The gaming industry is fine. It’s all the AAA publishers that are shit.
The ruin of modern games is the perfect shit storm of:
- The quest for the other side of the uncanny valley, making releases closer to decades
- The death of the in-house game engine.
- The half-baked attempt to cross-platform consoles with PCs
- The half-baked attempt to cross-platform mobile devices with consoles
- The merger of Live Service Games and Free to Play
- Game prices not following inflation.
- Everyone and their brother trying to take a major cut.
Shit is more complex and resource intensive than it has ever been, we’re hardly even looking to optimize these days if it works.
You get to choose from a couple of engines, who want a serious cut, or a free engine who has serious problems on consoles.
You need the game not only to pay for itself in sales, but in in-game sales without making it to gambley or making it too pay to win.
Adjusted for inflation, Mario Odyssey is $20 less at launch than E.T. was at launch for the atari.
The baby boom in the USA was a real demographic phenomenon but every “generation” after that gets fuzzier to the point where its now just rage bait nonsense or just a proxy term for complaining about changing fashions. Even within the Boomer cohort people had wildly different experiences growing up across such a large span. That said, every game studio I ever worked for was run by Gen X and Boomer aged people.
When they started in the industry it was small teams, tight budgets, a new frontier with a low bar to entry. Now it is highly corporate, capitalized, shareholder driven behemoth (like everything else). This transform happened when the millennial cohort was in our 20s, we had no influence on this, and it mirrored similar larger-scale transformations in the rest of society.
I’m fortunate in that I basically retired early, although I wouldn’t mind going back to work with a good group of people, even for cheap. Like the old days again. I still like the work I just hate the business. But it doesn’t matter, the whole industry is in ruins now.
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The golden age of games, also happened to have publishers who were just that, publishers, not slave drivers commanding the market and shutting down studios every time they sneezed.
There’s plenty of great games these days. The “golden age” wasn’t because of the quality of games. It was because I was able to delve into them deeply and enjoy them without all the concerns of my adult life running on the back of my mind pulling me out of it.
Yeah, oh no a bunch of people got into an industry that they loved so much they got underpaid and lowered the value of their labour to be treated worse.
But then a bunch of them realized they could just use their passion to make something themself and get paid for it and now we are having a hard time justifying why the big industry’s “shovels” are special.It is a shame this happening to lots of industries right now for lots of other reasons too. With the big industry now trying to justify it as being cheaper to make because they automated all the people that make the product especially better.
Golden age of gaming is now, though. We get so many bangers basically for free it’s insane
Most definitely can be refuted. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of amazing games out there made by young and old people that appeal to both young and old people. The issue Anon is struggling with is non gamer capitalists running game companies and milking games for every last penny at the cost of quality.
I know it’s a tired example, but look at the company and team responsible for BG3. A game that is widely considered one of the greatest games to be realsed in at least the last 10 years, maybe even longer. This game was made by a company owned and operated by old people and young people. The teams directing, designing, creating, and writing this game were made up of multiple generations of people, and what was made, unimpacted by corporate greed, was a masterpiece.
Good games are products of passion and creative freedom, not money or age.
There’more great games now then ever there ever was. So many choices. Plus, the older games didn’t disapear and there is no such thing as “the Golden Age of gaming” lol. It’s just that a bunch of low- losers are spending their days on the internet crying about “woke runing my videagame” because they see a woman not having huge boobs and a bikini armor.
Im currently enjoying there Blue Prince.
There’s nothing else like it, it’s challenging, and cozy.
If you like playing detective, and bring patience and like exploring and taking notes instead of hyper-focusing on one goal, it’s tens of hours of fun.
Only thing I don’t really like about it is the drafting mechanic. I hit a lot of “ooh! I think I know how to solve that puzzle!” or “Ooh, I think I vaguely remember something in that one room that I didn’t screenshot at the time but I’m pretty sure was a clue for the puzzle I just discovered!” only to never see the relevant room(s) in a bunch of runs. Hell, I’m pretty sure based on a clue that there’s some kind of clock room (if it’s just the den, I have no idea how to figure it out so I’m assuming there’s another clock room) I haven’t seen yet at all dozens of days in, another related puzzle that requires I draft a whole bunch of related rooms that I never get enough of (unless I’m on a wrong line of thought about that) and a third related to the other two where AFAIK I’m waiting on a random item drop and the room to use it in to appear in the same run.
