Smoke In The Crystal Ball

Hal Halpin of the ECA takes a close look at some popular gaming predictions over at The Escapist.  Unsurprisingly, he views many of the futurist predictions as unlikely; when you consider that previous predictions in all sorts of industries have generally been wildly off-base, his skepticism isn’t really all that surprising.  People just aren’t very good at extrapolating across huge swaths of time - in part because technological change happens so quickly and unpredictably.

In any case, read the whole piece.  I will take issue with a handful of comments: betting against continued consolidation is probably a fool’s game, but I would argue that speculating on some stable equilibrium of 3 major publishers is likely also inaccurate.  I don’t see more than one or two publishers merging in the next year, but more to the point, I’d also see new ones rising up in the future as well.  I’m not entirely convinced that the hit-and-miss business model is broken, either, or that its disappearance is desirable: those commercial successes are fueling a lot of risky commercial failures (but critical successes) that I enjoy playing, and I’d hate for them to disappear.  As a gamer, more content is most often better content, at least in aggregate.  And until developers figure out a way to incorporate strong business acumen into their businesses, they’re going to need the publishers as much as the reverse.

I’ll also quibble with his comments on content, simply because I think he may have confused cause and effect.  Halpin argues that his son is less brand-conscious than his generation because he will consume Lego Indiana Jones in all of its platform forms (PC, Mac, console, TV, etc.).  And it’s true that his son doesn’t care about platform because he can afford access to several - but what Halpin misses is that this has always been true, at least in theory.  The brand that his son is loyal to is the Indiana Jones brand, and brand consciousness is almost more important because it helps people filter an incredible amount of otherwise undifferentiated content.  Prior generations had less to filter and also less ability to consume; yet the fact that newer generations can consume more types of brands or media doesn’t mean they’re less loyal, just more affluent.

Finally, I can see that the average price of a game may fall as microtransactions and similar concepts begin to launch additional business models.  Yet the question isn’t really about sticker price, as Halpin comments on.  Rather, it’s a total cost of ownership - someone is going to have to compensate the developer/publisher for giving up cash up front, whether it’s by viewing more ads or buying more horse armor.  In other words, the piper is still being paid - the question is whether we can free-ride on someone else’s money or time rather than our own.