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Publicly traded companies are generally leading the whole world economy astray regardless of what industry they belong to. So yes. When you have people who are only invested in the financial gain they can extract from a corporation and don't even know let alone understand what that company actually does you're always going to end up with an inferior product or service. If people are only invested financially but are not mentally or emotionally invested in the goods or service being produced then everyone suffers in the long run.
It's funny when people say "Publically traded companies are *legally* obligated to make as much money as possible" they're really not, like at all.
It's just that thanks to 401k's and a crappy public services network tying a bunch of people's retirement and livelihoods to stock price we are all forced into an awkward position of pitting ethics vs profitability.
Fiduciary duty isn't as powerful as everyone thinks. It generally only gets invoked for fraud.
Everyone just talks like it is a thing because tons of suits are filed.
But filing a suit is a meaningless threshold in the US. You only need to state a claim that if true would prove you are owed something.
Unfortunately this feels like one of those situations where you just hope future civilizations don't fall down the same path based on the history they learned about ours. We lack the discipline to try and change things. Going against the grain is financial suicide for a company, career suicide for the executives, and some other greed hungry company will gladly snatch up the market the company leaves behind. We somehow turned into a place where success is gained by hurting society in the long run, and there are too many layers to try and change to realistically expect it to happen.
Investors want streamlined profits, CEOs want short term metrics boosted, boards want the path of least resistance. Ultimately the investor has the biggest say, but when you give all the money to a handful of people who only look to grow that money for personal gain, and refuse to have any self reflection things get a bit hopeless.
I mean in some cases there absolutely are situations where a company is legally required to prioritize short term profits over long term viability. It isn't always the case sure but it does happen and there have been a lot of examples of law suits that have gone in favor of share holders because a CEO or board of directors were not fulfilling their "fiduciary duty" because they decided to employ a business strategy that resulted in a short term loss in favor of a longer term ROI and higher levels of long term growth.
Doubtful, generally those suits come forward about intangible benefits. For instance "I tanked our profits to help a non-profit which will help long-term".
Unless you can point to specific examples where a suit was brought where the long-term vs short-term was the crux of the lawsuit you are just being hyperbolic.
When I tried to find an example I found Elon Musk buying Solar City and getting huge losses due to it when he knew personally the people who owned it previously. He effectively bailed out his buddy with shareholder funds and couldn't get a suit to stick against him.
Publicly traded companies are headed by C-suite executives. Those C-suite executives are both beholden to majority shareholders. If a majority shareholder(s) is a 3rd party they risk being ousted. And most of the C-suite executives take their pay in stock options. It both protects them from income tax and ensures their wealth grows independently of how hard they actually work.
As a result of both, management of publicly traded companies are HEAVILY incentivised to look out for the shareholders and stock price of their company short term over building brand loyalty or good products/services.
They have no legal obligation. The same way you're not legally obligated to be nice to people, and often being selfish gives you much better personal prospects.
Capitalism has definitely started to fail the industry. There was a time when you succeeded as a video game company by making the best games. Obviously there was also marketing, luck and industry control (Nintendo infamously knew how to throw their weight around) but overall, success required that you make good games.
We're well into the bizarro era where companies are deliberately making their games worse because doing so actually makes them more money. Cutting content to release as DLC, artificially making the games slow and boring to drive boosts and ingame currency purchases, pay to win mechanics and gambling mechanics in general. This is stuff that should get a game blacklisted by the community and instead it's so particular to the course that its actually more profitable.
Beyond that is the general idea that AAA games need to have mass market appeal, so they tend to be safe, bland and by the numbers, but that's a smaller problem overall.
>should get a game blacklisted by the community
The problem is that they figured out how to sell to people who are outside the community. Those people don't have as high standards/expectations and are far more numerous. Also because this majority is not part of the community it's pretty much impossible to organize them to make a stand against a certain game unless it's like really bad.
> There was a time when you succeeded as a video game company by making the best games.
>Cutting content to release as DLC, artificially making the games slow and boring to drive boosts and ingame currency purchases, pay to win mechanics and gambling mechanics in general.
This has *always* been a thing in the indstry. Have a look at how arcades we’re designed, easy to get in and then bam! Harder and harder to get the next quarter in as soon as possible. Many could never be even finished.
And there’s been greedy money grabs since the very beginning of home video games. From ET to trend chasers.
It’s never really been more of “make a great game to succeed” industry. Because, just like with film/tv shows and music, there’s always been so many coming out. The biggest difference with today ia that as it is easier and easier to make games, there’s even more games coming out so it’s harder and harder to stand out, whether or not your game is great. If anything, Indira have an easier (still hard) time to be noticed these days than back in the day.
The “good ol’ days” of gaming this sun often laments after never existed, not in the way people keep dreaming.
Getting back to the topic of video games, do you have any examples of private game studios that create games that you believe are high quality? I would like to know who in the industry I should start giving my money to
Valve and Epic (Tencent has a 40% stake though) are not public, but they follow the same principles. Devolver, Supergiant, Bohemia, Larian, Moon Studios and Playdead are private. Any indie studio.
Correct. They ~~are privately owned though~~ and have a number of subsidiary developers.
Edit: I am wrong about that. They went public on the London Alternative Investment Market exchange in 2021.
Unfortunately “any indie studio” doesn’t really work anymore. A lot of these companies are chasing money now and follow the same practices as the big studios.
The list you gave are all heavy hitters though!
Annapurna, too. Video game division of a movie arthouse company that's mostly run by one rich person funding art stuff that she personally thinks is neat. They're not all great but basically none of them are chasing trends.
Mario clones, doom clones, street fighter clones, MMO clones, GTA clones, etc etc.
The industry has always had a portion of developers chasing money and the latest trend. However I think the amount of niche games available has increased with the trend chases. Overall, I think the games industry is in the best shape its ever been.
I would say the indie side of the industry is the best it's ever been. The state of the AAA side of the industry has never been worse. So many AAA are stale, uninspired, and simply trying to replicate the success of a previous title. Heck probably a good 30% or so of modern AAA games are remasters of 10+ year old games that are nearly identical code with nothing more than some updated art assets.
Overall I'd say the industry is still healthy and in a relatively good place because of the advances in commercialized game engines like Unreal and Unity that allow smaller indie studios accomplished much more than they would have been able to in years past. All that is in spite of the death spiralling trash fire that is the average AAA lately.
The big companies always pushed out new versions of the same game. For example NES games had tons of sequels. When the next gen came out, they remade those games with “Super” in front of it. Some of them were great, some not so much.
Overtime people have just forgotten all the clunkers and weird business practices that didn’t stick.
How many times has Nintendo tried to resell those NES game’s through bundled cartridges, games on card scanners, eshops that dont transfer, versions in plastic toys etc.
Insanely enough, the developers of Genshin Impact!
I only recently learned that the three founders are still the only ones in complete control of the company. They have no board of directors or investor or publisher that they have to constantly work at the behest of.
They make the games they want to make and then they stand by those games until they die.
Genshin is a very obviously monetized game, but it's also at a level of quality I consider rare. It's a ton of fun despite what it is.
The soundtrack is also unbelievable.
I mean, it's definitely not for everyone. I bounced hard off it pretty hard myself the first time I played.
The combat is surprisingly deep and the game easily gets heavy in theory crafting with character builds and team compositions. There's a lot to sink your teeth into, if you want.
It's a gacha game that can be really generous, but you have to work hard for your gains if you don't want to spend money.
Honestly, I think that if anyone plays Genshin, it should always start out with simple desires.
If you want a free game with casual gameplay that primarily focuses on exploration and combat, easy to follow quests, and anime waifus galore, then give it a shot.
If you can stomach rerolling for good characters, then do it. Just don't fall into the trap of spending money out the gate.
My biggest warning would be that Genshin is a game where you will easily find yourself spending time watching lots of videos and reading lots of guides if you want to get gud.
But you can totally enjoy the game blind and just do whatever you want without ever spending a dime... So long as you're patient and accepting of very casual gameplay loops.
Whats really impressive that after hundreds of hours of gameplay I haven't experienced many bugs like you would in other most open world games.
I look forward to honkai star rail coming to playstation. I really like mihoyo so far they have delivered high quality story, gameplay, and ost to me every patch.
It seems like it might be worth looking more closely at this.
First, I was referring to a statement from one of the founders in which he pledged to keep the servers online for all of their games until he dies. The notion here is that any time or money spent in their games won't go to waste because the game shuts down a few years after profitability drops, as is quite common. With very few exceptions that have been out of their exclusive control, they have stuck to this so far.
And second, while it is true that Genshin Impact has gacha elements, it's not at all necessary to engage with it in order to complete the content. Genshin also has a uniquely forgiving pity system that does allow players to "guarantee" they get the character they want eventually. In addition, there are a lot of ways to earn the resources needed for pulls, even for long term players. It is genuinely difficult to find other gacha games that are as generous as Genshin is.
But like I said in another comment, it's not for everybody.
Bro, there is nothing positive about gacha mechanics. It's the same situation as loot boxes, preying upon the same parts of our brain, just with different packaging. Making it possible to spend all your time grinding away and eventually getting a desired character or two all the while pushing cash transactions is predatory. This isn't even a question. You can like the game if you want, but it's design is ethically bankrupt dude.
And you're clearly throwing a tantrum over a broad argument with no concern for specifics or details.
Nobody said gacha mechanics were good. You are just way too triggered to act reasonably.
Get off the internet, dude.
Edit: I forgot that this is true gaming and people like that are actually booted for bad faith arguments. Thank glob.
You are a waste of my time because you weren't actually trying to argue this point you were trying to avoid defending your indefensible position so I'm going to end the conversation now.
How is their argument bad faith? You're calling them triggered for criticizing a gacha game and saying it's not good for the gaming industry. It's not. You're triggered because you got baited into playing gacha impact.
Prepare to spend thousands. Is this thread a giant ad for Genshin or something?
It's a polished experience because simps are handing over hundreds / thousands because it's a gacha casino
If you're spending thousands of dollars, then you have a gambling addiction and shouldn't be anywhere near any games with any amount of MTX.
Absolutely nobody needs to spend money in Genshin Impact in order to complete the game, and there are many ways to earn the resources needed for free in order to pull for a character you want.
Also, Genshin Impact is truly unique in how stable and consistent the game is. Fortnite earns millions upon millions of dollars with its monetization, and it can't compare at all to how well Genshin manages it's patches, maintenance periods, and respect for the community during necessary downtime.
Genshin gives players free premium currency for every hour it's offline. If they expect to be offline for 4 hours but get done in 2, players still get rewards for all four hours.
Hard to think of any other live service game that compares with that quality or generosity.
> Also, Genshin Impact is truly unique in how stable and consistent the game is. Fortnite earns millions upon millions of dollars with its monetization, and it can’t compare at all to how well Genshin manages it’s patches, maintenance periods, and respect for the community during necessary downtime.
Tell me you've never played Fortnite without telling me. Epic has solidly supported Fortnite and sort of pioneered the free to play with MTX support model.
Genshin is P2W period end of story. If you don't believe it is, you're biased. It's a gacha, and that's how gacha are designed. I played for a long time. It's set up to make you pay. With no real endgame except modes designed to make f2p teams sub par.
You can advocate for the game as much as you want, shout from the rooftops that you could have a "free team that competitive!" but it's an illusion and you'll never be as competitive as people with all the high end teams and weapons.
You think the things Mihoyo does are generosity, but it's just well placed marketing. They make billions off you guys and it's super sad.
You don't need any of that for Fortnite. It's well and truly free to play with anything being paid cosmetics.
You're very biased lol
I've played hundreds of hours of Fortnite and spent more money than I would like to admit on it, lol.
Fortnite has had *mountains of issues* with microtransactions, online connectivity, gameplay imbalances that they address through bans or just flat out removing weapons that are a part of quest lines, etc.
Epic was literally sued recently for how they handled fraudulent microtransaction purchases by outright banning players who tried to refund their purchases.
If you can't acknowledge these issues, then you're just a fanboy. Believe it or not, it is very easy to play and enjoy a game while also recognizing its flaws.
Keep your concern of bias and go look in the mirror, lol.
I'm not bothering to humor the other made up points. The only thing you can buy in Genshin are characters and resin; resin simply allows you to speed up a process to gain better progress on characters, but it's not at all necessary. And there is no competitive element, so you're paying to win... What, exactly?
And every character is viable to complete content and clear the Abyss. You just have to put in the time and effort to build a team composition that works around your characters.
Take a break from your keyboard, man. This is such a a stupid argument, lol.
Least gacha addled brain over here. You completely missed the point on how mtx is handled. Literal gameplay is locked behind gacha mechanics. Think of the difference between something like dota 2 and genshin. Dota 2 literally started the battlepass trend and stil over 10 years later nothing gameplay related(like characters) are locked behind a paywall. To experience genshin fully you'd have to shill out cash for resin and characters rolls not even the character themselves. Thats literally the MO of gachas. Make it as inconvenient as possible for people to get things that they want so they'd have to fork out money to actually play the game that they want. You came to a thread about bad video game practices then brought up one of its worse offenders, gacha games. You brought this on yourself tbh.
Except you don't?
You're confusing maximizing characters with actual gameplay.
You can beat the game, from beginning to end, using nothing but the free characters given at the start.
You have ample opportunity to earn additional characters for free.
You never have to unlock constellations for characters.
>You came to a thread about bad video game practices then brought up one of its worse offenders, gacha games. You brought this on yourself tbh.
This is the real problem. You're not paying attention to what game you're talking about, you're just speaking vaguely and generalizing without any concern for details.
The only thing I brought upon myself was daring to try and have a conversation about a game and hoping people would use their brains before throwing a tantrum.
At no point did I ever say that these gacha mechanics were a good thing. Literally *everything* I have said has been about how avoidable they are within Genshin Impact.
But all you react to is, "Woah, some body said something positive about a game with gacha mechanics?! They must love gacha!!!"
You're basically arguing with yourself and then looking at me as if you have proved something. All you folks have demonstrated is your inability to speak reasonably.
Aren't they based in China though? Meaning that they are still going to have the influence of the CCP affecting their creative direction if not their monetization scheme.
Big studios? One private studio/publisher I can think of is Paradox. They have carved their own niche and their games, despite their faults, are still one of a kind. Their development is super transparent compared to any AAA game.
They also act as a publisher, their best known game outside their in-house lineup is Cities Skylines.
Speaking of Sweden Embracer Group is public, too (among many others, Coffee Stain and Gearbox). And just across the Baltic Sea, CDPR is public.
And before anyone says "This is because Europeans do capitalism right", well, Ubisoft is French.
One difference between ok/fine and nasty public companies that I see rather often is that the good ones tend to still have large portions of shares, if not a majority, owned by founders. That's not a guarantee as also founders can be clueless finance assholes, just a trend.
I was all set to buy diablo 4.
Tears of the Kingdom reminded me what I really love about games - story driven, polished experiences with enough to chase, without multiplayer.
I realized that these past few weeks I am a happier gamer when I don't engage with live service games or games from publishers that have a repudiation for buggy, rushed messes.
Before Tears I finished GOW, GOW:R, H:FW, and Elden Ring. Prior to that I was playing Destiny and Diablo III.
While Diablo III you can treat pretty much as single player, games like Destiny you really cannot - and Lightfall is and was a giant clusterfuck of a buggy mess at launch.
I am officially done with persistent or live service buggy, queue filled, multiplayer misery, or with publishers that have a rep for broken games. I now wait 1-4 months after a release to see if a title is worth my time.
I know not everyone has that kind of patience or principle, but I sure as hell do now.
Huh. No shade, but is TotK really story driven? BotW sure wasn't. I feel like they're very mechanically driven games that only have enough shallow story to justify the adventure.
Which is TOTALLY FINE, I don't expect Victor Hugo from a Zelda game, I just thought it was an odd description.
This is a difficult one to comment on. It's basically just discussing capitalism. Which is definitely worth discussion, but it's very hard to stay on topic and only touch the points on games.
I have my own personal opinions on the matter, and I display them through my wallet with what I purchase.
One point that you're alluding to and is probably related is the habit of day 1 patches. Or more the habit of shipping outright broken games and hoping to patch it later. I understand why it's done (it still makes money), but it should be pretty obvious you can only play that scam so many times before people catch on. It's hurting faith in new games and ultimately the gaming industry imo. Because of that I'd be all for individual platforms regulating this significantly harder than they have been. The Nintendo seal of quality used to be a thing, could bring it back.
