An Old Gamer's Dilemma

I've been thinking of getting rid of my old systems for many many moons now, but I've been perpetually caught in a swirl of conflicting issues.

I grew up with the idea of never selling my games, but over the years, the strength of this notion has waned. When I think about, say, my NES, I think of two things. On the one hand, I think of the great times I've had playing with it and how I pride that, to this day, my single-owned system still works because I take care of my stuff. But on the other hand, I think of how I'm too lazy to curate my collection, how I don't want to deal with old tech anymore, and how such a great system is just wasting away while someone else could be taking better care of it than I do.

The part I'm stuck on is how to get rid of all of the stuff. Part of me says "Let's get rid of the old shit before I have the opportunity to change my mind." but then it conflicts with the part of me that says, "I'd like to give it to someone I know, but shipping is so expensive and I have to work on cleaning up before shipping it off." And I don't even want to listen to the part of me that says, "You'll play with it again....eventually."

I guess I'm just writing this to just get all these random thoughts on the screen so I can try sorting them out in some kind of logical sequence. Despite breaking certain morals, I've turned to emulation to satisfy my retro-gaming needs for time, space, and financial reasons. By no means am I giving up on gaming, not by a long shot. However, gaming has taken a different priority in my life. That said, I've come to believe the notion that if you want new things in life, you have to make room for them. I'm still coming to terms, but I think that I must part with my old systems. It's for the best....there's always someone out there that would take better care of my systems. I wish that there was an easy way to give my old stuff to someone I know would take care of them. I live in an inconvenient area in terms of post-office drop-off or pick-up. I don't want to haul a box of stuff for less than two miles in my car just to send it out...it's not worth it. Inversely, I don't want to inconvenience anyone who would want to pick it up, either. I do have a retro game store in the local vicinity (less than 10 miles out) that takes great care of their hardware. I really don't care how much they want to give me for it all....I just want the stuff out. But, they close at inconvenient hours, and I really do feel bad about taking money away from them for it (but honestly, would like something to compensate for my efforts). My easiest option right now is to donate all my stuff to the Vietnam Veterans of America Household Goods Donation because they do pick up, but I'm not happy about not knowing who will receive my stuff, if it gets received at all. And I'm sure videogames are not necessarily something that they would want.

I guess I'm asking for help here. Does anyone know of any services that I would be able to use to get my stuff out of my house with total peace of mind?

Can't Wait for Titanfall? Here are some Futuristic FPS Games You Can Play For Free.

I feel that it is my duty as a jaded gamer to start with my "contrarian" sentiment towards first-person shooters. I believe that the FPS genre has not changed significantly enough in almost ten years (with Halo marking the last major change to the genre) that it's not worth paying a full retail price for any FPS. Since the Free-to-Play model has been introduced to the genre, I've been getting my fill on that genre that way, and considering that there have been some great F2P FPS games, it's hard to convince me to cash in on a full-price game. However, it isn't entirely impossible to convince me. Very few full-price FPS games have been able to convince me to invest my hard-earned money into them, let alone make me consider looking into. My most recent exception to my "FPS is not worth my money" policy is Titanfall.

At the time of writing this, the Titanfall developers have been conducting a closed-beta testing session for about 48 hours, but only a select few (including myself) have been selected to gain access to the game this round. Naturally, this selection process has left the rest of the community needing to wait anxiously either for the next beta session or for the final release a month away. Thankfully, those who can find at least a little satisfaction out of watching gameplay video streams can have peace of mind knowing that EA didn't issue a non-disclosure agreement for during this test, but it wasn't always like this before this weekend's beta.

My friends at TheSpawnPoint Gaming Blog posted an article a few days before the beta that featured a couple of leaked videos for Titanfall. When EA announced the game at last year's E3, the trailers showed aspects of gameplay similar to ones that I've experienced in recent F2P FPS games. So naturally, before I watched the leaked videos, I was going to be all negative and dismissive by saying "been there, done that," but after seeing them, I actually wanted to play this game!

To expand on "been there, done that," I believe that Titanfall actually might play like three Free-to-Play games rolled into one. What I find attractive in this game is that it transitions from game type to game type seamlessly, so it would be like playing three of my favorite F2P games at the same time! Who wouldn't want to be part of THAT ménage à quatre of FPS gameage?!

