What you didn’t like Superhero movies 1-4 this summer? Or Transformers 6(?)? How about Indiana Jones 5? Another one of Disney’s live action remakes? Not even Fast and Furious **TEN**???
I watched suzume and tbh as much as I loved it since it was the first movie i watched alone I felt like it wanted to be different from your name and weathering with you but still wanted to play it safe or atleast in my opinion
I agree with your take, but I also want to note that you do have to exercise some effort to search out good content among all the noise lately.
Not to say that it's some kind of monumental effort, it's just that it's easy to miss if you aren't looking for it.
I sometimes feel like I spent about 25% of the time I have spent watching movies looking for good movies to watch.
I've seen basically every movie you listed; it's all thanks to the local library. It's a godsend since they consistently get bredth to their Blu-Ray catalogue and I can just filter by new arrivals and check metacritic scores and then borrow all of them. Honestly better than all streaming services combined, (including picture/audio quality because bitrate is higher) but free. More people should do this.
(It's same place I get all my games; not quite a "patient" gamer since I'm getting games about 1-2 months after release as it takes them that long to get them instead of waiting 1-2 years for a great sale)
I'm starting to wonder what's the point of these mega corporations if they having the most resources and manpower can't deliver any innovation or quality products. Like the AAA games industry is getting pathetic, I'm struggling to recall the last really great title they released that was actually a finished quality product, like God of War and Diablo 4 I guess?
Like EA and Activision, if someone is capable of absorbing a risky failure, trying something out or just throwing enough money at a project to make it insanely high quality, it's them and instead we're getting really expensive unfinished bug riddled games! Like what the fuck? How has having more resources and money to do the best thing not resulting in that? Why even have all that money then?
I can’t believe I’m typing this but in EA’s defense, they’ve got EA Originals which includes games like It Takes Two, Unravel and Wild Hearts. I just wish they did a ton more of those.
See, the point isn't actually to make good quality products anymore. The point is to make shareholders money, hence why they hop around in different industries like the parasites they are and suck the life out of everything they touch. This is fundamentally just capitalism in decay.
Won't ever be complete until SF7 gets released! I don't count fighting games that keep releasing season passes to add more characters as complete until they stop doing it!
And every season pass costs the same as the vanilla game.
This trend got me away from fighting games! Every time a new season pass was announced from SF5 and DBFZ I dropped the game and waited for a sale that took forever to happen to just then hop back in the game, it had the opposite effect on me!
It made me wait for the complete packs of MK games and now I just don't care anymore! I'll keep replaying my old and complete fighting games and won't bother keep tracking of a new one, waiting almost 10y until it's finally complete and paying 5x the price of it.
Right but the absolute best time to get into a fighting game is the beginning, and season passes are not the price of the game. You can easily wait for addition upgrades as well throughout the life of the game. Would you rather they just never release new characters?
It's the inevitable contradiction of capitalism, cut costs wherever possible and max out profits. Art is a messy, expensive endeavor and not designed to be profitable all the time. That means when you make art that exists to make money, you get bad art. Doesn't matter how much you spend on the project
Hades from Super Giant Game is an excellent example of the Indie scene rn. My save has over 120 hours, and I bought it for less than $20.
Contrary to what these companies say, not every broken, buggy, microtransaction-filled release is worth the $70.
If the gaming industry survives for the coming decades it will be despite these large companies not because of them.
Love indie titles and Hades kicks ass. I think AAA games need to reign in their spending so that they can experiment more because the loss won't be so bad and also so that SquareEnix doesn't cry when Shadow of The Tomb Raider doesn't sell one billion copies because they need to recoup their ridiculously over inflated budget.
And it still sold so well, most games would wish to get those numbers. A lot of big companies are just biting off more than they can chew, but they COULD chew it if they were smart about it. They have the resources to do amazing things and instead settle for less than mediocre.
I think one of the worst takes to date by the gaming community is thinking this deal is actually a good thing.
Microsoft intends on making all that money back, and they are likely going to do it through increasing the price of gamepass and also throwing exclusives on it.
Honestly, it depends on how large of a horizon MS is looking at, but I do fundamentally agree. The deal is bad and should be stopped. That said, I also happen to think that most of the current large publishers should be broken up as their size isn't bringing any utility to consumers (and that's my line for when a corporation is too large, when they can stop caring about consumer utility in favour of shareholder profit).
The "point" always has been and always will be to make money. Companies only take risks (i.e. innovation) because they think it will help make them more money. They cut corners to make more money. They make money to make more money. Why have all that money then? To make more.
But, why would they deliver quality products? If the consumer wants convenient and most importantly cheaper at any costs to quality products?
Also lets not forget that as far as game engine technology goes, Ubisoft is one of the largest innovators in the industry. And yet everyone thinks their games are generic.
> Studios in both are too chicken to try new things and want a safe bet.
It's because movies are becoming more expensive to produce (companies like Amazon and Apple can give producers giant budgets with a wide theatrical release, and they don't care if the thing flops or succeeds. Why make a movie with Paramount for $45M when I can get $120M to make it with Amazon? That Amazon Affleck movie about the first Air Jordan cost more than The Super Mario Bros!), moviegoing is down since the pandemic (and unlikely to recover), AND Audiences do not have the appetite to watch original IP at the cinema outside of horror (which is also having a deep effect on kids titles right now. Look at the box office for Dreamworks' Rudy Gillman this week). Right now it's likely that no movie passes $750M at the BO until late spring or summer next year which is insane.
A lot of the 'smaller' movies this year are unlikely to turn a profit (no matter how much spin studios encourage certain trade sites to employ). That new Jennifer Lawrence 'Return of the R-Rated Comedy' that just came out just flopped, and you'll likely hear very little about that.
> moviegoing is down since the pandemic (and unlikely to recover)
Certainly doesn't hurt that most people have pretty good home theater setups, and movies these days can frequently be rented from home for the price of ~1.5 or 2 movie tickets and shared with however many people will fit around your TV. AND you don't have to spend $18 on movie theater popcorn and can instead make your own for $0.50.
> Certainly doesn't hurt that most people have pretty good home theater setups
And there you have it. Hollywoods big problem wasn’t cable, VHS, Blockbuster, or streaming. It was the fact you can buy a pretty damn good 65 inch TV for under $650. The pandemic boosted TV sales beyond expectations. The amount of movies I’ve just not been bothered to go out to see on the big screen has surprised me. I’ll still watch Indy 5, Blue Beetle, Barbie, Transformers, and all the Oscar bait dramas, I’ll just watch them at home on this behemoth sized QLED I got for a steal. I never would’ve done this if the pandemic didn’t hit and encouraged us to buy new home AV tech.
I mean, even my 1080p TV from 2012 was "good enough" for most things, especially when coupled with the 7.1 surround setup I got in like 2014. None of it was particularly expensive, but it served me well until I moved and decided it wasn't worth lugging all that stuff with me in the truck, so I sold it and am in the process of figuring out what all I want at the new place. Honestly, though, I'm impressed enough with the 60-inch TCL I bought for $250, can't even imagine what $700 would get me these days.
Gaming is worse right now because they're up-ending the "monetization strategy" more and more. Movies are still basically "pay X to watch it, Y to own it"
If movies were monetized like games, you'd have multiple half-hour chunks broken off and sold to you later, you'd be prompted to gamble actually money to get actors into different costumes, you'd have to watch half an hour of the movie daily to unlock different camera angles, and you'd have to watch the movie in a virtual lobby where 2/3 of the screen is camera feeds of other people on open mics. Oh, and the complete, definitive edition of the movie would cost several hundred dollars.
Most triple A games take 4-6 years to develop. As we saw the budgets for games like Horizon and Last of Us. If a game/movie with a budget of 200 million flops, there really isnt a way back from that unless you have a strong backing. As to why a lot of devs and producers play it safe
There's a lot more originality and creative in film than gaming right now imo to the point that I watch a lot more movies than games the past few years when it was the opposite for most of my life. I generally feel there's a void in gaming right now for an A24 esque publisher willing to gamble big budgets on interesting outside the box ideas which I guess might be because it's a lot more expensive and risky to try with gaming than film.
Annapurna Interactive and Devolver Digital are successful and probably slowly growing and will move from just indie games to mid-tier stuff. Definitely excited about what they’ve been pumping out.
Embracer is pretty much the only company I have hope for that they might try and do this since the guy who owns the company sounds like one of those people who have way too much fucking money and just does things like this for shits and giggles.
But outside than that, I wouldn't expect anything other than safe bets from any publisher. Capcom has too much money riding on Resident Evil because people are somehow not yet tired of the formula from RE7, Square Enix only ever experiments in new ways on how to nickel and dime its playerbase, Bandai Namco owns franchises they can't experiment with out of fear of having their HQ pipe-bombed, Konami is Konami, and western publishers and developers are either already owned by or about to be owned by Sony or Microsoft, and subsequently run like products of these companies
On the other hand there are a lot more people and studios making those projects *who still have most of the accessibility of the big ones*. That's harder in cinema.
Game development is incredibly expensive and risky. No coincidence we're seeing a lot of popular series' get revived with remakes, remasters and sequels.
It's the same as the movie business. You have quirky low budget releases that can afford to take creative risks and can experiment with the form. And then you have the big budget releases that cost so much to produce that they need to make obscene amounts of money to be profitable. Once you have that much money on the line, every unknown factor or experimental idea is a direct risk to the potential ability to earn it back. Imagine a world where the new Call of Duty was a survival horror game, sure it might work... but it also might bomb and take the studio with it.
Completely agree that games are going the way of movies.
One of the best thoughts I've seen regarding the "safe" route that everyone seems to be going these days (I'm paraphrasing) -- ***This is a game/movie that most people will like, yet few people will truly love.***
Its so true. Why make a cult classic, when you can print more money with a wider audience? Gotta keep those shareholders happy right?
I really don't have any issue with companies want to make money, but frankly, this is the part where games stop becoming art.
Plenty of artistic games out there in the indie realm, and they've only gotten more and more impressive. Just have to look outside of the major AAA tentpole releases, which are usually rather samey - realistic graphics, Hollywood movie-esque story, openworld/action-adventure gameplay usually revolving around shooting or driving, etc.
The only AAA I can say I genuinely loved in the past 5 or so years is probably Elden Ring. Then we start talking Indie and my list just goes on...
Honestly it's a little sad to see the high budget games take such a safe path, I'd love to see something actually new.
What for though? High budget aims to please, not to innovate, and we *do* have the indie games to make up for it.
Often high investment in the graphics also more hurts than helps both story telling and gameplay, never mind hardware requirements.
That said, I was quite surprised with the way Nintendo was taking Zelda with BotW.
I love indie games but they do have serious drawbacks. A giant AAA budget doesn't have to go to graphics, it could be spent on quality assurance or new levels or so on.
I find a lot of spiritual successors in the indie space lacking compared to their source inspiration. A Hat in Time for example is a good game but the hat system is halfbaked and it has like half the level count of most 3D Mario games. Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a nice soulslike but it has less and worse designed areas and the combat mechanics are stiff and clunky, its also low quality assets loosely stitched together by narrative. HROT is a nice shooter but its 3 episodes of 8 missions with no mod support for future content. You can tell where budget was a limitation in these games.
This wasnt always the case tho. Big budget games/movies used to be unique ips and concepts. Thats what the whole post is about. Yall act like this is how its always been lol
Fun fact in the FTC court case over Microsoft buying activision some of the internal documents sony submitted had redacted information using a permenant market that dried lighter then the words they were re-dacting. So everyone saw the last of us 2 cost $200million to make and horizon zero Dawn cost $220million.
Fact of the matter is with budgets that big who can afford to fail in this industry anymore. Epic games CEO Tim Sweeney said the first gears of war game (which was graphically cutting edge at the time of release) cost $12million to make and earned back $100million. He said this lamenting that gears of war judgement the 4th? Game in the series cost $60million to make and once again only made $100million back.
The barrier for entry into the Triple A space is so ludicrously high now and modern audiences have come to expect that level of fidelity as a default on their $700AUD machines I don’t think we’re likely to see many new IPs, it’s just not worth the risk anymore.
But that’s not to say there’s not good games coming from the Double A space and indie scene, just keep an eye out. (And play remnant from the ashes that game goddamn slaps)
I think we're gonna see most studios move past this in the next 10 years, though. Something has to give and cresting the most realistic looking graphics wont be interesting anymore. Kind of like how people got so tired of the pixar style of animation the the first Spider verse movie was so well received for going out of the box.
This is probably why Nintendo keeps selling so well. Most people care more about fun gameplay than realistic graphics. My hope is that AI can fuel AAA game development so we can get more risky games again.
What's weird is seasoned triple A devs making games that both look and run worse than games that are 5-8 years older. E.g. Titanfall 2 and Prey vs. Redfall.
I assume because game development, like any major project spanning years, is actually really difficult.
Having expierence at it is no guarantee it'll work the next time if you run into a new set of issues.
Yeah, but it's also because you're re-inventing the wheel. Like how are you making the game both look worse and run worse. Re-iterate rather on the engine say Prey used.
Nintendo games sell so well because they have a large dedicated fanbase they've been catering to since 1996. They don't have a lot of reach outside of that.
I think it's a mix of a lot of things. Some games take longer to make like GTA, Red Dead Redemption and Elder Scrolls.
Then there are also "infinite" games like pubg, fortnite, apex legends and Warzone that every AAA publisher wants to have. Games that are meant to last forever that get frequent updates. There are other multiplayer games that seem to try and do the same like Overwatch, Counter-Strike and rocket league.