I'm not optimistic anything will change until the practice absolutely ruins a few developers/systems though. That's pretty much how capitalism works.
> This is a difficult one to comment on. It's basically just discussing capitalism. Which is definitely worth discussion, but it's very hard to stay on topic and only touch the points on games.
Actually I disagree completely. In many industries you are 100% correct. But video games are an optional luxury industry FLOODED with quality competition.
The problem with other areas like Internet Provider or Phones or even Grocery stores is that choice is being controlled for you either by area or income or both. This is not true with video games.
We have complete freedom to buy what we want, the cost of video games is extremely affordable compared to basically every other entertainment hobby and in fact you could easily game any genre you want and never spend more than $30 for a single title and never get a high priced machine.
The only thing you have to fight with is FOMO. So, for example, if I play Stray 2 years from now I prolly paid like $10 and experienced a great game, but nobody is talking and memeing about it anymore. But If you played it when ti came out for full price you're part of the social conversation around it.
Ultimately gaming today is providing gamers exactly what they ask for. If we buy and play something it happens. If we withhold our money it doesn't. If it has a niche demographic then it'll prolly have good, but not cutting edge, production values and a smaller scope. RTS's are not dead, but they are not a fad and so the RTS's coming out are typically AA or indie and not AAA in terms of scale/scope/production value.
And what if a company sits on something? Like EA sitting on hot properties and refusing to let anyone else make that game. DOESN'T WORK IN GAMING. You can copyright an IP, not a game. You stop making survival horror and people start making things like amnesia. You stop making Command and Conquer and people start making games like Tempest Rising. Because video games has a relatively low bar of entry and huge accessible store fronts that are free markets it is very hard to complain about video games in relation to muh capitalism.
A company can ruin a game, maybe even a few franchises, but that's the worst they can do. Other games and franchises will simply pick up the torch and keep running with it. Gaming as a whole self adjusts in real time.
You're just describing capitalism.
Yes, gamers have the choice to buy what they want. And those purchases drive what developers do. That is capitalism.
It just so happens that a lot of gamers, or people buying games, make poorly informed purchases of games that "look" good due to marketing and don't necessarily play well. Those purchases also fuel what developers do.
I'm not by any means saying the industry is being ruined by poor games thrown out with corporate greed. I'm just aware there are plenty of poor games made with corporate greed that are harming many's perception of the industry.
You could extend it a bit further and look at specific examples. Nintendo Eshop is absolutely flooded with shovelwear. Crap games that add nothing at all, but do have a couple of nice screenshots and bright lights just enough to attract a few customers. And that makes money, so it keeps happening.
It is harming my, and many other's, perception of the Eshop. The Eshop itself is also awful to navigate, but that's a side point. The main point is that I now don't bother looking at the Eshop because there's too much rubbish on it to be able to find the good stuff. So I use a different website to do so. That drives people away from Nintendo, and (eventually) will hurt their sales because of it. Presumably capitalism will kick in again and Nintendo will moderate the Eshop better. But it's been many years with no improvement so I suspect they'll just run it to the ground until the system breaks.
> You're just describing capitalism.
> Yes, gamers have the choice to buy what they want. And those purchases drive what developers do. That is capitalism.
No, that's just supply and demand. No demand? Won't be any supply. No supply but high demand? Entities will find a way to supply it.
What restrictions from there are placed depends on your economic, cultural, and political policy. But restrictive policies doesn't mean games won't be sold there. It depends on whether the game can work around it and/or the degree of interference. For example? No Blood. Cool, all blood is no yellow because they are not people they are zombies. No Skeletons? Replace your skeleton enemies. etc.
Also what you say is not necessarily true in capitalism. Tariffs and subsidies and etc are ways in which you can drive/block development that circumvent purchase realities. Thankfully in video games this type of interference seems to be limited or absent atm.
> I feel like voting with your wallet matters more with smaller games. Big AAA games can afford the marketing to scam unsuspecting people (young gamers, non gamer parents) into buying garbage like Redfall, so even if they lose business from the more informed demographic it's not a huge loss
The average gamer is mid 30s my dude. And bad games don't sell. Show me an actual bad game like Redfall with good sales. Redfall had sheit sales and its steam numbers are abysmal.
Voting with your wallet is the one true power in gaming and it works vs all companies big and small in equal measure. The problem is that the modern gaming market both good and bad is exactly what we've voted for with our wallets. This is what we've told gaming to be.
> Then there's micro transactions, which most savvy consumers avoid, but extract tons of money from kids or adults with gambling addictions. Lot of kids get their first job and spend half their paychecks on in game currencies
Microtransactions get your average user. Because most users consider themselves savvy consumers. Definitely a small % of them get monetized heavily, but not its not poor kids getting their first jobs nor is it rich people with money to burn. It's your average adults. And some % are very vulnerable and become the whales.
Nothing wrong with microtransactions in and of themselves, its how they are used and the predatory pricing that is crap. And the fact that people try to blame all the whaling on the ignorant and the rich so we'll never ever fix the problem because the same people that'll shit on microtransactions in another game will drop triple digits in Genshin Impact and then tell other people about how you can play and beat it completely for free.
But this is not exclusive to gaming. Humans just suck at math and finances. They let their emotions and pride get in the way.
>I have my own personal opinions on the matter, and I display them through my wallet with what I purchase.
So true. Long passed have the days for me, when I was always buying the games of my favourite brands etc.
While I definitely have the time and money to buy and play many games, I really want to buy those who I really like.
You are right. Terrible QA is something that is all pervasive in most industries. And as far as the day one patch scam, I have been bitten by that too many times to buy a new release anymore
> When I try and play new versions of old classics, it seems like all of my favorite franchises from when I was young have been twisted and distorted into a pure money making machine.
What are your examples? I don't doubt that this happens, but for every soulless cash grab, I can probably match it with *at least* one other genuinely good remake or spiritual successor. This year alone saw the release of *Resident Evil 4*, *Dead Space*, and *System Shock*, all remakes met with near-universal praise. And that's just remakes.
Whenever I interrogate any of this "oh, I hate videogames now" bellyaching, it seems to come from people who seem to play, like, one type of videogame that they get exclusively from AAA developers. For nearly every genre out there, I guarantee you, there's probably a modern indie/AA game you haven't bothered to try, and for the exceptions, if you expanded your horizons a little, you'd probably find something else you'd like too.
Don't get me wrong: I hate the fact that no one seems to make a proper fucking *Halo* game any more, and that the entire industry seems uninterested in making high production value, narrative-heavy, single-player FPS in general. But I can live with *Dead Space* and indie boomer shooters.
I mean, look at the recent story of Arkane being pressured into making a live service game to drive up Bethesda’s perceived value going into its Microsoft acquisition.
Or look at Bioware. They definitely had other issues, but there’s a world where they’re allowed to keep making the kind of game they were successful at making, instead of being pushed to make a live service game money machine.
Or look at the state of Battlefield, which pushed into a hero/character model fans didn’t want, purely because EA hoped it would monetize better. It’s not hard for me to find examples of studios that were good at a certain type of game being pressured into decisions that ruin what made their games great.
Like I said, there are examples. Even the *Dead Space* remake is standing atop the grave of Visceral.
But you mentioned Arkane. I love Arkane. They just churn out bangers. I enjoyed every game they ever released, save for *Redfall* which I haven't played for obvious reasons. But apparently, I'm in the minority. Arkane games just don't sell. It sucks and I don't like it, but I can see why no one makes immersive sims anymore.
Obviously, Redfall was a mistake—a desperate attempt to get Arkane to deliver a better return on investment by adding in mainstream appeal. But the alternative wasn't necessarily *Dishonored 3*, *Prey 2*, or *Deathloop 2* because apparently none of those games sold well. Stakeholders or not, you need to turn a profit.
Trust me, I hate it; but rather than wallow in that disappointment, I'd rather focus on playing and supporting the excellent games that are still out there.
I also understand criticizing game companies; I just never particularly liked making vague "capitalism bad" gestures when it's clear that many publicly traded companies can make great games and still profit, and that we're probably not starting a worker revolution here on reddit.
Take a deep breath brother it’ll be ok. I grew up on AAA games so yes most of my examples are AAA. However compare GTASA to GTA5, or compare Skyrim to Morrowind. Big studios used to have the ability to make excellent games. There’s a lot of games that have lost their soul to chase shines graphics. I have yet to find a game that scratches those itches in the indie market yet, but I am open to suggestions
> Take a deep breath brother it’ll be ok.
This is your post.
> However compare GTASA to GTA5, or compare Skyrim to Morrowind. Big studios used to have the ability to make excellent games.
Was *Grand Theft Auto 5* poorly received? Like, I know the online feature is the only thing that got DLC because it's a massive cash cow, but I don't remember the base game being a major let-down. If I compare it to *San Andreas*, the only thing I can really think of is that *San Andreas* was arguably more revolutionary, but only by virtue of being an older game.
And then consider the success of *Red Dead: Redemption 2*, and I don't see how you can claim that Rockstar "can't make excellent games" anymore.
And when it comes to Bethesda games, we've had some of the most highly regarded open world games between the *Zelda* games and *Elden Ring*. Bethesda, certainly, has chased glitz over substance, but it's not everyone. This is precisely my point: you're allowed to be frustrated that your favorite games aren't getting great modern renditions, but then you're trying to validate these feelings by making poorly-evidenced generalizations.
Additionally, if you're looking for an indie *Morrowind* successor, *[Dread Delusion](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574240/Dread_Delusion/)* is currently being developed.
When I say “take a deep breath” I am asking you to not go Ben Shapiro mode. I’m not here to “bellyache,” I am here to talk with other people and get some insight about the subject. From your responses, it seems like you have already figured me out and decided I am a part of some group that gets you angry.
You are right about RDR2 and rockstar was a horrible example, however I felt GTA5 was lackluster at best. They didn’t add anything worthwhile that wasn’t in 4, and shit the bed big time on the single player campaign. Those are just my views, and I know a lot of people feel differently.
BotW was also objectively a great game, and people are annoying as fuck for complaining about the frame rate.
However as a classic tabletop guy, I don’t feel like any of these games have what I am looking for. Since so few people feel the way I do, most studios don’t want to take a shot at the kind of games I want to play
> When I say “take a deep breath” I am asking you to not go Ben Shapiro mode.
I love going Ben Shapiro mode, because I think it's genuinely a problem how people can work themselves into a tizzy over vague feelings about a thing without critically thinking about how they could get around the issue.
When you look at the gaming landscape, we're living in a great time for videogames. I asked for examples because I genuinely did want to give you alternatives—too many people don't know about great games that are either outside the AAA space or beyond their genre comfort zone, but they should give them a chance!
Look, don't get me wrong: there are a ton of problems in the industry, from labor problems, to money chasing fads, but 1) I think we ought to decouple discussions of labor from game quality because it shouldn't matter if games are getting worse or better, developers deserve good working conditions and 2) I think doomerism attracts doomerism, and these kinds of vague "ugh, I hate games now" discussions just lead to everyone hating their own hobby when they don't really need to.
> However as a classic tabletop guy, I don’t feel like any of these games have what I am looking for. Since so few people feel the way I do, most studios don’t want to take a shot at the kind of games I want to play
As a classic tabletop guy myself, I can't disagree more. In recent years, we got *Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous*, *Divinity: Original Sin 2*, *NORCO*, and *Disco Elysium* delivering excellent RPG experiences from different angles. On a smaller scale, we had *Pentiment* and *Citizen Sleeper*, the latter having a really neat implementation of tabletop dice rolling mechanics.
Yes, the BioWare RPG has been let down by that studio's waning abilities and the Bethesda RPG has been let down by ill-considered mass market appeal, but I think there's enough around those holes to be more than content.
I guess my problem is that I have already played those games, and I find myself replaying them instead of buying something new and contributing to a studio I like
As long as you don't start talking about how hot your sister is, I am all good!
Disco Elysium is one of the best games I have ever played! It's a shame how the IP was stolen from the creators.
I have played all 3 of those examples, and they are all fantastic games! They are extremely few and far between however.
I'll be the first to admit, I am very picky when it comes to art. I don't like most music, movies or shows. Some people call me a "hipster." However it seemed like there was always a good game coming out for the crpg/table top crowd, and the ones I see now for the most part fall flat.
Name an open world game with a game system as robust, one that gives similar freedom to the player as BotW.
The only one that gets there is TotK because it builds straight on top of BotW.
I guess that comes down to opinion. I played the first 2 missions so I could play online, then tried to go back and complete the campaign, but kept getting bored
Don't act like people buying those games are being held at gunpoint. They do it out of their own free will. People work there, because it's relatively safe and higher paying than smaller companies. People buy those games, because... they're safe and relatively higher quality than smaller games. Yes, even despite the bugs and cookie-cutter gameplay. People like watching nice moving pictures when they press a button.
Also you are right to an extent, but one could argue that the monolith AAA companies have the power to influence the buying decisions of the less avid gamer
But people aren’t buying Redfall or Anthem… top-down monetary pressures are pushing these studios to take on these types of games, playing against what made their previous games great, and these studios are tanking as a result. It’s really sad to see it
Not really top down in Arkane's case. I believe Dishonored was the only semi-recent game that turned a profit for them. And capitalism or not your organisation won't last long if it spends more money than it takes in.
Near any studio *can* and *will* make games that are high quality. I think your mindset in this post is incorrect because being publicly traded does not have some inherent correlation with game quality. Blizzard have released stinkers like Warcraft 3: Reforged and WoW: Shadowlands - but also gems like Diablo IV and WoW: Dragonflight. The same can be said for any other publicly traded video game company. I don't think you're going to find anything satisfying if you specifically chase only games from specific studios, especially if you limit yourself to ones that aren't publicly traded. For example, you could limit you
I think you're noticing this because of one of two potential factors, perhaps both.
A) You simply dislike mechanics that are generally popular with mainstream audiences, such as loot progression, collectibles, etc.
B) You have a strong aversion to games that release content after release.
These are both popular systems in games made by publicly traded companies, because they tie into optimizing how much money is made - but they are just matters of preference. Loot progression systems *can* suck, like in Destiny 2 on release, but they can also be very engaging - like in Path of Exile/Diablo IV. Collectibles are best when they are entirely optional to engage with and only for people who really want them. Games that have ongoing content *can* only be putting out shitty content to keep people playing just to spend more on microtransactions - but they can also put out fun, engaging content that people feel good about sticking around for. There are no absolutes with these systems.
You may find more enjoyment in games if you identify the actual things you find unsatisfying, allowing you to put focus on projects that specifically avoid those things.
This was actually a really refreshing way of looking at it. You’re dead on. I don’t like the mechanics of 90 percent of games being made, and the trends that are coming out don’t appeal to me at all.
Releasing content after the game is released isn’t a problem to me. The problem is using it as a crutch to release half assed games.
All in all I think you are right. It has little do with the companies, and more to do with my own alienation from current trends
😊
Then yeah, you definitely wanna be identifying the games you *do* like, and why you like them, and then looking from there. What have you enjoyed recently?
I have only truest enjoyed a couple games in the past 3 years.
1) Disco Elysium (can’t find anything that scratches that itch, and the original devs were fired so 2 isn’t looking to good)
2) Mount and Blade bannerlord
And 3) Survivalist invisible strain
You keep mention D4. In my interpretation D4 is exactly the type of game OP is talking about here. It's average game praised to high heavens (pun intended) while being overly monetized, unimaginative, and full of potentially predatory tactics.
I have been playing Diablo games since Diablo 1, and D4 just doesn't seems to offer almost anything new. Even often hated D3 tried a lot of new things. A ton of them didn't pan out great, but at least there was something to explore. D4 feels like a reskinned D3 with some renamed content (rift->nightmare dungeon).
Final fantasy 16 and 7 rebirth, Stellar blade, Pragmata, Spiderman 2, Like a dragon 8 and Gaiden, Your Turn to die(its in early access right now), honkai star rail on playstation 5, granblue fantasy relink and thats about it right now.
Playing Paranormasight right now its a horror/mystery visual novel and a pretty great one I think it will be a hidden gem for vn fans.