Anyway, here are the three games I think Titanfall might play like....while I could be wrong, at least there are three new games you can play for free. Moreover, since the closed beta is upon a select few who have signed up for it, this may be able to tide the people who didn't get the opportunity to participate in the beta over while they wait for the final release next month.

Planetside 2 (PC, soon on PS4)

This first pick features futuristic, hectic, and beautiful first-person combat. I use "hectic" with a bit of reservation because things only get hectic if there are enough people playing in the same area; otherwise, the maps might be too vast for a 6-8 players to achieve a comparable combat experience. Similar to Titanfall, players are able to traverse terrain with the use of a jetpack or move around undetected with a cloaking device, but these are specific to particular soldier classes. Another major aspect in the game that Titanfall can relate to is vehicular combat. The thing is, you have all the ground and air vehicles you could ever need in full-scale combat, except bipedal tanks. However, if you're in the heat of battle, you will encounter a tank, turret, or aircraft while you're on foot more often than not. This unfortunate situation in Planetside 2 can help you train on the guerrilla tactics required to take down Titans from a distance on your lonesome. However, taking Titans down by jumping on them and shooting their head off is safely a unique experience to Titanfall.

Blacklight: Retribution (PC, PS4)

This is another game that features more futuristic, hectic, and beautiful first-person combat. Unlike Planetside's seemingly uncapped player limit, Retribution features 8v8 combat, so the pace of the game may be much more comparable to Titanfall than Planetside 2 is. Another thing unlike Planetside 2's metagame of conquering territory on a map, Retribution offers many other game modes that seem to also be in Titanfall, like Capture the Flag, Domination, and King of the Hill. Another key element in Retribution that Titanfall can relate to is the "Hardsuit," which is essentially a mech that you call for from HQ (it even deploys from the sky like a Titan!) if you want extra armor and firepower. Armed with a minigun and a railgun, you can take out a whole team of enemy soldiers by yourself if they are unprepared. The Hardsuit also take in a good deal of enemy fire while it keeps you safe. However, the downside to the Hardsuit is that it's very slow and unwieldy, and worse, it can be taken down with a direct hit from a single rocket. Judging from the Titanfall videos, Titans have much more agility, comparatively, and may have more weapons to play around with. Yet again, Titanfall has something unique to offer!

Hawken (PC)

The difference between the previous games that feature futuristic, hectic, and first-person combat is that Hawken features futuristic, hectic, PURE-MECH first-person combat. Unlike the clunky Hardsuits in Retribution, Hawken's mechs are quite agile and offer more than just a railgun and a minigun. But, unlike Titans, Hawken's mechs can jump and even hover while launching a barrage of weapons. Furthermore, players can heal their mechs in the middle of a match. But one thing that you can't do in Hawken is disembark from your mech and fight on foot. Furthermore, the Titan will actually continue fighting for you even when you're not piloting it! These features in Titanfall definitely add much more depth in gameplay, so you can look forward to that when you get your chance to play it.

PlayStation Home: Renovate or Die

After over six months, I had my PlayStation 3 resurrected from a "Yellow Light of Death" issue with the help of my friend, Gerard (thanks a million for the heat gun treatment!). I hadn't realized how much I had used the PS3 before it broke down until after it was fixed. After getting re-acclimated with using the system, I noticed that I spend a lot of time browsing the PlayStation Store, but not buying or demoing anything. Another thing I noticed is the amount of time I spend in PlayStation Home. But, when I signed back on a few weeks ago, something was different.

All of the Spaces I frequented just last year were empty. It was a pretty jarring experience for me to run around these huge empty landscapes without the familiar bombardment of text bubbles, crowds of dancing avatars, and ridiculous costumes. There was a bit of charm to see the Space actually being used as they were intended, despite the frustration of having to wait your turn to use a virtual pool table or arcade machine. And I was actually getting excited over the growing number of Spaces dedicated to Home games. Sodium ONE was nothing but a great idea, but seeing how empty that Space was just a few weeks ago, it looked like it never caught on.