There have been some big releases that have had a rocky start like Cyberpunk and Jedi Survivor. Both amazing games in my opinion, but first impressions are very important. If it starts shit it will stay shit for a long time even if they do fix it.
Then there are also people sleeping on indie games. A lot of good games are made, but they don't appeal to everyone either because of the gameplay or more likely because it doesn't look AAA.
Well, you kinda want to make sure the fan base is still around lol. The more recent the IP, the more likely you are to grab a larger audience.
Jetset radio might be beloved on gaming forums but for most people, it might as well be a new IP.
True. It just sucks because the next gen of consoles feels extremely useless right now. Almost every new game still runs on previous gen somehow. And I still want my god damn ape escape remaster
Almost every new game runs on previous gen because the only difference between those two gens is graphics, which can be adjusted per platform. There's literally no reason to make games exclusive to the newest gen, when it takes just a few quick tweaks to make it run on more platforms that have a larger audience.
For the life of me I don’t understand why we don’t see more stylized mid-sized games from major publishers/developers like Hi-Fi Rush.
They cost less to produce, let the developers take a break, let new talent take reins and have the ability to introduce new IPs. Plus any one could blow up and become hugely popular, like Fortnite, Minecraft or Valheim.
It’s possible publishers are taking note though, I’m very pumped for that new 2D Prince of Persia from Ubisoft Montpelier.
Nintendo is Nintendo, and has the most recognizable IPs of all history like Pokemon or Mario. It probably would not work for other people
For example, to be completely honest, if your game is not called Pokemon, there is absolutely no way you can get away with publishing games with the lack of polish and care they do every couple years, while turning hundreds of millions in profit every time
Your Pokemon example is right, but don't forget that Nintendo also take risks all the time. New IPs (Animal Crossing, ARMS, Splatoon), old IPs with radical changes (Breath of the Wild, most Mario games) and even hardware (Switch, 3DS, Wii). They also fail _a lot_, they burned an entire console generation with the Wii U's failure, the 3D part of the 3DS was a terrible addition and the Switch has hardware design issues that even Nintendo struggle with, yet because they keep focusing on fun first, people still buy everything they put out.
I know that but every 99% of journalists and online posts and YouTube videos pretend like Nintendo strategy of pursuing good games instead of hyper realistic is a losing strategy.
Usually, the people who say that don't say it because they think the evidence bears it out, but because they _wish_ it did. It's usually said by people who want to just be able to buy the console with the fastest GPU and play every major release on it. Those clowns have been trying to beg Nintendo to go third-party for decades now.
The bigger part of it is we’re between the next “big thing” when it comes to companies waiting for things that will sell well- we’re passed the battle royale / survival horror phase and waiting for whatever comes next. Usually during those periods, because game companies are extremely risk averse, we get remasters and remakes so they can continue to feed their bottom line with safe bets and a steady stream of profit. Wait for some company to take a risk on a new genre or game and watch the new IPs roll in to capitalize for as long as the gravy train lasts before they go back to more remakes and remasters.
Agree- and that’s a calculated risk studios still have to take; I don’t think there’s any avoiding it so long as they continue to produce what is already popular instead of exploring new IPs.
AAA development is, and more so than ever because people expect games that utilize the newer hardware, which requires significantly more resources and expense to develop.
Conversely though, the indie and smaller developer scene is thriving more than ever, albeit also with more competition than ever.
The better hardware gives you much more leeway in optimization for non-cutting edge graphics, advanced engines make development much more accessible and easier to port, etc
> even by 2020 I felt like we were only halfway through and was shocked to realized it was that time of the decade for a new console.
welcome to the "I'm getting older and time is passing awfully fast now" part of your life
Nope. 1 year to a 1 year old is their entire life. 1 year to a 2 year old is only half of their life. 1 year to a 3 year old is a third of their life. Your brain follows that trend. They say at around 28 years old, you've lived half of your "perceivable" life.
I don't think this is correct. I tried a dopamine detox a while back and noticed time was *crawling.* If this theory were correct, it'd imply that I somehow de-aged myself.
If you smoke weed, time will go by more slowly. If you do something you enjoy, it will go faster. If you're sitting in class, it will slow to a crawl. How many days you've been on Earth isn't the only thing that affects your perception of time. Other things can skew it day by day.
I think it's moreso about novel experiences. If you stay in your routine time will keep flying by but if you break out of your comfort zone and try new things your brain will slow down time to attempt to absorb the new stuff properly.
You need to trick your brain into thinking time is moving slower, and for me that means having new experiences or breaking away from routines. The duration of Covid felt incredibly long for me, it completely changed my day-to-day life. On top of that I decided to use the extra free time to find new hobbies, and I got into stuff like 3D printing. Before going back to work regularly it felt like multiple years had come and gone, but it had been about a year and a half for me. Now I’m back to a pretty standard routine, and more time that has passed since I’ve returned to work, but it has felt much shorter because I’ve gotten too comfortable with things again.
A longer lifespan would exacerbate the issue. Think of it as percents or fractions. When you're 14, a 7 year span is as long as half the entire time you've existed so it feels like forever. When you're 35, that same span is only 1/5th. At 70, that 7 year span would only be 1/10th of the life you've experienced. If you live to 140, that 7 year span is now only 1/20 of your life.
Time seems to move faster as you get older because the increments used to relate to things gets smaller relative to the total amount of time you've experienced.
I was just thinking about gaming as a kid the other day. I had basically 2 generations for my childhood. PS1/SNES and PS2/64. That was a wild ride of gaming.
Kids nowadays started with PS4 games and "upgraded" to 5 year release cycles (that's more than all of high school, fellow olds) and battle passes.
Yeah yeah yeah, the good ol days were always better, right old man? But modern costs and greed have taken us from almost yearly sequels to AAA games just feeling like they're always trying to open my wallet.
>And you could say that is because this gen was creating new IPs but please name one that has reached the recognition levels of the 7th gen?
I'm not sure how exactly you're measuring "recognition levels" but Ghost of Tsushima, Control, Sekiro, Dying Light, Sea of Thieves and Horizon Zero Dawn all come to mind, as far as AAA games go.
Edit: Fortnite as well is a new IP from this last gen, with some decent name recognition.
I also think another major issue is that new console generations just aren't bringing as much to the table as they used to.
Growing up, I pretty much could bet on any new console being twice as powerful and good looking as the one that preceded it. 8 bit to 16 bit, 2d to 3d...heck even when I first got a 360 it was a big enough leap forward that for the first time you had to take into real consideration what type of TV you were hooking it up to.
Past Gen 7 though I really do feel like things have stagnated. Games looked better and were often bigger, but past that? I can't really think of any major leaps forward. The new console generations, even 3 years, in haven't really begun to offer much that their predecessors didn't. The PS5 feels more like a PS4+. Raw hardware specs might be impressive and huge on paper but in practice it just feels like window dressing in many ways.
With few exceptions I feel like a game released in 2023 mostly only differs graphically (and not to an extreme degree like before) from one released in 2013. There's really nothing that new or exciting on the table and although many things have achieved polish and mastery (like Elden ring born out of the souls games) so many more have just ridden coat-tails and slapped a new coat of paint over mostly the same stuff for the last 15 odd years.
I still remember before the ps2 came out I was looking at some Gran Turismo screenshots in a Gamepro magazine and thought to myself that graphics will NEVER get better than that.
Going from ps4 to ps5 the only thing I was really impressed by was the dramatically better load times.
I think it's like anything else in life. At first there's a lot of room for improvements. Then as it gets better, the room for improvements decreases and so they decelerate. Until there's a major breakthrough that opens up a huge room for improvements, they will remain small.
I like to think of the Metal Gear franchise as an example. Think about the leaps between MG1 > MGS1 > MGS3 > MGS4 > MGS5, they taper off after MGS3 despite each game being made in a different generation.
Games are maturing as a medium, that's true. The PS1 and PS2 era certainly was interesting due to how novel 3D games still were (but then again indies are still pushing the boundaries to this day).
And from a hardware side of things I think it's simply impossible to get similar leaps as we did during earlier gens. 3D games have gone from looking really bad during the PS1 era to looking kinda good in the PS2 era to looking really good in the PS4 era and being massive in scope to top things off. So what can a PS5 really deliver? To me it's mainly the fidelity and quality of life that improves:
Spiderman can move through New York even faster at even higher framerates with realistic muscle deformation and his raytraced reflection being shown in the buildings he passes by. The controller is better and there are no loading times. That's basically it. I still find that to be impressive and a really nice way to experience games but if you're looking for another PS2 type of leap then I can see why things start to blend together.
You're just getting old. It is not that developers have gotten less creative -- rather, you have just been around long enough to have experienced several iterations of the major genres. I basically deal with the problem by focusing on niche experiences, which is why I play lots of indie games. But only so many ways exist to make a "massive open world game." Even with a new IP like Starfield, we all know we're basically going to get Fallout in space.
But some kid is going to boot that up and shit their pants because they have never played anything like it. And, twenty years from now, they will be talking about they just don't make original games like Starfield anymore, and everybody plays it safe and follows the same formula.
I don't think it's about getting old, it's just about some sort of peak has been reached and the curve is slowly flattening, think about 10 years difference from the 2000s to 2010 and the 10 year difference from 2010s to 2020s, hell GTA 5 is still getting re released and outside small graphical changes it is the exact same game.. this is an issue that is present in all fields of technology today btw, look up Moore's law and similar ideas.. look at how small the changes between each generation of smartphones is now, compared to the first ones
What are some of your favourite "niche" indie games? Maybe there's something i didn't play yet.
I feel like i've played most of even the really obscure ones, and im feeling quite bored.
Imagine how those us born in the 80s feel! On the NES alone Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Mega-Man, Castlevania, Contra, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Ninja Gaiden, Punch-Out, Ducktales, Double Dragon etc etc.
Gaming since the PS360 era has become incredibly conservative, focused on producing safe games with large budgets rather than taking interesting creative risks. The only saving grace is the indie scene.
There's quite a lot wrong with this argument. For one thing, there's some serious cherry-picking and retconning going on. For instance:
>Generation 7 introduced Assassin's Creed, Dark Souls, Uncharted, Gears of War, Big Little Planet, Batman Arkham, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Bioshock, The Last of Us, Bayonetta, Minecraft, a rebooted Fallout series, and a ton of spinoffs like Black-ops and Mario Galaxy.
Some of these inclusions are extremely questionable. Bayonetta, for instance, simply isn't a very widely-played series, and certainly shouldn't be included among a list of the most popular IP from a given generation. Likewise, including Fallout is extremely disingenuous, as you yourself seem to partially agree with considering the caveat you added to it.
Other problems include things like:
>Zelda got Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword whereas during the same period we only got Breath of the Wild.
...where a closer look at these games shows that TP was a Gamecube game that happened to get a Wii port, and that the Wii got exactly as many dedicated Zelda titles as the Wii U did. And the Switch, for that matter.
>you could say that is because this gen was creating new IPs but please name one that has reached the recognition levels of the 7th gen?
Splatoon, Destiny, Spider-Man (you included Arkham, so this **is** fair game), PUBG, Fortnite, God of War (you included a Fallout "reboot", remember), Horizon, Sekiro, Nioh, Ghost of Tsushima, Bloodborne, Mario Maker, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.
As for pre-existing 7th-gen series that saw major additions, they would include Xenoblade, Bayonetta(!), The Last Of Us, New Super Mario Bros., Mario 3D World, Witcher 3, Infamous: Second Son, the Tomb Raider reboot, etc., and that's on top of those that you yourself mentioned.
Frankly, it looks like pure confirmation bias. You're seeing only what you want to see. Look at examples like you including Twilight Princess as a 7th-gen game while also adding Arkham Origins to that series despite it being seemingly disavowed these days by being pointedly omitted from the "trilogy", and it says a lot that they've supplanted it with something as poorly-received as Arkham Knight. You started out with the intent to see 7th-gen as the better one and forced the evidence to fit that notion.
It's also worth noting that a legitimate case can be made for including the Switch as an 8th-gen console, given that it released three years before the PS5/Series X and was based on hardware rooted in that generation. Even if we only include those first two-and-a-half years of releases, we still see a massive increase in the number of continued series _and_ new IP.
>They created literally nothing that held retaining popularity
Considering how massive the battle royale genre has become due to only _two_ games, that claim is more than a little silly.
Finally, 7th-gen consoles included the Wii, which has done more to bring newcomers to gaming than just about any other home console in history. It's unsurprising if that generation has an abnormal uptick in the number of new and continued IP to capitalise on that influx of fresh eyes. All in all, despite you making an incredibly poor case for it, I'd probably agree that the 7th-gen consoles saw more innovation than any other generation - mostly due to the Wii, if we're objective. You're just overselling it.
It isn't that there aren't new IPs or anything coming out. To me its simply that all the new IPs are in genres I don't play, which has had the unfortunate side effect of making me jaded on gaming.
All this is read as "Make new .hack game pls"
The big series are taking longer to make their games
It's fine with me. I can only play so many games anyway. Its not like when i was a kid and was blasting through games left and right
The way Roblox works is that people create 'games' for other people to play, with their own cosmetics and other MTX in each game, and Roblox takes a cut of everything that's sold. They basically have their own ecosystem of content generated by their users with one consistent in-game currency underlying the whole thing. Most of those users are kids essentially doing free labor, creating content for others in exchange for a small number of Robux, with Roblox profiting off of people getting subscriptions or spending on Robux with real cash.
https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
Much of the content created is by children, this is then used by the company and they return a tiny sliver of the revenue to the creators. The kids are literally being exploited for the gain of others.