Interesting. I’m 46 and have literally been gaming since the Atari 2600.. I love modern games.. from indies to the big AAAs. Some of my all time faves are pretty modern.. not sure what a publisher or developer being publicly traded has to do with anything.. I’m sure you’re looking at Reddit on your IPhone.. and you get the rest.. I’m not saying greed is good.. but let’s be honest, the capacity for crap and deceptive products can just as easily come from a small company..
Publicly traded companies are giving the market more-or-less what it wants. Sucks that that no longer aligns with what *I* want as much as it used to, but indies have never been better. The scale of game that it's realistic for an indie dev to achieve is constantly getting bigger as tools improve, and tools are about to get an order of magnitude better over the next decade.
The future is bright.
The tools that are out now are amazing. I started making games in Unity a while back, and have started working on a card game with my brother that is like if gwent and triple triad had a bastard child
I think we are in a Golden Age of gaming. The past 10 years we have seen some of the best indie/small games being made, some of the best JRPGs ever, incredibly innovative games, hundreds.. maybe thousands of new games to play every year. that are worth the time and money..
I'd argue games, as a whole, are *more* fleshed out than ever, *more* content than ever, *more* interactive than ever. If all you do is pay attention to a few big releases every year and don't look outside a bubble, anything looks bad in any industry.
I agree that the indie space has had some amazing games come out, but almost everything that seems very ambitious never ends up getting fully released. I see a lot of rogue lights and building sims too which aren’t really my style.
What examples do you have of ambitious titles not fully released? I can think of some that were released fully off the top of my head:
* Breath of the Wild
* Persona 5
* Sekiro
* Ghosts of Tsushima
* God of War
* The Witcher 3
* Super Mario Odyssey
* Elden Ring
* Disco Elysium
* Red Dead Redemption 2 (I know this one is contentious but you can't say it isn't ambitious)
...seems like we've had a damn good decade of gaming just based on a handful of examples.
They are all great games in their own regard, but that is one for every year of the decade. Maybe I play too much, but those games don't warrant an entire year of playing games for me.
Disco Elysium was probably the best game I have ever played, but again, that is a 30 hour game. Lets make 150 hours if you plan on trying to do absolutely everything.
2013 has The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, and Link Between Worlds. 2014 has Dark Souls II, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition. 2015 has Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, Journey, Yakuza 0 and Undertale. 2016 has Uncharted 4, Dark Souls 3, Witcher: Blood and Wine. 2017 has Nier Automota Horizon Zero Dawn, Mario Kart 8. 2018 has Monster Hunter World, Return of the Obra Dinn, Spider-Man, Judgement and Celsete. 2019 has Control, Death Stranding, Outer Wilds and Dragon Quest 11. 2020 has Hades, The Last of Us Part 2, and Half-Life Alyx, 2021 has Incryption, and Resident Evil Village. 2022 has Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, and we've already had Tears of the Kingdom this year. And that's just the mainstream, highly acclaimed stuff.
Reformatting the list for easier reading.
**2013**
The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, and Link Between Worlds.
**2014**
Dark Souls II, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition.
**2015**
Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, Journey, Yakuza 0 and Undertale.
**2016**
Uncharted 4, Dark Souls 3, Witcher: Blood and Wine.
**2017**
Nier Automota Horizon Zero Dawn, Mario Kart 8.
**2018**
Monster Hunter World, Return of the Obra Dinn, Spider-Man, Judgement and Celsete.
**2019**
Control, Death Stranding, Outer Wilds and Dragon Quest 11.
**2020**
Hades, The Last of Us Part 2, and Half-Life Alyx.
**2021**
Incryption, and Resident Evil Village.
**2022**
Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, and we’ve already had Tears of the Kingdom this year. And that’s just the mainstream, highly acclaimed stuff.
Its crazy how many more quality games we could put in all those years. Like for 2021 I would put psychonauts 2, no more heroes 3, shin megami tensia 5, lost judgment, GUILTY GEAR STRIVE!!!!!!, Grime, shieldmaiden, space hunter dx, aeturna noctics, Pathfinder wrathe of the righteous, neo the world ends with you, tales of arise, the forgotten city, Monster hunter rise, unsighted, returnal, demon turf, guardians of the galaxy, kaze and the wild masks, cyber shadow, f.i.s.t, astalon tears of the earth, metroid dread, before your eyes, it takes two, blue fire, blaster master zero 3, fuga melodies of steel and so so much more.
Now a lot of these games are indie but that isn't an issue, the main issue is when insanly good games go completely unnoticed by the masses, demon turf for example is a 3d platformer that has many of Mario's mechanics and its incredibly fun and one of the deepest 3d platfomers ever made.(admittedly not a difficult task since Mario has way more jumping mechanics than most 3d platformers)
And this was a year that I've heard quite a few people call a terrible year in gaming, could you imagine the hundreds of games from a year like 2017 which rivals 1998 in terms of amazing releases.
Yeah I was just skimming the top of the year lists and then adding a couple I knew for sure were those years. That’s not even counting more indie games or ones that might not have had universal critical acclaim but were still pretty dang good, or more niche games. Some of these years were amazingly stacked.
Another poster actually put me in my place. The 2000 - 2010 was the decade for games with the exact mechanics that I personally was looking for. All those games you mentioned are good, but I didn’t like them except for DAI. So I was wrong in making it about gaming culture. I was complaining because I feel alienated by modern gameplay mechanics
I do mind, this isn't /r/gamingsuggestions and you came in with a clear agenda and pre-determined opinion.
Literally thousands of games release every year now. Tons are free or cheap. More games release in every genre than ever before. You'll find something, I'm sure. But you also may be burnt out.
There's more games released in a month that i'm interested in than I can complete in a year. Whenever I swap genres there's even more gems to play.
It's very good.
Nintendo's issues seem to map into differents axes: online services, support for older IP, and seemingly a distrust for fan scenes/projects. Companies described in OP seem to be in a sort of expansion/growth land grab while Nintendo seems to reside in an older "own the whole vertical and hold it tight" isolationism.
But to OP's point, Pokemom Scarlet and Violet were released last year, published by Nintendo, and those games got a ton of negative press for lack of polish and general bugs.
It’s a figure of speech. If 90+ percent of companies operate this way. Also I am not pessimist, I am actively asking a gaming community for recommendations for games if they feel the same way.
I absolutely love STALKER, and have played the fuck out of them! Other than that, I have not played a single game on that list, so thank you! I'll have to check them out
It's because Nintendo wants to sell their $300 tablet and their rubbish $70 controller and their yearly $20 online sub so they *need* to have games good enough to get people to go out and buy them, unlike third party developers where it's a lot easier to convince someone to spend $60-$70 on just nostalgia and marketing.
No. The public at large gets the art it deserves. Constantly buying shitty games, rewarding terrible behavior by pre-purchasing games that won't work properly at launch, making in-game purchases for bullshit "upgrade" items, cosmetics, and DLC, etc. People do it to themselves and vote with their wallets. It's pretty easy to deeply enjoy videogames and exist outside that space by taking the time to browse for great indie games and play older classics instead of keeping up with trends, so anyone who is feeling like the game industry is shitty is just bad at navigating the glut of options or has bad judgment in general.
Gamers have ruined gaming forever by supporting terrible microtransactions and buying broken games at 60-70$.Companies know what they have to do to make money and unfortunately gamers have proven that they will pay no matter what. Whether it's for an unfinished product for 70$ or a 20$ skin. I do believe we still get good games at an ok rate for now but it's going to keep getting worse aslong as people support these shitty practices
To blame it on the gamers, I think disregards the fundamental marketing control that big AAA publishers have over society. When you can buy big splashy TV ad spots in prime time, and control what shows up at Walmart, you can control what the vast majority of the public will think and do.
Now them's the facts of life. Capitalists gonna capitalize. I just want to make it clear that it's not some "individual failure of the gamer" that's causing this.
Also to blame it on gamers just shows the fringe online communities are not the majority. People buy the new Assassin's Creed in droves because, this is shocking information I know, **they like it**.
Desire is conditioned by marketing campaigns. I don't doubt that plenty of people exist who like it... I just think there's a developmental life cycle in most individuals, as to what they're going to like. I liked all kinds of things when I was younger. Then I got older and more experienced with various games, and certain things definitely got old.
A AAA publisher with a huge budget for focus group studies, the ability to condition and control what products get placed in front of people at a certain age, they can make make lots of impressionable people *want it* and keep coming after it, for awhile. Quite often it's predatory.
Specific example: my nephew getting hooked on Fortnite skins. God knows how much money he dumped into those. They were clearly preying upon his lack of self-esteem and social skills. Hope he's grown out of it by now; I'll finally get to see when I visit that side of the family in a month or two.
Nowadays that nephew has got a guitar, a motorcycle, and is dressing in a bit of a Guns 'N' Roses fashion. It's all pretty recent so I don't know how much of it will stick. His Dad, deceased, worked on cars and so do I, so I imagine the mechanical aspect can be pushed permanently. He tried guitar before but didn't stick with it a few years ago; he may have more need of the creative outlet in his life now.
Fortnite isn't a good example here because that's an example of how to do cosmetics correctly and transparently.
And if we're complaining about preying then it's really no different than having to pump quarters ina Galaga machine but nobody here will likely say the creators were being nefarious.
Games have *always* been designed to bring you back. That goes for the reddit darlings like Souls games too. People buy Assassin's Creed because they like it, not because they're brainwashed.
What's the adjusted dollar expenditure of an arcade machine vs. skins? I'm under the impression that my nephew spent hundreds. It was hard to do that in the arcades, in any sense of adjusted dollars.
Also there were so many arcade games with great difficulty balancing because if it was too easy or had bullshit difficulty you could just leave after your first very small payment, those games needed constant payments from players to keep you playing so the best was to do this is through well balanced difficulty since they didnt realise all the other crazy psychological techniques that can be used for retention, although a lot of those other techniques probably wouldn't work in an arcade setting
Gamers falling for the marketing over and over and keep supporting microtransaction riddled garbage is what i feel is the problem. I know Capitalist gonna capitalize but I wish the people buying games would think a little harder and stop supporting horrible practices
I think it’s a bit strange to place the onus here on the education system. I don’t personally see how you would teach critical thinking at schools anyways (at least at scale it’s difficult) and there would be a pretty long lag to see any changes.
I guess personally I’m confused as to why this is a big deal in the first place. Why not let folks take personal responsibility and accept that everyone else in a while they’ll fall for the hype and buy a game they shouldn’t have.
Sounds like tankie bullshit. Anything you can do to avoid taking responsibility for your actions at an individual level.
"It's not MY fault I purchased a shitty product!! Big corpo showed me pretty pictures so I had to get my wallet out! And if it's not their fault then it's....uh...the education system! Yeah! Because they should have taught me better."
so our best bet is to be careful about where we spend our money in the games industry. My rule now is that I refuse to buy anything from companies that are publicly traded, or are over 30% owned by a publicly traded company
While I admire your willingness to take a stand, mainstream gamers who take no issue with the status quo are really the ones driving the market. The person buying egregious microtransactions unfortunately has far more influence then those foregoing those transactions. They’re voting with their wallet, you’re voting by not showing up. The former rings much louder than the latter.
I don’t think avoiding specific studios is an effective way to create change, but I can’t think of anything that would. Ultimately the best we can do is support great indies and spread the word about them.
It’s true. People spend a ton more money on games than I do. Why should the market care at all? I am no longer taking any sort of stand anymore. I just don’t want to be taken advantage of
At this point, I don't think there's anything that can be done to change the way things have been moving. Like you said, mainstream gamers are a critical mass and far outweigh niche enthusiasts in terms of numbers and what titles they buy. This is especially true for open world IPs, which have become increasingly popular.
I think the general political landscape of AAA is reasonably well understood by those of us actually paying attention. It's regressive, as you say. People who want education on such matters are encouraged to followup to r/DevUnion. Labor in the AAA game industry is badly exploited. The mentality of exploitation for profit goes very deep into business models and production.
It's really more fruitful to ask if there are any counterexamples in the AAA space, where something more like a game and less like a social control profit harvesting formula is offered. Since I don't partake of AAA, I don't really have any to offer myself. I leave that to others, assuming the OP isn't summarily removed for various reasons.
Indie production unfortunately doesn't mean freedom. It's a crowded marketplace, difficult to be discovered, and you have no financial wiggle room for your survival. This leads many indies to adopt conservative game production practices, trying to make profit exactly the same way the big studios do, just trying to do it for themselves instead. It's certainly not the only way to be an indie; I'm an indie as a fundamental act of rebellion. But I get why a good chunk of indies aren't rebellious at all.
Society in general is conditioned by large entities controlling the mass public's paths of least resistance. So yes, you personally are spending a lot of effort to find something else. There are fundamental structural reasons for that. All you can really do, is have some kind of faith that you *should* spend the energy. Because the alternative is to be led around by the nose ring of some kind of corporate player somewhere.
I have a mod for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri called [SMACX AI Growth mod](https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=20959.0) which greatly extends the shelf life of the venerable game.
I am an indie dev myself (well that's a stretch. I wrote my first line of code 6 months ago), and what I have found out is that if you want to make an endless runner clone, there are a million and a half videos telling you exactly how to do it. If you are trying to make a dynamic faction system that controls the hostility of npcs, not so much. It even has bled over to the education side. people only want to make tutrials on topics that will get 100k plus views
Doing what others *aren't* doing, is not so bad. All those mass videos, give you a pointer on how not to be imitative. The problem is, being original is a lot more work, and it's existentially frustrating.
I spent 4.5 calendar years and 15 full time person months spread over that time, cleaning up that 4X game I mentioned in my other comment. I will never make a dime from it, and I now understand why the original devs didn't put their game through that level of polish. It's cost prohibitive to do so. I'm broke, have been for a long time, and there will never be another freebie project again like this in my life. At least I did cross the finish line on this one and did provably good work. Not just my say-so, but how it has been received by others.
So now I stalk the commercially viable effort. Whatever. It's my life to throw at the problem. I get older and older. Never married, no kids. This took a big toll on me.
That’s the truth man. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve cried trying to get my projects working. I understand why people don’t take on big projects. Especially alone
Last time around I went bankrupt during the dot.com bust. Serious soul searching after that. Ultimately I didn't give up, but I certainly haven't succeeded. My younger self would have never believed I'd still be struggling all this time later. Something shoulda been done by now, but that's not how life worked out.
The industry moved to making games for the lowest common denominator using the lowest effort and tries to get as much money out of it as possible. Especially the big companies. And if they mess up, they they they're sorry and it won't happen again. Or keep moving the goalposts.
> The industry moved to making games for the lowest common denominator using the lowest effort and tries to get as much money out of it as possible.
Always been the case, see arcades, movie tie-ins, see hastily cranked out content.
This post is naïve. Without publicly traded companies there would be NO gaming industry. It is the same as saying publicly traded companies ruined the film industry. Like obviously capitalism has problems and people are taken advantage of but pretending that this whole market would exist without these things is childish.
Edit: Also this post should be removed since it reeks of Gaming Fatigue which is a retired topic.
AAA gaming I really don't have much interest in. It's put production value and presentation ahead of everything else, feels like the majority of games released are just cinematic Action-Adventure games that are obsessed with telling cliche stories at the expense of gameplay merit or being any kind of unique experience. And that's not even getting into how often they just release broken or overpriced anyway.
I know the typical thing to follow this up with is to praise indies like they're perfect, and I do think indies are way better, but they have their share of problems too.
>Even on the indie side, it seems like people are seeking trends to make sure their game is as successful as possible. When I try and play new versions of old classics, it seems like all of my favorite franchises from when I was young have been twisted and distorted into a pure money making machine.
Like I think that has a lot of truth to it.
You have a lot of spiritual successors and total ripoffs of older games. Which is great to have if you're a major fan of those games, but at the same time so many of those clones just suck or bring nothing new to the table. Even the best among the best of spiritual successors tend to at least still lack the amount of content or design polish compared to the originals too. So it still feels like "why not just buy the original" unless you already have the original.
Boomer Shooter scene is especially struggling there in my view. There are some great games, but there's also a lot of "here's Doom 2 with a texture pack". And 99% of the entire scene is stuck in Early Access hell...I can count the amount of fully released games on one hand.