Even something like being able to curate the deck more than the conservatory allows would be tremendous.
Yeah, that’s what I meant with having notes and pivoting: don’t focus on one puzzle like that. Follow all the threads and when you get the chance to make this one happen, do it.
For things related to items, you have an option to make things easier, e.g. I stored the power hammer in the coat check until I got both the coat check and a room I knew I could use the power hammer in. In the like 5 runs in between I just did other stuff, there’s always plenty to do.
Again, I think I understand what I need to do for one puzzle, but if I’m right I need to draft 8 specific rooms all in the same run (I’m hoping I’m wrong and can come up with some other answer). That’s…easier said than done barring a lot of luck. It’s very much that I’m pretty sure I know what the puzzle is and what the solution is but the game is unwilling to let me draft what I need to solve it.
I’m pretty sure one of my missing rooms from the directory is some kind of elevated clock room (“High up among all the clocks”, the only “high up” room I’ve really got is the Attic and the only room with a lot of clocks is the Den so it feels like I need a new room), but I’m a few dozen days in and haven’t seen one.
If you’re post room 46 you probably know what puzzle I’m talking about, and I’ve got 5/8 of the keys and the puzzle behind one door solved. The third one I’m missing is almost certainly in one of the lockboxes in the Vault, but that’s a matter of time and luck to get vault, the right deposit box key and enough steps to get from one to the other in the same day. It’s another case where it’s not an interesting puzzle or mystery, it’s waiting on RNG to allow me to do the thing. Getting those keys, figuring out the puzzles behind the doors, and finding the rest of the red envelopes are my current big goals.
And boy do I wish that I’d got the coat check the only run to date where I got all the parts for the power hammer. Currently got the emerald bracelet in mine, which is nice but…
I’ve been playing this, too! It’s a great game!
Games are amazing right now, what is this talking about? EA/WB/Ubisoft dreck?
It went to shit because big corpos realized there was money in the games industry. It went to shit because capitalism took the reins.
Bu-but Asmongold and Kirsche Verstahl told me the problem was woke gamedevs! /s
I’m aware this was sarcasm, but want to point out Asmongold is a Nazi sympathizer. No idea who the other person is.
The other is a Nazi VTuber, with her name allegedly being a dogwhistle (positive christianity if I recall correctly).
Asmongold is a priest of Nurgle.
No one I know can afford to buy a house because our generations been so royally fucked in every which way, yet somehow we are responsible for steering the entire game industry in our twenties. Right… lol.
Like they didn’t realize in the 90s
Institutional money didn’t take it seriously until the mid to late 2000s.
Big video game companies were already doing the same as today though.
That’s why most of the money hungry games were in the arcades back then. PC gaming wasn’t nearly as big.
You have a very different memory of that time
Probably because we grew up in completely different countries. Australia was very behind back in the day. We had a 2 year lag.
- Hollow Knight (Silksong soonTM)
- Stardew Valley
- Factorio
- Outer Wilds
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Clair Obscur
Gaming is fucking phenomenal right now, OP is looking in the wrong direction.
Games made by gamers vs corporations are two different worlds indeed
STOP blaming age groups! It’s a divide and conquer tactic. It’s not your parent’s fault. It’s not your grandparent’s fault. It is the fault of the rising Oligarchy Super Wealthy. Their system works when we work against each other. We’re even suspicious and blame our parents and grandparents these days. WTF??
Ironically they blame their own children too
Obligatory:
No war but class war.
Gaming is insane right now. I can buy a game for $10 that would have won game of the year every year straight for an entire decade. Even saying this there’s probably like 15 games that fit this category.
Gamers today get what they deserve. If they want to consume triple A slop they’re going to get fucked. Its really simple.
I almost never pay more than 5$ for a game, get the free game from epic each week since last year, and I have hundreds of amazing games in my livrary. I litteraly could stop working and play super fun games 24/7 for the next 2-3 years without spending a dime. Up to a last year, I was litteraly playing on an overclocked i5 750 (16 y/o cpu) with a 1060i gpu, and can’t think of a game that wasn’t playable. I even worked on a small VR project on that computer lol.
I agree. There is a lot of great content for reasonable prices and a lot of terrible content for high prices. It’s a thriving industry. We just need to be intentional about our purchasing decisions.
Nah, not really, it’s only shit if you only play AAA suit-driven slop. There’s a ton of awesome games being released and the older ones are still there to (re) play.
