8 Ways The Gaming Industry Can Improve
Why do we keep putting up with this??
As much as we all love playing the titles it produces, the gaming industry at large isn't exactly a place of harmony and purity.
Far from it in fact, as in this current era, we're putting up with more utterly greasy practices than ever before.
Microtransactions, data mining scams, homogeneity, crunch culture, extortionate prices, and more are a daily occurrence and yet what we often fail to realize is that these practices are only allowed to continue because we the paying public let them.
We, despite every action made by publishers, are the true decision-makers of the industry and if we speak with our wallets and call out those making shady practices the norm really can have an impact going forward.
Now it's not all doom and gloom out there, but there are many, many ways in which the industry can improve, and as I'll detail here, these are things you can affect by letting your voice be heard.
8. Lower Prices For Digital Downloads
With the recent closure of the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eStores, the conversation once again turns to the age-old debate of digital vs physical copies of video games, and while there are cases for the former allowing for faster loading and the ability to take your game library with you on just one device, the latter presents it's benefits in just one sentence.
"But I actually own my !*$% game"
Whatever side you fall on, there is one thing that we can all agree with and that's that the price of digital download titles is not something that seems fair all things considered. Remind me again why I'm paying the same price as a physical version for a copy of a game that lasts as long as the platform is willing to support it and now takes a huge chunk of my hard drive?
Surely the publisher is saving a tonne of production costs when it comes to disc or cartridge creation as well as packaging?
Therefore why aren't the savings passed on to the public? Well according to some publishers you're paying for the "convenience" of having a non-tangible product, which in reality holds as much water as a sieve.
Going forward, publishers must start to reward those paying for digital copies, especially with the ballooning price of games in general, being a literal paywall for some.
Honestly, if they want to bang on about "convenience", we might start "conveniently" skipping their titles in general.