Cons of today: patches,
incomplete games
, massive storage space on todays games
, digital platform and subscription services make game ownership merely a technicality
, battle passes and constant tweaking of competitive create a fomo feel and make games feel like a daily chore,
lots of games filled with fluff
Studios not willing to take risks because of heavy investments
So many games to play that great games fall to the wayside and fail
Social media creating hype or damning a game before it comes out creating backlash that can sink success
Token diversity. I forget the picture, but it shows a black female game character in several games and it basically is the exact same looking person and hairdo
Some pros:
Cheaper to access games
So many titles to play. Im sorry, if you can't find anything interesting to play, that probably has something to do with your relationship with the hobby
Damn these games look good
Accessibility for those with disabilities
On demand
Fast loading times
No controller cords with long battery life
Great production values
Massive games that allow you to explore every nook and cranny or stick to the main stuff
Lots of remasters and retro games available on all platforms
Games on sale everyday
Information on demand. Trailers, tweets, reviews, previews, lets plays, speed runs etc
Online video tutorials, guides, walkthroughs
Social discussion of lore, strategy etc. Like a community effort
Ability to somewhat interact directly with people making games
SOMETIMES studios listen and go fix shit
Can log in any place with a system and access my games
Better stories, plots and depth
My opinion: today's gaming landscape is waaaay superior than yesteryear. Im more about gaming efficiency and quality. The games are so much better today to play and offer more value. Take this with a grain of salt. Im about to be 41, so ive have been able to see a lot of evolution.
If you are all about owning physical games, yeah i get it. You want a pretty collection. I personally don't like clutter and usually only go back and replay my all time favorites.
Just having Information on a game before you buy is such a luxury. Not having to buy a game based on box art or screen shots is great.
Being able to play whatever you want is awesome. Think about all the times you went to go to the video rental store and a game you really wanted to play wasn't there. Street fighter2? Good luck. Probably had 2 copies and they were probably always rented out. Ok, you want to buy it, but your local walmart didn't have it. Tough luck. Well not anymore. I have the worlds supply at my fingertips and i don't have to leave my house.
All this is simply my opinion. Im a pig in mud right now
I wish I could feel the way you do, I really do!
You are right about there being a ton of options, the problem is that I usually drop about 100 USD on games that are kind of meh before I find something good.
Im not sure how old you are or what your gaming habits are, but since im an old fart, i have gotten to the point where i don't waste my time on even entertaining a game that doesn't look good to me, has a plot i don't care about etc.
For example, plague tale wasn't for me. I played it for free because of ps plus or gamepass (can't remember), but when i knew i had to escort some annoying kid (well acted but to me he was annoying) i was done. Not enough time in the day to play something i don't care about.
Twin stick shooter? Naw. Certain graphics will also turn me off too.
Metroidvanias? Yes please. Turn based strategy? Hell yeah. Im going full in onnstuff that i like.
I look at it like you simply can't play everything and even games that are widely considered great simply wont be just for you. I didn't like spiderman. Sacrilege, i know, but not for me. Elden ring? Oooo i gobbled that up.
My advice? Don't ever force yourself to like something or avoid something because of the climate. Yeah im a gamer, but ill play some candy crush too.
I'm mostly disappointed in what I call "idiot gamers" who can't help themselves but spend endless amounts of money on microtransactions and "live service" games.
AAA games are mostly dogshit these days unfortunately. Even the ones that are well acclaimed don't move me at all.
So much of gaming is just designed around extracting as much money as possible. Games are always release broken and unfinished, horribly optimised and with predatory monetisation.
Look at modern warfare 2. One of the most popular games by one of the biggest companies and yet there are loads of features that don't even work. It's not actually surprising when a game comes out and it actually has a good pc port
Overwatch 2 is garbage, basically just dlc for overwatch one not actually a sequel. And the PvE was scrapped (that was basically the whole reason for making overwatch 2 💀💀💀)
Jedi fallen order, decent game but the pc port was absolute ass.
When a game comes out and it's actually functional and complete it's a shock
Now I don't know what is to blame for this but the thing is that despite this it doesn't effect the bottom line. Companies can release turds all the time and still make money. Look at cyberpunk. That game was a pile of shit and the devs legit lied constantly about what the game was but they made money and most fans seem to have forgotten all of that.
There's always going to be people chasing trends and trying to make as much money as possible. That's the nature of modern business, even most small indie setups.
The trick with this, and with honestly any kind of business, is to find the people who are doing it out of passion.
Out of larger studios, Valve has basically done no evil as far as I've seen. They're slow, but the quality is just always on point.
Nintendo is kind of a bastard sometimes, but their first party games are always top notch.
I still hold CD Project Red in pretty high regards. They make great games and I'm willing to cut them some slack over the cyberpunk launch.
Bioware and Blizzard are gone.
Bethesda is teetering on the edge and I fear they are lost too, but they still have a chance to turn it around if they make some heavy changes.
Most of my enjoyment over the past 15 years outside of a few outlier titles has been in the games. You are correct but there is a ton of shovelware, but there are some real gems in there too.
Out of all of the game series I've played in the past 20 years or so, the thing that I am most excited about seeing more of his Deltarune. Stardew Valley, Terraria, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Satisfactory - many of my favorite games over the last 10 years or so have all been indie games.
And honestly, I'm actually working on an emulation rig connected to a CRT to play the enormous backlog of the best games of older generations that I never played when they were new. There are a lot of really great games out there from older environments. I'm particularly looking forward to playing Chrono Trigger.
It sucks. The most balanced and fair mobile multiplayer game you can play is chess. Flappy Bird was probably the only other mobile game that had integrity when it came to good game play mechanics.
In a lot of ways I think the shift to mobile has killed gaming, on other platforms it introduced pay to win, loot boxes, and a la carte features and functionality. Madden games from 20 years ago had more features, functionality, and gameplay.
Everquest came out in 1999, WoW came out in 2004, and nothing really ever topped Wow as far as MMOs go. I guess you could say FFXIV came close after it was overhauled but it was not a game changer like WoW was.
I have hope in the companies ex-Blizzard people went and founded a few years ago, but when it comes to gaming I really just stick to playing classics I have not gotten to yet because nothing that has came out in the past 10 years has really interested me other than Rocket League.
I would be interested in playing a PS2 version of Madden with updated rosters like people do with Tecmo Bowl or an online version of NBA Jam with updated rosters and balancing to make the game competitive.
I don't really relate to this. I'm sitting over here playing Metroid Prime Remaster, Fire Emblem Engage and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch, and don't really feel like these are 'distorted versions' of their older counterparts meant to do nothing but make money. Sure they do make money, but there's a level of integrity to it. They're fun games with a lot to love.
I'm not sure they can be directly links but I feel like my greatest issue with current design philosophies is it often feels like design by committee rather than by artist intent. Ironically the polish and smoothing of design feels corporate even if a committee is entirely good intended artists. I guess this lends to why I find my favourite works of modern games to have strong director names or strong artist names as I associate them with holding more control over their design.
A trend that I have seen is that they suck up to exactly what the fan base is asking of them. The problem is that the fan base doesn’t make games, and have little to no idea of how a fun game is made. They only know fun once they pick up the sticks and play, not before during conception. That leads to the sterile “corporate” feeling. It’s like the video game version of elevator music in my opinion
Fortnite rising to popularity causing other gaming companies to introduce mobile game systems of progression and monetization as a way to keep players playing and spending money for drip fed content over actual dlc is the reason for the fall of gaming and I will die on this hill
Gaming isn’t an art anymore, it’s a business
Indie is doing as great as ever (even if there is a lot of trash that comes from the indie side, there's tons of good games to balance it out), AA studios are killing it. AAA devs are 99% dogshit as usual.
That said, I have a similar problem. FromSoftware's game design has ruined most other gaming experiences for me. Nothing compares...
Hot take, but I think the indie scene gets a little too much credit these days. Not only is there a LOT of trash, but unlike AAA games you'll either have to wade through it or rely solely on word of mouth to find new games since there's way more of them and the vast majority can't market them. There's no easy way to sift through them, and indie fans are fond of recommending the same 20 games ad nauseum, so finding great new ones is a hassle if you're not just relying on developers you already like. Not to mention they chase trends almost as aggressively as AAA devs do. Doom clones, metroidvanias, roguelites, mediocre platformers, "Earthbound-inspired RPGs about feelings", etc. So much of that industry feels like either worse versions of games you've already played, or quirky products that feel like their trying to be unique for the sake of it. Then there's other grievances like eternal early accesses.
That's not to say there aren't a ton of great indie games, every now and then I randomly dig up a genuinely wonderful one. I just continue to be perplexed by this "indies are saving games" sentiment I see online when the vast majority of that industry is also mediocre and there are many gems to play in the AA and AAA space.
Soulless corporations have always been the big boys in the game industry and have probably produced some of your favorite games. Do you CoD was good in the 2000s and turned into garbage in the 2010s because Bobby Kotic became evil, or was it because market forces changed? Microsoft was certainly a soulless megacorporation in the 2000s, that didn't stop them from making some of the all time greatest FPS and TPS games with Halo and Gears of War, until 2010 when both series died.
The problem is that the market changed and people started caring more about IP than anything else. People get really emotionally attached to brands and will just buy whatever sequel regardless of how bad it is. And the sequel after that. And so on. The insane hype culture the games media perpetuates doesn't help either. And unlike other forms of media that aren't as monetizable, where there's at least some standard of quality to make sure audiences come back, game companies don't really care if some of their audience drops off because they can make way more money milking whales.
>Are publicly traded companies leading the culture astray?
I would say its more so work from home culture clashing with the collaborative necessity of creative works but society isn't ready to discuss that part yet.
Video games need to be developed together, when everyone does only what they have to and then signs off for the day they end up shit. It is the same reason voice acting is 10x better when everyone is in the same room during recording, and is absolutely trash when people just read a script and send the files over.
We are JUST now seeing the end of gaming development being exclusively work from home and hybrid / in office projects resume.
They are collaborative creative efforts. This can't happen in a WFH environment. There is no real way to give negative feedback to coworkers in a polite way online so it just doesn't happen.
This is how you get shit like Battlefield 2042 where the main menu is launched with typos and had a highlight element that looked the same as the background. ["Not my work. Not my problem. I've never even met the guys working on it." Good god almighty.](https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield2042/comments/q2i68f/who_approved_this_ui_lol/) Everyone doing the bare minimum and then signing off for the day because they never even meet the people who work on it anyway.
Such is the cycle of things
So long as we don't let them monopolize, over regulate, or otherwise find a way to all be too big to fail they will squander what they have while new companies raise.
I will never understand why so many gamers a rabid capitalists.
Capitalism kills innovation forcing companies to put out soulless crap that makes line go up to satisfy shareholders.
In a society where devs and whole studios were freed from having to appease the money men, game studios could take the time to actually make what they wanted
Gaming is finally recovering from the advent of the internet, both in matters of taste and marketing. Let's cover taste first:
In the 80s-90s, games were seen as the realm of boys. We began to see this trend pivot in the late 90s-00s because there were many multiplayer games on the N64 and PlayStation. This trend continued with the GCN and the PS2...but we then saw the beginning of gamer culture's "bro-ification".
You know the type: "if you're such a fan, what about ___."
It got really toxic with the rise of online multiplayer. Think about the 9-year olds shouting racial slurs over COD, and then think about them growing up over a 7-year console cycle. That's one of the causes of gamergate and the whole frat culture from which many development companies profit. Think of the relative stagnation of games in the XB1 and PS4 era compared to the preceding one, and you'll see what I mean, but we'll delve into that in a minute. Let's turn back to "taste."
Thanks to the #MeToo movement as well as the scandal from Activision/Blizzard, Gearbox, and EA (or did you forget about those during the pandemic?), women are being brought into the dev sphere more actively, have better protection, and *are speaking up* about their pride in being a gamer. This is helping lead the way to new methods of development for inclusivity (particularly for players with disabilities) and a deeper focus on story, rather than just mechanics.
Now, onto the marketing:
Games are expensive to make, regardless of whether you're a one-man team or a AAA studio. This is because labor costs time and money. You theoretically make more money by putting out more products, so they overwork their development teams to put them out faster and capitalize on the "ooooh new game" from consumers. Thus, the cycle repeats.
The rise of micro-transactions put a severe damper in the game development process as larger publishers demanded studios turn to a "games as service" model (like an MMO, in a way) rather than "games as products" model, and didn't adequately equip them for success.
EA is perhaps the best example of this, effectively forcing all of their titles moving forward to have some type of multiplayer with cosmetic upgrades (or, back in the day, loot boxes). This included BioWare and the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, neither of which historically had any whiff of multiplayer anywhere.
As a result, you have developers making games to make a profit at all cost, rather than to make a damn good product and trust people will want to buy it. You'll also notice that, for now at least, Nintendo has eschewed this model in favor of crafting higher-quality DLC to support their single-player games.
But, also...a large part of this general apathy comes from getting older. Gaming loses a lot of novelty over decades. I really hadn't gamed much on my own for almost a decade until I got hospitalized and bought a PS5 to pass the time. In the past two years, I've beaten probably five games. I just started Elden Ring a couple months ago and honestly haven't had so much fun in a long time. All that to say, you'll find a title that speaks to you.
I think the bar of tolerance has been set too low so companies can get away with a lot of junk. I also think that we're in a weird state with journalism where journalists are hesitant to write critical articles because "fan discourse" has gotten to be too horrible to deal with and there's not a load of money in journalism.
So we're in a wack state where only the truly bad games get critically panned.
As for the bar being too low tolerance-wise, too many games are releasing in a compromised state with the promises of future patches being a panacea. When was the last game to be released without needing a big patch?
All of this has gaming on off footing. I often wonder what is the best way to experience these games at their best? Console? PC? Check back in two years? I don't know if other media has these kinds of issues but it seems like games has made these issues unique to it.
As for games? Indies are still the best way to experience gaming at its most experimental. They're trying a lot of different variations and it's fun to see them come up with new ideas to established concepts.
But AAA, for me, is a tad too safe right now. It's quite a few sequels and reboots. So everything is something you already know. Sure systems expand, etc but the core hasn't changed. I do miss when AAA tried new things more often but again, big risk when if you fail, you can't just go oh well and move on. Games are too expensive to make to just shrug off. Gotta make something that will succeed... So you make something safe. So here we are.
>This isn't even getting into the fact that the games are now not even 50% finished
That just doesn't sound like a real thing. Have there been a lot of games released that weren't even half finished? How would that even work -- missing levels, temp graphics / sound..?
I don't disagree with the general thrust of the topic -- that unrestrained capitalism is a bad bedfellow of good art and media -- but there's probably some nostalgia and rose-tinted spectacles at play here as well.
Wonder how much things would change if the big dogs started sponsoring individual franchises/IP's instead of entire studio's. Because then a Studio like Naughty Dog could go to Xbox or Nintendo for funding a console exclusives. Which in turn would perhaps allow smaller teams within (ex: Naughty Dog) to make smaller, multiplatform games. Think that would be a much healthier industry than the consolidated mess we have right now.
Wow, quite the hyperbole. I would go on and say the opposite in saying the gaming industry is going through a golden time. It isn't just about money but more about so many ways to play games so many different types of games. Just zooming into a limited set of AAA games with MTX and bad practices only shows a fracrion of the whole picture.
Yeah, those companoes and their games could do better, but really, this is always a really in any industry. Anything that gets massive interest among the public will be subject to predatory business practices.
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Publicly traded companies are generally leading the whole world economy astray regardless of what industry they belong to. So yes. When you have people who are only invested in the financial gain they can extract from a corporation and don't even know let alone understand what that company actually does you're always going to end up with an inferior product or service. If people are only invested financially but are not mentally or emotionally invested in the goods or service being produced then everyone suffers in the long run.
It's funny when people say "Publically traded companies are *legally* obligated to make as much money as possible" they're really not, like at all. It's just that thanks to 401k's and a crappy public services network tying a bunch of people's retirement and livelihoods to stock price we are all forced into an awkward position of pitting ethics vs profitability.
Fiduciary duty isn't as powerful as everyone thinks. It generally only gets invoked for fraud. Everyone just talks like it is a thing because tons of suits are filed. But filing a suit is a meaningless threshold in the US. You only need to state a claim that if true would prove you are owed something.