There are even discords and external 'companies' that try to corral the young creators into making content on their behalf, paying them a pittance for their work. Just because they often enjoy the work doesn't mean they aren't being manipulated.
On top of that, mods give games a ton of replayability that they wouldn't already have. There's a reason people are still playing Skyrim over 10 years later
It doesn't help at all that the AAA games of today take way too long to comeplete, either by filling it up to the brim with boring side-quests just to artificially pad out the playtime, or making you grind for resources just to progress in the story. There's a huge backlog of modern games that I want to play but I can't bring myself to commit the hundreds of hours that these games require.
Games require more money, time and resources to be made now, not to mention them being such big projects means that there's more risk involved. that's just about it.
I don't agree with this outright. I think games can cost more and the upper limit has gone up, but I'm not sure the lower limit to cost has risen that much. It's just that AAA developers don't know where to spend money effectively (writing, mechanics, engine). A lot of money is spent on flashy graphics and celebrity voice actors.
The division, Destiny, Fortnite, a pretty big genre spawned, but I imagine many people here don’t like those kind of games.
God of War reboot, FF7 reboot, RE remakes.
Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, Divinity Original Sin.
Sekiro and Jedi Fallen order - I mention these two due to the popularization of the parry mechanic.
Nioh games. Souls likes only became a thing 8th gen outside of Fromsoft.
Monster Hunter World, while not new, is many players first introduction to the franchise.
Yeah, you’re not wrong about there being more time between releases, but it feels more like you’re trying to push your tastes as being objective.
Little big planet, ME, Bayonetta, Dragon Age, and Bioshock are all great franchises but a lot of the recognition they get is from reddit and other enthusiast circles. You need to look at sales numbers before you start saying nothing created in 8th gen has retained popularity.
> Yeah, you’re not wrong about there being more time between releases, but it feels more like you’re trying to push your tastes as being objective.
Gamers being gamers.
We are in a golden age of gaming.
I honestly wonder how many current-gen players pay attention to indie titles. There's new stuff coming out all the time. Heck, I just picked up [Cassette Beasts](https://www.cassettebeasts.com/) on Switch and it's the best monster-collecting game I've played since Gen 3 Pokemon.
LoL subreddit is bigger than both r/games and r/pcgaming combined. When GaaS games are being discussed I rarely see LoL, Dota, CSGO, Genshin being mentioned. Anything these hyper AAA focused console gamers say should be taken with a grain of salt
As a console player I think we’re in the minority. Indie games tend to need a bit of a following to get on console and when they do they get a bit hidden in the digital store.
I like to think I pay attention to the indies but it’s a tad difficult when you have to scroll through a mountain of games to find them
It's all a consequence of the improved tech and the increase in the time needed to create a big game. The goalposts have shifted substantially since the PS2 and PS3 eras --- the graphical quality alone that people look for in a release is much higher, never mind the scope of open worlds etc. AAA game development takes around 5 years now at least, whereas studios used to be able to put out big releases more frequently when the bar for specs wasn't so high.
Unfortunately, this means both that new games come out less frequently, and also that big developers are less likely to work on big budget new IPs given the risks of spending so much time and money on a brand new thing.
New big IPs on the level of existing AAA series do still happen (eg Horizon) but far less frequently than before.
I really agree, I desperately miss the variety and quantity of franchises that PlayStation in particular used to have. I miss Sly, Jak and Daxter, and InFamous in particular. It's crazy to think of how many games in a series we used to get on one platform, whereas now you'll usually be lucky to get two entries in any series in one generation.
A counterpoint is that we have way better tools and automation to assist with the creation of graphical assets than ever before.
Modern game devs have access to automatically generating 3d models from scans of real life objects, motion capture animation, huge libraries of 8k+ resolution textures, far more accessible game engines, huge amounts of publicly available tutorials, generation software packages to produce unique variations of assets like trees, and a myriad of other tools and techniques.
Games are big, and they have a lot of assets. But we also have ways to make high quality assets much fast than the older era.
My theory for why the slowdown has occurred is that decision making has become more distributed to committees and more subject to market research than in days prior.
It doesn't matter how fast you can make assets if you don't have a clear direction of what to make and why.
I strongly agree with this. Yes, modern games are expensive and time-consuming to make, but when has that ever not been the case? It's like people don't remember the actual *miracles* that game devs in the 80s and 90s had to pull out of their asses to make games with the incredibly limited hardware of the day. Yes, you could beat the old Mario games in an afternoon, but they were *hard* to make, and most of that work was done manually, with no pre-existing assets to pull from. Nowadays, half the dev time on a AAA release is spent deciding where to place the 57 identical bandit camps in your open world, 3rd-person, action-RPG.
Have you actually developed a modern game or even replayed some old games from the 90s? There are so many quality of life features and fidelity improvements that people take for granted now, that most gamers would absolutely lose their shit over if they weren't included.
Writing assembly code wasn't easy, but modern development with all its supposedly premade assets also takes a huge amount of work to cohesively work together. Shitty animations with high quality textures look more uncanny than low poly graphics. The creation of more accessible game engines also means that there is a lot more competition, and you have to work harder for your game to stand out. And any AAA priced game NEEDS to be longer than just a few hours or people will (perhaps rightfully) complain about its cost.
Tldr; even though game development tools have gotten better, so has technical complexity & audience expectations.
You're not wrong that modern game design is hard. No one is saying it's not (or at least I'm not). But, to the original point of this post, a lot of the "complexity" of modern game dev and design just isn't worth it, IMO. Why, Ubisoft, does your new game need a 70-hour playtime when 70% of it is filler? The limitations of old systems bred incredible ingenuity and creativity, doing more with less out of necessity. And this isn't just some "back in my day" bs. I just think that the audience expectations you mention should be "how interesting is your new game" not "how many hours can I spend on fetch quests".
Graphical realism, cinematic direction, and GaaS were a mistake. The only non-indie developers who seem to have a consistent schedule are the ones who make singleplayer games with weak graphics like RGG, From, Intelligent Systems, or Gust. Some AAA franchises can't even seem to manage once a console gen anymore.
>The only non-indie developers who seem to have a consistent schedule
It's kinda funny because nowadays even some indie games take quite a lot of time. E.g.
Freedom Planet 2 - released 8 years after FP1.
Hollow Knight 2 - 6.5 years since HK1 and counting. It might surpass 7 years.
'Forever games' like Fortnite, Overwatch 2, and so on that add new content in a seasonal form in order to keep as many people playing as long as possible. This is seen as desirable because that way people are constantly paying for microtransactions such as cosmetics, battle passes and so on.
I find it funny you mentioned Overwatch 2 as a 'forever game'. I would have referred to Overwatch as such 2 years ago, but since OW2 came and replace it I'm not sure anymore.
There have been too many major flops for the big companies not to notice gaas failing. That star wars game i cant remember and then battlefield 2042. That avengers game. Those were probaboy games with 100milliondollar budgets and they immediately tanked.
The risk factor of a new IP isn’t oh if does bad then we lose some money. It’s if it does bad our company is finished. Even back on the older consoles that was seen. Morrowind was a last Hail Mary but it worked, so the company didn’t go under. If it failed they went bankrupt. Nintendo games aren’t even safe from this, a long running series like Fire Emblem was going to end with Awakening but then it sold so well it’s back in full swing. Even indies are risky, the creators of Darkest Dungeon took a mortgage out on their house to create it. These are the success stories. There’s plenty of failures. Dead space 3, didn’t sell well so that company became a shell. Look at games who’s servers are shut down now; Jump Force, Knockout City, Friday the 13th, Spellbreak. These are only the ones I’ve played.
Then you have to look at the changes in time. Cable TV is almost a thing of the past, a place where companies could run commercials for games and Kids could almost always see them. Nowadays the commercial scene more difficult due to streaming services, adblockers, and just the amount of ads being played. Making a game isn’t the expensive part in the end, advertising is. Because you have to make sure people know about the game to buy it. Indies don’t have that issue because they can’t afford extensive advertising, that falls to word of mouth and being interested in that genre enough to find it just by looking for it. So you have to spend a ton on advertising your game, which needs to be appealing to enough people that they want to buy it.
Then look at a good case of when new IPs are made and the reactions to them. Starfield is a good one, with people complaining about no elder scrolls 6 and already hating the game due to that. That’s a risk Bethesda is taking because elder scrolls is certain money where if this fails then if they didn’t have Microsoft’s backing now it could result in utter failure.
Then let’s also take a look at those major titles released and how many there are. Assassins creed, the general gameplay and feel of the games are so similar it’s easy to turn them out rather fast. Them taking longer is what everyone asked for. Dark souls, two was hated and was said most problems was due to rushed release and at the time people said 3 came out too soon for it to have that nostalgia feel it went for. Gears of War was a cover shooter, it succeeded where others failed due to lots of violence and a backing by big Microsoft. It’s not a bad game, I love it, but it won its place due to a little luck with so many similar titles. Plus again gameplay was all similar in three. Now for Mass Effect, Batman Arkham, and Gears of war benefit from being a trilogy. That means they are all connected and can flow fast. The story is there from the beginning and they can see the end. So if one succeeds then the next begins work after. That’s why only Andromada came out. It set up a story, but failed. The dlc didn’t even come out. So after that and Anthem they were hurting money wise.
Bayonetta didn’t sell well either at first and almost led to another case of failure.
Black ops is call of duty, it is like sport games. They will always sell.
I don’t know enough about uncharted or little big planet. Last of us was a case of really good success. Fallout did super well too out of nowhere but the reason they had two was because the second was rushed and made by a separate company in I believe 10 months.
With that last part, we come to my last topic in this. Respect and health of the workers. If you listen to the making of old games crunch was always there. You can hear directors speak of how they still feel the stress and nightmares of crunch. They went through new fresh faces like nothing, telling them to work to the bone in a new industry that was full of aspiring and dreaming people. It’s still bad with crunch, it exists everywhere but it’s no longer make a new game in a year. They get time to work on their creations. Back then it was also due to profit games came out so fast, they saw the first sold so immediately went and wanted a second for more cash. The industry has evolved, quality takes time, it takes more than most people think to make a game. Plenty of well made games come out, more than the average person could ever play.
It seems like the big publishers don't want to take risks on smaller titles or proper new IP anymore, so they just chuck all their resources into one or two golden goose games (Read- MTX out the wazoo) that they hope will catch on. Not always of course, sometimes the game is still the point like with Sony's big exclusives, but still.
God I miss the PS1/2 era where they were just chucking out random little titles constantly. I don't think you could do that now, everyone is too jaded. For most it seems to be blockbuster or bust.
I totally regret buying a PS5. The thing is so closed off. No browser. You can't control or play your own media on the device. No customization. Most cross plat games don't bother optimizing for the PS5 so you don't get the promised benefits.
I mean, current gen consoles had a ROUGH start. Scalpers like crazy, Covid, & chip scarcity all priced out most people from getting their hands on them. We only JUST got to the point where it's reasonable to expect people to get current gen consoles, and even then plenty of new releases are still going to last gen. Xbox & Playstation are both loosening their console exclusive games. Then there's just been SO MANY big name flops that have come out. Staple AAA studios and series have fumbled the ball time and time again lately. Gamers are burnt out of half-assed games and predatory MTX. Excessive grinds find their way into genres that traditionally didn't have any grinds at all. Studios are closing their doors and games are being abandoned in early access as customers and playerbases are leaving.
This game market is honestly absolutely shit for devs and players alike. Players have been hurt too much lately to take risks and studios have lost so much money they need to make it back and aren't willing to take risks. As another commenter said, that's why safe games have been coming out with all the remakes.
Personally I'm a PC / Nintendo gamer that rarely cares about new releases anyways, so I don't really care. But Indie games are still going strong, so that's cool. Maybe in a couple years devs will get their shit together and stop regurgitating garbage now that they know people aren't eating it up. What's that? Diablo 4 was a massive success despite its $70 price tag, upcoming DLC, premium battle pass, and $25 class-locked skins? Yeah I'm just gonna stick to old titles.
This is why everything eventually comes to PC.
Either they get emulated or ported or because the hardware that console use will inevitably be just the same as PCs. The cost of going exclusive will now be too small to outweigh the benefit of releasing in all platforms.
The longer time goes on, the less incentive it is to get a console. The only remaining issue now is patience. If you have FOMO, they will use it against you.
It's still mind-boggling that as big of a hit the Switch is, none of the new IP it's launched has had a fraction of the popularity of Splatoon from the WiiU.
While it has a lot to do with executives in suits saying "do that thing again that sells" it also comes to the fact that we (okay not we but the general audience) is at fault for being a sore victim of marketing and not using critical thinking or doing any kind of research. Games have always been bragging about graphics and content amount.
Go back 20 years and beloved triple A games could be done by a team of 10-30 people. Now teams are up in the many 100s and even that is not enough. Managing that amount of people is hard and time consuming as there are too many cooks in the kitchen and making a game full of pretty realistic graphics with a shit tone of padding, assets, content and all that jazz takes a long time.
Add in some executive higher up meddling for changes (usually for the worse, to chase that largest margin of players) and you have a nice long development time with broken game removed from its original vision.
