Crash Down
In the late 1900s, a new form of entertainment was born: the video game. This digital alternative for entertainment had been steadily growing in popularity, seen as a novelty more than anything, a nice change of pace from playing a board game or seeing a film in a theatre. It was a niche market, an expensive investment for most households at the time; the cost to start the gaming hobby was eye-wateringly expensive, but the industry slowly but surely grew. As the growth of any industry forms, titans of said industry rise in the wake of it . One such company was Atari, a California-based game company formed in 1972, and for a while, it was the company that beat some who tried but couldn’t escape the shadow it casts. In the end, Atari destroyed itself and the games industry, as in 1983, the video game market crashed. It was a slow descent as many mistakes were made by early game publisher, adding more and more straw to the proverbial back of consumers until something needed to give, and something did. Since then, the games industry has been resurrected, spared the fate of being a lousy fad, now growing into a gigantic market. New titans of industry formed from the ashes of the old era standing taller than ever before, but within these new titans, the phantom pain of past mistakes still lingers, becoming cracks in this new beast. Old mistakes become new, resulting from the industry’s success. With the writing on the wall in the coming years without significant change, video games will suffer the same fate as in 1983.
Usually, when talking about an industry crash, we think about stocks; according to business insider writer Robin Kavanagh’s What is a stock market crash? Understanding the causes and consequences can help investors prepare. The stock market crashes when there’s a substantial drop in overall share prices within a few days. A market would crash for numerous reasons: investor speculation, natural disasters, or simply someone adding or subtracting a zero for a specific stock. More likely than not, an industry crash coincides with a “customer” customer crash where the customer(s) no longer desire said product in the same quantity they have wanted in the past. This can be shown in a fad’s massive surge of popularity only for interest to take a nose dive right after. The video game crash 1983 displays both the consumers’ lack of interest in the product and the lack of faith in the investors due to the market’s oversaturation. With many entities fighting to get into this emerging market, the number of games being published inflated to a point where consumers needed help to handle the sheer volume of games coming out; the overall quality of said games also suffered.
Video games, as the name implies, instead of lacquered paper and colorfully reentered cardboard playmats and plastic figures. Video is a digital medium, lines of code packaged through cartridges, discs, or downloaded through storefronts. These games are also interactive mediums and are managed through a controller and a console. The console and controller is a two-part system, the console being a CPU (central processing unit) reading the game’s code and processing the game’s internal mechanics and interactions. The controller is connected to the interaction part, and the assorted buttons have an effect on the game state. This careful balance between these three core aspects of games makes the groundwork for the majority of games, and even if one of these aspects wasn’t done properly, it was a death blow for that company’s success. Creating a “good” (financially and critically successful) game is hard, and creating a good game that is also economically successful is much more complicated. In a paper written by Nikolai Surminski The Role of video game quality in financial markets the statement is made that “while the correlation between product quality, profitability, and financial growth is impacting a company’s stock price through different steps, there also exists a direct link between quality and the performance in the financial markets.” In short, though not always the case, good games should and can produce profitable results.
The fall of gaming wasn’t the result of the good games needing to be more successful; it was due to a two-part punch of a flood of low-quality games and overproduction of consoles and game cartridges not being able to make back the production costs the company sinks into it . So many companies wanted in on the gaming gold rush without a proper understanding of the trinity; Lackluster games, barely functioning controllers, and unimpressive consoles came into the market, oversaturating a market with simply not enough people to buy them. These products were purchased and sold for the same price as good products (a range of 30 to 125$), and because of the lack of formal reviews because of the newness of the market, people were not the wiser when buying, causing a lack of faith in an industry that from an outsider’s perspective was an expensive roll of the dice to see if you get something worthwhile.
Today, gaming is dominated by AAA developers’ massive studios with budgets ranging from millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to produce a shippable product, and while smaller studios still make games, it’s the AAA studio that is the backbone of the industry. The landscape of the financial world has changed a lot since then. As investors grow hungrier for a favorable return on investment and studios do everything in their power to meet those arguably obtainable expectations, more extreme practices are put into place.
The phantom pain of old mistakes evolves, becoming a dark parody of hopefully learned failings, those failings pressure that will collapse on the Titans once again. Like all industries things change constantly, companies consume, become consumed merge, etc.. that is the nature of the beast we call this dog-eat-dog market. Without real change, the titans that have lorded over this industry will be nothing.
References
Josephson, K. (2023, August 5). The 1983 video game crash and a history lesson for Lina Khan: Kimberlee Josephson. FEE Freeman Article. https://fee.org/articles/the-1983-video-game-crash-and-a-history-lesson-for-lina-khan/
Kavanagh, R. (2020). What is a stock market crash? understanding the causes and consequences can help investors prepare. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/what-is-a-stock-market-crash
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Hi I would love feedback on how clearly I described the terms of my essay and how I can punch up my opening paragraph without deleting the history portion of it thankyou
I’d love to fulfill your request, Anonymous, but I can’t get past the grammar. I promise I’ll gladly concentrate on your descriptions of terms, but we really need to focus on your sentence structure in the weeks we have left. I apologize if this seems at all irrelevant to you, but I just don’t understand. I’m quite certain I’ve seen strong writing from you in other places, but here there are just too many basic language elements to ignore.
I’m going to make complete sentences of your first paragraph. Please respond either way if you want more of this sort of help.
In the late 1900s a new form of entertainment was born: the video game.
This digital alternative for entertainment HAS been steadily growing in popularity ever since.
Seen as a novelty more than anything, IT BEGAN AS a nice change of pace from playing a board game or seeing a film in a theatre.
It was a niche market AT FIRST—TOO EXPENSIVE for the majority of households at the time.
The cost to start the gaming hobby was eye-wateringly expensive.
Still, the industry slowly but surely grew.
As the growth of any industry forms, titans of said industry rise in its wake.
One such company was Atari, a California-based game company formed in 1972, and, for awhile, it was the company to beat.
Some tried but couldn’t escape its shadow.
In the end, it was Atari that not only destroyed itself but the ENTIRE games industry, as, in 1983, the video game market crashed.
It wasn’t a fast descent, as many mistakes were made, adding more and more straw to the proverbial back of consumers until something needed to give, and something did.
Since then, the games industry has been resurrected—spared the fate of being a bad fad—now growing into a gigantic market.
New titans of industry formed from the ashes of the old era, standing taller than ever before, but, within these new titans, the phantom pain of past mistakes still lingers, becoming cracks in this new beast.
Old mistakes become new, and new mistakes form from the success of the industry.
ACCORDING TO the writing on the wall, in the coming years, without significant change, video games will suffer the same fate as THEY DID in 1983.
I wouldn’t RECOMMEND all those sentences, but they’re grammatically correct, if still a little nonconforming.
Ordinarily, I reserve copy-editing until the last revision cycle, but I hope you’ll spend some time with me to work on sentence structure before you write more short arguments, Anonymous.
Don’t take my word alone. Find a peer tutor at the Writing Center or a knowledgeable colleague to take a look at your drafts if you want confirmation that your stuff is hard to understand (and therefore hard to find persuasive) as you’ve drafted it.
Good grammar and punctuation changes. New sources. A new paragraph break. All positive changes, nothing major.
Regraded.