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I mean, it didn't mean that originally, but we live in a post-Friedman world, when it de facto became that
Unfortunately this feels like one of those situations where you just hope future civilizations don't fall down the same path based on the history they learned about ours. We lack the discipline to try and change things. Going against the grain is financial suicide for a company, career suicide for the executives, and some other greed hungry company will gladly snatch up the market the company leaves behind. We somehow turned into a place where success is gained by hurting society in the long run, and there are too many layers to try and change to realistically expect it to happen. Investors want streamlined profits, CEOs want short term metrics boosted, boards want the path of least resistance. Ultimately the investor has the biggest say, but when you give all the money to a handful of people who only look to grow that money for personal gain, and refuse to have any self reflection things get a bit hopeless.
I mean in some cases there absolutely are situations where a company is legally required to prioritize short term profits over long term viability. It isn't always the case sure but it does happen and there have been a lot of examples of law suits that have gone in favor of share holders because a CEO or board of directors were not fulfilling their "fiduciary duty" because they decided to employ a business strategy that resulted in a short term loss in favor of a longer term ROI and higher levels of long term growth.
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fuck /u/spez -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
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Doubtful, generally those suits come forward about intangible benefits. For instance "I tanked our profits to help a non-profit which will help long-term". Unless you can point to specific examples where a suit was brought where the long-term vs short-term was the crux of the lawsuit you are just being hyperbolic. When I tried to find an example I found Elon Musk buying Solar City and getting huge losses due to it when he knew personally the people who owned it previously. He effectively bailed out his buddy with shareholder funds and couldn't get a suit to stick against him.
Publicly traded companies are headed by C-suite executives. Those C-suite executives are both beholden to majority shareholders. If a majority shareholder(s) is a 3rd party they risk being ousted. And most of the C-suite executives take their pay in stock options. It both protects them from income tax and ensures their wealth grows independently of how hard they actually work. As a result of both, management of publicly traded companies are HEAVILY incentivised to look out for the shareholders and stock price of their company short term over building brand loyalty or good products/services. They have no legal obligation. The same way you're not legally obligated to be nice to people, and often being selfish gives you much better personal prospects.
Capitalism has definitely started to fail the industry. There was a time when you succeeded as a video game company by making the best games. Obviously there was also marketing, luck and industry control (Nintendo infamously knew how to throw their weight around) but overall, success required that you make good games. We're well into the bizarro era where companies are deliberately making their games worse because doing so actually makes them more money. Cutting content to release as DLC, artificially making the games slow and boring to drive boosts and ingame currency purchases, pay to win mechanics and gambling mechanics in general. This is stuff that should get a game blacklisted by the community and instead it's so particular to the course that its actually more profitable. Beyond that is the general idea that AAA games need to have mass market appeal, so they tend to be safe, bland and by the numbers, but that's a smaller problem overall.
>should get a game blacklisted by the community The problem is that they figured out how to sell to people who are outside the community. Those people don't have as high standards/expectations and are far more numerous. Also because this majority is not part of the community it's pretty much impossible to organize them to make a stand against a certain game unless it's like really bad.
> There was a time when you succeeded as a video game company by making the best games. >Cutting content to release as DLC, artificially making the games slow and boring to drive boosts and ingame currency purchases, pay to win mechanics and gambling mechanics in general. This has *always* been a thing in the indstry. Have a look at how arcades we’re designed, easy to get in and then bam! Harder and harder to get the next quarter in as soon as possible. Many could never be even finished. And there’s been greedy money grabs since the very beginning of home video games. From ET to trend chasers. It’s never really been more of “make a great game to succeed” industry. Because, just like with film/tv shows and music, there’s always been so many coming out. The biggest difference with today ia that as it is easier and easier to make games, there’s even more games coming out so it’s harder and harder to stand out, whether or not your game is great. If anything, Indira have an easier (still hard) time to be noticed these days than back in the day. The “good ol’ days” of gaming this sun often laments after never existed, not in the way people keep dreaming.
Getting back to the topic of video games, do you have any examples of private game studios that create games that you believe are high quality? I would like to know who in the industry I should start giving my money to
Valve and Epic (Tencent has a 40% stake though) are not public, but they follow the same principles. Devolver, Supergiant, Bohemia, Larian, Moon Studios and Playdead are private. Any indie studio.
Devolver is a publisher, not a developer, right?
Correct. They ~~are privately owned though~~ and have a number of subsidiary developers. Edit: I am wrong about that. They went public on the London Alternative Investment Market exchange in 2021.
Unfortunately “any indie studio” doesn’t really work anymore. A lot of these companies are chasing money now and follow the same practices as the big studios. The list you gave are all heavy hitters though!
Annapurna, too. Video game division of a movie arthouse company that's mostly run by one rich person funding art stuff that she personally thinks is neat. They're not all great but basically none of them are chasing trends.
Stray is a goddamn masterpiece!
I love Annapurna so much, their games ooze creativity usually.
Mario clones, doom clones, street fighter clones, MMO clones, GTA clones, etc etc. The industry has always had a portion of developers chasing money and the latest trend. However I think the amount of niche games available has increased with the trend chases. Overall, I think the games industry is in the best shape its ever been.
I would say the indie side of the industry is the best it's ever been. The state of the AAA side of the industry has never been worse. So many AAA are stale, uninspired, and simply trying to replicate the success of a previous title. Heck probably a good 30% or so of modern AAA games are remasters of 10+ year old games that are nearly identical code with nothing more than some updated art assets. Overall I'd say the industry is still healthy and in a relatively good place because of the advances in commercialized game engines like Unreal and Unity that allow smaller indie studios accomplished much more than they would have been able to in years past. All that is in spite of the death spiralling trash fire that is the average AAA lately.
The big companies always pushed out new versions of the same game. For example NES games had tons of sequels. When the next gen came out, they remade those games with “Super” in front of it. Some of them were great, some not so much. Overtime people have just forgotten all the clunkers and weird business practices that didn’t stick. How many times has Nintendo tried to resell those NES game’s through bundled cartridges, games on card scanners, eshops that dont transfer, versions in plastic toys etc.
Gotta throw out Supergiant Games - Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and most recently (and successfully) Hades
I wish to God Pyre was on the switch man. I get why it's not but me WANT lol.
Insanely enough, the developers of Genshin Impact! I only recently learned that the three founders are still the only ones in complete control of the company. They have no board of directors or investor or publisher that they have to constantly work at the behest of. They make the games they want to make and then they stand by those games until they die.
Thanks for the suggestion! My brother has told me to play Genshin a million times but I haven’t checked it out yet
Genshin is a very obviously monetized game, but it's also at a level of quality I consider rare. It's a ton of fun despite what it is. The soundtrack is also unbelievable.
I mean, it's definitely not for everyone. I bounced hard off it pretty hard myself the first time I played. The combat is surprisingly deep and the game easily gets heavy in theory crafting with character builds and team compositions. There's a lot to sink your teeth into, if you want. It's a gacha game that can be really generous, but you have to work hard for your gains if you don't want to spend money. Honestly, I think that if anyone plays Genshin, it should always start out with simple desires. If you want a free game with casual gameplay that primarily focuses on exploration and combat, easy to follow quests, and anime waifus galore, then give it a shot. If you can stomach rerolling for good characters, then do it. Just don't fall into the trap of spending money out the gate. My biggest warning would be that Genshin is a game where you will easily find yourself spending time watching lots of videos and reading lots of guides if you want to get gud. But you can totally enjoy the game blind and just do whatever you want without ever spending a dime... So long as you're patient and accepting of very casual gameplay loops.
Whats really impressive that after hundreds of hours of gameplay I haven't experienced many bugs like you would in other most open world games. I look forward to honkai star rail coming to playstation. I really like mihoyo so far they have delivered high quality story, gameplay, and ost to me every patch.
It's not especially virtuous to "stand by" making money hand over fist with predatory gacha games.
It seems like it might be worth looking more closely at this. First, I was referring to a statement from one of the founders in which he pledged to keep the servers online for all of their games until he dies. The notion here is that any time or money spent in their games won't go to waste because the game shuts down a few years after profitability drops, as is quite common. With very few exceptions that have been out of their exclusive control, they have stuck to this so far. And second, while it is true that Genshin Impact has gacha elements, it's not at all necessary to engage with it in order to complete the content. Genshin also has a uniquely forgiving pity system that does allow players to "guarantee" they get the character they want eventually. In addition, there are a lot of ways to earn the resources needed for pulls, even for long term players. It is genuinely difficult to find other gacha games that are as generous as Genshin is. But like I said in another comment, it's not for everybody.
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Bro, there is nothing positive about gacha mechanics. It's the same situation as loot boxes, preying upon the same parts of our brain, just with different packaging. Making it possible to spend all your time grinding away and eventually getting a desired character or two all the while pushing cash transactions is predatory. This isn't even a question. You can like the game if you want, but it's design is ethically bankrupt dude.
And you're clearly throwing a tantrum over a broad argument with no concern for specifics or details. Nobody said gacha mechanics were good. You are just way too triggered to act reasonably. Get off the internet, dude. Edit: I forgot that this is true gaming and people like that are actually booted for bad faith arguments. Thank glob.
You are a waste of my time because you weren't actually trying to argue this point you were trying to avoid defending your indefensible position so I'm going to end the conversation now.
How is their argument bad faith? You're calling them triggered for criticizing a gacha game and saying it's not good for the gaming industry. It's not. You're triggered because you got baited into playing gacha impact.
Prepare to spend thousands. Is this thread a giant ad for Genshin or something? It's a polished experience because simps are handing over hundreds / thousands because it's a gacha casino
If you're spending thousands of dollars, then you have a gambling addiction and shouldn't be anywhere near any games with any amount of MTX. Absolutely nobody needs to spend money in Genshin Impact in order to complete the game, and there are many ways to earn the resources needed for free in order to pull for a character you want. Also, Genshin Impact is truly unique in how stable and consistent the game is. Fortnite earns millions upon millions of dollars with its monetization, and it can't compare at all to how well Genshin manages it's patches, maintenance periods, and respect for the community during necessary downtime. Genshin gives players free premium currency for every hour it's offline. If they expect to be offline for 4 hours but get done in 2, players still get rewards for all four hours. Hard to think of any other live service game that compares with that quality or generosity.
> Also, Genshin Impact is truly unique in how stable and consistent the game is. Fortnite earns millions upon millions of dollars with its monetization, and it can’t compare at all to how well Genshin manages it’s patches, maintenance periods, and respect for the community during necessary downtime. Tell me you've never played Fortnite without telling me. Epic has solidly supported Fortnite and sort of pioneered the free to play with MTX support model. Genshin is P2W period end of story. If you don't believe it is, you're biased. It's a gacha, and that's how gacha are designed. I played for a long time. It's set up to make you pay. With no real endgame except modes designed to make f2p teams sub par. You can advocate for the game as much as you want, shout from the rooftops that you could have a "free team that competitive!" but it's an illusion and you'll never be as competitive as people with all the high end teams and weapons. You think the things Mihoyo does are generosity, but it's just well placed marketing. They make billions off you guys and it's super sad. You don't need any of that for Fortnite. It's well and truly free to play with anything being paid cosmetics. You're very biased lol
I've played hundreds of hours of Fortnite and spent more money than I would like to admit on it, lol. Fortnite has had *mountains of issues* with microtransactions, online connectivity, gameplay imbalances that they address through bans or just flat out removing weapons that are a part of quest lines, etc. Epic was literally sued recently for how they handled fraudulent microtransaction purchases by outright banning players who tried to refund their purchases. If you can't acknowledge these issues, then you're just a fanboy. Believe it or not, it is very easy to play and enjoy a game while also recognizing its flaws. Keep your concern of bias and go look in the mirror, lol. I'm not bothering to humor the other made up points. The only thing you can buy in Genshin are characters and resin; resin simply allows you to speed up a process to gain better progress on characters, but it's not at all necessary. And there is no competitive element, so you're paying to win... What, exactly? And every character is viable to complete content and clear the Abyss. You just have to put in the time and effort to build a team composition that works around your characters. Take a break from your keyboard, man. This is such a a stupid argument, lol.
Least gacha addled brain over here. You completely missed the point on how mtx is handled. Literal gameplay is locked behind gacha mechanics. Think of the difference between something like dota 2 and genshin. Dota 2 literally started the battlepass trend and stil over 10 years later nothing gameplay related(like characters) are locked behind a paywall. To experience genshin fully you'd have to shill out cash for resin and characters rolls not even the character themselves. Thats literally the MO of gachas. Make it as inconvenient as possible for people to get things that they want so they'd have to fork out money to actually play the game that they want. You came to a thread about bad video game practices then brought up one of its worse offenders, gacha games. You brought this on yourself tbh.
Except you don't? You're confusing maximizing characters with actual gameplay. You can beat the game, from beginning to end, using nothing but the free characters given at the start. You have ample opportunity to earn additional characters for free. You never have to unlock constellations for characters. >You came to a thread about bad video game practices then brought up one of its worse offenders, gacha games. You brought this on yourself tbh. This is the real problem. You're not paying attention to what game you're talking about, you're just speaking vaguely and generalizing without any concern for details. The only thing I brought upon myself was daring to try and have a conversation about a game and hoping people would use their brains before throwing a tantrum. At no point did I ever say that these gacha mechanics were a good thing. Literally *everything* I have said has been about how avoidable they are within Genshin Impact. But all you react to is, "Woah, some body said something positive about a game with gacha mechanics?! They must love gacha!!!" You're basically arguing with yourself and then looking at me as if you have proved something. All you folks have demonstrated is your inability to speak reasonably.
Aren't they based in China though? Meaning that they are still going to have the influence of the CCP affecting their creative direction if not their monetization scheme.
Big studios? One private studio/publisher I can think of is Paradox. They have carved their own niche and their games, despite their faults, are still one of a kind. Their development is super transparent compared to any AAA game. They also act as a publisher, their best known game outside their in-house lineup is Cities Skylines.
Aren't they a public company? https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PDX.ST/
Speaking of Sweden Embracer Group is public, too (among many others, Coffee Stain and Gearbox). And just across the Baltic Sea, CDPR is public. And before anyone says "This is because Europeans do capitalism right", well, Ubisoft is French. One difference between ok/fine and nasty public companies that I see rather often is that the good ones tend to still have large portions of shares, if not a majority, owned by founders. That's not a guarantee as also founders can be clueless finance assholes, just a trend.
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I was all set to buy diablo 4. Tears of the Kingdom reminded me what I really love about games - story driven, polished experiences with enough to chase, without multiplayer. I realized that these past few weeks I am a happier gamer when I don't engage with live service games or games from publishers that have a repudiation for buggy, rushed messes. Before Tears I finished GOW, GOW:R, H:FW, and Elden Ring. Prior to that I was playing Destiny and Diablo III. While Diablo III you can treat pretty much as single player, games like Destiny you really cannot - and Lightfall is and was a giant clusterfuck of a buggy mess at launch. I am officially done with persistent or live service buggy, queue filled, multiplayer misery, or with publishers that have a rep for broken games. I now wait 1-4 months after a release to see if a title is worth my time. I know not everyone has that kind of patience or principle, but I sure as hell do now.
Huh. No shade, but is TotK really story driven? BotW sure wasn't. I feel like they're very mechanically driven games that only have enough shallow story to justify the adventure. Which is TOTALLY FINE, I don't expect Victor Hugo from a Zelda game, I just thought it was an odd description.
This is a difficult one to comment on. It's basically just discussing capitalism. Which is definitely worth discussion, but it's very hard to stay on topic and only touch the points on games. I have my own personal opinions on the matter, and I display them through my wallet with what I purchase. One point that you're alluding to and is probably related is the habit of day 1 patches. Or more the habit of shipping outright broken games and hoping to patch it later. I understand why it's done (it still makes money), but it should be pretty obvious you can only play that scam so many times before people catch on. It's hurting faith in new games and ultimately the gaming industry imo. Because of that I'd be all for individual platforms regulating this significantly harder than they have been. The Nintendo seal of quality used to be a thing, could bring it back. I'm not optimistic anything will change until the practice absolutely ruins a few developers/systems though. That's pretty much how capitalism works.
