get the fact that everyone can’t find or afford these new games systems, but you’re punishing your loyal supporters for things that are in your control, and that can be fixed.

Gaming companies know the past so you won’t be doomed to repeat it, but at this point are you ignorant to the signs of history repeating itself and welcoming another dark age of gaming?