Live service garbage has costed the industry billions in losses and costed tens of thousands of devs their jobs. Fad chasing in general.
Everyone wants to make the fortnite killer or overwatch killer. They set billions of dollars on fire and get nothing for it. And it’s the devs who pay the price. Not the c-suite dipshits who threw all that money in the fire pit.
You want a fan fucking tastic game that you can put 250 hours in and never regret a minute of it?
The Yakuza franchise. Start wirh Yakuza 0. Play them all. You will laugh. You will cry. You will get so irrationally angry at pixels you’ll want to actually murder them. You’ll fall in love. And cry some more. Your heart will break many times. And nothing will ever be the same.
Ever had a game or movie or book leave you in stunned silence? You spend the next week thinking about it? That’s the Yakuza franchise. It’s silly and stupid and hilarious and it’ll tear your damn heart out when you least expect it.
When you beat the game and go thru The Unity to a whole ass different dimension and not one single detail is different in any way. That’s what kills the drive to go onward. Because the game was fine. Once.
The whole story is predicated on a multiverse that effectively doesn’t exist. Except on 1 sidequest for Barrett.
Just plug my old ass into the matrix. If I live to see 80 we’ll probably have some kind of full dive VR by that point. Or at least something approaching it.