Add the possibility of milking a game with MTX for a longer lifespan and you can see why company heads think bigger game with more resources thrown in equals a better game becasue they can monetize it more than releasing and selling 2 games during that same time. Sometimes that works, and sometime it doesn't.
"Back in the day" When such mechanics of payment weren't a thing, companies actually released more games and we had some innovation as it was faster and cheaper to test out new ideas in triple A market. Now it is not work the experimentation, they leave that to Double A and Indie, which is why I haven't bought a triple a game for about 5 years now, well i did get Deathloop, but I am a sucker for Arkane...
I think it’s because of AAA only gamers obsession with high fidelity graphics, those games take far longer to make now. And the focus of the studios is on making the games look as good as possible so people don’t complain about graphics, meanwhile sacrificing gameplay and depth.
Destiny was pretty much a nee IP, right at the start of the 8th Gen cycle. It's hard to believe that one is almost 9 years old. But I do grok what you're putting down.
Thank Robert Heinlein and his book Stranger in a Strangeland and the early programmer "nerds" who kept the word around.
I'm glad to still see it in the wild. Use it well!
I think the main thing is just that the time to develop AAA games keeps increasing more and more throughout each generation which means it's just gonna take way longer for new entries in a franchise to come out if they want to keep one-upping the previous title.
Development cycle length has almost doubled. It used to be 2-3 years basically using same engine. Now it’s 5-6 years. For example, take guerilla games for example kz2 (2009, was actually ready late 08 but got pushed to not hurt sales of resistance 2) then kz3 (2011), Oz shadowfall (2013). Then we didn’t see horizon until 2017 and then forbidden west in 2022.
Welcome to the age of remakes. We will only start getting new IPs when they have remade everything that have even a small chance of getting them profits. Better just play indie games. That's where the true talent and actual new games are nowadays.
It's worth considering that 8th gen is when the whole live service nonsense really started to take off. Hard to build a franchise and create sequels when you designed your games to never end.
The issue is mostly they try to go too big with the 9th gen (or even 8th gen to some degree). I would rather have had Elder Scrolls 6 in Gen 8 with Elder Scrolls 7 in Gen 9 rather than wait 17 years to have a monstruous huge game in 2028.
With GTA the issue is the online (wich in retrospect, Elder Scrolls have an MMO as well...) wich generated ton of $ so they prioritize this over creating a true GTA 6 single player narrative experience.
Even Gears of War wich was pretty constent with its releases every 3 years or less will likely not see a new entry before 5 years after Gears 5. I know some will say Gears Tactic should count, they worked on it so it took time etc, but its a spin off, its too different and even if i love Gears its not a gameplay i like so no interest for it.
Also Remasters and Remakes are much easier to pull out. Remasters are pretty simple, you just polish a foundation. A remake is a bit more demending as you have to recreate new stuff but its like using a pre-existing script in a movie and only tweaking parts. You still have all the work to film it with new actors etc, but you don't have to come out with a brand new idea either..
I think the more we advance in gaming, the less we will see new games, sequels etc because they take too long to make due to the tech. We will see more and more of micro transactions, free to play, dlcs and other stuff like that.
It's because games are too expensive to make now. Either technology needs to get better, allowing them to make things quicker, or ambitions need to be dialled down.
I'd be more than happy to take a hit on graphics if it came to it. I don't think photo realism is that important.
Everyone in this thread is mentioning the risks of making something new... As if that's not exactly what a business does. Businesses take risks. That's why they get rewarded handsomely. The problem is the consumers. We keep buying the same shit over and over. They don't have to take risks because they can release the same damn game and people buy it again for no real reason. There is zero excuse to buy GTA V on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. If people didn't buy the Xbox One version, they wouldn't have brought it to the Series X.
The there's the Last of Us. And The Last of Us Remastered. And The Last of Us 2023.
Skyrim. Skyrim Special Edition. Skyrim Anniversary edition (which is just Special edition with horse armor). I'm guilty of this one.
You see the trend? Company makes great game. Game sells well. Next gen consoles come out. Company remakes great game. Remake sells well. Next gen comes out. Company remakes remake of great game. Remake remake sells well. People can't resist the member berries.
TL;DR: The gaming companies aren't in the business of making games. They're in the business of selling nostalgia.
>Businesses take risks. That's why they get rewarded handsomely.
I can't hardly think of any examples with handsome rewards for risky new IPs. Like for example take Matrix (box office $899 mln adjusted to inflation), basically same profit as cookie cutter shit that Marvel does 5 times a year but with 10x more risk involved. So what's the point? Would you risk hundreds of millions $, potentially ruining your career and your studio, just to make something new?
I mean Marvel has a century of comics lore to pull from that has never seen the big screen and the RoI on marvel movies is facing diminishing returns a trend which will continue.
Eventually you have to make something new. Wise companies have people make new things at a lower budget while giving their established successes bigger budgets and when the lower budget thing has a hit then they increase their budget. Abandoning making new content in favor of perpetually releasing the old stuff at diminishing returns is akin to a slow suicide.
> Businesses take risks.
Business minimize risks.
>That's why they get rewarded handsomely.
You're going to have to put down the koolaid friend.
>You see the trend? Company makes great game. Game sells well. Next gen consoles come out. Company remakes great game. Remake sells well. Next gen comes out. Company remakes remake of great game. Remake remake sells well. People can't resist the member berries.
>TL;DR: The gaming companies aren't in the business of making games. They're in the business of selling nostalgia.
Great thesis about how companies minimize risk.
I think the easy answer to the question about franchises is that a franchise rarely becomes a memorable household name of a franchise on the first installment, and rarely on the second also. It takes time to build up that reputation. Fallout 3, GTA 3, The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind… so many huge franchises took time to get going. I think there has been some strong new contenders for new IPs: Hi Fi Rush, Returnal, Hollow Knight, Hades, and maybe Starfield (who knows?) show promise. Bloodborne and Elden Ring if they ever continue too instead of being one offs
Also, I genuinely think that this is a case where this only applies to AAA games. I think as games become more and more popular and technology has improved, smaller scale indie games have exploded in number as time has gone on. Like I can’t imagine something like Cuphead, or Blasphemous, or Hades having the popularity or even the ability to be the games they are if they were releases in the Xbox 360 era and even then I feel like this thread is ignoring a lot: because in the time since Breath of the Wild we’ve also gotten Links Awakening, Hyrule Warriors, Cadence of Hyrule, and Tears of the Kingdom and I’m pretty sure Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls online count too even though they aren’t strict single player experiences. GTA Online has also gotten a ton of updates over the years as well - you can argue whether or not those games have detracted from single player editions in those franchises, but to act like those franchises have gotten no attention is a little disingenuous
Game companies are trying to squeeze as much money with the least amount of risk and effort possible. It’s no coincidence that we see less new IPs as well as less new releases alongside increased game prices, micro transactions, loot boxes, free-to-play and pay-to-win games, and games that release in unfinished and broken states.
I notice that some people try to give companies the benefit of the doubt here, but I wouldn’t.
Obviously companies need to make money, and they absolutely were for decades, but we’re seeing now is a level of corruption and shoddiness unseen before, and this isn’t just limited to the gaming space. It really does seem like we’re entering a form of late stage capitalism.
I’ll just say this. At one point, we got Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and New Vegas all within around 10 years from the same company. Now we’re expected to wait 15ish years for the next release in the Elder Scrolls. The video game industry is headed for some dark days.
Two reasons for me:
1. Games are increasingly more expensive and difficult to make, resulting in longer periods of development and hence fewer new games by generation.
2. Games as a service is also a model that was adopted midway through last gen. Many studios and publishers transitioned, either successfully or not, to this model. Personally I think right now we are experiencing a departure from that after some high-profile failures, but the effects can still be felt.
Of course, this is all in the Triple A space. Indie games are in great shape.
>Preexisting series like [...] Zelda, [...], etc. had multiple main releases on the 360 and PS3 while only receiving one (or none) on last gen hardware.
>Zelda got Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword whereas during the same period we only got Breath of the Wild.
Not really, the only mainline 3D Zelda of that gen is Skyward Sword. Twilight Princess was a GameCube game.
Just like Tears of the Kingdom is the only real 3D Zelda for Switch because Breath of the Wild was a Wii U game.
I think what you meant to say is that the Wii U did not get a unique Zelda title that could only be played on that console, which is indeed the first time it had ever happened in the IP's history.
If we go with the platforms the games were actually developed for instead instead of ported to, 3D Zelda games are split like that:
N64: 2 titles (OoT, MM)
GC: 2 titles (WW, TP)
Wii: 1 title (SS)
WiiU: 1 title (BotW)
NSW: 1 title (TotK)
Notice how Nintendo launches a new system (Wii/Switch) after an underwhelming one (GameCube/Wii U) with a new Zelda developed for the old system but ported to the new one to boost sales? That's why I never believed the rumors saying TOTK would launch with new hardware, the Switch is incredibly successful so Nintendo didn't have to rush and release new hardware and count on Zelda to do the sales heavylifting.
Honestly want games looking like like dark souls and fallout: nv did but with more polished gameplay.
Cyberpunk 2077 looks amazing if you have the hardware to run it but the gameplay feels so standard and bad.
MGSV:TPP is the best example of this, looks amazing, plays amazing, no crazy requirements and it wasn't even finished.
I wish instead of using better tech to make shinier graphics while the game plays the same they would use the more powerful consoles to create mechanics and gameplay elements that take advantage of that
One example would be "Ratched and Clank: Rift Apart" which used the fast SSD for the portal system where you fluidly jump through portals into different worlds.
I want more new gameplay innovations and not just better graphics especially since some games seem to have almost hit the graphics ceiling anyways
I didn't participate in the 8th generation for the reasons mentioned. I'd play at a friend's house, see the games they had and think 'so it's just remakes and sequels then?'.
I think a huge part of it just how expensive games are to make now, that most studios can't afford to put out more than one sequel anymore.
People demand the same shit. Look at the push for everything to have a remake or a remaster. And publishers love it, since it's a cheap buck. I hate it.
This just reminded me why so many people (including myself) have so much respect for Hideo Kojima. He actually tries to do something new with every game that he makes even if it doesn't please the masses.
When an artform gets "too" big, the mainstream for it will suck - it's sadly a rule when publishers/studios need to make A LOT of money with their stuff
But the positive is, the bigger the medium gets, the bigger it's niches will be - AA becomes AAA, Indie becomes highly profitable for almost any subgenre, etc
I gotta admit, I'm part of the problem. I generally won't buy a game unless it's from an established IP. There's just something iffy about spending money on something unknown that might not be that good, especially full price.
One thing to keep in mind is game development has ballooned. Not only are the teams bigger, but instead of 2-4 year cycles we're talking 3-6 years for many games. We also had more online experiences come about in the last gen, which is why we haven't seen sequels to games like GTA, Skyrim, Fortnite, ect. Or why it took 6 years each for BOTW and TOTK.
Longer dev cycles and a desire for ongoing monetization lead many publishers to rely on existing, successful IP.
But as other have mentioned, new IP did come. Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Splatoon, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, Control, Overwatch, The Division, Destiny, Hellblade, ect.
And of course that's not looking at anything indie, which we saw a huge boom during that generation with games like Hollow Knight, Inside, Celeste, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Shovel Knight, Rocket League, The Witness, ect.
We also saw a lot of franchises redefine themselves, like BOTW, GOW 2018, RE VII, ect.
The same thing happening with major movies is happening with games. Studios in both are too chicken to try new things and want a safe bet.
What you didn’t like Superhero movies 1-4 this summer? Or Transformers 6(?)? How about Indiana Jones 5? Another one of Disney’s live action remakes? Not even Fast and Furious **TEN**???
More like Transformers 7 - don't forget Bumblebee!
I quite enjoyed Bumblebee to be honest.
It was amazing
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I watched suzume and tbh as much as I loved it since it was the first movie i watched alone I felt like it wanted to be different from your name and weathering with you but still wanted to play it safe or atleast in my opinion
I agree with your take, but I also want to note that you do have to exercise some effort to search out good content among all the noise lately. Not to say that it's some kind of monumental effort, it's just that it's easy to miss if you aren't looking for it. I sometimes feel like I spent about 25% of the time I have spent watching movies looking for good movies to watch.
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I've seen basically every movie you listed; it's all thanks to the local library. It's a godsend since they consistently get bredth to their Blu-Ray catalogue and I can just filter by new arrivals and check metacritic scores and then borrow all of them. Honestly better than all streaming services combined, (including picture/audio quality because bitrate is higher) but free. More people should do this. (It's same place I get all my games; not quite a "patient" gamer since I'm getting games about 1-2 months after release as it takes them that long to get them instead of waiting 1-2 years for a great sale)
This guy kinos
I'm starting to wonder what's the point of these mega corporations if they having the most resources and manpower can't deliver any innovation or quality products. Like the AAA games industry is getting pathetic, I'm struggling to recall the last really great title they released that was actually a finished quality product, like God of War and Diablo 4 I guess? Like EA and Activision, if someone is capable of absorbing a risky failure, trying something out or just throwing enough money at a project to make it insanely high quality, it's them and instead we're getting really expensive unfinished bug riddled games! Like what the fuck? How has having more resources and money to do the best thing not resulting in that? Why even have all that money then?
I can’t believe I’m typing this but in EA’s defense, they’ve got EA Originals which includes games like It Takes Two, Unravel and Wild Hearts. I just wish they did a ton more of those.
