You may not agree, but they are right. We are not most people. They want, and they have, that sweet “lowest common denominator” market, and they will take advantage of that until something else generates more cash. The “lowest common denominator” demand more CoD and whatnot. They don’t care if it’s bad, because them and all their friends will buy it and perhaps even have some fun. The big studios converging on vapid cash grabs instead of creating interesting content is depressing, sure, but hardly surprising in a world where morals and ethics don’t matter, where you can get away with the absolute most heinous, reprehensible acts, and suffer zero consequences.
I don’t really care though. The indie scene is unaffected by this, and has only gotten better every year for as long as it has been around. It’s fucking GLORIOUS already, and it’s not going anywhere because it’s not run by an oligarchy of publicly traded shitfactories.
Yeah. I’m of the same mind. I was here to witness the resurgence of Boomer and Movement Shooters. Now, we’re in the cusp of the resurgence of RTS. I am very much happy with the state of gaming, without having to focus on sequels.
The last game published by 505 I played were apparently Indivisible, which was trash. I never played Ghostrunner nor Control which basically eliminates most of their notable recent output. I think I can safely say I’ll be fine with my continued ignoring of them as a publisher.
It’s very well done! It wasn’t really on my radar, but I got it for free from epic, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ditto Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I think the only things I’ve paid for on the epic store are the dlc from those gems.
Yeah i think we’re in a golden age of indie games. When i want to find a new game, i search youtube for “best indie games of 2018” or 2017, 2021 or whatever. So much great stuff to play made in the last 5-10 years. And so much more affordable. And it feels great to give my money to these devs.
If someone told me 4-5 years ago, that the year we got really incredible sequels to both Breath of the Wild, and that cool new Spider-Man game on PS4, my most-enjoyed game would be an indie Lovecraftian light-horror fishing game, I wouldn’t have believed them.
Also, making a good game is always a risk, it’s an intersection of tech, business, and art. Control e.g. sold only a few million copies, depsite being widely praised.
If you however want be sure, you invest a lot in marketing and monetisation, targeting a wide audience as you said, and can take a lower risk to make back your investment. Absolutely hate this of course, but luckily there are still good games, as long as e.g. Sony is willing to take that risk to sell more PS consoles, or we get wonders like BG3
Not polished as it’s still in early access, not amazing graphics, but turning out to be a damn good game that most “AAA” developers wouldn’t even try to make, that was made by one guy (and now a small team of volunteers/contractors lol)
Meh, at least as far as the games industry goes, we’ve been here before. Really the past few years have been incredible for games, now it’s time to settle into another stretch of mediocrity as companies learn the same lessons over again. Super sucks for the devs, though, seems they always get the shortest end of the stick.
My highest play time game is probably minecraft, and my recent go-to is slay the spire.
Sequels are seen as safer profits (there is an existing market) so they get more investment and more investment tends to make better games.
This doesn’t mean its what people want, it just means that name recognition means its cheaper to market a hit game with previous versions acting as a marketing boost. Its a feedback loop.
New IP comes out, people are apprehensive if they know nothing about it.
Sequel to popular IP comes out, people trust it because they know and like the earlier game, and assume a sequel will be more of that.
And if a sequel ever deviates from the proven model of its predecessors, people lose their shit and send death threats to developers.
That’s why you see so much recycled garbage come out, because trying something new usually results in more risk and lower returns. Not always, but usually.
It is always amusing to see the head of optional entertainment industries make statements like they are making a declaration on par with climate change, a economic depression, etc. As if they expect massive press coverage and endless crying by their would be customers.
When in reality the actual reaction by most is along the lines of “oh no, anyway” and move on to the next bit of optional entertainment media while they and their company are forgotten to the trash pile of failed companies.
I keep finding all these cool games and instantly get deflated when I find out they’re online. I want single player, i really don’t like playing with other people.
I remember being a kid playing Morrowind and really wishing my friends could play with me.
Now I’m an adult and I don’t want to play with the kids. They have way more time to play and take my ass to the cleaners. After the umpteenth time getting tea bagged while some 13 year old goes on about fucking my mother, his voice breaking repeatedly throughout, I swore off multiplayer.
