A good reason why restrictions exist on what video games are published

[CM30]

And why so many people are wrong about some free for all downloadable games market replacing the current model is that the publishers act as... well, book publishers, in keeping the vast majority of truly awful stuff from reaching a mass audience. When people complain about how Nintendo is pricing out independant developers and talking about how free games are rubbish (they're not exactly right in the latter, but might be partially accurate in regards to a large amount of them), they fail to realise that the whole model really does exist for the customer to some degree.

Think about it. While many published games are either horrible or mediocre, it's only a small percentage of the wave of rubbish that would end up available without any real editorial control in developer kits/licensed developers/etc. Know that old quote people call Sturgeon's Law? It's extremely visible in the downloadable app/free/cheap games market. Just keep that in mind when you complain that Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft are too strict on what to allow on their systems, because with no barriers, you don't just get the underrated/hidden gems and the good indie games, but all the awful ones as well.

More importantly, I think the reason that downloadable games in some Apple like marketplace aren't the future is pretty much because customers do want quality control. Sure, for a device which also does a bunch of other stuff, the quality of the games is of minimal importance, but when people buy a dedicated video game console like the 3DS, they want to have a guarantee that the games are at least playable and have some substance to them.

But I think many developers, especially independant ones like to ignore this point and imagine the future as some free for all no barrier to entry system simply because they're developers... if it makes sense, they want such a system because it benefits them regardless of the consumer. Think about that. All those people wanting any old individual/small group/company to be able to make games on no budget without restrictions simply want a vanity press equivalent for games. But gamers don't. Gamers don't want a massive selection where about fifty million rubbish titles exist along about ten million good ones. Forget the hype, if you want to see how well such a free for all games industry would do, maybe look at how (not particularly well) most books available from vanity presses like PublishAmerica do.

Is this possibly accurate in some way?

 

[NintenDan]

I think that's one point a lot of people probably overlook. Everybody hears the sad and touching stories of a person with an amazing game that just doesn't get published because the evil corporations don't want to let people succeed in life, but I don't think that's the case, as you've pointed it out. They have to be sure they don't just let anybody get the chance to make a game or else there will be, like you said, ten million good games in a stack of fifty million games in total, which is something I don't want to have to sort through.

There are heaps of other ways to enter the game industry though, Plants Vs. Zombies started on the computer, and worked it's way over to the App Store, and now I'm pretty certain it's been announced for the DS.

I'm not entirely educated on the subject, but I know I didn't really think about the amount of crap that could be made if there were no little to no restrictions on what games were published.