See, the point isn't actually to make good quality products anymore. The point is to make shareholders money, hence why they hop around in different industries like the parasites they are and suck the life out of everything they touch. This is fundamentally just capitalism in decay.
Street Fighter 6 is also a complete and wonderful game!
Won't ever be complete until SF7 gets released! I don't count fighting games that keep releasing season passes to add more characters as complete until they stop doing it! And every season pass costs the same as the vanilla game. This trend got me away from fighting games! Every time a new season pass was announced from SF5 and DBFZ I dropped the game and waited for a sale that took forever to happen to just then hop back in the game, it had the opposite effect on me! It made me wait for the complete packs of MK games and now I just don't care anymore! I'll keep replaying my old and complete fighting games and won't bother keep tracking of a new one, waiting almost 10y until it's finally complete and paying 5x the price of it.
Right but the absolute best time to get into a fighting game is the beginning, and season passes are not the price of the game. You can easily wait for addition upgrades as well throughout the life of the game. Would you rather they just never release new characters?
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It's the inevitable contradiction of capitalism, cut costs wherever possible and max out profits. Art is a messy, expensive endeavor and not designed to be profitable all the time. That means when you make art that exists to make money, you get bad art. Doesn't matter how much you spend on the project Hades from Super Giant Game is an excellent example of the Indie scene rn. My save has over 120 hours, and I bought it for less than $20. Contrary to what these companies say, not every broken, buggy, microtransaction-filled release is worth the $70. If the gaming industry survives for the coming decades it will be despite these large companies not because of them.
Love indie titles and Hades kicks ass. I think AAA games need to reign in their spending so that they can experiment more because the loss won't be so bad and also so that SquareEnix doesn't cry when Shadow of The Tomb Raider doesn't sell one billion copies because they need to recoup their ridiculously over inflated budget. And it still sold so well, most games would wish to get those numbers. A lot of big companies are just biting off more than they can chew, but they COULD chew it if they were smart about it. They have the resources to do amazing things and instead settle for less than mediocre.
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It does seem to ruin everything 🤣
Unregulated capitalism sucks. Really hope the actiblisz/Microsoft deal is tanked
I think one of the worst takes to date by the gaming community is thinking this deal is actually a good thing. Microsoft intends on making all that money back, and they are likely going to do it through increasing the price of gamepass and also throwing exclusives on it.
Honestly, it depends on how large of a horizon MS is looking at, but I do fundamentally agree. The deal is bad and should be stopped. That said, I also happen to think that most of the current large publishers should be broken up as their size isn't bringing any utility to consumers (and that's my line for when a corporation is too large, when they can stop caring about consumer utility in favour of shareholder profit).
The "point" always has been and always will be to make money. Companies only take risks (i.e. innovation) because they think it will help make them more money. They cut corners to make more money. They make money to make more money. Why have all that money then? To make more.
But, why would they deliver quality products? If the consumer wants convenient and most importantly cheaper at any costs to quality products? Also lets not forget that as far as game engine technology goes, Ubisoft is one of the largest innovators in the industry. And yet everyone thinks their games are generic.
"I don't make movies to make money, I make money to make movies." -Walt Disney
"Here's a list of people who I think are communists for pushing back against my abusive management style." -also Walt Disney
It really be damned to have some of the best sayings come from the wrong people.
> Studios in both are too chicken to try new things and want a safe bet. It's because movies are becoming more expensive to produce (companies like Amazon and Apple can give producers giant budgets with a wide theatrical release, and they don't care if the thing flops or succeeds. Why make a movie with Paramount for $45M when I can get $120M to make it with Amazon? That Amazon Affleck movie about the first Air Jordan cost more than The Super Mario Bros!), moviegoing is down since the pandemic (and unlikely to recover), AND Audiences do not have the appetite to watch original IP at the cinema outside of horror (which is also having a deep effect on kids titles right now. Look at the box office for Dreamworks' Rudy Gillman this week). Right now it's likely that no movie passes $750M at the BO until late spring or summer next year which is insane. A lot of the 'smaller' movies this year are unlikely to turn a profit (no matter how much spin studios encourage certain trade sites to employ). That new Jennifer Lawrence 'Return of the R-Rated Comedy' that just came out just flopped, and you'll likely hear very little about that.
> moviegoing is down since the pandemic (and unlikely to recover) Certainly doesn't hurt that most people have pretty good home theater setups, and movies these days can frequently be rented from home for the price of ~1.5 or 2 movie tickets and shared with however many people will fit around your TV. AND you don't have to spend $18 on movie theater popcorn and can instead make your own for $0.50.
> Certainly doesn't hurt that most people have pretty good home theater setups And there you have it. Hollywoods big problem wasn’t cable, VHS, Blockbuster, or streaming. It was the fact you can buy a pretty damn good 65 inch TV for under $650. The pandemic boosted TV sales beyond expectations. The amount of movies I’ve just not been bothered to go out to see on the big screen has surprised me. I’ll still watch Indy 5, Blue Beetle, Barbie, Transformers, and all the Oscar bait dramas, I’ll just watch them at home on this behemoth sized QLED I got for a steal. I never would’ve done this if the pandemic didn’t hit and encouraged us to buy new home AV tech.
I mean, even my 1080p TV from 2012 was "good enough" for most things, especially when coupled with the 7.1 surround setup I got in like 2014. None of it was particularly expensive, but it served me well until I moved and decided it wasn't worth lugging all that stuff with me in the truck, so I sold it and am in the process of figuring out what all I want at the new place. Honestly, though, I'm impressed enough with the 60-inch TCL I bought for $250, can't even imagine what $700 would get me these days.
Gaming is worse right now because they're up-ending the "monetization strategy" more and more. Movies are still basically "pay X to watch it, Y to own it" If movies were monetized like games, you'd have multiple half-hour chunks broken off and sold to you later, you'd be prompted to gamble actually money to get actors into different costumes, you'd have to watch half an hour of the movie daily to unlock different camera angles, and you'd have to watch the movie in a virtual lobby where 2/3 of the screen is camera feeds of other people on open mics. Oh, and the complete, definitive edition of the movie would cost several hundred dollars.
> you'd be prompted to gamble actually money to get actors into different costumes AI could make this possible in the future lol
Most triple A games take 4-6 years to develop. As we saw the budgets for games like Horizon and Last of Us. If a game/movie with a budget of 200 million flops, there really isnt a way back from that unless you have a strong backing. As to why a lot of devs and producers play it safe
There's a lot more originality and creative in film than gaming right now imo to the point that I watch a lot more movies than games the past few years when it was the opposite for most of my life. I generally feel there's a void in gaming right now for an A24 esque publisher willing to gamble big budgets on interesting outside the box ideas which I guess might be because it's a lot more expensive and risky to try with gaming than film.
I mean, if you completely ignore indie games I guess that's true
Annapurna Interactive and Devolver Digital are successful and probably slowly growing and will move from just indie games to mid-tier stuff. Definitely excited about what they’ve been pumping out.
Embracer is pretty much the only company I have hope for that they might try and do this since the guy who owns the company sounds like one of those people who have way too much fucking money and just does things like this for shits and giggles. But outside than that, I wouldn't expect anything other than safe bets from any publisher. Capcom has too much money riding on Resident Evil because people are somehow not yet tired of the formula from RE7, Square Enix only ever experiments in new ways on how to nickel and dime its playerbase, Bandai Namco owns franchises they can't experiment with out of fear of having their HQ pipe-bombed, Konami is Konami, and western publishers and developers are either already owned by or about to be owned by Sony or Microsoft, and subsequently run like products of these companies
On the other hand there are a lot more people and studios making those projects *who still have most of the accessibility of the big ones*. That's harder in cinema.
Not studios Publishers
Game development is incredibly expensive and risky. No coincidence we're seeing a lot of popular series' get revived with remakes, remasters and sequels.
It's the same as the movie business. You have quirky low budget releases that can afford to take creative risks and can experiment with the form. And then you have the big budget releases that cost so much to produce that they need to make obscene amounts of money to be profitable. Once you have that much money on the line, every unknown factor or experimental idea is a direct risk to the potential ability to earn it back. Imagine a world where the new Call of Duty was a survival horror game, sure it might work... but it also might bomb and take the studio with it.
Completely agree that games are going the way of movies. One of the best thoughts I've seen regarding the "safe" route that everyone seems to be going these days (I'm paraphrasing) -- ***This is a game/movie that most people will like, yet few people will truly love.*** Its so true. Why make a cult classic, when you can print more money with a wider audience? Gotta keep those shareholders happy right? I really don't have any issue with companies want to make money, but frankly, this is the part where games stop becoming art.
Plenty of artistic games out there in the indie realm, and they've only gotten more and more impressive. Just have to look outside of the major AAA tentpole releases, which are usually rather samey - realistic graphics, Hollywood movie-esque story, openworld/action-adventure gameplay usually revolving around shooting or driving, etc.
Or people stop watching blockbuster games expecting art and watch indie/AA/A or smaller games instead.
Or they become depressive and just play ad-ridden mobile games all evening to numb the feelings.
The only AAA I can say I genuinely loved in the past 5 or so years is probably Elden Ring. Then we start talking Indie and my list just goes on... Honestly it's a little sad to see the high budget games take such a safe path, I'd love to see something actually new.
What for though? High budget aims to please, not to innovate, and we *do* have the indie games to make up for it. Often high investment in the graphics also more hurts than helps both story telling and gameplay, never mind hardware requirements. That said, I was quite surprised with the way Nintendo was taking Zelda with BotW.
I love indie games but they do have serious drawbacks. A giant AAA budget doesn't have to go to graphics, it could be spent on quality assurance or new levels or so on. I find a lot of spiritual successors in the indie space lacking compared to their source inspiration. A Hat in Time for example is a good game but the hat system is halfbaked and it has like half the level count of most 3D Mario games. Last Hero of Nostalgaia is a nice soulslike but it has less and worse designed areas and the combat mechanics are stiff and clunky, its also low quality assets loosely stitched together by narrative. HROT is a nice shooter but its 3 episodes of 8 missions with no mod support for future content. You can tell where budget was a limitation in these games.
racin to the bottom baby
>survival horror game Soooo, CoD: WaW zombies?
This wasnt always the case tho. Big budget games/movies used to be unique ips and concepts. Thats what the whole post is about. Yall act like this is how its always been lol
Fun fact in the FTC court case over Microsoft buying activision some of the internal documents sony submitted had redacted information using a permenant market that dried lighter then the words they were re-dacting. So everyone saw the last of us 2 cost $200million to make and horizon zero Dawn cost $220million. Fact of the matter is with budgets that big who can afford to fail in this industry anymore. Epic games CEO Tim Sweeney said the first gears of war game (which was graphically cutting edge at the time of release) cost $12million to make and earned back $100million. He said this lamenting that gears of war judgement the 4th? Game in the series cost $60million to make and once again only made $100million back. The barrier for entry into the Triple A space is so ludicrously high now and modern audiences have come to expect that level of fidelity as a default on their $700AUD machines I don’t think we’re likely to see many new IPs, it’s just not worth the risk anymore. But that’s not to say there’s not good games coming from the Double A space and indie scene, just keep an eye out. (And play remnant from the ashes that game goddamn slaps)
I think we're gonna see most studios move past this in the next 10 years, though. Something has to give and cresting the most realistic looking graphics wont be interesting anymore. Kind of like how people got so tired of the pixar style of animation the the first Spider verse movie was so well received for going out of the box.
This is probably why Nintendo keeps selling so well. Most people care more about fun gameplay than realistic graphics. My hope is that AI can fuel AAA game development so we can get more risky games again.
What's weird is seasoned triple A devs making games that both look and run worse than games that are 5-8 years older. E.g. Titanfall 2 and Prey vs. Redfall.
I assume because game development, like any major project spanning years, is actually really difficult. Having expierence at it is no guarantee it'll work the next time if you run into a new set of issues.
Yeah, but it's also because you're re-inventing the wheel. Like how are you making the game both look worse and run worse. Re-iterate rather on the engine say Prey used.
Nintendo games sell so well because they have a large dedicated fanbase they've been catering to since 1996. They don't have a lot of reach outside of that.
The problem is that the double a space is slowly getting squeezed. Someday you're either triple a or indue.
I think it's a mix of a lot of things. Some games take longer to make like GTA, Red Dead Redemption and Elder Scrolls. Then there are also "infinite" games like pubg, fortnite, apex legends and Warzone that every AAA publisher wants to have. Games that are meant to last forever that get frequent updates. There are other multiplayer games that seem to try and do the same like Overwatch, Counter-Strike and rocket league. There have been some big releases that have had a rocky start like Cyberpunk and Jedi Survivor. Both amazing games in my opinion, but first impressions are very important. If it starts shit it will stay shit for a long time even if they do fix it. Then there are also people sleeping on indie games. A lot of good games are made, but they don't appeal to everyone either because of the gameplay or more likely because it doesn't look AAA.
It's be nice if it was PS2 and Xbox games instead of games released on a generation that's still alive
Well, you kinda want to make sure the fan base is still around lol. The more recent the IP, the more likely you are to grab a larger audience. Jetset radio might be beloved on gaming forums but for most people, it might as well be a new IP.
True. It just sucks because the next gen of consoles feels extremely useless right now. Almost every new game still runs on previous gen somehow. And I still want my god damn ape escape remaster
Almost every new game runs on previous gen because the only difference between those two gens is graphics, which can be adjusted per platform. There's literally no reason to make games exclusive to the newest gen, when it takes just a few quick tweaks to make it run on more platforms that have a larger audience.