PlayStation Home Appraisal

Surely, I wasn't the only one that saw the potential of PlayStation Home...so why isn't anyone using it now?

All right, I admit, I'm playing dumb for the sake of argument. To be honest, I guess I've always had a feeling of apprehension ever since I signed onto Home the first time. It sounded like a good idea when Sony was marketing it before it came out, but by the time it was released, the idea was already pretty stale.

The personalization features, such as modifying your avatar's likeness and arranging furniture in your virtual apartment, suffered from clunky interface controls, making the process time-consuming and frustrating. The Spaces that you could explore were really large but didn't have much to do in them at all, and having your avatar spend most of its time literally running around in these large landscapes definitely didn't help make things interesting. Communicating with other people was a real pain as well. Aside from having to be within a virtual earshot of the other person's avatar, you either had to struggle with the on-screen keyboard or make a big production to set up a keyboard or headset (or both) just to say hello. Perhaps the biggest setback for the Home experience was the network issues. Home suffered from crazy lag, most likely due to how Home spent most of its time downloading every single avatar–that includes their likenesses and the costumes they wear (which you might not have yourself, which would add extra load)–in the current Space you're in. Shopping for costumes, furniture, and accessories was a real pain because of all the downloading and processing happening in the background....I don't see how anyone would want to buy anything!

With all that said, I honestly like Home and I hope it thrives, but not many people have such low standards as I do for games. I don't have any idea where resolving Home's issues stands in Sony's priority list, but if they want it to survive, they're going to have to make a major overhaul to it if they want it to continue. Below are several suggestions for a "renovation blueprint" to improve on the PlayStation Home experience.

Step 1: A Social Network Should Act Like One

Here is the first, most important way Home can be a better community. Sony goes out of the way to call Home a social network, yet it does little to resemble a social network. One major problem with Home is that it's just too darned flashy for its own good. When someone mentions Facebook or Twitter, the last thing people think of is making an avatar run around aimlessly in a virtual space. Social networks are all about instant access to information...what better way to do that than make Home a simpler menu-driven, chatroom-based experience? Yeah, you read it right: cut out the "running around" part of Home. It's just a boring waste of time to run around anyway. Throwing all of the interaction points in a Space into a simple menu will not only save time, but be able to satisfy the need for instant access to information and also ensure that users don't miss a single thing. Currently, not everything that a user can interact with in a Space is clearly marked, so listing all points of interest will help ensure that people get to see everything the Space has to offer. Lastly, switching to menus would eliminate the slightly jarring disconnect between running around in a virtual space with your avatar to shopping at a Purchase Point. Because Home is supposed to be an immersive virtual experience, having a very non-dynamic menu for the stores is more of an injustice than a simple oversight.

For communications, stripping the interface to a couple of simple text windows really shouldn't be an issue since Home's communication system is already based on how messages are handled on PSN friend lists, so little would change if at all. Furthermore, eliminating the need to place your avatar near other avatars to talk to them would remove all the annoying aspects of communicating on Home and distilling the social media aspect down into its purest form: the chat window. Despite it looking kinda pretty, the colorful mess of word bubbles and the frustration of trying to read blocked word bubbles would be filtered out as well. Mic and keyboard support should be retained for people already using those devices. Perhaps using the chat room or voice chat functionality might see more use in Home since chatting is more relevant there.

Step 2: ...But Keep It Pretty

While I may be preaching that Home should be neutered of its avatar-driven immersion in a virtual world, I never said anything about getting rid of everything. There's no reason why Sony has to get rid of everyone's hard work....devs and users alike spent a lot of time working on avatars, picking wardrobe, designing costumes, furniture and accessories, and laying out Spaces. Heck, some users actually paid real money for their stuff, so it would be bad business to remove everything entirely. So, instead of throwing all that away, just repurpose them.

For avatars, it just wouldn't make much sense to drop them. XBL has their avatars, while Nintendo has their Miis, so it'd be odd for Sony not to have avatars. In XBL's case, they have successfully sold clothes, costumes, and accessories without the use of a virtual environment, so it shouldn't be strange for Sony's avatars to be just avatars.

