And what you’re describing is the economic realities of a bubble bursting, which means they have to pivot to making something sustainable that the market actually wants. That doesn’t mean AA or indie exclusively. It does mean smaller scope. Halo and Gears of War could be created much faster when they were linear games, and now they’re both open world and arguably worse off for it.
The industry kept making games bigger that would have been better off if they’d stayed smaller. I’m not saying to make the games they make now in less time. I’m saying stop making games that take 5 years to make and instead make games that take 3 years to make.
There was an article from years back, I want to say around 2019 or so on then-Gamasutra, about how it was already too late to stop the bubble from bursting because all of these games are trying to get everyone’s attention (I’m having trouble finding it now). Now the bubble is bursting, and big games these days have dev cycles of about 5 years, putting us right here in 2024. Get dev cycles to 3 years or less so that you can actually react to changing market conditions, and charge a fair price for a good product. Maybe sequel it or otherwise make regular old expansion DLC. That was sustainable. No one even makes a multiplayer game anymore unless it’s intended to be rigorously competitively balanced or suck up all of your time and money through grinding.
What specifically didn’t you like about 3? I haven’t played any of them, but we’ve had a drought of crime stories in games lately, so I’m looking forward to seeing another one come out (that isn’t Yakuza).
I just filled out my report to the DGCCRF, and I hope it’s even more damning, amidst my claims of forced obsolescence, that the game was removed from my account in the past week with a message telling me to check the store for new games to buy.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I found there to be a lot of homogeneity here. The games that were the most up my alley were the ones I’d already heard of, but there were a lot of Vampire Survivors-inspired games and city builders.
So the thing is, regardless of current campaigns to stop killing games, this is like the definition of throwing good money after bad…unless they actually offered customers assurances that they’ll get their money’s worth out of an up front payment to play the game. Because without that assurance, however long your free to play multiplayer game sustained an audience, the version where you have to buy the game up front will be worse off.