The article seems primarily focused on new games. And the article still makes some great points, but when you factor in older games the problem gets bigger.
I am not going to say that old games were better or that “they just don’t make them like they used to”. What I will say is that a lot of older games that are super cheap on Steam or out of print entirely are still great. There are occasionally new great games being released of course (I haven’t played Hades 2 yet but I expect it to be great, for example). But there’s a lot of new games being released where I think… “Why would I spend $70 or $80 on this when I already have this backlog of older games? Why would I spend my time playing 7/10 games when I have dozens of 9/10’s sitting in my library waiting for me?”
Very true. And sometimes there’s an answer to those questions, even if we discount the games designed to disappear after a few years. You might be sensitive to spoilers, it might be the perfect game for you in the moment (like the right game for a handheld system just before a trip), your friends might want to play it with you or talk with you about it when you’re done, etc. But that competition with back catalogs absolutely exists.
Yeah. When they announced the new Silent Hill I was somewhat interested - although I felt the peak was back then with SH2. But having read about the remaster of SH2 and some reviews that said, it’d return to the roots? Nice!
Then I saw a streamer play it early, watched a bit and it looked promising. So I went to wishlist it. Then the release day comes and steam lists it for 70 bucks (available in two days) or 90 bucks now. Well, no. Let’s see how long the price will be that high, but WTF? I don’t wanna know what’s the price on console for it - usually it’s 10-20 bucks more?!?
Not every game costs $70. Expedition 33 in particular only costs $50 when it’s not on sale, unless you’re in a different region where $50 USD converts to $70 in your country.
Going to need a global wave of union organization to at least get royalties on sales determined for contribution levels. That’s unlikely to be incredible money but anything is better than nothing as you age towards their elder years
Besides that, no real solution. It’s happened to every art industry. It turns out there’s probably been an incredible amount of artistic talent every year throughout the millenniums but it’s just the last couple decades where it didn’t require super levels of luck and financial backing to make it
I believe Gearbox has always done this royalty situation union-less. But that doesn’t spread out sales to other games that need customers. There are still going to be plenty of games that just don’t move a lot of copies because other games suck the oxygen out of the room.
Let’s not toot Gearbox’s horn. While Borderlands 3 was their biggest success when it launched the people working on it got less royalties (per person) than they got for Borderlands 2. Meanwhile Pitchford bargained himself a 12 million bonus before the game was even released. Oh and when people complained about getting less royalties Pitchford said, like the asshole he is, they’re free to quit. Gearbox does royalty situation union-less (as I know 40% of the royalties are split between the employees), but that comes at the cost of having to put to with one the biggest assholes in the industry who will tell you to eat shit if you don’t like something.
It also comes at the cost of being paid less than the industry average, which isn’t high. But it wasn’t so much tooting Gearbox’s horn as it was pointing out that it doesn’t solve the problem stated in the article. It wasn’t about how well the employees at a successful studio are paid but rather how many studios are unsuccessful because of how much competition there is. The industry might generate absurd amounts of money, but a large percentage of that is still just going to a handful of games that gather all the attention rather than being spread around more uniformly, and I don’t think there’s really a way to spread it around.
Absolutely. I agree that royalties aren’t the solution here and I agree with what the problem is. Your previous comment just kinda came across (at least to me) like giving some praise to Gearbox for giving out royalties when IMO it doesn’t really deserve praise when those royalties don’t meet the expectations of the people actually doing the work. Especially when the owners get to set their own special deals with guaranteed payouts.
I’m sure it looked great when they made Borderlands 2, but they also made Battleborne. Borderlands 2 devs still get royalties to this day. And hey, Gearbox still gets some stuff right sometimes. The entire Borderlands series still supports LAN, which even the people who manage the Steam pages don’t seem to care about. They can be good in some ways and shitty in others. Life is rarely so simple.
It’s one thing if a reviewer says it’s good. His livelyhood relies on the video game industry thriveing. If you stop buying this game, the studio won’t make the next game. If the studio won’t make the next game, the reviewer can’t review the next game. If the reviewer can’t review the next game, then where does their paycheck come from?
So I’m not saying they knowingly artificially raise scores and sell games. I’m just saying maybe a 7 gets reviewed as an 8 just so the reviewer won’t feel awkward when meeting with industry folk at the next industry get together.
But when gamers collectively band together, and say itxs 10/10, and game of the year, I feel rest assured that Elden Ring is as good as people say.
I have not bought Elden Ring. I have not played Elden Ring. In all honesty, I probably won’t. Why?
BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED TO PLAY EVERY SINGLE GAME JUST BECAUSE IT’S AMAZING!!! YOU CAN JUST NOOOOOT PLAY IT!
Don’t blame too many games. Don’t blame reviewers. Don’t blame anything. This is only a problem if you let it control your life. Variety is good for everybody. Some games you can just let others enjoy. I’m glad Elden Ring is so great. I don’t feel bad I missed it. I’m happy for you if you loved it.
Isn’t that so much healthier of an attitude to have?
The article is about how so many games are coming out that many of the companies making them are going under even when they make games that are evaluated as being good or great. I provided an anecdote about myself that probably contributes to it. I didn’t really share it to be about my attitude toward being able to play these games. I’ll be just fine.
This isn’t a problem. For the first time in a very long time, I actually have a queue of games I want to play and din’t just mindlessly scroll steam store or wait for big releases. In fact, I no longer follow game releases, there is something at any given time I can find to play
Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they’re raving about a new one before I’ve finished that last one.
That’s why i only wishlist games that i’m interested in. by the time i get around to them, there’s usually a sale and/or price drop. Some games have been on my wishlist for years, while I’m working through my backlog, waiting for their price to drop even further.
I’m not sure there’s any solution to this problem. Returning to the era of gatekeepers would be a regression, and the increased democratization of game development has led to more creative and interesting products all around. This glut may be intimidating for players, but it also presents them with more choices than ever before, so long as they can ignore the FOMO of not jumping on every new release as soon as it hits.
But for the companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into games that need to move huge numbers to break even, this is no small challenge. And it’s just getting harder every year.
Solution is simple, stop spending millions of dollars on the same bloody IP and cash grabs and give your devs some freedom.
I’m playing games that came out 10 hears ago, and I have a backlog of many years and I couldn’t be happier with it.
It’s better than no having anything to play.
At a industry level we all know that gamedev is not a great career. Specially if you are indie the most common profit is 0. But it’s ok. You can do it just for the love of it as I do. I spent time making games just because I love it. No everything have to turn a profit.
The main problem I see is that creators and all of the people involved in creating games get a smaller share than they would have in the generations before and games aren’t getting cheaper to make. It’s the same with movies and music and everything. There’s only so much capital and the pool of people fighting over it keeps getting bigger. It would be nice if people could make shit just for the sake of making it but instead every market has become a cutthroat competitive wasteland of bland bullshit and half assed or unfinished projects.
I buy tons of games. I hardly play most of them. So many have potential, but stay in early access or fizzle out and the developers abandon it. It really sucks, because I do see a lot of creativity and really awesome ideas that go to waste. Unfortunately, people have to make money to survive and can’t just create art for art’s sake.
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Aktywne