As for the Spaces, these can be left completely intact, but instead of users running around in them, they can be used as a creative way to represent the Spaces' content. Just imagine that when you first enter a Space, you're shown the entrance or lobby of the Space. If you select Point of Interest A in the menu, the camera zooms through the Space until it reaches the virtual location of Point of Interest A. To add to the aesthetic, the developers can throw in some randomly generated avatars to populate the area and make it look busy (why randomly generated avatars should be used instead of real avatars will be mentioned later). On top of all that, the user's own avatar could be on screen and react while they zoom around the Space...maybe even teleport from place to place.

Another thing to do is allow users to peruse the Spaces with a free-range camera. It was pretty limiting to only be able to take pictures at your avatar's eye level, and some of the Spaces were moderately impressive. Being able to take more dynamic shots of Spaces would make for some sweet XMB wallpapers.

Currently in Home, interaction points in Spaces, such as kiosks or machines you walk up to in able to play a mini game or look at something, usually have a cap on how many users can use them at the same time. Whether this is caused by the PS3's limitations is unknown to me, but perhaps making avatars and Spaces abstract would lift the limit, so people don't have to wait until other people "get off the machine" to get their turn.

Step 3: Optimize Network Connectivity

Like I said before, because Home spends most of its time downloading and caching avatar and Space data, getting rid of Home's virtual reality aspects would relieve most of the strain on the network, so that solves most of the problem right there.

But, what about those users that want to show off their avatar's costumes, etc? This is where Home should follow an "on-demand" model, where instead of forcing all users to download all the avatar data loaded in the visited Space, they should only load the avatars they choose to see. Users should be able to pick from a list of avatars, and be able to drill down to which interaction point they are currently using in the Space. Perhaps for those users that really need to know, add the gender of the users to increase incentive to look around. Or better yet, add some kind of "Meeting Place" for each Space so users can sign into that Space to just strut around. Yeah, yeah, I know that sounds similar to how it is now, but the point is to make the avatar loading process on-demand. Besides, since there are soooo many users that just love to dance around for hours on end in one place, it would be tragic to remove that feature completely, right?

Users shouldn't be forced to load all that data if they don't care about it. When I use Home, I'm not concerned about meeting people....I just want to play games, check out the Spaces, and get free stuff for my avatar. By making avatar data optional, I can guarantee you that perusing Home would be a much smoother experience.

So, as I said before, I really don't know what Sony thinks of Home these days. They don't really seem to advertise it in any kind of big campaign, let alone mention it at a professional level in conferences. All flaws aside, I really hope Home survives the transition between system generations, because there were some really cool things happened. They had music streams you could listen to and request songs; they promoted upcoming games with themed Spaces where you could get exclusive costumes and accessories; hell, they even streamed the launch of the space shuttle Endeavor back in 2011. My favorite part was seeing full-scale games develop on Home. Sodium ONE, Sodium2, Novus Prime, and No Man's Land were respectable games worth playing. Admittedly, I also thought that the people and the community had their moments. Sometimes I signed on to bother interact with people, and honestly, some people were actually pretty cool to talk to.

Sony really had a good idea with Home, but its facade needs a bit of a refreshing. If they want people to keep coming back, they need to renovate or force to shut it down.

My Current Love/Hate Thing with Capcom.

Damn you, Capcom.

Apparently, with all their terrible business practices and lackluster and/or regurgitated content, Capcom STILL has the ability to get me to consider buying more of their stuff.

I downloaded Capcom Arcade Cabinet over the weekend after I found out that Black Dragon/Black Tiger was available to play for free. I have never played the game before, but after I watched the guys at Giant Bomb play it, I wanted in on the action.

Younger gamers may not understand this, but I thought this game was brilliant for a 1987 production. The graphics and animation were awesome (however, a lack of parallax kind of stunted the atmosphere a bit) and the gameplay was typically hard (broken?) for an arcade game of that time. As for sound, Capcom did what they could with the board's sound chip for both SFX and music. I like how each stage's music held a theme, but the tinny instruments started droning on my ears after a couple of hours.

It took me a couple of hours and a million continues to finish the game, but I left the game feeling satisfied and wanting to play more; however, the game isn't the only thing that compels me to fire the game up again.

