This started happening when studios got bigger and marketing controlled release dates. By the 2010s or so, the actual devs had zero say. So some idiot owner would promise a game in 18 months, half the ideas would be removed due to time, and a rushed product went out.
“Games as a service” was just corporate speak for how to streamline putting out a game with less components and then adding them over time.
The terms have changed a bit over time, but generally “AAA” now means (in the industry) a large studio makes a game with a large marketing budget. If you think of those games that are published by EA, but made by one of their smaller studios and has a smaller marketing budget, that’s “AA”.
Much like “alpha” and “beta”, the meanings are changing so quickly it’s hard to keep up with what the industry means and what players mean.
I’m so old when I started in games “alpha” meant a feature complete game with a few crash bugs, and beta meant no (25% repro, or whatever the studio chose) crash bugs and all assets added and working.
Now it’s basically “alpha” means a demo, and “beta” means they’re buying time for GM release.
Yeah exactly, my first thought was “Doom is still in the public discourse.”
Not to mention, oh what’s that game that broke earnings numbers on steam, oh yeah, Cyberpunk 2077? Rough launch aside, the game literally printed money, and is a great RPG and a great FPS.
I appreciate what you’re getting at, but I also think you forget how grey Duke 3d was.
I agree Quake was too brown and grey, but the idea it was ‘visually hot garbage’ is definitely an outside take. We finally had 3d models that weren’t sprites, not to mention how impressive prerendered Lightmaps were for the time.
I will agree that GLQuake was when the graphics really were at their best.
I once deleted the operating system just to fit a single game into my hard drive, booted from floppy while I was playing it and reversed the process when I was finished.
I remember doing this Battle of Britain and TIE Fighter! Man, memories.
I just go by reviews, usually from people I know. The only real difference between AA/A and Indie titles now really is marketing budget and size of team. Not much else is different. You also run into issues about what counts as indie now: it used to mean without a publisher, but it seems to have morphed into ‘a smaller company.’
But yeah, just look up reviews. Games like FTL, Hades, and so on tend to become known by word of mouth.
If the games stayed I’d check it out, but having a game for a few months isn’t something I find value in, which tends to be what people I’ve spoken with about it. Especially since you don’t choose the games.
Also, seriously the PC app is absolutely awful. The games work worse on it than on steam. It crashes, has terrible performance, and break installs constantly.
You also can’t mod a lot of these games, which particularly on PC is a pretty large missing piece.
That’s also not to mention the cost has doubled in two years.
You’re allowed to enjoy it, but I think it’s also clear why it isn’t taking off.
The reason people I know tend to give for not using GamePass is you’re essentially paying for demos (which still exist on PC pretty often. I just bought Roboquest because of the demo.)
EDIT: Also, $12/month is a huge amount of money for me to spend on something like that. Just shy of 150/year for games that aren’t good enough to own, but are good enough to play, doesn’t strike me as valuable.
One thing I read (a lot, oddly) is that GamePass is ‘really popular’/the most popular ‘subscription’ service, but I have never met anyone who uses it.
I checked the numbers of people using GamePass, and it seems the numbers have gone:
2021 - 23 million
2022 - 25 million
2023 - there was a brief post on linkedin saying 30 million, but it was removed.
If even the most popular service is struggling to pass 30 million users, how exactly is Ubisoft going to compete? There’s what, 120 million people with Xbox subscriptions, and they can barely get 1/4 of them to use GamePass?
It’s interesting to watch ‘AAA’ studios absolutely faceplanting every year now, hopefully we can make a full indie-sweep soon.
Think Quick! immediately comes to mind as the an early one I played a lot of, followed by Mines of Titan.
I am not sure I could go through the 90’s games that left lasting impressions on me. I guess Homeworld, Sacrifice, Marathon, Alpha Centauri, and Chrono Trigger have occupied a massive amount of my mind for ages now, haha.
I love tribes - I even still have the same mousepad from when I played it last - but I want to warn people this is being made by Prophecy Games, who have straight up abandoned their last game. Starsiege Deadzone, put out in July, is already dead. Take a look at the steam charts for proof. I want Tribes more than most other old IPs, but we have to be real cautious with our hype, so to speak.
I can deflect the doxxing slightly by saying it’s more than one. The first rhymes with Wicrosoft and the other is too small and would definitely doxx me. However I have friends all over the industry, and can confirm identical reactions from places with names similar to Acti… mizion, Sledge…wammer Ztudios, 434… endustries, Pioware… Grames?