Things the gaming industry will regret in 10 years

Gaming has come a long way in the last few years. What was once a niche media platform strictly enjoyed by the sort of geeks you'd only find in a bad '80s high school movie has now become a form of blockbuster entertainment (and, in many cases, an art form) revered the world over by millions upon millions of players. And as the industry has progressed and advanced, so too has the technology and the culture behind it.

Despite this, there's plenty of room for improvement. Gaming today is fraught with issues, and money-grabbing schemes by publishers are just the tip of the digital iceberg. These are the failures, the tricks, and the schemes that the industry — and all those who are a part of it — are going to really, really regret in just a few years.

And then there's the sexism. Whereas a failure to diversify has been a passive failure on the part of the industry, in some cases akin to embarrassing negligence, this is an active failure on the part of creators who have no tact or sensitivity in portraying women in their games. Sexism in video games, of course, is no new thing. From skimpy outfits (RPGs, we're looking at you) to the exclusion of female playable characters to a weird insistence on following the male gaze, it's hard to argue that video games have been a bastion for feminist thought or progress.

But as times change (and they will – the gradual and relative improvement in how film and television have portrayed women shows what will soon enough happen with games), there can be little doubt that we'll all look back on the old days, in the '80s, '90s, '00s and even the '10s, as a jurassic era in which out-of-touch makers couldn't stop producing games in which women were treated as jokes. What we have now and what we used to have is likely to be seen as nothing more than a shameful embarrassment.

Day 1 downloadable content: the words alone are enough to send shivers into even the most hardcore gamer. The concept is simple — you purchase a new release, race home, and put it in, only to find that the developers have created extra content for you to enjoy that they left out of the game itself. And it's yours for only $3.99.

It's a deeply irritating practice, and one that stems purely from a publisher's desire to make more money from a game. DLC began as a way for makers to keep making after their game had been released, and for new levels, modes, and maps to be added once you already had the game in your hands. With Day 1 DLC, however, it's become (for some studios) little more than daylight robbery. The good news, however, is that Day 1 DLC is actually bad for business. A franchise or publisher that gains a reputation for offering Day 1 DLC risks damaging its brand and future sales, to the point where, in the long term, they're going to start losing more money than they make. Once the industry realizes this, you can expect it to distance itself from the practice quicker than you can say "ripoff." The few publishers who stick with it will (hopefully) see their reputation damaged almost irreparably — and it's them who'll regret it most of all.

Motion control is the gaming equivalent of 3-D movies. Like 3-D, it came onto the scene with a bang, was embraced by the vast majority of mainstream consoles (such as the PS3's Sixaxis controller and the Xbox Kinect), and even led to one or two successes, like the Nintendo Wii.

Motion control is also comparable to 3-D in the sense that people are at last figuring out that it's really nothing more than a gimmick — a product of its time that inspired too few good things and too many cringe-worthy embarrassments. It made you look stupid, it was frequently broken or unusable and, outside of Nintendo, the only games we got out of it were monstrosities like Kinect Star Wars. The times they are a-changin' and the fad is coming to an unhappy end. By a decade's time, the only studio that will be glad they ever went with motion control will be Nintendo, and the catastrophic failure of the Wii U means even they will regret sticking instead of folding on this particular piece of technology.

As consoles have slipped ahead in the race for mainstream appreciation, the PC has been left behind a little, both by casual customers and by creators. As a result, major releases are too often excluded from the PC. Other times, the port is a buggy, unplayable mess — if it plays at all. Rockstar is a particularly famous example of a studio that neglected the PC, most specifically with Red Dead Redemption, which never saw a PC release despite a major backlash from fans.

The problem is, the PC isn't exactly a niche platform. Rockstar itself learned this when its release of Grand Theft Auto V for PC turned out to be a gargantuan hit, bringing in two million copies in the first month of release. Once the console industry realizes how much money it can make with a little more effort in PC ports, they're going to regret not having done so earlier.

The Grand Budapest Hotel cost $25 million to make. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind cost $20 million. Baby Driver cost $35 million. Do you know how much it cost to produce Destiny, the so-so Activision game you probably haven't heard from since it released? Try a reported $500 million, including marketing. Too many games these days cost too much to make, and make too little of a return to justify their existence. Releases like Destiny or The Old Republic (reportedly $200 million) funnel in huge budgets and often fail spectacularly on launch.

It's entirely possible, however, that the growing popularity of low-budget, indie games will lead to a scaling-back of budgets on the part of most (but not all) studios. Smaller will become better, and games like Destiny and The Old Republic will be remembered as the gaming equivalents of that giant hotel in North Korea that nobody ever wanted. Or, you know, it might get much worse. But here's hoping.