It seems that Capcom has taken design cues from Sega's Vintage Collection series—a series that I am also fond of—to present their own set of classic games, down to the synth-heavy menu music. I joke around that Capcom shares Sega's ideal that an excessive use of synth wave instruments from a Casio keyboard was how videogame music was intended to sound like back then, but that electronic sound really does have a nostalgic ring to it. Music aside, the presentation of Capcom Arcade Cabinet is really solid. The beautiful collage (right) is actually used as the game selection screen. Each game in the collection is represented by the character (or in the instance of the 194X series, the planes) the player controls. The games you own in the collection have their characters in full color; the games you don't have are just black silhouettes of the characters; and the games with demos available are colored in a faint grayscale.

This is pretty.

Capcom is delivering the games in the collection in sets of three every two weeks, categorized by their year of release. According to what I've seen in the PlayStation Store, people can also grab the games individually à la carte after their respective sets have been released. Giant Bomb mentions in their Quick Look video that Capcom has already announced that once all of the game sets are released, they will be selling the entire set for a discounted price. Contrary to their complaints (they believe that people that purchase the sets as they come out will be ripped off because they won't be getting the discount), I feel that I could easily hold out until the whole collection is available for purchase. My way of thinking is that these games must have been re-released time and time again on various systems in various combinations since the PlayStation. I probably have all of these games (and more) in my original XBox library under the Capcom Classics Collection series, so I think it's pretty bad that they're asking for money from me again. Furthermore, even the extra content—promotional art, production sketches, and trivia for each game—is probably all recycled as well, so what's the point in buying this collection?

This is where I hate myself....Despite having to purchase these games all over again, the presentation is almost irresistible. I've already mentioned the sweet collage, right? Another perk is being able to see all the gallery art at a high resolution. The gallery also provides a music player for each game, so that's really cool....ringtone factory, anyone? Also, for the hardcore gamers out there, there are options like Score Attack, where people can put their best scores on the world leaderboard, a Save Replay (I'm not sure myself, but it will save your entire playthrough data) so you can watch your sessions later, and even a Practice Mode, where players can play stages individually to study and memorize all of the enemy patterns and level design to get that perfect score...legitimately. Lastly, for convenience sake, I feel that stuff like retro gaming collections are best as digital content anyway. Installing all of the games on the hard drive will definitely reduce or eliminate any load times, and I also feel that it's just plain weird to have to pop in a disc to play these games....

Oh yeah, and let's not forget that sweet collage.

Anyway, the first set is $4.99 (only two games), due to the fact that they're throwing in Black Tiger for free, but the subsequent packs will be available for $9.99. There are five packs in total, making the entire set $44.95 via piecemeal, but the whole set, available May 21, will be $29.99. Additionally, there are two "secret" games that you can unlock by fulfilling certain requirements. I hope you don't need to buy the individual sets to unlock these games....that would be horrible on Capcom's part.

On a side note, I noticed that the initial download was 1.5GB...considering that the original ROMs are comparatively tiny, and all of the gallery art and extras are such a high resolution, I'd say that you're downloading the entire set from the get-go, and you're just paying for the unlocks. To me, despite this sounding similar to the Street Fighter × Tekken "everything is on the disc" debacle, I don't find this much of a problem...probably because these old games are already complete. I don't know, I guess I have a bias towards Capcom's older games.

Ono, Not Again! Another Darkstalkers rumor drops on the internet.

So yeah, the buzz of a new Darkstalkers game (known as the "Vampire" series in Japan) hit the internet some time over the weekend, as I'm sure fighting game fans like me probably know.  Considering how I'm reacting to the news, I wonder if I can consider myself as a fan anymore.  When I heard about this, I got that sinking feeling....for some reason, I don't want a new Vampire game.  At least, not from today's Capcom.

I don't know about you, but I haven't been very happy with Capcom's fighting games as of late.  For Street Fighter IV, it just didn't keep me engaged, and I don't think it's because I have less time to play games overall.  I still can't believe I did it, but I sold my copies of Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV last month.  What's more unbelievable is that I really don't feel any remorse for doing so.  Where have things gone wrong???