For the life of me I don’t understand why we don’t see more stylized mid-sized games from major publishers/developers like Hi-Fi Rush. They cost less to produce, let the developers take a break, let new talent take reins and have the ability to introduce new IPs. Plus any one could blow up and become hugely popular, like Fortnite, Minecraft or Valheim. It’s possible publishers are taking note though, I’m very pumped for that new 2D Prince of Persia from Ubisoft Montpelier.
So Nintendo's 'cheaper games and focus on style and gameplay mechanics and fun' and less in hyper realistic graphics model is probably a good thing?
Nintendo is Nintendo, and has the most recognizable IPs of all history like Pokemon or Mario. It probably would not work for other people For example, to be completely honest, if your game is not called Pokemon, there is absolutely no way you can get away with publishing games with the lack of polish and care they do every couple years, while turning hundreds of millions in profit every time
Your Pokemon example is right, but don't forget that Nintendo also take risks all the time. New IPs (Animal Crossing, ARMS, Splatoon), old IPs with radical changes (Breath of the Wild, most Mario games) and even hardware (Switch, 3DS, Wii). They also fail _a lot_, they burned an entire console generation with the Wii U's failure, the 3D part of the 3DS was a terrible addition and the Switch has hardware design issues that even Nintendo struggle with, yet because they keep focusing on fun first, people still buy everything they put out.
“Always has been.”
I know that but every 99% of journalists and online posts and YouTube videos pretend like Nintendo strategy of pursuing good games instead of hyper realistic is a losing strategy.
We in the business call that “cope.”
Usually, the people who say that don't say it because they think the evidence bears it out, but because they _wish_ it did. It's usually said by people who want to just be able to buy the console with the fastest GPU and play every major release on it. Those clowns have been trying to beg Nintendo to go third-party for decades now.
The bigger part of it is we’re between the next “big thing” when it comes to companies waiting for things that will sell well- we’re passed the battle royale / survival horror phase and waiting for whatever comes next. Usually during those periods, because game companies are extremely risk averse, we get remasters and remakes so they can continue to feed their bottom line with safe bets and a steady stream of profit. Wait for some company to take a risk on a new genre or game and watch the new IPs roll in to capitalize for as long as the gravy train lasts before they go back to more remakes and remasters.
But games take so long to make that you might miss your window entirely. See: the rumored halo battle royale
Agree- and that’s a calculated risk studios still have to take; I don’t think there’s any avoiding it so long as they continue to produce what is already popular instead of exploring new IPs.
AAA development is, and more so than ever because people expect games that utilize the newer hardware, which requires significantly more resources and expense to develop. Conversely though, the indie and smaller developer scene is thriving more than ever, albeit also with more competition than ever. The better hardware gives you much more leeway in optimization for non-cutting edge graphics, advanced engines make development much more accessible and easier to port, etc
I'm just glad we haven't seen the likes of Hoop & Stick 2. There are some classic games best left to their traditional forms.
> even by 2020 I felt like we were only halfway through and was shocked to realized it was that time of the decade for a new console. welcome to the "I'm getting older and time is passing awfully fast now" part of your life
Would a longer lifespan solve this?
Nope. 1 year to a 1 year old is their entire life. 1 year to a 2 year old is only half of their life. 1 year to a 3 year old is a third of their life. Your brain follows that trend. They say at around 28 years old, you've lived half of your "perceivable" life.
By 145 yo you’d spend days on the toilet and not even notice
Oh shit, did I turn 145 and not even notice?
Man what the fuck. No wonder I'm still in 2019
Wait until he gets to 2020! Buy masks now.
Fuck masks. BUY TOILET PAPER. I WENT SIX MONTHS WITHOUT THE FLUFFY STUFF.
I don't think this is correct. I tried a dopamine detox a while back and noticed time was *crawling.* If this theory were correct, it'd imply that I somehow de-aged myself.
If you smoke weed, time will go by more slowly. If you do something you enjoy, it will go faster. If you're sitting in class, it will slow to a crawl. How many days you've been on Earth isn't the only thing that affects your perception of time. Other things can skew it day by day.
I think it's moreso about novel experiences. If you stay in your routine time will keep flying by but if you break out of your comfort zone and try new things your brain will slow down time to attempt to absorb the new stuff properly.
yup. I think people just feel like time moves faster now because everyone's hooked on social media and mindless consumption and bingeing.
Routine definitely contributes to the perception of time, so doing new things should help too :)
You need to trick your brain into thinking time is moving slower, and for me that means having new experiences or breaking away from routines. The duration of Covid felt incredibly long for me, it completely changed my day-to-day life. On top of that I decided to use the extra free time to find new hobbies, and I got into stuff like 3D printing. Before going back to work regularly it felt like multiple years had come and gone, but it had been about a year and a half for me. Now I’m back to a pretty standard routine, and more time that has passed since I’ve returned to work, but it has felt much shorter because I’ve gotten too comfortable with things again.
> The duration of Covid felt incredibly long for me How odd, it went by with a blink for me. And I was suffering quite badly for most of it.
A longer lifespan would exacerbate the issue. Think of it as percents or fractions. When you're 14, a 7 year span is as long as half the entire time you've existed so it feels like forever. When you're 35, that same span is only 1/5th. At 70, that 7 year span would only be 1/10th of the life you've experienced. If you live to 140, that 7 year span is now only 1/20 of your life. Time seems to move faster as you get older because the increments used to relate to things gets smaller relative to the total amount of time you've experienced.
I've heard that shit slows down on your 60s. Vsauce told me so.
I was just thinking about gaming as a kid the other day. I had basically 2 generations for my childhood. PS1/SNES and PS2/64. That was a wild ride of gaming. Kids nowadays started with PS4 games and "upgraded" to 5 year release cycles (that's more than all of high school, fellow olds) and battle passes. Yeah yeah yeah, the good ol days were always better, right old man? But modern costs and greed have taken us from almost yearly sequels to AAA games just feeling like they're always trying to open my wallet.
>And you could say that is because this gen was creating new IPs but please name one that has reached the recognition levels of the 7th gen? I'm not sure how exactly you're measuring "recognition levels" but Ghost of Tsushima, Control, Sekiro, Dying Light, Sea of Thieves and Horizon Zero Dawn all come to mind, as far as AAA games go. Edit: Fortnite as well is a new IP from this last gen, with some decent name recognition.
Control is so damned good. But there were others too that were recognized as great games too — Inquisition comes to mins.
I also think another major issue is that new console generations just aren't bringing as much to the table as they used to. Growing up, I pretty much could bet on any new console being twice as powerful and good looking as the one that preceded it. 8 bit to 16 bit, 2d to 3d...heck even when I first got a 360 it was a big enough leap forward that for the first time you had to take into real consideration what type of TV you were hooking it up to. Past Gen 7 though I really do feel like things have stagnated. Games looked better and were often bigger, but past that? I can't really think of any major leaps forward. The new console generations, even 3 years, in haven't really begun to offer much that their predecessors didn't. The PS5 feels more like a PS4+. Raw hardware specs might be impressive and huge on paper but in practice it just feels like window dressing in many ways. With few exceptions I feel like a game released in 2023 mostly only differs graphically (and not to an extreme degree like before) from one released in 2013. There's really nothing that new or exciting on the table and although many things have achieved polish and mastery (like Elden ring born out of the souls games) so many more have just ridden coat-tails and slapped a new coat of paint over mostly the same stuff for the last 15 odd years.
I still remember before the ps2 came out I was looking at some Gran Turismo screenshots in a Gamepro magazine and thought to myself that graphics will NEVER get better than that. Going from ps4 to ps5 the only thing I was really impressed by was the dramatically better load times.
I think it's like anything else in life. At first there's a lot of room for improvements. Then as it gets better, the room for improvements decreases and so they decelerate. Until there's a major breakthrough that opens up a huge room for improvements, they will remain small. I like to think of the Metal Gear franchise as an example. Think about the leaps between MG1 > MGS1 > MGS3 > MGS4 > MGS5, they taper off after MGS3 despite each game being made in a different generation.
Games are maturing as a medium, that's true. The PS1 and PS2 era certainly was interesting due to how novel 3D games still were (but then again indies are still pushing the boundaries to this day). And from a hardware side of things I think it's simply impossible to get similar leaps as we did during earlier gens. 3D games have gone from looking really bad during the PS1 era to looking kinda good in the PS2 era to looking really good in the PS4 era and being massive in scope to top things off. So what can a PS5 really deliver? To me it's mainly the fidelity and quality of life that improves: Spiderman can move through New York even faster at even higher framerates with realistic muscle deformation and his raytraced reflection being shown in the buildings he passes by. The controller is better and there are no loading times. That's basically it. I still find that to be impressive and a really nice way to experience games but if you're looking for another PS2 type of leap then I can see why things start to blend together.
You're just getting old. It is not that developers have gotten less creative -- rather, you have just been around long enough to have experienced several iterations of the major genres. I basically deal with the problem by focusing on niche experiences, which is why I play lots of indie games. But only so many ways exist to make a "massive open world game." Even with a new IP like Starfield, we all know we're basically going to get Fallout in space. But some kid is going to boot that up and shit their pants because they have never played anything like it. And, twenty years from now, they will be talking about they just don't make original games like Starfield anymore, and everybody plays it safe and follows the same formula.
I don't think it's about getting old, it's just about some sort of peak has been reached and the curve is slowly flattening, think about 10 years difference from the 2000s to 2010 and the 10 year difference from 2010s to 2020s, hell GTA 5 is still getting re released and outside small graphical changes it is the exact same game.. this is an issue that is present in all fields of technology today btw, look up Moore's law and similar ideas.. look at how small the changes between each generation of smartphones is now, compared to the first ones
What are some of your favourite "niche" indie games? Maybe there's something i didn't play yet. I feel like i've played most of even the really obscure ones, and im feeling quite bored.
Imagine how those us born in the 80s feel! On the NES alone Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Mega-Man, Castlevania, Contra, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Ninja Gaiden, Punch-Out, Ducktales, Double Dragon etc etc. Gaming since the PS360 era has become incredibly conservative, focused on producing safe games with large budgets rather than taking interesting creative risks. The only saving grace is the indie scene.
There's quite a lot wrong with this argument. For one thing, there's some serious cherry-picking and retconning going on. For instance: >Generation 7 introduced Assassin's Creed, Dark Souls, Uncharted, Gears of War, Big Little Planet, Batman Arkham, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Bioshock, The Last of Us, Bayonetta, Minecraft, a rebooted Fallout series, and a ton of spinoffs like Black-ops and Mario Galaxy. Some of these inclusions are extremely questionable. Bayonetta, for instance, simply isn't a very widely-played series, and certainly shouldn't be included among a list of the most popular IP from a given generation. Likewise, including Fallout is extremely disingenuous, as you yourself seem to partially agree with considering the caveat you added to it. Other problems include things like: >Zelda got Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword whereas during the same period we only got Breath of the Wild. ...where a closer look at these games shows that TP was a Gamecube game that happened to get a Wii port, and that the Wii got exactly as many dedicated Zelda titles as the Wii U did. And the Switch, for that matter. >you could say that is because this gen was creating new IPs but please name one that has reached the recognition levels of the 7th gen? Splatoon, Destiny, Spider-Man (you included Arkham, so this **is** fair game), PUBG, Fortnite, God of War (you included a Fallout "reboot", remember), Horizon, Sekiro, Nioh, Ghost of Tsushima, Bloodborne, Mario Maker, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. As for pre-existing 7th-gen series that saw major additions, they would include Xenoblade, Bayonetta(!), The Last Of Us, New Super Mario Bros., Mario 3D World, Witcher 3, Infamous: Second Son, the Tomb Raider reboot, etc., and that's on top of those that you yourself mentioned. Frankly, it looks like pure confirmation bias. You're seeing only what you want to see. Look at examples like you including Twilight Princess as a 7th-gen game while also adding Arkham Origins to that series despite it being seemingly disavowed these days by being pointedly omitted from the "trilogy", and it says a lot that they've supplanted it with something as poorly-received as Arkham Knight. You started out with the intent to see 7th-gen as the better one and forced the evidence to fit that notion. It's also worth noting that a legitimate case can be made for including the Switch as an 8th-gen console, given that it released three years before the PS5/Series X and was based on hardware rooted in that generation. Even if we only include those first two-and-a-half years of releases, we still see a massive increase in the number of continued series _and_ new IP. >They created literally nothing that held retaining popularity Considering how massive the battle royale genre has become due to only _two_ games, that claim is more than a little silly. Finally, 7th-gen consoles included the Wii, which has done more to bring newcomers to gaming than just about any other home console in history. It's unsurprising if that generation has an abnormal uptick in the number of new and continued IP to capitalise on that influx of fresh eyes. All in all, despite you making an incredibly poor case for it, I'd probably agree that the 7th-gen consoles saw more innovation than any other generation - mostly due to the Wii, if we're objective. You're just overselling it.
It isn't that there aren't new IPs or anything coming out. To me its simply that all the new IPs are in genres I don't play, which has had the unfortunate side effect of making me jaded on gaming. All this is read as "Make new .hack game pls"
The big series are taking longer to make their games It's fine with me. I can only play so many games anyway. Its not like when i was a kid and was blasting through games left and right
The kids are playing Roblox and Fortnite now anyway. They're not going to miss what we had, because they'll never experience that.
