The looming economic crisis and it’s impact on games…or, “Crap!!! Oh wait, we’ll be ok.”

Goodness golly gee, the subprime lending crisis is the tip of the risk-managed liquidity market’s stomachache, the titanic of the American leisure market is going to sink against bloated gas prices and a foreclosure plague. All of this because fraud-ridden loan-mongers gave out fake money to people who had no right to take on a pet turtle, let alone a mortgage. And God knows turtles are a joy.

So as a result, everyone I talk to is wringing their hands over the state of the jobs they’re vying for – to be precise, we’re discussing a peculiarly voracious breed of nerd and know-how: The SMU Guildhall student. See, we all want to be making video games…probably because growing up is for neo-cons with MBAs. And woe is us who were anticipating a burgeoning games market with plenty of ridiculous jobs paying congressional salaries. No no, I meant there that we were looking for congressional jobs paying ridiculous salaries…although I may be repeating myself.

But I disagree, what with my fanboy love of P.J. O’Rourke and not a drop of formal economics education to fight back with.

Video games WILL NOT SUFFER the coming recession. Hell…try alcohol and credit lines during the Great Depression for a precedent. People will find leisure activities to spend time and money on regardless of their circumstances, and if you do some simple math it starts to make sense. Take my wacky mother and father-in-law, for example:

They could spend thirty dollars going to Outback Steakhouse and have a…well, a tolerable time once a month. OR they could get two subscriptions to a $15-a-month MMO and pretend to like each other again, pretending to spend quality time doing pretend fun things in a pretend fun world. This approach is exponentially better for both the pocket book and the “relationship” (cough cough). That is, it’s better until someone decides to go off and pull a LeeRoy Jenkins – and you’re close enough to punch them. But hey, you’ve got plenty more chances to have a good time, unlike the couple glaring at each other over why it was necessary to order the blooming effing onion and three wallaby godDa*^&$-Ishould’vemarriedyoursisters. Even Divorce lawyers gotta make money, so what looks ’bout as beautiful as mother nature’s ass hair is just the circle of life.

Back to the point! Video games will do well despite the coming crisis as a cheap, albeit maligned, alternative to the new car you were saving up for, the trip to Venice (beach…you culturally lazy slouch) you’ve been getting that chest-waxing done in anticipation of, or that snuff film you were trying to film. I’d say that Video games’ biggest threat in the coming years will be, inevitably, it’s former allies – drugs and alcohol. Now, I mean, I would NEVER condone using drugs or alcohol to enrich your gaming experience, or discuss how incredible playing Condemned 2 is on mushrooms, or talk about how much fun a room full of drunk wii-bowlers is, or…see, I just point out the trends with these hooligan excuses for America’s future of which I am no willing participant.

Now, I will discuss this in more depth later, but the caveat is that, in my most unhumble of opinions, Microsoft should halt development of the Xbox 1080 or Xbox Tessaract or whatever they decide to call it and immediately work to drop prices for their games to under $40 by trading a small portion of the stores’ profit margin and a smaller portion of their own, trading technological competitiveness and $60 games for immeasurable market penetration and software distribution rates. Upping demand by these methods necessitates more supply, and more supply implies more profit in what I would expect to be a three-to-one sales difference between the two business models. But I’ll go off on cheaper games for bigger paychecks later. For now, just rest assured that if you’re trying to get into the games industry, I honestly can’t see a better time; if you just like playing games, forget Paris but don’t lose any sleep over your console’s future…and finally, if you’re a major publisher, and you know who all three of you are, recognize the chance to dominate the market and spread the rewards around to all the Tim Schafers of the dev community.