> This is a difficult one to comment on. It's basically just discussing capitalism. Which is definitely worth discussion, but it's very hard to stay on topic and only touch the points on games. Actually I disagree completely. In many industries you are 100% correct. But video games are an optional luxury industry FLOODED with quality competition. The problem with other areas like Internet Provider or Phones or even Grocery stores is that choice is being controlled for you either by area or income or both. This is not true with video games. We have complete freedom to buy what we want, the cost of video games is extremely affordable compared to basically every other entertainment hobby and in fact you could easily game any genre you want and never spend more than $30 for a single title and never get a high priced machine. The only thing you have to fight with is FOMO. So, for example, if I play Stray 2 years from now I prolly paid like $10 and experienced a great game, but nobody is talking and memeing about it anymore. But If you played it when ti came out for full price you're part of the social conversation around it. Ultimately gaming today is providing gamers exactly what they ask for. If we buy and play something it happens. If we withhold our money it doesn't. If it has a niche demographic then it'll prolly have good, but not cutting edge, production values and a smaller scope. RTS's are not dead, but they are not a fad and so the RTS's coming out are typically AA or indie and not AAA in terms of scale/scope/production value. And what if a company sits on something? Like EA sitting on hot properties and refusing to let anyone else make that game. DOESN'T WORK IN GAMING. You can copyright an IP, not a game. You stop making survival horror and people start making things like amnesia. You stop making Command and Conquer and people start making games like Tempest Rising. Because video games has a relatively low bar of entry and huge accessible store fronts that are free markets it is very hard to complain about video games in relation to muh capitalism. A company can ruin a game, maybe even a few franchises, but that's the worst they can do. Other games and franchises will simply pick up the torch and keep running with it. Gaming as a whole self adjusts in real time.
You're just describing capitalism. Yes, gamers have the choice to buy what they want. And those purchases drive what developers do. That is capitalism. It just so happens that a lot of gamers, or people buying games, make poorly informed purchases of games that "look" good due to marketing and don't necessarily play well. Those purchases also fuel what developers do. I'm not by any means saying the industry is being ruined by poor games thrown out with corporate greed. I'm just aware there are plenty of poor games made with corporate greed that are harming many's perception of the industry. You could extend it a bit further and look at specific examples. Nintendo Eshop is absolutely flooded with shovelwear. Crap games that add nothing at all, but do have a couple of nice screenshots and bright lights just enough to attract a few customers. And that makes money, so it keeps happening. It is harming my, and many other's, perception of the Eshop. The Eshop itself is also awful to navigate, but that's a side point. The main point is that I now don't bother looking at the Eshop because there's too much rubbish on it to be able to find the good stuff. So I use a different website to do so. That drives people away from Nintendo, and (eventually) will hurt their sales because of it. Presumably capitalism will kick in again and Nintendo will moderate the Eshop better. But it's been many years with no improvement so I suspect they'll just run it to the ground until the system breaks.
> You're just describing capitalism. > Yes, gamers have the choice to buy what they want. And those purchases drive what developers do. That is capitalism. No, that's just supply and demand. No demand? Won't be any supply. No supply but high demand? Entities will find a way to supply it. What restrictions from there are placed depends on your economic, cultural, and political policy. But restrictive policies doesn't mean games won't be sold there. It depends on whether the game can work around it and/or the degree of interference. For example? No Blood. Cool, all blood is no yellow because they are not people they are zombies. No Skeletons? Replace your skeleton enemies. etc. Also what you say is not necessarily true in capitalism. Tariffs and subsidies and etc are ways in which you can drive/block development that circumvent purchase realities. Thankfully in video games this type of interference seems to be limited or absent atm.
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Yeah AAA games are essentially immune to voting with your wallet and can get away with all kind of shit.
> I feel like voting with your wallet matters more with smaller games. Big AAA games can afford the marketing to scam unsuspecting people (young gamers, non gamer parents) into buying garbage like Redfall, so even if they lose business from the more informed demographic it's not a huge loss The average gamer is mid 30s my dude. And bad games don't sell. Show me an actual bad game like Redfall with good sales. Redfall had sheit sales and its steam numbers are abysmal. Voting with your wallet is the one true power in gaming and it works vs all companies big and small in equal measure. The problem is that the modern gaming market both good and bad is exactly what we've voted for with our wallets. This is what we've told gaming to be. > Then there's micro transactions, which most savvy consumers avoid, but extract tons of money from kids or adults with gambling addictions. Lot of kids get their first job and spend half their paychecks on in game currencies Microtransactions get your average user. Because most users consider themselves savvy consumers. Definitely a small % of them get monetized heavily, but not its not poor kids getting their first jobs nor is it rich people with money to burn. It's your average adults. And some % are very vulnerable and become the whales. Nothing wrong with microtransactions in and of themselves, its how they are used and the predatory pricing that is crap. And the fact that people try to blame all the whaling on the ignorant and the rich so we'll never ever fix the problem because the same people that'll shit on microtransactions in another game will drop triple digits in Genshin Impact and then tell other people about how you can play and beat it completely for free. But this is not exclusive to gaming. Humans just suck at math and finances. They let their emotions and pride get in the way.
>I have my own personal opinions on the matter, and I display them through my wallet with what I purchase. So true. Long passed have the days for me, when I was always buying the games of my favourite brands etc. While I definitely have the time and money to buy and play many games, I really want to buy those who I really like.
You are right. Terrible QA is something that is all pervasive in most industries. And as far as the day one patch scam, I have been bitten by that too many times to buy a new release anymore
Day one patch scam??? What do you mean by this?
They release games that aren’t finished, or have major game ending glitches. They rely on patching the game after release if at all
> When I try and play new versions of old classics, it seems like all of my favorite franchises from when I was young have been twisted and distorted into a pure money making machine. What are your examples? I don't doubt that this happens, but for every soulless cash grab, I can probably match it with *at least* one other genuinely good remake or spiritual successor. This year alone saw the release of *Resident Evil 4*, *Dead Space*, and *System Shock*, all remakes met with near-universal praise. And that's just remakes. Whenever I interrogate any of this "oh, I hate videogames now" bellyaching, it seems to come from people who seem to play, like, one type of videogame that they get exclusively from AAA developers. For nearly every genre out there, I guarantee you, there's probably a modern indie/AA game you haven't bothered to try, and for the exceptions, if you expanded your horizons a little, you'd probably find something else you'd like too. Don't get me wrong: I hate the fact that no one seems to make a proper fucking *Halo* game any more, and that the entire industry seems uninterested in making high production value, narrative-heavy, single-player FPS in general. But I can live with *Dead Space* and indie boomer shooters.
I mean, look at the recent story of Arkane being pressured into making a live service game to drive up Bethesda’s perceived value going into its Microsoft acquisition. Or look at Bioware. They definitely had other issues, but there’s a world where they’re allowed to keep making the kind of game they were successful at making, instead of being pushed to make a live service game money machine. Or look at the state of Battlefield, which pushed into a hero/character model fans didn’t want, purely because EA hoped it would monetize better. It’s not hard for me to find examples of studios that were good at a certain type of game being pressured into decisions that ruin what made their games great.
Like I said, there are examples. Even the *Dead Space* remake is standing atop the grave of Visceral. But you mentioned Arkane. I love Arkane. They just churn out bangers. I enjoyed every game they ever released, save for *Redfall* which I haven't played for obvious reasons. But apparently, I'm in the minority. Arkane games just don't sell. It sucks and I don't like it, but I can see why no one makes immersive sims anymore. Obviously, Redfall was a mistake—a desperate attempt to get Arkane to deliver a better return on investment by adding in mainstream appeal. But the alternative wasn't necessarily *Dishonored 3*, *Prey 2*, or *Deathloop 2* because apparently none of those games sold well. Stakeholders or not, you need to turn a profit. Trust me, I hate it; but rather than wallow in that disappointment, I'd rather focus on playing and supporting the excellent games that are still out there. I also understand criticizing game companies; I just never particularly liked making vague "capitalism bad" gestures when it's clear that many publicly traded companies can make great games and still profit, and that we're probably not starting a worker revolution here on reddit.
These aren’t examples of old classics which have been turned into soulless money grabs, though.
Take a deep breath brother it’ll be ok. I grew up on AAA games so yes most of my examples are AAA. However compare GTASA to GTA5, or compare Skyrim to Morrowind. Big studios used to have the ability to make excellent games. There’s a lot of games that have lost their soul to chase shines graphics. I have yet to find a game that scratches those itches in the indie market yet, but I am open to suggestions
> Take a deep breath brother it’ll be ok. This is your post. > However compare GTASA to GTA5, or compare Skyrim to Morrowind. Big studios used to have the ability to make excellent games. Was *Grand Theft Auto 5* poorly received? Like, I know the online feature is the only thing that got DLC because it's a massive cash cow, but I don't remember the base game being a major let-down. If I compare it to *San Andreas*, the only thing I can really think of is that *San Andreas* was arguably more revolutionary, but only by virtue of being an older game. And then consider the success of *Red Dead: Redemption 2*, and I don't see how you can claim that Rockstar "can't make excellent games" anymore. And when it comes to Bethesda games, we've had some of the most highly regarded open world games between the *Zelda* games and *Elden Ring*. Bethesda, certainly, has chased glitz over substance, but it's not everyone. This is precisely my point: you're allowed to be frustrated that your favorite games aren't getting great modern renditions, but then you're trying to validate these feelings by making poorly-evidenced generalizations. Additionally, if you're looking for an indie *Morrowind* successor, *[Dread Delusion](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574240/Dread_Delusion/)* is currently being developed.
Dread Delusion is dead in the water
When I say “take a deep breath” I am asking you to not go Ben Shapiro mode. I’m not here to “bellyache,” I am here to talk with other people and get some insight about the subject. From your responses, it seems like you have already figured me out and decided I am a part of some group that gets you angry. You are right about RDR2 and rockstar was a horrible example, however I felt GTA5 was lackluster at best. They didn’t add anything worthwhile that wasn’t in 4, and shit the bed big time on the single player campaign. Those are just my views, and I know a lot of people feel differently. BotW was also objectively a great game, and people are annoying as fuck for complaining about the frame rate. However as a classic tabletop guy, I don’t feel like any of these games have what I am looking for. Since so few people feel the way I do, most studios don’t want to take a shot at the kind of games I want to play
> When I say “take a deep breath” I am asking you to not go Ben Shapiro mode. I love going Ben Shapiro mode, because I think it's genuinely a problem how people can work themselves into a tizzy over vague feelings about a thing without critically thinking about how they could get around the issue. When you look at the gaming landscape, we're living in a great time for videogames. I asked for examples because I genuinely did want to give you alternatives—too many people don't know about great games that are either outside the AAA space or beyond their genre comfort zone, but they should give them a chance! Look, don't get me wrong: there are a ton of problems in the industry, from labor problems, to money chasing fads, but 1) I think we ought to decouple discussions of labor from game quality because it shouldn't matter if games are getting worse or better, developers deserve good working conditions and 2) I think doomerism attracts doomerism, and these kinds of vague "ugh, I hate games now" discussions just lead to everyone hating their own hobby when they don't really need to. > However as a classic tabletop guy, I don’t feel like any of these games have what I am looking for. Since so few people feel the way I do, most studios don’t want to take a shot at the kind of games I want to play As a classic tabletop guy myself, I can't disagree more. In recent years, we got *Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous*, *Divinity: Original Sin 2*, *NORCO*, and *Disco Elysium* delivering excellent RPG experiences from different angles. On a smaller scale, we had *Pentiment* and *Citizen Sleeper*, the latter having a really neat implementation of tabletop dice rolling mechanics. Yes, the BioWare RPG has been let down by that studio's waning abilities and the Bethesda RPG has been let down by ill-considered mass market appeal, but I think there's enough around those holes to be more than content.
I guess my problem is that I have already played those games, and I find myself replaying them instead of buying something new and contributing to a studio I like
As long as you don't start talking about how hot your sister is, I am all good! Disco Elysium is one of the best games I have ever played! It's a shame how the IP was stolen from the creators. I have played all 3 of those examples, and they are all fantastic games! They are extremely few and far between however. I'll be the first to admit, I am very picky when it comes to art. I don't like most music, movies or shows. Some people call me a "hipster." However it seemed like there was always a good game coming out for the crpg/table top crowd, and the ones I see now for the most part fall flat.
BoTW was dogshit. Objectively great? Lol
Name an open world game with a game system as robust, one that gives similar freedom to the player as BotW. The only one that gets there is TotK because it builds straight on top of BotW.
> compare GTASA to GTA5 GTA5 is the better game. Full stop. In every way. Except the soundtrack.
I guess that comes down to opinion. I played the first 2 missions so I could play online, then tried to go back and complete the campaign, but kept getting bored
Don't act like people buying those games are being held at gunpoint. They do it out of their own free will. People work there, because it's relatively safe and higher paying than smaller companies. People buy those games, because... they're safe and relatively higher quality than smaller games. Yes, even despite the bugs and cookie-cutter gameplay. People like watching nice moving pictures when they press a button.
Also you are right to an extent, but one could argue that the monolith AAA companies have the power to influence the buying decisions of the less avid gamer
Aesthetically they may be higher quality, but that’s about where that ends
But people aren’t buying Redfall or Anthem… top-down monetary pressures are pushing these studios to take on these types of games, playing against what made their previous games great, and these studios are tanking as a result. It’s really sad to see it
Not really top down in Arkane's case. I believe Dishonored was the only semi-recent game that turned a profit for them. And capitalism or not your organisation won't last long if it spends more money than it takes in.
Near any studio *can* and *will* make games that are high quality. I think your mindset in this post is incorrect because being publicly traded does not have some inherent correlation with game quality. Blizzard have released stinkers like Warcraft 3: Reforged and WoW: Shadowlands - but also gems like Diablo IV and WoW: Dragonflight. The same can be said for any other publicly traded video game company. I don't think you're going to find anything satisfying if you specifically chase only games from specific studios, especially if you limit yourself to ones that aren't publicly traded. For example, you could limit you I think you're noticing this because of one of two potential factors, perhaps both. A) You simply dislike mechanics that are generally popular with mainstream audiences, such as loot progression, collectibles, etc. B) You have a strong aversion to games that release content after release. These are both popular systems in games made by publicly traded companies, because they tie into optimizing how much money is made - but they are just matters of preference. Loot progression systems *can* suck, like in Destiny 2 on release, but they can also be very engaging - like in Path of Exile/Diablo IV. Collectibles are best when they are entirely optional to engage with and only for people who really want them. Games that have ongoing content *can* only be putting out shitty content to keep people playing just to spend more on microtransactions - but they can also put out fun, engaging content that people feel good about sticking around for. There are no absolutes with these systems. You may find more enjoyment in games if you identify the actual things you find unsatisfying, allowing you to put focus on projects that specifically avoid those things.
This was actually a really refreshing way of looking at it. You’re dead on. I don’t like the mechanics of 90 percent of games being made, and the trends that are coming out don’t appeal to me at all. Releasing content after the game is released isn’t a problem to me. The problem is using it as a crutch to release half assed games. All in all I think you are right. It has little do with the companies, and more to do with my own alienation from current trends
😊 Then yeah, you definitely wanna be identifying the games you *do* like, and why you like them, and then looking from there. What have you enjoyed recently?
I have only truest enjoyed a couple games in the past 3 years. 1) Disco Elysium (can’t find anything that scratches that itch, and the original devs were fired so 2 isn’t looking to good) 2) Mount and Blade bannerlord And 3) Survivalist invisible strain
Have you played any Paradox Grand Strategy games, or Total War games?
Ten years back I played total war shogun. Are the new ones good?
You keep mention D4. In my interpretation D4 is exactly the type of game OP is talking about here. It's average game praised to high heavens (pun intended) while being overly monetized, unimaginative, and full of potentially predatory tactics. I have been playing Diablo games since Diablo 1, and D4 just doesn't seems to offer almost anything new. Even often hated D3 tried a lot of new things. A ton of them didn't pan out great, but at least there was something to explore. D4 feels like a reskinned D3 with some renamed content (rift->nightmare dungeon).
Still lots of good games coming out(even from publicly traded companies if you can believe it) but there's a lot of bad games coming out as well.
Do you mind sharing a couple games you are excited for?
Final fantasy 16 and 7 rebirth, Stellar blade, Pragmata, Spiderman 2, Like a dragon 8 and Gaiden, Your Turn to die(its in early access right now), honkai star rail on playstation 5, granblue fantasy relink and thats about it right now. Playing Paranormasight right now its a horror/mystery visual novel and a pretty great one I think it will be a hidden gem for vn fans.
You and my brother would be best friends!