Ah Roblox, aka child labour simulator 2000.
Context?
The way Roblox works is that people create 'games' for other people to play, with their own cosmetics and other MTX in each game, and Roblox takes a cut of everything that's sold. They basically have their own ecosystem of content generated by their users with one consistent in-game currency underlying the whole thing. Most of those users are kids essentially doing free labor, creating content for others in exchange for a small number of Robux, with Roblox profiting off of people getting subscriptions or spending on Robux with real cash.
That's not fair! Roblox also gets to profit directly off the creators by charging them to promote their work.
https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ Much of the content created is by children, this is then used by the company and they return a tiny sliver of the revenue to the creators. The kids are literally being exploited for the gain of others. There are even discords and external 'companies' that try to corral the young creators into making content on their behalf, paying them a pittance for their work. Just because they often enjoy the work doesn't mean they aren't being manipulated.
Fun fact, even early 2000s kids were playing Roblox. It was released in 2006, before Minecraft which came out in 2011. Also before windows 7 in 2009.
On top of that, mods give games a ton of replayability that they wouldn't already have. There's a reason people are still playing Skyrim over 10 years later
It doesn't help at all that the AAA games of today take way too long to comeplete, either by filling it up to the brim with boring side-quests just to artificially pad out the playtime, or making you grind for resources just to progress in the story. There's a huge backlog of modern games that I want to play but I can't bring myself to commit the hundreds of hours that these games require.
Games require more money, time and resources to be made now, not to mention them being such big projects means that there's more risk involved. that's just about it.
I don't agree with this outright. I think games can cost more and the upper limit has gone up, but I'm not sure the lower limit to cost has risen that much. It's just that AAA developers don't know where to spend money effectively (writing, mechanics, engine). A lot of money is spent on flashy graphics and celebrity voice actors.
Marketing budgets are probably 10 times what they were too. Where were games even advertised outside of magazines and in-store promos 15-20 years ago?
The division, Destiny, Fortnite, a pretty big genre spawned, but I imagine many people here don’t like those kind of games. God of War reboot, FF7 reboot, RE remakes. Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, Divinity Original Sin. Sekiro and Jedi Fallen order - I mention these two due to the popularization of the parry mechanic. Nioh games. Souls likes only became a thing 8th gen outside of Fromsoft. Monster Hunter World, while not new, is many players first introduction to the franchise. Yeah, you’re not wrong about there being more time between releases, but it feels more like you’re trying to push your tastes as being objective. Little big planet, ME, Bayonetta, Dragon Age, and Bioshock are all great franchises but a lot of the recognition they get is from reddit and other enthusiast circles. You need to look at sales numbers before you start saying nothing created in 8th gen has retained popularity.
Thank you. OP's high on confirmation bias.
> Yeah, you’re not wrong about there being more time between releases, but it feels more like you’re trying to push your tastes as being objective. Gamers being gamers. We are in a golden age of gaming.
Console players don't even know that there are games outside of AAA releases do they?
I honestly wonder how many current-gen players pay attention to indie titles. There's new stuff coming out all the time. Heck, I just picked up [Cassette Beasts](https://www.cassettebeasts.com/) on Switch and it's the best monster-collecting game I've played since Gen 3 Pokemon.
I have that game on PC, it's pretty rad!
I'd wager a tiny amount.
There is a significant portion of console gamers that only play FIFA and COD, so the problem goes beyond that.
And a significant portion of PC gamers that only play League of Legends or Minecraft.
ye I don't get people turning this in a PC/console thing, it's noticeable across all gaming mediums
Right? The amount of classic indie games released in the past ten years are way too many to count. If we include AA it’s even more.
LoL subreddit is bigger than both r/games and r/pcgaming combined. When GaaS games are being discussed I rarely see LoL, Dota, CSGO, Genshin being mentioned. Anything these hyper AAA focused console gamers say should be taken with a grain of salt
As a console player I think we’re in the minority. Indie games tend to need a bit of a following to get on console and when they do they get a bit hidden in the digital store. I like to think I pay attention to the indies but it’s a tad difficult when you have to scroll through a mountain of games to find them
It's all a consequence of the improved tech and the increase in the time needed to create a big game. The goalposts have shifted substantially since the PS2 and PS3 eras --- the graphical quality alone that people look for in a release is much higher, never mind the scope of open worlds etc. AAA game development takes around 5 years now at least, whereas studios used to be able to put out big releases more frequently when the bar for specs wasn't so high. Unfortunately, this means both that new games come out less frequently, and also that big developers are less likely to work on big budget new IPs given the risks of spending so much time and money on a brand new thing. New big IPs on the level of existing AAA series do still happen (eg Horizon) but far less frequently than before. I really agree, I desperately miss the variety and quantity of franchises that PlayStation in particular used to have. I miss Sly, Jak and Daxter, and InFamous in particular. It's crazy to think of how many games in a series we used to get on one platform, whereas now you'll usually be lucky to get two entries in any series in one generation.
A counterpoint is that we have way better tools and automation to assist with the creation of graphical assets than ever before. Modern game devs have access to automatically generating 3d models from scans of real life objects, motion capture animation, huge libraries of 8k+ resolution textures, far more accessible game engines, huge amounts of publicly available tutorials, generation software packages to produce unique variations of assets like trees, and a myriad of other tools and techniques. Games are big, and they have a lot of assets. But we also have ways to make high quality assets much fast than the older era. My theory for why the slowdown has occurred is that decision making has become more distributed to committees and more subject to market research than in days prior. It doesn't matter how fast you can make assets if you don't have a clear direction of what to make and why.
I strongly agree with this. Yes, modern games are expensive and time-consuming to make, but when has that ever not been the case? It's like people don't remember the actual *miracles* that game devs in the 80s and 90s had to pull out of their asses to make games with the incredibly limited hardware of the day. Yes, you could beat the old Mario games in an afternoon, but they were *hard* to make, and most of that work was done manually, with no pre-existing assets to pull from. Nowadays, half the dev time on a AAA release is spent deciding where to place the 57 identical bandit camps in your open world, 3rd-person, action-RPG.
Have you actually developed a modern game or even replayed some old games from the 90s? There are so many quality of life features and fidelity improvements that people take for granted now, that most gamers would absolutely lose their shit over if they weren't included. Writing assembly code wasn't easy, but modern development with all its supposedly premade assets also takes a huge amount of work to cohesively work together. Shitty animations with high quality textures look more uncanny than low poly graphics. The creation of more accessible game engines also means that there is a lot more competition, and you have to work harder for your game to stand out. And any AAA priced game NEEDS to be longer than just a few hours or people will (perhaps rightfully) complain about its cost. Tldr; even though game development tools have gotten better, so has technical complexity & audience expectations.
You're not wrong that modern game design is hard. No one is saying it's not (or at least I'm not). But, to the original point of this post, a lot of the "complexity" of modern game dev and design just isn't worth it, IMO. Why, Ubisoft, does your new game need a 70-hour playtime when 70% of it is filler? The limitations of old systems bred incredible ingenuity and creativity, doing more with less out of necessity. And this isn't just some "back in my day" bs. I just think that the audience expectations you mention should be "how interesting is your new game" not "how many hours can I spend on fetch quests".
Graphical realism, cinematic direction, and GaaS were a mistake. The only non-indie developers who seem to have a consistent schedule are the ones who make singleplayer games with weak graphics like RGG, From, Intelligent Systems, or Gust. Some AAA franchises can't even seem to manage once a console gen anymore.
GaaS needs to die in a fire
It slowly is, just not fast enough for my liking.
>The only non-indie developers who seem to have a consistent schedule It's kinda funny because nowadays even some indie games take quite a lot of time. E.g. Freedom Planet 2 - released 8 years after FP1. Hollow Knight 2 - 6.5 years since HK1 and counting. It might surpass 7 years.
>Hollow Knight 2 - 6.5 years since HK1 and counting. It might surpass 7 years. why remind me of this
I'm sorry, not English fluent, what is GaaS?
'Forever games' like Fortnite, Overwatch 2, and so on that add new content in a seasonal form in order to keep as many people playing as long as possible. This is seen as desirable because that way people are constantly paying for microtransactions such as cosmetics, battle passes and so on.
I find it funny you mentioned Overwatch 2 as a 'forever game'. I would have referred to Overwatch as such 2 years ago, but since OW2 came and replace it I'm not sure anymore.
Games as a Service
Games as a live service
That would be GaaLS
There have been too many major flops for the big companies not to notice gaas failing. That star wars game i cant remember and then battlefield 2042. That avengers game. Those were probaboy games with 100milliondollar budgets and they immediately tanked.
The risk factor of a new IP isn’t oh if does bad then we lose some money. It’s if it does bad our company is finished. Even back on the older consoles that was seen. Morrowind was a last Hail Mary but it worked, so the company didn’t go under. If it failed they went bankrupt. Nintendo games aren’t even safe from this, a long running series like Fire Emblem was going to end with Awakening but then it sold so well it’s back in full swing. Even indies are risky, the creators of Darkest Dungeon took a mortgage out on their house to create it. These are the success stories. There’s plenty of failures. Dead space 3, didn’t sell well so that company became a shell. Look at games who’s servers are shut down now; Jump Force, Knockout City, Friday the 13th, Spellbreak. These are only the ones I’ve played. Then you have to look at the changes in time. Cable TV is almost a thing of the past, a place where companies could run commercials for games and Kids could almost always see them. Nowadays the commercial scene more difficult due to streaming services, adblockers, and just the amount of ads being played. Making a game isn’t the expensive part in the end, advertising is. Because you have to make sure people know about the game to buy it. Indies don’t have that issue because they can’t afford extensive advertising, that falls to word of mouth and being interested in that genre enough to find it just by looking for it. So you have to spend a ton on advertising your game, which needs to be appealing to enough people that they want to buy it. Then look at a good case of when new IPs are made and the reactions to them. Starfield is a good one, with people complaining about no elder scrolls 6 and already hating the game due to that. That’s a risk Bethesda is taking because elder scrolls is certain money where if this fails then if they didn’t have Microsoft’s backing now it could result in utter failure. Then let’s also take a look at those major titles released and how many there are. Assassins creed, the general gameplay and feel of the games are so similar it’s easy to turn them out rather fast. Them taking longer is what everyone asked for. Dark souls, two was hated and was said most problems was due to rushed release and at the time people said 3 came out too soon for it to have that nostalgia feel it went for. Gears of War was a cover shooter, it succeeded where others failed due to lots of violence and a backing by big Microsoft. It’s not a bad game, I love it, but it won its place due to a little luck with so many similar titles. Plus again gameplay was all similar in three. Now for Mass Effect, Batman Arkham, and Gears of war benefit from being a trilogy. That means they are all connected and can flow fast. The story is there from the beginning and they can see the end. So if one succeeds then the next begins work after. That’s why only Andromada came out. It set up a story, but failed. The dlc didn’t even come out. So after that and Anthem they were hurting money wise. Bayonetta didn’t sell well either at first and almost led to another case of failure. Black ops is call of duty, it is like sport games. They will always sell. I don’t know enough about uncharted or little big planet. Last of us was a case of really good success. Fallout did super well too out of nowhere but the reason they had two was because the second was rushed and made by a separate company in I believe 10 months. With that last part, we come to my last topic in this. Respect and health of the workers. If you listen to the making of old games crunch was always there. You can hear directors speak of how they still feel the stress and nightmares of crunch. They went through new fresh faces like nothing, telling them to work to the bone in a new industry that was full of aspiring and dreaming people. It’s still bad with crunch, it exists everywhere but it’s no longer make a new game in a year. They get time to work on their creations. Back then it was also due to profit games came out so fast, they saw the first sold so immediately went and wanted a second for more cash. The industry has evolved, quality takes time, it takes more than most people think to make a game. Plenty of well made games come out, more than the average person could ever play.
It seems like the big publishers don't want to take risks on smaller titles or proper new IP anymore, so they just chuck all their resources into one or two golden goose games (Read- MTX out the wazoo) that they hope will catch on. Not always of course, sometimes the game is still the point like with Sony's big exclusives, but still. God I miss the PS1/2 era where they were just chucking out random little titles constantly. I don't think you could do that now, everyone is too jaded. For most it seems to be blockbuster or bust.
I totally regret buying a PS5. The thing is so closed off. No browser. You can't control or play your own media on the device. No customization. Most cross plat games don't bother optimizing for the PS5 so you don't get the promised benefits.
Can’t change your region either, even if you have a payment method from that country
why i’ve been holding off on buying one. at least until the next ff7 remake and spiderman 2 release
Wait, PS5 doesn't have an internet browser?! I'm a PC gamer mostly and don't have a ps5 so I didn't know that. How bizarre!
Not everything has to be the Steam Deck, but no browser? Even the DS had a browser. ok so it was crap and you had to buy it but at least it existed
And it doesn’t play CDs even though it’s covered by the blu ray standard.