While it's not accurate to hold him solely responsible, I feel that Yoshinori Ono is at least a representative of the current Capcom fighting game era....and I don't mean this in a good way.  I feel that the current era is an ugly one.  All of the fighting games made under Ono's charge have lacked soul in comparison to their predecessors.  Furthermore, Capcom has taken advantage of their fans by extorting them into buying almost every small update and forcing them to pre-order for exclusive content.  When SSFIV came out, I thought they were doing it right by giving it a $40 price tag, but when I saw that Capcom gouged customers for unlocking costumes that were on the disc, that $40 lost its appeal.  I REEEALLY want Street Fighter x Tekken (Zangief and Hug Zero, baby! Team Ton-o-meat!!), but I heard they're shipping discs with locked content again. If I'm buying this game, it ain't for $60.

To be honest, there was a time when money was no object, and I would make a Capcom fighting game purchase happen, no matter what the cost.  But, the way things are now in my life and in the game industry, if it costs this much for a fan to cash in on a game they're not sure about, then I can no longer be a fan.  I got better things to do with my money.

The End of the Gaming World?

Howdy, internet.

Well, It's been almost a year since I've written a blog...so I've made up for lost time by writing a huge blog about something that's been on my mind.

So yeah, I've talked about this before, but I didn't get to finish it.  While I stopped talking about it over a year ago, I still think the same thing: the game industry is setting up for another crash.  I feel that the only thing that keeps it from happening is the consumers' patience; it's only a matter of time before our patience runs out.

For those of you that weren't aware, prepare for a long history lesson about the history of the great video game industry through the eyes of a old jaded gamer.  So expect a lot of negativity, but I hope that this will make you aware of the dark side of gaming and what might happen.

History Repeats Itself

George Santayana's famous quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," has proven to be an axiom we all experience some time in our lives, if we are not careful.  In other words, history repeats itself if we fail to learn from past mistakes.  In this case, the Video Game Crashes of the past (1977 and 1983) will inevitably happen as long as the current industry doesn't do anything to change their fate.

As of late, more and more gamers have aired their grievances over games and the companies behind them.  Despite this, publishers are not doing much, if anything, to cater to their customers' demands.  The pressure is only going to build up between the industry and its customers and eventually, the bubble's gonna pop.  But, this isn't the first time this has happened.

If you look into the details of the prior game crashes (Wikipedia summarizes both events here), you'll begin to see a pattern.  One thing in common between the two crashes is oversaturation.  In 1977, many companies in the market jumped ship, due to an oversaturation of systems that had a terribly limited number of games built-in.  Magnavox played a major role in the oversaturation, having released eight systems in a span of three years (beat that, Apple!).  The market recovered shortly after Space Invaders came around, but an oversaturation of systems occurred again in 1983.  This time around, however, games were more of the cause of the second crash.  High expectations were met with poor quality software, whether it was a bad arcade port (Pac-Man for the Atari 2600) or a terrible licensed games (the infamous E.T. game, again on the Atari 2600).  Furthermore, many companies were coming out of the woodwork to try cashing into the videogame craze that spread across North America, but because most of these companies were ill-equipped for programming quality games.  This resulted in a surge of crappy games that piled up in retail stores.  People were disappointed with these games, so they told their friends not to by them.  They collected dust and took up space on retail shelves, et cetera, and the rest is history.

Now Are You Beginning to See The Pattern?

Let's jump forward to 2012.  So, the industry has enjoyed almost 30 years of prosperity, but I feel another industry-crashing storm is a-brewing.  The videogame industry is starting to fall into the same patterns that preceded each videogame crash.

Oversaturation of Games
The current generation of gaming came up with the term "shovelware" to refer to the large amount of poor-quality games that started filling the store shelves.  Add to that the plethora of underpar licensed games....sure, a few of these games have been decent, but we all know how most licensed games turn out.  Also, while the sun goes down on the "plastic guitar" craze, we're left with all those gigantic boxes piled up in retail stores.  Used-game stores have forsaken the concept of buying and reselling all those clunky peripherals because they have no space for them, and no one wants them.  But, the pile-up doesn't end there; we have games that you can't buy without an accompanying peripheral.  Skylanders comes to mind first, followed by all those Cabela's hunting games....all tucked up next to Rock Band, Rock Revolution, Band Hero, and all their third-party peripherals.

