Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away…
via Asking Big Questions #011: “Is Game Quality Improving?” — The Well-Red Mage
The Well-Red Mage has asked another Big Question: is game quality improving?
Of course, the answer is “no”.
Simply because of the mathematics involved, each generation’s games become worse on average.
Ever since the video game market recovered from the crash, it’s grown progressively larger.
In the process, brand competition has grown in proportion to consumer demand, leading to an increasingly-lower lowest common denominator that brings the bar down with it.
The result is a video game industry that’s becoming, on average, more generic.
While the potential for quality that an individual game has is increasing, so too is the quantity of games overall.
The ratio of quality to quantity is getting wider – an overall decrease in quality on average.
The good games are becoming better but the bad games are becoming more abundant in comparison.
This pattern isn’t exclusive to video games but of entertainment products in wider culture as a whole.
Each new film is less likely to be worth watching, each new song is less likely to be worth hearing, each new book is less likely to be worth reading.
The ones that are worthwhile will be better than their predecessors but as they become more difficult to find, the effort required becomes greater with less probability of success.
The Universe is expanding every moment, and with each of those moments, less and less of it contains any life.
Alex Sigsworth 