There’s a jump between your first paragraph and the second. In the first one you said you wanted to play with your friends. But in the second you got the worst of Internet boys.
I also wanted to play Morrowind with my friends. We got Elder Scrolls Online but that’s a monkey’s paw wish. I wanted drop in multiplayer and an experience more like left 4 dead. I don’t want randoms. I want my friends. I don’t want a big always online persistent world. I want the single player world, but with my friends.
If I keep going I’m just going to reinvent Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer. That’s basically what I wanted back when. Not the MMO shit.
Hell, even the dark souls “summon a friend in” is like 70% of what I wanted.
I feel old. Remember when a brand new, highly anticipated, AAA game was like $40?
Not they are $70, plus $20-40 for preorder deluxe directors cut extra content bonus versions. Plus $10-30 for “season passes”. Plus online subscription services for the game itself, the online service the game runs on, or both. Oh, and don’t forget ad placement in the game. A giant billboard for house insurance in every cutscene. Drink your monster energy to refill your sprint meter…
That doesn’t include greedy mobile games that require vast amounts of money to remove artificial restriction, such as daily energy meters to act. Or cosmetic DLC that costs half the price of the game itself.
And don’t even get me start on the constant tracking, spying, or actual malware some publishers implement in their games.
Ah yes the anime treatment. Only release reboots, sequels, prequels, and poor spinoffs. For every One Punch Man, Mob Psycho 100, Chainsaw Man, or Megalobox, there are way more re-do’s or milking such as Yet Another Gundam Series, a new Bleach something or another, InuYasha retread, Trigun reboot, Hunter x Hunter reboot, FMA Brotherhood, Fruits Basket, Fate/Stay universe, Evangelion remake, everything DragonBall…I could go on. It’s rather depressing.
Games are just following the curves established by other artistic mediums over the decades when laziness and greed wins, as it always does. Even The Last of Us wasn’t safe.
For every reboot sequel and prequel there are 10 new series. There are around 40 different new anime this season. (Without counting Chinese, musics, poor quality and children’s show). Take a look at myanimelist seasonal anime.
(Anime in Japan come out in season : winter, spring, summer, fall. So they start and finish roughly at the same time).
.
And most or your example are pretty bad,
bleach just got an end that everyone liked
hunter hunter was paused because the author is sick, it never stopped and it’s not a reboot
FMA brotherhood was great because it fixed the issue with FMA : the end of the anime was made before the manga. And it’s 2009 come on you can’t use that to say that nowadays there’s only reboots
yeah they are milking the fate franchise and evangelion, and their community is all for it
Brother, skyrim has gotten insane. They now have in game vibrators that sync with REAL WORLD versions so you can feel the same thing IRL when it’s being used.
Im happy for this. But between this and the last update with a bunch of mods I have to wonder why – how are dev cycles being approved for these lovely changes? Is there enough money to be made pulling in anyone who hasn’t already bought the game and DLC? Good community PR?
My guess would be that it’s relatively quick for them to do and it allows them to bring the Witcher 3 back into the public eye whilst also getting some good will from the active community. Bet they announce another Witcher game release soon.
They’ve probably been having this conversation for a long time as it’s one major thing that separates it from Skyrim. They both have the longstanding love from the community but Skyrim is alive in a way that Witcher 3 isn’t.
Perhaps it was the switch from RedEngine or new decision makers at CDPR or something that finally brought it about.
Well they ported it to the switch and it’s one of the larger games on the Steam Deck (highly rated, verified, and iirc it was playable not long after the Deck’s release) so they might actually be able to keep extending the life of the game for a while longer and keep making sales.
I’ve actually had it in my library for a while but haven’t gotten into it because my life is too busy for video games right now. But with official mod support… maybe I can find some extra time somewhere lol
All you See Sweets can keep trying to quantify what it is gamers like. The truth is its ephemeral until it is materialized and on our screens. You never know how fun your thing is until milliona of people can access it. So stop trying to codify it, or find a formula. There is none. Make fun shit, take all the risk. Make new shit that no one has ever made before. But for the love of fps fucking please don’t pretend you’ve drilled down on what gamers like. Thats a promise to fail.
pcgamer.com
Aktywne