Oversaturation of Systems
Sony, Microsoft, and (to some extent) Nintendo have all been guilty of overloading the market with multiple versions of their respective systems for this generation.  Whether they release a special color for their consoles, bump up the specs a bit, or drop their consoles a size or two, stores and consumers alike are feverishly trying to keep up with the high volume of redundant hardware.  In some cases (especially the DS and the PSP), features like more cache space or a built-in camera were added—or, in the case of PSPgo, removed—to drastically improve the functionality of the hardware, forcing some people to upgrade to the newer versions.  Those who don't keep up with the updates are bound to be confused and/or frustrated over the many similar-yet-different options for each system.

Lack of Publishing Control....?
It's hard to say at this point in time whether there is a solid argument about this.  When you count the AAA titles, the budget titles, the shovelware, and the independent games, we have more than enough games to fill our backlog, but laws have been put in place since the crash of '83 that prevent just anyone from publishing a game about anything for any given platform and expect a profit.  Development studios must follow a chain of command if they want to make money with their games.  If you have the money to burn, you could sign with companies like EA or Ubisoft to press your games onto disc.  If you want to take the indie route, you can ask Valve, Apple, and the like to distribute your game digitally.  So generally, one could say that publishers have got the control thing down pat.  However, Tim Schafer's Kickstarter initiative to ask end-users for funding the next Double Fine project instead of publishers might indicate that the publishers' grip on game distribution might be slipping.  Publishers have a tendency to take over the creative process of a game and altering the final product for the sake of maximizing sales...this obviously doesn't work too well for the creators.  The fundraiser's immediate success may serve as a beacon to other developers to fight for their freedom of creative control over their own projects, but nothing is for certain right now.  Only time will tell if an uprising against publishers will happen.

Loss of Interest
The Crash of '83 happened mostly in part due to people with high expectations being repeatedly let down with inadequate games.  The Crash of '77 was much more simple: people just got tired of playing the same games.  Today, the video game industry is setting up for a one-two combination of both factors.  Last year alone showed that consumers' frustrations over constant disappointment is starting to come to a head with the attack of the three-quels. Complaints over game redundancy have been much less apparent, but exist nonetheless.  I'm sure every gamer knows at least one person that has said "I'm tired of playing [genre]" or "All of those are the same to me."  People can only be frustrated so many times before they decide to give up and move on.

Here Comes A New Challenger!

Since the game industry had plenty of time to evolve without being disrupted by any major market disaster, there are many more factors involved in making a game than there were back in the 80's.  Like a machine, however, the more moving parts are involved, the more things can go wrong and the harder it is to maintain.  On top of the factors that have caused the video game industry to fall in the past, there is a new host of other factors that will help sink a larger industry just as fast if things are left unchecked.

The Worldwide Market
While the United States wasn't the only country involved in the evolution of video games throughout history, the first two market crashes were pretty much self-contained within North American shores.  However, between then and now, Japan controlled the market for most of the time, but focus has recently shifted back to the Americans and the growing demand for Hollywood-calibre experiences.  Additionally, most games today are developed by studios located in Canada, France, Singapore, and other countries all around the world.  Should the video game industry collapse today, it would most certainly leave an impression on the world economy.

Running Out of Creative Ammo or Public Complacency?
A concrete catalog of genres in video games came about during the Atari 2600 era and has since evolved into a vast spectrum of categories and their respective sub-genres.  However, we haven't really seen anything entirely new in a while.  Sure, the indie market has emerged in the past ten years and has provided us with fresh ideas from time to time, but those games usually are either too obscure to fall under a single genre, or do not fall under a genre other than the miscellaneous "indie" genre.  One can speculate that the industry is just simply running out of original ideas, but then again, what if we factor in the business aspect of making games?  In other words, if publishers don't think that a game will sell well, they won't release it.  It seems that the games that sell well today are games played in either first-person perspective or third-person perspective.  Even IP reboots, like XCOM or Syndicate, just to name a couple, have forsaken their original strategic/tactical gameplay elements in favor of first-person action.  Whether the gameplay change was a creative or executive decision remains to be seen, but in the end, we're stuck with two more first-person games added to an already oversaturated genre.