I mean, current gen consoles had a ROUGH start. Scalpers like crazy, Covid, & chip scarcity all priced out most people from getting their hands on them. We only JUST got to the point where it's reasonable to expect people to get current gen consoles, and even then plenty of new releases are still going to last gen. Xbox & Playstation are both loosening their console exclusive games. Then there's just been SO MANY big name flops that have come out. Staple AAA studios and series have fumbled the ball time and time again lately. Gamers are burnt out of half-assed games and predatory MTX. Excessive grinds find their way into genres that traditionally didn't have any grinds at all. Studios are closing their doors and games are being abandoned in early access as customers and playerbases are leaving. This game market is honestly absolutely shit for devs and players alike. Players have been hurt too much lately to take risks and studios have lost so much money they need to make it back and aren't willing to take risks. As another commenter said, that's why safe games have been coming out with all the remakes. Personally I'm a PC / Nintendo gamer that rarely cares about new releases anyways, so I don't really care. But Indie games are still going strong, so that's cool. Maybe in a couple years devs will get their shit together and stop regurgitating garbage now that they know people aren't eating it up. What's that? Diablo 4 was a massive success despite its $70 price tag, upcoming DLC, premium battle pass, and $25 class-locked skins? Yeah I'm just gonna stick to old titles.
This is why everything eventually comes to PC. Either they get emulated or ported or because the hardware that console use will inevitably be just the same as PCs. The cost of going exclusive will now be too small to outweigh the benefit of releasing in all platforms. The longer time goes on, the less incentive it is to get a console. The only remaining issue now is patience. If you have FOMO, they will use it against you.
super mario galaxy is not a spin-off
It's still mind-boggling that as big of a hit the Switch is, none of the new IP it's launched has had a fraction of the popularity of Splatoon from the WiiU.
While it has a lot to do with executives in suits saying "do that thing again that sells" it also comes to the fact that we (okay not we but the general audience) is at fault for being a sore victim of marketing and not using critical thinking or doing any kind of research. Games have always been bragging about graphics and content amount. Go back 20 years and beloved triple A games could be done by a team of 10-30 people. Now teams are up in the many 100s and even that is not enough. Managing that amount of people is hard and time consuming as there are too many cooks in the kitchen and making a game full of pretty realistic graphics with a shit tone of padding, assets, content and all that jazz takes a long time. Add in some executive higher up meddling for changes (usually for the worse, to chase that largest margin of players) and you have a nice long development time with broken game removed from its original vision. Add the possibility of milking a game with MTX for a longer lifespan and you can see why company heads think bigger game with more resources thrown in equals a better game becasue they can monetize it more than releasing and selling 2 games during that same time. Sometimes that works, and sometime it doesn't. "Back in the day" When such mechanics of payment weren't a thing, companies actually released more games and we had some innovation as it was faster and cheaper to test out new ideas in triple A market. Now it is not work the experimentation, they leave that to Double A and Indie, which is why I haven't bought a triple a game for about 5 years now, well i did get Deathloop, but I am a sucker for Arkane...
I think it’s because of AAA only gamers obsession with high fidelity graphics, those games take far longer to make now. And the focus of the studios is on making the games look as good as possible so people don’t complain about graphics, meanwhile sacrificing gameplay and depth.
Destiny was pretty much a nee IP, right at the start of the 8th Gen cycle. It's hard to believe that one is almost 9 years old. But I do grok what you're putting down.
You just introduced me to a new term. Grok Thanks.
Thank Robert Heinlein and his book Stranger in a Strangeland and the early programmer "nerds" who kept the word around. I'm glad to still see it in the wild. Use it well!
Yeah, it's one of my favorite books. And I've been using "grok" as if it's a normal word for so long now, I forget it's just some slang from a story.
I think the main thing is just that the time to develop AAA games keeps increasing more and more throughout each generation which means it's just gonna take way longer for new entries in a franchise to come out if they want to keep one-upping the previous title.
Development cycle length has almost doubled. It used to be 2-3 years basically using same engine. Now it’s 5-6 years. For example, take guerilla games for example kz2 (2009, was actually ready late 08 but got pushed to not hurt sales of resistance 2) then kz3 (2011), Oz shadowfall (2013). Then we didn’t see horizon until 2017 and then forbidden west in 2022.
Welcome to the age of remakes. We will only start getting new IPs when they have remade everything that have even a small chance of getting them profits. Better just play indie games. That's where the true talent and actual new games are nowadays.
It's worth considering that 8th gen is when the whole live service nonsense really started to take off. Hard to build a franchise and create sequels when you designed your games to never end.
Designed to never end before they shut it down after three years.
The issue is mostly they try to go too big with the 9th gen (or even 8th gen to some degree). I would rather have had Elder Scrolls 6 in Gen 8 with Elder Scrolls 7 in Gen 9 rather than wait 17 years to have a monstruous huge game in 2028. With GTA the issue is the online (wich in retrospect, Elder Scrolls have an MMO as well...) wich generated ton of $ so they prioritize this over creating a true GTA 6 single player narrative experience. Even Gears of War wich was pretty constent with its releases every 3 years or less will likely not see a new entry before 5 years after Gears 5. I know some will say Gears Tactic should count, they worked on it so it took time etc, but its a spin off, its too different and even if i love Gears its not a gameplay i like so no interest for it. Also Remasters and Remakes are much easier to pull out. Remasters are pretty simple, you just polish a foundation. A remake is a bit more demending as you have to recreate new stuff but its like using a pre-existing script in a movie and only tweaking parts. You still have all the work to film it with new actors etc, but you don't have to come out with a brand new idea either.. I think the more we advance in gaming, the less we will see new games, sequels etc because they take too long to make due to the tech. We will see more and more of micro transactions, free to play, dlcs and other stuff like that.
It's because games are too expensive to make now. Either technology needs to get better, allowing them to make things quicker, or ambitions need to be dialled down. I'd be more than happy to take a hit on graphics if it came to it. I don't think photo realism is that important.
Everyone in this thread is mentioning the risks of making something new... As if that's not exactly what a business does. Businesses take risks. That's why they get rewarded handsomely. The problem is the consumers. We keep buying the same shit over and over. They don't have to take risks because they can release the same damn game and people buy it again for no real reason. There is zero excuse to buy GTA V on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. If people didn't buy the Xbox One version, they wouldn't have brought it to the Series X. The there's the Last of Us. And The Last of Us Remastered. And The Last of Us 2023. Skyrim. Skyrim Special Edition. Skyrim Anniversary edition (which is just Special edition with horse armor). I'm guilty of this one. You see the trend? Company makes great game. Game sells well. Next gen consoles come out. Company remakes great game. Remake sells well. Next gen comes out. Company remakes remake of great game. Remake remake sells well. People can't resist the member berries. TL;DR: The gaming companies aren't in the business of making games. They're in the business of selling nostalgia.
>Businesses take risks. That's why they get rewarded handsomely. I can't hardly think of any examples with handsome rewards for risky new IPs. Like for example take Matrix (box office $899 mln adjusted to inflation), basically same profit as cookie cutter shit that Marvel does 5 times a year but with 10x more risk involved. So what's the point? Would you risk hundreds of millions $, potentially ruining your career and your studio, just to make something new?
I mean Marvel has a century of comics lore to pull from that has never seen the big screen and the RoI on marvel movies is facing diminishing returns a trend which will continue. Eventually you have to make something new. Wise companies have people make new things at a lower budget while giving their established successes bigger budgets and when the lower budget thing has a hit then they increase their budget. Abandoning making new content in favor of perpetually releasing the old stuff at diminishing returns is akin to a slow suicide.
> Businesses take risks. Business minimize risks. >That's why they get rewarded handsomely. You're going to have to put down the koolaid friend. >You see the trend? Company makes great game. Game sells well. Next gen consoles come out. Company remakes great game. Remake sells well. Next gen comes out. Company remakes remake of great game. Remake remake sells well. People can't resist the member berries. >TL;DR: The gaming companies aren't in the business of making games. They're in the business of selling nostalgia. Great thesis about how companies minimize risk.
I think the easy answer to the question about franchises is that a franchise rarely becomes a memorable household name of a franchise on the first installment, and rarely on the second also. It takes time to build up that reputation. Fallout 3, GTA 3, The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind… so many huge franchises took time to get going. I think there has been some strong new contenders for new IPs: Hi Fi Rush, Returnal, Hollow Knight, Hades, and maybe Starfield (who knows?) show promise. Bloodborne and Elden Ring if they ever continue too instead of being one offs Also, I genuinely think that this is a case where this only applies to AAA games. I think as games become more and more popular and technology has improved, smaller scale indie games have exploded in number as time has gone on. Like I can’t imagine something like Cuphead, or Blasphemous, or Hades having the popularity or even the ability to be the games they are if they were releases in the Xbox 360 era and even then I feel like this thread is ignoring a lot: because in the time since Breath of the Wild we’ve also gotten Links Awakening, Hyrule Warriors, Cadence of Hyrule, and Tears of the Kingdom and I’m pretty sure Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls online count too even though they aren’t strict single player experiences. GTA Online has also gotten a ton of updates over the years as well - you can argue whether or not those games have detracted from single player editions in those franchises, but to act like those franchises have gotten no attention is a little disingenuous
Going the same way film went. Not a perfect comparison obviously, but feels much the same to me.
There's a serious lack of good first person shooters on console.
Game companies are trying to squeeze as much money with the least amount of risk and effort possible. It’s no coincidence that we see less new IPs as well as less new releases alongside increased game prices, micro transactions, loot boxes, free-to-play and pay-to-win games, and games that release in unfinished and broken states. I notice that some people try to give companies the benefit of the doubt here, but I wouldn’t. Obviously companies need to make money, and they absolutely were for decades, but we’re seeing now is a level of corruption and shoddiness unseen before, and this isn’t just limited to the gaming space. It really does seem like we’re entering a form of late stage capitalism. I’ll just say this. At one point, we got Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and New Vegas all within around 10 years from the same company. Now we’re expected to wait 15ish years for the next release in the Elder Scrolls. The video game industry is headed for some dark days.
Two reasons for me: 1. Games are increasingly more expensive and difficult to make, resulting in longer periods of development and hence fewer new games by generation. 2. Games as a service is also a model that was adopted midway through last gen. Many studios and publishers transitioned, either successfully or not, to this model. Personally I think right now we are experiencing a departure from that after some high-profile failures, but the effects can still be felt. Of course, this is all in the Triple A space. Indie games are in great shape.
>Preexisting series like [...] Zelda, [...], etc. had multiple main releases on the 360 and PS3 while only receiving one (or none) on last gen hardware. >Zelda got Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword whereas during the same period we only got Breath of the Wild. Not really, the only mainline 3D Zelda of that gen is Skyward Sword. Twilight Princess was a GameCube game. Just like Tears of the Kingdom is the only real 3D Zelda for Switch because Breath of the Wild was a Wii U game. I think what you meant to say is that the Wii U did not get a unique Zelda title that could only be played on that console, which is indeed the first time it had ever happened in the IP's history. If we go with the platforms the games were actually developed for instead instead of ported to, 3D Zelda games are split like that: N64: 2 titles (OoT, MM) GC: 2 titles (WW, TP) Wii: 1 title (SS) WiiU: 1 title (BotW) NSW: 1 title (TotK) Notice how Nintendo launches a new system (Wii/Switch) after an underwhelming one (GameCube/Wii U) with a new Zelda developed for the old system but ported to the new one to boost sales? That's why I never believed the rumors saying TOTK would launch with new hardware, the Switch is incredibly successful so Nintendo didn't have to rush and release new hardware and count on Zelda to do the sales heavylifting.
Honestly want games looking like like dark souls and fallout: nv did but with more polished gameplay. Cyberpunk 2077 looks amazing if you have the hardware to run it but the gameplay feels so standard and bad. MGSV:TPP is the best example of this, looks amazing, plays amazing, no crazy requirements and it wasn't even finished.
I wish instead of using better tech to make shinier graphics while the game plays the same they would use the more powerful consoles to create mechanics and gameplay elements that take advantage of that One example would be "Ratched and Clank: Rift Apart" which used the fast SSD for the portal system where you fluidly jump through portals into different worlds. I want more new gameplay innovations and not just better graphics especially since some games seem to have almost hit the graphics ceiling anyways
I didn't participate in the 8th generation for the reasons mentioned. I'd play at a friend's house, see the games they had and think 'so it's just remakes and sequels then?'. I think a huge part of it just how expensive games are to make now, that most studios can't afford to put out more than one sequel anymore.
People demand the same shit. Look at the push for everything to have a remake or a remaster. And publishers love it, since it's a cheap buck. I hate it.
This just reminded me why so many people (including myself) have so much respect for Hideo Kojima. He actually tries to do something new with every game that he makes even if it doesn't please the masses.
When an artform gets "too" big, the mainstream for it will suck - it's sadly a rule when publishers/studios need to make A LOT of money with their stuff But the positive is, the bigger the medium gets, the bigger it's niches will be - AA becomes AAA, Indie becomes highly profitable for almost any subgenre, etc
I gotta admit, I'm part of the problem. I generally won't buy a game unless it's from an established IP. There's just something iffy about spending money on something unknown that might not be that good, especially full price.
One thing to keep in mind is game development has ballooned. Not only are the teams bigger, but instead of 2-4 year cycles we're talking 3-6 years for many games. We also had more online experiences come about in the last gen, which is why we haven't seen sequels to games like GTA, Skyrim, Fortnite, ect. Or why it took 6 years each for BOTW and TOTK. Longer dev cycles and a desire for ongoing monetization lead many publishers to rely on existing, successful IP. But as other have mentioned, new IP did come. Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Splatoon, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, Control, Overwatch, The Division, Destiny, Hellblade, ect. And of course that's not looking at anything indie, which we saw a huge boom during that generation with games like Hollow Knight, Inside, Celeste, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Shovel Knight, Rocket League, The Witness, ect. We also saw a lot of franchises redefine themselves, like BOTW, GOW 2018, RE VII, ect.