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• Steve: "I almost feel like the games that are the ones I like the most are kind of becoming an endanger : the archvile
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  Later on...
  
  Jake: "I think games are in flux more, and I think people's interests in them are still a weird sort of transient thing; you'll end up getting a generation of people who grew up on a DS and Facebook, more so than us who grew up on a Nintendo and a PC."
  
  Chris: "So why do those people growing up, take pre... like, you know what I mean, like, if we've already had generations of people growing up on this, doesn't that imply that the people growing up on Facebook or whatever, that's equally... transient..."
  
  Steve: "...the generational falloff, I think, is a real thing; people from prior generations, bit by bit, tend not to play as much stuff, you know, and the younger generation is going to be the ones making up the core of... 'we spend X number of dollars per week on this thing, and it's going to be higher than the guys who are now like 40 or 50, and Half-Life 1 is part of their upbringing."
  
  I can definitely see this; I'm an "NES and PC generation" guy, and I've already seemingly seen the GBA and Halo generation take over the mainstream action genre. Pretty soon it'll be the DS and Facebook generation. I don't think it's a complete replacement, but the GBA / Halo crowd is the "gaming generation" being catered to the most by the marketers at Activision Blizzard, EA, Take Two, Ubisoft, etc.
  
  At 56:44, Steve continues on about the budget hurdle:
  
  Steve: "Some inherent aspects of these kinds of games require... maybe not, but a certain level of, you know, money and team size to actually carry off something like this; I guess if you could..."
  
  Jake: "This is being [garbled] by the author of 'Game Noir', the classic blog post! You're selling yourself out here, Steve!"
  
  (Note: Gamasutra opinion article: "Is the Industry Ready For Its 'Game Noir'?", Steve Gaynor, December 31, 2007: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16591 )
  
  Steve: "Yeah... [groans]... If you could maintain fidelity and scale overall scope, then I guess, you know, you could do the same thing with less money and a smaller team."
  
  Chris: "I mean, I think that'll start to become more true, when you look... the stuff that smaller and smaller teams are doing now is kind of mind-blowing, even as mainstream game industry teams balloon constantly. I wouldn't be all that broken up if that type of game that I enjoy became a bit more of a niche target; when I look outside of video games, most of the stuff that I enjoy, be it movies, or books, or whatever, television... most of the stuff that I enjoy is the stuff that isn't the big centerpiece marquee titles; most of it's the stuff that has some decent awareness behind it, but isn't like the absolute blockbuster akin to a Modern Warfare 2 launch. The equivalent of that in the movie world is usually not what I care about."
  
  Jake: "The thing that's always gonna be tough in games, though, is if you want a world, that's the most expensive think you can make in a game, is a big explorable world. And that's the thing that you get for free, or at least for cheap, or you can imply a lot more easily in a TV show, because you don't have to show the parts that..."
  
  I can agree that there's hope in the smaller teams that know where their limitations are; Trine, Torchlight, and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity are three examples of this that I bought last year and fully enjoyed. And does there really need to be a "big explorable world"? How about if it's big enough? Or if it's not a real world, but something abstract (like Tron 2.0) or alien (like Unreal 1)? There are developers who could pull off something similar if they know how they can limit the scope of their projects in a way that won't be a perceivable limit to gameplay.
  
  One last thing: there was this post from Chris early in the morning of April 6: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=22612903 . I don't know if that was made before or after the recording session, but it's interesting to contrast and compare this post with minutes 49 to 60 of The Idle Thumbs Podcast 5.

  Apr 09, 2010 6:36pm PDT
  Later on... Jake: "I think games are in flux more, and I think people's interests in them are still a : the archvile
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