Diminishing Returns
There was a time when video games were written by a single person.  These days, games require very large teams to produce.  Furthermore, to keep up with the demand for Hollywood-calibre productions, studios hire Hollywood directors, writers, composers, and voice talents.  In short, games can be expensive to make.  Unfortunately, sometimes games are not well received, regardless of the production costs.  Whether it's because the expectations for the game were set too high, or the game just sucked, game studios and publishers suffer great losses and sometimes even shut down.  If things don't change, these costly disappointments will start shutting down even the biggest studios.

Rushing Incomplete or Unpolished Games Out The Door
For the sake of striking the iron while it's hot, publishers insist on keeping an aggressive deadline for games so they can maximize sales while people are still excited for their games, whether the dev studios can finish or refine the games in time or not.  There have been a good number of games that were obviously released incomplete, leaving gamers frustrated and feeling ripped off having paid full price for an incomplete product.  Even though publishers sometimes go out of their way to announce patches or add-ons for their games just prior to their release, the damage is already done.  In more extreme cases, some games are sold with entire pieces of the game missing, and customers are charged for the missing pieces when they are released as an add-on.  If enough people catch onto this marketing strategy, this will give publishers a good amount of trouble.

Obsolecence of the Handheld Gaming Market
While I make it a point to never listen to what he says, Michael Pachter was actually onto something when he predicted that the handheld console era is coming to a close back in 2010, but I don't think it was wholly accurate.  Contrary to what Pachter said, I feel that mobile phones will have a greater impact on the handheld console market than the iPod Touch, mostly because it's a phone as well a multimedia device.  Also, now that Android phones have proven their worth as a competitor to Apple, consumers now have the freedom of choice.  Most importantly, mobile devices are now powerful enough to run the Unreal Engine.  Essentially, we don't need the 3DS or the Vita anymore, because our phones can practically do anything now.

Game Over....New Game.

So what happens when the video game industry goes down?  Whether big publishing companies go small and live on with the mobile division or abandon video games altogether and go into other software markets like alarm clock apps, one thing's for sure: the mainstream will stop caring about games.  If you ask me, I'm really hoping for this to happen, but I'm sure you know about that, considering I just wrote a GIGANTIC blog about it.  That said, I'm not too worried about video games disappearing from existence, because as history has proven, video games will not only find a way to survive but evolve into something greater.

While things fell apart around the industry in both 1977 and 1983, a parallel world of video game development ran quietly underground, which was mostly unaffected by the events that happened above them.  While the public focused on burning the Odyssey and Pong machines in 1977, university students across the U.S. were developing the precursors of RPGs, MMORPGs, and FPSs on their school's mainframes.  In 1983, when the public enjoyed rumors of Atari burying truckloads of copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600 somewhere in New Mexico, the personal computer scene was on the rise.  Aside from receiving faithful ports of arcade games, magazines published source code for games, so that users can type-in the code onto their machines to be rewarded with a game to play and customize to their liking.

If (or when?) the current industry collapses, what underground movement will keep games alive?  Thanks to low-cost, indie-friendly publishers like Valve, Apple, or Google, anyone willing to dedicate their time to making a game would be able to distribute their games with little overhead from publishing costs.  Secondly, the free-to-play model seems to be making great strides in helping bigger game studios build larger and higher-quality games without needing to rely heavily on publishers.

In the case of consoles, unlike the consoles that were around during the first two Crashes, this generation's systems (or possibly, whatever future generation the Crash will happen) have a good chance of survival, thanks to the digital distribution of games.  Even if stores, physical or otherwise, will stop carrying disc-based games in their warehouses, willing gamers will still be able to buy games on their respective platforms' networks (XBL, PSN, Nintendo Network, etc.).  However, because consoles today are primarily disc-based systems, and the number of disc-based games would significantly be reduced due to a lack of publishers, consoles may become obsolete.  This is especially true if you factor in the fact that PCs are getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerful.

In any event, video games will survive.  That is, if the rest of the world survives 2012....but that's another story.