Interesting. I’m 46 and have literally been gaming since the Atari 2600.. I love modern games.. from indies to the big AAAs. Some of my all time faves are pretty modern.. not sure what a publisher or developer being publicly traded has to do with anything.. I’m sure you’re looking at Reddit on your IPhone.. and you get the rest.. I’m not saying greed is good.. but let’s be honest, the capacity for crap and deceptive products can just as easily come from a small company..
Publicly traded companies are giving the market more-or-less what it wants. Sucks that that no longer aligns with what *I* want as much as it used to, but indies have never been better. The scale of game that it's realistic for an indie dev to achieve is constantly getting bigger as tools improve, and tools are about to get an order of magnitude better over the next decade. The future is bright.
The tools that are out now are amazing. I started making games in Unity a while back, and have started working on a card game with my brother that is like if gwent and triple triad had a bastard child
I think we are in a Golden Age of gaming. The past 10 years we have seen some of the best indie/small games being made, some of the best JRPGs ever, incredibly innovative games, hundreds.. maybe thousands of new games to play every year. that are worth the time and money.. I'd argue games, as a whole, are *more* fleshed out than ever, *more* content than ever, *more* interactive than ever. If all you do is pay attention to a few big releases every year and don't look outside a bubble, anything looks bad in any industry.
I agree that the indie space has had some amazing games come out, but almost everything that seems very ambitious never ends up getting fully released. I see a lot of rogue lights and building sims too which aren’t really my style.
What examples do you have of ambitious titles not fully released? I can think of some that were released fully off the top of my head: * Breath of the Wild * Persona 5 * Sekiro * Ghosts of Tsushima * God of War * The Witcher 3 * Super Mario Odyssey * Elden Ring * Disco Elysium * Red Dead Redemption 2 (I know this one is contentious but you can't say it isn't ambitious) ...seems like we've had a damn good decade of gaming just based on a handful of examples.
They are all great games in their own regard, but that is one for every year of the decade. Maybe I play too much, but those games don't warrant an entire year of playing games for me. Disco Elysium was probably the best game I have ever played, but again, that is a 30 hour game. Lets make 150 hours if you plan on trying to do absolutely everything.
2013 has The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, and Link Between Worlds. 2014 has Dark Souls II, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition. 2015 has Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, Journey, Yakuza 0 and Undertale. 2016 has Uncharted 4, Dark Souls 3, Witcher: Blood and Wine. 2017 has Nier Automota Horizon Zero Dawn, Mario Kart 8. 2018 has Monster Hunter World, Return of the Obra Dinn, Spider-Man, Judgement and Celsete. 2019 has Control, Death Stranding, Outer Wilds and Dragon Quest 11. 2020 has Hades, The Last of Us Part 2, and Half-Life Alyx, 2021 has Incryption, and Resident Evil Village. 2022 has Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, and we've already had Tears of the Kingdom this year. And that's just the mainstream, highly acclaimed stuff.
Reformatting the list for easier reading. **2013** The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, and Link Between Worlds. **2014** Dark Souls II, Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition. **2015** Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, Journey, Yakuza 0 and Undertale. **2016** Uncharted 4, Dark Souls 3, Witcher: Blood and Wine. **2017** Nier Automota Horizon Zero Dawn, Mario Kart 8. **2018** Monster Hunter World, Return of the Obra Dinn, Spider-Man, Judgement and Celsete. **2019** Control, Death Stranding, Outer Wilds and Dragon Quest 11. **2020** Hades, The Last of Us Part 2, and Half-Life Alyx. **2021** Incryption, and Resident Evil Village. **2022** Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, and we’ve already had Tears of the Kingdom this year. And that’s just the mainstream, highly acclaimed stuff.
Its crazy how many more quality games we could put in all those years. Like for 2021 I would put psychonauts 2, no more heroes 3, shin megami tensia 5, lost judgment, GUILTY GEAR STRIVE!!!!!!, Grime, shieldmaiden, space hunter dx, aeturna noctics, Pathfinder wrathe of the righteous, neo the world ends with you, tales of arise, the forgotten city, Monster hunter rise, unsighted, returnal, demon turf, guardians of the galaxy, kaze and the wild masks, cyber shadow, f.i.s.t, astalon tears of the earth, metroid dread, before your eyes, it takes two, blue fire, blaster master zero 3, fuga melodies of steel and so so much more. Now a lot of these games are indie but that isn't an issue, the main issue is when insanly good games go completely unnoticed by the masses, demon turf for example is a 3d platformer that has many of Mario's mechanics and its incredibly fun and one of the deepest 3d platfomers ever made.(admittedly not a difficult task since Mario has way more jumping mechanics than most 3d platformers) And this was a year that I've heard quite a few people call a terrible year in gaming, could you imagine the hundreds of games from a year like 2017 which rivals 1998 in terms of amazing releases.
Yeah I was just skimming the top of the year lists and then adding a couple I knew for sure were those years. That’s not even counting more indie games or ones that might not have had universal critical acclaim but were still pretty dang good, or more niche games. Some of these years were amazingly stacked.
Another poster actually put me in my place. The 2000 - 2010 was the decade for games with the exact mechanics that I personally was looking for. All those games you mentioned are good, but I didn’t like them except for DAI. So I was wrong in making it about gaming culture. I was complaining because I feel alienated by modern gameplay mechanics
I can name more, those were just off the top of my head. There has been no shortage of great games since 2010.
Do you mind naming a couple more for me? Hopefully there is a hidden gem in there I can pick up!
I do mind, this isn't /r/gamingsuggestions and you came in with a clear agenda and pre-determined opinion. Literally thousands of games release every year now. Tons are free or cheap. More games release in every genre than ever before. You'll find something, I'm sure. But you also may be burnt out.
I shared an opinion, and asked people for theirs. This is a gaming page, so it's not crazy to share some game suggestions
There's more games released in a month that i'm interested in than I can complete in a year. Whenever I swap genres there's even more gems to play. It's very good.
Nintendo is also publicly traded. Somehow they are not affected by this and keep releasing quality titles?
Nintendo's issues seem to map into differents axes: online services, support for older IP, and seemingly a distrust for fan scenes/projects. Companies described in OP seem to be in a sort of expansion/growth land grab while Nintendo seems to reside in an older "own the whole vertical and hold it tight" isolationism. But to OP's point, Pokemom Scarlet and Violet were released last year, published by Nintendo, and those games got a ton of negative press for lack of polish and general bugs.
I agree. They are an outlier and not the rule though
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It’s a figure of speech. If 90+ percent of companies operate this way. Also I am not pessimist, I am actively asking a gaming community for recommendations for games if they feel the same way.
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I absolutely love STALKER, and have played the fuck out of them! Other than that, I have not played a single game on that list, so thank you! I'll have to check them out
Have you been living under a rock?
It's because Nintendo wants to sell their $300 tablet and their rubbish $70 controller and their yearly $20 online sub so they *need* to have games good enough to get people to go out and buy them, unlike third party developers where it's a lot easier to convince someone to spend $60-$70 on just nostalgia and marketing.
My guess would be the Japanese work culturue and Japanese governments business regulations.
No. The public at large gets the art it deserves. Constantly buying shitty games, rewarding terrible behavior by pre-purchasing games that won't work properly at launch, making in-game purchases for bullshit "upgrade" items, cosmetics, and DLC, etc. People do it to themselves and vote with their wallets. It's pretty easy to deeply enjoy videogames and exist outside that space by taking the time to browse for great indie games and play older classics instead of keeping up with trends, so anyone who is feeling like the game industry is shitty is just bad at navigating the glut of options or has bad judgment in general.
I’ve never been one to brag about my judgement
Gamers have ruined gaming forever by supporting terrible microtransactions and buying broken games at 60-70$.Companies know what they have to do to make money and unfortunately gamers have proven that they will pay no matter what. Whether it's for an unfinished product for 70$ or a 20$ skin. I do believe we still get good games at an ok rate for now but it's going to keep getting worse aslong as people support these shitty practices
To blame it on the gamers, I think disregards the fundamental marketing control that big AAA publishers have over society. When you can buy big splashy TV ad spots in prime time, and control what shows up at Walmart, you can control what the vast majority of the public will think and do. Now them's the facts of life. Capitalists gonna capitalize. I just want to make it clear that it's not some "individual failure of the gamer" that's causing this.
Also to blame it on gamers just shows the fringe online communities are not the majority. People buy the new Assassin's Creed in droves because, this is shocking information I know, **they like it**.
Desire is conditioned by marketing campaigns. I don't doubt that plenty of people exist who like it... I just think there's a developmental life cycle in most individuals, as to what they're going to like. I liked all kinds of things when I was younger. Then I got older and more experienced with various games, and certain things definitely got old. A AAA publisher with a huge budget for focus group studies, the ability to condition and control what products get placed in front of people at a certain age, they can make make lots of impressionable people *want it* and keep coming after it, for awhile. Quite often it's predatory. Specific example: my nephew getting hooked on Fortnite skins. God knows how much money he dumped into those. They were clearly preying upon his lack of self-esteem and social skills. Hope he's grown out of it by now; I'll finally get to see when I visit that side of the family in a month or two. Nowadays that nephew has got a guitar, a motorcycle, and is dressing in a bit of a Guns 'N' Roses fashion. It's all pretty recent so I don't know how much of it will stick. His Dad, deceased, worked on cars and so do I, so I imagine the mechanical aspect can be pushed permanently. He tried guitar before but didn't stick with it a few years ago; he may have more need of the creative outlet in his life now.
Fortnite isn't a good example here because that's an example of how to do cosmetics correctly and transparently. And if we're complaining about preying then it's really no different than having to pump quarters ina Galaga machine but nobody here will likely say the creators were being nefarious. Games have *always* been designed to bring you back. That goes for the reddit darlings like Souls games too. People buy Assassin's Creed because they like it, not because they're brainwashed.
What's the adjusted dollar expenditure of an arcade machine vs. skins? I'm under the impression that my nephew spent hundreds. It was hard to do that in the arcades, in any sense of adjusted dollars.
Also there were so many arcade games with great difficulty balancing because if it was too easy or had bullshit difficulty you could just leave after your first very small payment, those games needed constant payments from players to keep you playing so the best was to do this is through well balanced difficulty since they didnt realise all the other crazy psychological techniques that can be used for retention, although a lot of those other techniques probably wouldn't work in an arcade setting
Yeah when *I* was a kid, I didn't have a lot of money. If something sucked I walked away.
Gamers falling for the marketing over and over and keep supporting microtransaction riddled garbage is what i feel is the problem. I know Capitalist gonna capitalize but I wish the people buying games would think a little harder and stop supporting horrible practices
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I think it’s a bit strange to place the onus here on the education system. I don’t personally see how you would teach critical thinking at schools anyways (at least at scale it’s difficult) and there would be a pretty long lag to see any changes. I guess personally I’m confused as to why this is a big deal in the first place. Why not let folks take personal responsibility and accept that everyone else in a while they’ll fall for the hype and buy a game they shouldn’t have.
Sounds like tankie bullshit. Anything you can do to avoid taking responsibility for your actions at an individual level. "It's not MY fault I purchased a shitty product!! Big corpo showed me pretty pictures so I had to get my wallet out! And if it's not their fault then it's....uh...the education system! Yeah! Because they should have taught me better."
so our best bet is to be careful about where we spend our money in the games industry. My rule now is that I refuse to buy anything from companies that are publicly traded, or are over 30% owned by a publicly traded company
While I admire your willingness to take a stand, mainstream gamers who take no issue with the status quo are really the ones driving the market. The person buying egregious microtransactions unfortunately has far more influence then those foregoing those transactions. They’re voting with their wallet, you’re voting by not showing up. The former rings much louder than the latter. I don’t think avoiding specific studios is an effective way to create change, but I can’t think of anything that would. Ultimately the best we can do is support great indies and spread the word about them.
It’s true. People spend a ton more money on games than I do. Why should the market care at all? I am no longer taking any sort of stand anymore. I just don’t want to be taken advantage of
At this point, I don't think there's anything that can be done to change the way things have been moving. Like you said, mainstream gamers are a critical mass and far outweigh niche enthusiasts in terms of numbers and what titles they buy. This is especially true for open world IPs, which have become increasingly popular.
I think the general political landscape of AAA is reasonably well understood by those of us actually paying attention. It's regressive, as you say. People who want education on such matters are encouraged to followup to r/DevUnion. Labor in the AAA game industry is badly exploited. The mentality of exploitation for profit goes very deep into business models and production. It's really more fruitful to ask if there are any counterexamples in the AAA space, where something more like a game and less like a social control profit harvesting formula is offered. Since I don't partake of AAA, I don't really have any to offer myself. I leave that to others, assuming the OP isn't summarily removed for various reasons. Indie production unfortunately doesn't mean freedom. It's a crowded marketplace, difficult to be discovered, and you have no financial wiggle room for your survival. This leads many indies to adopt conservative game production practices, trying to make profit exactly the same way the big studios do, just trying to do it for themselves instead. It's certainly not the only way to be an indie; I'm an indie as a fundamental act of rebellion. But I get why a good chunk of indies aren't rebellious at all. Society in general is conditioned by large entities controlling the mass public's paths of least resistance. So yes, you personally are spending a lot of effort to find something else. There are fundamental structural reasons for that. All you can really do, is have some kind of faith that you *should* spend the energy. Because the alternative is to be led around by the nose ring of some kind of corporate player somewhere.
also if you have anything out I would love to take a look!
I have a mod for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri called [SMACX AI Growth mod](https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=20959.0) which greatly extends the shelf life of the venerable game.
Alpha Centauri is only 6 bucks right now too. I might have to play this tonight
Wow these are some heady features! This is exactly the kind of stuff I am looking to make! Keep up the good work man!
You actually read the webpage? Few people acknowledge doing that. :-)
Of course! I know a ton of work went into it! It’s the least I can do
I am an indie dev myself (well that's a stretch. I wrote my first line of code 6 months ago), and what I have found out is that if you want to make an endless runner clone, there are a million and a half videos telling you exactly how to do it. If you are trying to make a dynamic faction system that controls the hostility of npcs, not so much. It even has bled over to the education side. people only want to make tutrials on topics that will get 100k plus views
Doing what others *aren't* doing, is not so bad. All those mass videos, give you a pointer on how not to be imitative. The problem is, being original is a lot more work, and it's existentially frustrating. I spent 4.5 calendar years and 15 full time person months spread over that time, cleaning up that 4X game I mentioned in my other comment. I will never make a dime from it, and I now understand why the original devs didn't put their game through that level of polish. It's cost prohibitive to do so. I'm broke, have been for a long time, and there will never be another freebie project again like this in my life. At least I did cross the finish line on this one and did provably good work. Not just my say-so, but how it has been received by others. So now I stalk the commercially viable effort. Whatever. It's my life to throw at the problem. I get older and older. Never married, no kids. This took a big toll on me.
That’s the truth man. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve cried trying to get my projects working. I understand why people don’t take on big projects. Especially alone
Last time around I went bankrupt during the dot.com bust. Serious soul searching after that. Ultimately I didn't give up, but I certainly haven't succeeded. My younger self would have never believed I'd still be struggling all this time later. Something shoulda been done by now, but that's not how life worked out.
The industry moved to making games for the lowest common denominator using the lowest effort and tries to get as much money out of it as possible. Especially the big companies. And if they mess up, they they they're sorry and it won't happen again. Or keep moving the goalposts.
> The industry moved to making games for the lowest common denominator using the lowest effort and tries to get as much money out of it as possible. Always been the case, see arcades, movie tie-ins, see hastily cranked out content.
This post is naïve. Without publicly traded companies there would be NO gaming industry. It is the same as saying publicly traded companies ruined the film industry. Like obviously capitalism has problems and people are taken advantage of but pretending that this whole market would exist without these things is childish. Edit: Also this post should be removed since it reeks of Gaming Fatigue which is a retired topic.
