That may be the case for licensed games, and yes they are a big part of the industry, but for most releases the developers put more into the game than you give credit for. Watch a behind the scenes video for a game and check out the office environment. Or visit the forums for an mmorpg, where devs will often talk directly -and in their own time- to players. Or read a bio page for some developers, it wont take long to find one that got their break because they made a mod or addon level for a game.
Sure, dev house X 25 totally 'phoned it in' for barbie super adventure Y on DS, but i can guarantee that the 90% of the time that same group has concept sketches for an original IP they'd love to get funded.

That's a good point, and it reminded me of watching the dev videos for Titan's Quest. You could tell those guys were really excited about their game and loved making it.

I think any game developer wants to make the best possible game he can. The problem is, it's usually not up to the developers. The overall design decisions are not made down at their level, but much higher up in the hierarchy. Probably, the publisher often also has a great deal of influence.

Hmm, funny as he introduces his future spouse after the house and the dogs....
Because WoW has a gameplay that can satisfy hardcore gamers AND casual gamers. You can spend all your day on it, or just play it a little every day. So, on the lenght, either way, you spend a lot of time on it, but it's not the same as many other games. I could hardly play a FPS just a little every day, and spend in total 2 months on it. I can with WoW.

There's still a lot of great games being made, you're just not likely to find them if you're only looking at the overmarketed triple A titles. Delve a bit deeper into your genre of choice, or even better expand your horizons into genres you haven't given all that much attention to, and you'll find there are lots of great games out there, and more being made each year.

Agreed. I'd almost say that there is more of a market for indie games done right these days than there probably ever were.
Maybe it's just the fact that game news travels a lot quicker these days than it once did. I'd imagine it takes a lot less time to throw something up on Twitter or some popular forums than it would to have gotten your game listed in a game magazine years ago.

i agree with him, and many of the posters here. It feels like too many games are made by and for teenage boys with lots of free time.
Be nice if games grew up and got jobs and kids, just like gamers have.

More "for" than "by", I think. I enjoyed the depth and philosophy of Sanitarium thoroughly when I was a teenage boy. I think many contemporary teenagers would too. Teenagers are not, as a rule, stupid and shallow. Some are, of course, but so are many adults. But the games industry is apparently working from a stylized and stereotypical media image of teenagers, and see that image as their only target audience.

To be honest, I felt there was a distinct vibe of "I don't have time these days, just show me the important bits" to that letter.
I agree with a lot of points but there's room for large scale epics that require a bit of dedication to get though, going down the 'short development & short game' path will preclude the possibility of anything with true depth & complexity. I'm sure that you COULD do an epic Planescape Torment style game with episodic content but it'd be a fuck of a gamble making something of that length (moreso than it is now and the concept is almost anathema to the industry) or would be a fuck of a compromise by making each one a self contained adventure with arc elements so you don't alienate customers who for some stupid reason decide to start playing an episodic series at episode 7

Here's hoping that devs will continue to put out games with the depth and length of the Baldur's Gate series, The Witcher, etc. If the future is quick 6-8 hour games then I'm seriously depressed/disappointed. :(

Considering the price to gameplay ratio, its pretty bad. I mean sure its better to pay au$80 for a hell of a good game that lasts 6 hours than it is to pay the same for a crap game that lasts for 20 but in the day when they could hit the sweet spot where it's both good and long (stop sniggering), that was where the real value clicked in

I think what has changed for me is that i've gotten fed up of the tricks they often use to artificially extend games.
Of course, some games are genuine epics, or huge open sandboxes that genuinely have enough to do to keep you interested for a long time.
But many games seem to rely on filler, grinding, extreme difficulty, or worse - making you replay things again and again. Thats ok (just) if you have the free time to devote to that.
But if you have a job/family/etc.. and you manage to sneak in 30 minutes of gaming a week... and at the end of that 30 minutes you die and have effectively just wasted 30 minutes of your life with nothing to show for it... it can be very frustrating.
I'd take a well crafted 6-8 hour game over an artificially padded out game anytime.
I can't work out the price comparison exactly, but a 6-8 hour game for $40 compares reasonably with a $9 2hr movie. I guess.

You've got to make the time for the important things. Sell the family on ebay then you can use the money to buy more games

I sold the family on ebay, but i used the money to got out drinking with friends...

I refuse to live in a world where every game is a arcade wannabe game! This man is clearly purely business and not focused on community and fan's. And both parts are important for a game to become popular! If its just a game of the moment, people wont stick to the company next time they release a game because a new game will come out in just a couple of months.
Blizzard would have a much lesser 10/10 scoring spree was it not for their active fan's and supporters, constantly backing up on them.
Piracy would also become a major problem, imagine if every torrent of games become 2 GB less in size? Distributing illegal games would become easy for both the people uploading and the people downloading. And these "episodic games" would properly cost like 20 dollars, it would become major rip-off's.
Apparently he thinks of these clients as a safe heaven, a place with no piracy, a digital mall for gamers. Anyone knows about PacSteam?
I am just going to stick with my DLC thank you!