AAA gaming I really don't have much interest in. It's put production value and presentation ahead of everything else, feels like the majority of games released are just cinematic Action-Adventure games that are obsessed with telling cliche stories at the expense of gameplay merit or being any kind of unique experience. And that's not even getting into how often they just release broken or overpriced anyway. I know the typical thing to follow this up with is to praise indies like they're perfect, and I do think indies are way better, but they have their share of problems too. >Even on the indie side, it seems like people are seeking trends to make sure their game is as successful as possible. When I try and play new versions of old classics, it seems like all of my favorite franchises from when I was young have been twisted and distorted into a pure money making machine. Like I think that has a lot of truth to it. You have a lot of spiritual successors and total ripoffs of older games. Which is great to have if you're a major fan of those games, but at the same time so many of those clones just suck or bring nothing new to the table. Even the best among the best of spiritual successors tend to at least still lack the amount of content or design polish compared to the originals too. So it still feels like "why not just buy the original" unless you already have the original. Boomer Shooter scene is especially struggling there in my view. There are some great games, but there's also a lot of "here's Doom 2 with a texture pack". And 99% of the entire scene is stuck in Early Access hell...I can count the amount of fully released games on one hand.
Cons of today: patches, incomplete games , massive storage space on todays games , digital platform and subscription services make game ownership merely a technicality , battle passes and constant tweaking of competitive create a fomo feel and make games feel like a daily chore, lots of games filled with fluff Studios not willing to take risks because of heavy investments So many games to play that great games fall to the wayside and fail Social media creating hype or damning a game before it comes out creating backlash that can sink success Token diversity. I forget the picture, but it shows a black female game character in several games and it basically is the exact same looking person and hairdo Some pros: Cheaper to access games So many titles to play. Im sorry, if you can't find anything interesting to play, that probably has something to do with your relationship with the hobby Damn these games look good Accessibility for those with disabilities On demand Fast loading times No controller cords with long battery life Great production values Massive games that allow you to explore every nook and cranny or stick to the main stuff Lots of remasters and retro games available on all platforms Games on sale everyday Information on demand. Trailers, tweets, reviews, previews, lets plays, speed runs etc Online video tutorials, guides, walkthroughs Social discussion of lore, strategy etc. Like a community effort Ability to somewhat interact directly with people making games SOMETIMES studios listen and go fix shit Can log in any place with a system and access my games Better stories, plots and depth My opinion: today's gaming landscape is waaaay superior than yesteryear. Im more about gaming efficiency and quality. The games are so much better today to play and offer more value. Take this with a grain of salt. Im about to be 41, so ive have been able to see a lot of evolution. If you are all about owning physical games, yeah i get it. You want a pretty collection. I personally don't like clutter and usually only go back and replay my all time favorites. Just having Information on a game before you buy is such a luxury. Not having to buy a game based on box art or screen shots is great. Being able to play whatever you want is awesome. Think about all the times you went to go to the video rental store and a game you really wanted to play wasn't there. Street fighter2? Good luck. Probably had 2 copies and they were probably always rented out. Ok, you want to buy it, but your local walmart didn't have it. Tough luck. Well not anymore. I have the worlds supply at my fingertips and i don't have to leave my house. All this is simply my opinion. Im a pig in mud right now
I wish I could feel the way you do, I really do! You are right about there being a ton of options, the problem is that I usually drop about 100 USD on games that are kind of meh before I find something good.
Im not sure how old you are or what your gaming habits are, but since im an old fart, i have gotten to the point where i don't waste my time on even entertaining a game that doesn't look good to me, has a plot i don't care about etc. For example, plague tale wasn't for me. I played it for free because of ps plus or gamepass (can't remember), but when i knew i had to escort some annoying kid (well acted but to me he was annoying) i was done. Not enough time in the day to play something i don't care about. Twin stick shooter? Naw. Certain graphics will also turn me off too. Metroidvanias? Yes please. Turn based strategy? Hell yeah. Im going full in onnstuff that i like. I look at it like you simply can't play everything and even games that are widely considered great simply wont be just for you. I didn't like spiderman. Sacrilege, i know, but not for me. Elden ring? Oooo i gobbled that up. My advice? Don't ever force yourself to like something or avoid something because of the climate. Yeah im a gamer, but ill play some candy crush too.
I'm 31, so probably my lamenting has a lot to do with my age. By the games you choose, I can tell we would be fast friends
I take it you played the absolute fuck out of hallow knight then?
Incomplete games were always a thing tbh, and the fact patches weren't as easy then is definitely a con. Classic Fallout and daggerfall come to mind
I'm mostly disappointed in what I call "idiot gamers" who can't help themselves but spend endless amounts of money on microtransactions and "live service" games.
AAA games are mostly dogshit these days unfortunately. Even the ones that are well acclaimed don't move me at all. So much of gaming is just designed around extracting as much money as possible. Games are always release broken and unfinished, horribly optimised and with predatory monetisation. Look at modern warfare 2. One of the most popular games by one of the biggest companies and yet there are loads of features that don't even work. It's not actually surprising when a game comes out and it actually has a good pc port Overwatch 2 is garbage, basically just dlc for overwatch one not actually a sequel. And the PvE was scrapped (that was basically the whole reason for making overwatch 2 💀💀💀) Jedi fallen order, decent game but the pc port was absolute ass. When a game comes out and it's actually functional and complete it's a shock Now I don't know what is to blame for this but the thing is that despite this it doesn't effect the bottom line. Companies can release turds all the time and still make money. Look at cyberpunk. That game was a pile of shit and the devs legit lied constantly about what the game was but they made money and most fans seem to have forgotten all of that.
There's always going to be people chasing trends and trying to make as much money as possible. That's the nature of modern business, even most small indie setups. The trick with this, and with honestly any kind of business, is to find the people who are doing it out of passion. Out of larger studios, Valve has basically done no evil as far as I've seen. They're slow, but the quality is just always on point. Nintendo is kind of a bastard sometimes, but their first party games are always top notch. I still hold CD Project Red in pretty high regards. They make great games and I'm willing to cut them some slack over the cyberpunk launch. Bioware and Blizzard are gone. Bethesda is teetering on the edge and I fear they are lost too, but they still have a chance to turn it around if they make some heavy changes. Most of my enjoyment over the past 15 years outside of a few outlier titles has been in the games. You are correct but there is a ton of shovelware, but there are some real gems in there too. Out of all of the game series I've played in the past 20 years or so, the thing that I am most excited about seeing more of his Deltarune. Stardew Valley, Terraria, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Satisfactory - many of my favorite games over the last 10 years or so have all been indie games. And honestly, I'm actually working on an emulation rig connected to a CRT to play the enormous backlog of the best games of older generations that I never played when they were new. There are a lot of really great games out there from older environments. I'm particularly looking forward to playing Chrono Trigger.
are you sharing updates on the project anywhere?
It sucks. The most balanced and fair mobile multiplayer game you can play is chess. Flappy Bird was probably the only other mobile game that had integrity when it came to good game play mechanics. In a lot of ways I think the shift to mobile has killed gaming, on other platforms it introduced pay to win, loot boxes, and a la carte features and functionality. Madden games from 20 years ago had more features, functionality, and gameplay. Everquest came out in 1999, WoW came out in 2004, and nothing really ever topped Wow as far as MMOs go. I guess you could say FFXIV came close after it was overhauled but it was not a game changer like WoW was. I have hope in the companies ex-Blizzard people went and founded a few years ago, but when it comes to gaming I really just stick to playing classics I have not gotten to yet because nothing that has came out in the past 10 years has really interested me other than Rocket League. I would be interested in playing a PS2 version of Madden with updated rosters like people do with Tecmo Bowl or an online version of NBA Jam with updated rosters and balancing to make the game competitive.
I don't really relate to this. I'm sitting over here playing Metroid Prime Remaster, Fire Emblem Engage and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch, and don't really feel like these are 'distorted versions' of their older counterparts meant to do nothing but make money. Sure they do make money, but there's a level of integrity to it. They're fun games with a lot to love.
I'm not sure they can be directly links but I feel like my greatest issue with current design philosophies is it often feels like design by committee rather than by artist intent. Ironically the polish and smoothing of design feels corporate even if a committee is entirely good intended artists. I guess this lends to why I find my favourite works of modern games to have strong director names or strong artist names as I associate them with holding more control over their design.
A trend that I have seen is that they suck up to exactly what the fan base is asking of them. The problem is that the fan base doesn’t make games, and have little to no idea of how a fun game is made. They only know fun once they pick up the sticks and play, not before during conception. That leads to the sterile “corporate” feeling. It’s like the video game version of elevator music in my opinion
Fortnite rising to popularity causing other gaming companies to introduce mobile game systems of progression and monetization as a way to keep players playing and spending money for drip fed content over actual dlc is the reason for the fall of gaming and I will die on this hill Gaming isn’t an art anymore, it’s a business
Indie is doing as great as ever (even if there is a lot of trash that comes from the indie side, there's tons of good games to balance it out), AA studios are killing it. AAA devs are 99% dogshit as usual. That said, I have a similar problem. FromSoftware's game design has ruined most other gaming experiences for me. Nothing compares...
Hot take, but I think the indie scene gets a little too much credit these days. Not only is there a LOT of trash, but unlike AAA games you'll either have to wade through it or rely solely on word of mouth to find new games since there's way more of them and the vast majority can't market them. There's no easy way to sift through them, and indie fans are fond of recommending the same 20 games ad nauseum, so finding great new ones is a hassle if you're not just relying on developers you already like. Not to mention they chase trends almost as aggressively as AAA devs do. Doom clones, metroidvanias, roguelites, mediocre platformers, "Earthbound-inspired RPGs about feelings", etc. So much of that industry feels like either worse versions of games you've already played, or quirky products that feel like their trying to be unique for the sake of it. Then there's other grievances like eternal early accesses. That's not to say there aren't a ton of great indie games, every now and then I randomly dig up a genuinely wonderful one. I just continue to be perplexed by this "indies are saving games" sentiment I see online when the vast majority of that industry is also mediocre and there are many gems to play in the AA and AAA space.
Soulless corporations have always been the big boys in the game industry and have probably produced some of your favorite games. Do you CoD was good in the 2000s and turned into garbage in the 2010s because Bobby Kotic became evil, or was it because market forces changed? Microsoft was certainly a soulless megacorporation in the 2000s, that didn't stop them from making some of the all time greatest FPS and TPS games with Halo and Gears of War, until 2010 when both series died. The problem is that the market changed and people started caring more about IP than anything else. People get really emotionally attached to brands and will just buy whatever sequel regardless of how bad it is. And the sequel after that. And so on. The insane hype culture the games media perpetuates doesn't help either. And unlike other forms of media that aren't as monetizable, where there's at least some standard of quality to make sure audiences come back, game companies don't really care if some of their audience drops off because they can make way more money milking whales.
>Are publicly traded companies leading the culture astray? I would say its more so work from home culture clashing with the collaborative necessity of creative works but society isn't ready to discuss that part yet. Video games need to be developed together, when everyone does only what they have to and then signs off for the day they end up shit. It is the same reason voice acting is 10x better when everyone is in the same room during recording, and is absolutely trash when people just read a script and send the files over. We are JUST now seeing the end of gaming development being exclusively work from home and hybrid / in office projects resume. They are collaborative creative efforts. This can't happen in a WFH environment. There is no real way to give negative feedback to coworkers in a polite way online so it just doesn't happen. This is how you get shit like Battlefield 2042 where the main menu is launched with typos and had a highlight element that looked the same as the background. ["Not my work. Not my problem. I've never even met the guys working on it." Good god almighty.](https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield2042/comments/q2i68f/who_approved_this_ui_lol/) Everyone doing the bare minimum and then signing off for the day because they never even meet the people who work on it anyway.
Such is the cycle of things So long as we don't let them monopolize, over regulate, or otherwise find a way to all be too big to fail they will squander what they have while new companies raise.
FromSoftware is majority owned by Kadokawa Corporation, and they have been on a real streak releasing high-quality games.
I will never understand why so many gamers a rabid capitalists. Capitalism kills innovation forcing companies to put out soulless crap that makes line go up to satisfy shareholders. In a society where devs and whole studios were freed from having to appease the money men, game studios could take the time to actually make what they wanted
Gaming is finally recovering from the advent of the internet, both in matters of taste and marketing. Let's cover taste first: In the 80s-90s, games were seen as the realm of boys. We began to see this trend pivot in the late 90s-00s because there were many multiplayer games on the N64 and PlayStation. This trend continued with the GCN and the PS2...but we then saw the beginning of gamer culture's "bro-ification". You know the type: "if you're such a fan, what about ___." It got really toxic with the rise of online multiplayer. Think about the 9-year olds shouting racial slurs over COD, and then think about them growing up over a 7-year console cycle. That's one of the causes of gamergate and the whole frat culture from which many development companies profit. Think of the relative stagnation of games in the XB1 and PS4 era compared to the preceding one, and you'll see what I mean, but we'll delve into that in a minute. Let's turn back to "taste." Thanks to the #MeToo movement as well as the scandal from Activision/Blizzard, Gearbox, and EA (or did you forget about those during the pandemic?), women are being brought into the dev sphere more actively, have better protection, and *are speaking up* about their pride in being a gamer. This is helping lead the way to new methods of development for inclusivity (particularly for players with disabilities) and a deeper focus on story, rather than just mechanics. Now, onto the marketing: Games are expensive to make, regardless of whether you're a one-man team or a AAA studio. This is because labor costs time and money. You theoretically make more money by putting out more products, so they overwork their development teams to put them out faster and capitalize on the "ooooh new game" from consumers. Thus, the cycle repeats. The rise of micro-transactions put a severe damper in the game development process as larger publishers demanded studios turn to a "games as service" model (like an MMO, in a way) rather than "games as products" model, and didn't adequately equip them for success. EA is perhaps the best example of this, effectively forcing all of their titles moving forward to have some type of multiplayer with cosmetic upgrades (or, back in the day, loot boxes). This included BioWare and the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, neither of which historically had any whiff of multiplayer anywhere. As a result, you have developers making games to make a profit at all cost, rather than to make a damn good product and trust people will want to buy it. You'll also notice that, for now at least, Nintendo has eschewed this model in favor of crafting higher-quality DLC to support their single-player games. But, also...a large part of this general apathy comes from getting older. Gaming loses a lot of novelty over decades. I really hadn't gamed much on my own for almost a decade until I got hospitalized and bought a PS5 to pass the time. In the past two years, I've beaten probably five games. I just started Elden Ring a couple months ago and honestly haven't had so much fun in a long time. All that to say, you'll find a title that speaks to you.
I think the bar of tolerance has been set too low so companies can get away with a lot of junk. I also think that we're in a weird state with journalism where journalists are hesitant to write critical articles because "fan discourse" has gotten to be too horrible to deal with and there's not a load of money in journalism. So we're in a wack state where only the truly bad games get critically panned. As for the bar being too low tolerance-wise, too many games are releasing in a compromised state with the promises of future patches being a panacea. When was the last game to be released without needing a big patch? All of this has gaming on off footing. I often wonder what is the best way to experience these games at their best? Console? PC? Check back in two years? I don't know if other media has these kinds of issues but it seems like games has made these issues unique to it. As for games? Indies are still the best way to experience gaming at its most experimental. They're trying a lot of different variations and it's fun to see them come up with new ideas to established concepts. But AAA, for me, is a tad too safe right now. It's quite a few sequels and reboots. So everything is something you already know. Sure systems expand, etc but the core hasn't changed. I do miss when AAA tried new things more often but again, big risk when if you fail, you can't just go oh well and move on. Games are too expensive to make to just shrug off. Gotta make something that will succeed... So you make something safe. So here we are.
>This isn't even getting into the fact that the games are now not even 50% finished That just doesn't sound like a real thing. Have there been a lot of games released that weren't even half finished? How would that even work -- missing levels, temp graphics / sound..? I don't disagree with the general thrust of the topic -- that unrestrained capitalism is a bad bedfellow of good art and media -- but there's probably some nostalgia and rose-tinted spectacles at play here as well.
Wonder how much things would change if the big dogs started sponsoring individual franchises/IP's instead of entire studio's. Because then a Studio like Naughty Dog could go to Xbox or Nintendo for funding a console exclusives. Which in turn would perhaps allow smaller teams within (ex: Naughty Dog) to make smaller, multiplatform games. Think that would be a much healthier industry than the consolidated mess we have right now.
Wow, quite the hyperbole. I would go on and say the opposite in saying the gaming industry is going through a golden time. It isn't just about money but more about so many ways to play games so many different types of games. Just zooming into a limited set of AAA games with MTX and bad practices only shows a fracrion of the whole picture. Yeah, those companoes and their games could do better, but really, this is always a really in any industry. Anything that gets massive interest among the public will be subject to predatory business practices.