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AAAA games just come and go these days

DR3AM

DR3AM

Dreams of a world where inflated review scores save studios
Mario Kart World? Lasted 2 weeks and people moved on
BF6? Oh look Arc Raiders is out
CoD? Another one?
Donkey Kong Bananza? That came out already?
Borderlands 4? Movie was better
Ghosts of Yotie? Cool
Death Stranding 2? Who asked for this?
Monster Hunter? PS4 gfx


All these games extremely well but people just moved with their lives.
Indies games like E33 , Hades 2, etc sold as well but they left a bigger impact in the gaming world.
 
A game with over a 40million dollar budget is an indie game now?

I love E33…but an indie darling it is not.

I dumped 70+ hours into E33 and I think I did all of the end game content. For me it perfectly stayed its welcome.
 
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I think this is a you problem.

And by "you" I mean people terminally online that think a game is only as relevant as the constant forum threads talking about them.
 
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CentralScrutinizer said:
I think this is a you problem.
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Nah, the cultural zeitgeist is more fickle than ever. Modern culture has an attention span of zero.


Look at some of these huge games like Hollow Knight Silksong. Hyped to all hell for nearly a decade and it's pretty much completely out of the conversation in the general gaming community 2 months after release.
 
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I'm always down for a shit take from DR3AM to kick off the GAF weekend. 💪
 
analog_future said:
Nah, the cultural zeitgeist is more fickle than ever. Modern culture has an attention span of zero.


Look at some of these huge games like Hollow Knight Silksong. Hyped to all hell for nearly a decade and it's pretty much completely out of the conversation in the general gaming community 2 months after release.
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Yeah but who cares? If you want to talk about the game, you can just do it in many places. A game doesn't just becomes "unrelevant" because people stop talking about it, and you can play a game and have fun even if nobody knows about it.
 
analog_future said:
Nah, the cultural zeitgeist is more fickle than ever. Modern culture has an attention span of zero.


Look at some of these huge games like Hollow Knight Silksong. Hyped to all hell for nearly a decade and it's pretty much completely out of the conversation in the general gaming community 2 months after release.
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Only if you live inside gaf. I can guarantee you people are still constantly talking about Silksong or Elden Ring or many others. The problem is, the internet now is bigger and more crowded so it's harder to notice these things compared to many years ago. Nothing changed. Hype doesnt die faster.
 
I would argue that something like exp33 costed probably way more than fucking bananza or mario kart 39485839...
 
Social media (and YouTube) have amplified FOMO. Anytime something new comes out, it supersedes what just came out and the focus shifts to it. Not necessarily new phenomena, but the focus shift is more dramatic today than say 10-15 years ago. AAA games are also typically rehashes of something that came out previously. For example, I haven't played Yotei yet, but it looks exactly like Tsushima which was already a refinement of the AC style games.
 
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The Mario Kart one surprises me. I got Monster Hunter but the performance was trash so I always meant to go back to it. Have they made it better yet?
 
analog_future said:
Nah, the cultural zeitgeist is more fickle than ever. Modern culture has an attention span of zero.


Look at some of these huge games like Hollow Knight Silksong. Hyped to all hell for nearly a decade and it's pretty much completely out of the conversation in the general gaming community 2 months after release.
Click to expand...
I'm sure Team Cherry is sad after all the millions and millions of copies they sold.
 
DR3AM said:
Mario Kart World? Lasted 2 weeks and people moved on
BF6? Oh look Arc Raiders is out
CoD? Another one?
Donkey Kong Bananza? That came out already?
Borderlands 4? Movie was better
Ghosts of Yotie? Cool
Death Stranding 2? Who asked for this?
Monster Hunter? PS4 gfx


All these games extremely well but people just moved with their lives.
Indies games like E33 , Hades 2, etc sold as well but they left a bigger impact in the gaming world.
Click to expand...
I get what you say but what's the point for being edgy? just play older games, it's not the end of the world.
 
don't agree. KCD2 gona stay with me forever. EX33 was also amazing. Ghost of yotei was solid. Ninja gaiden 4 also really clicked for me. Death stranding 2 did come and go for me though
 
Yeah and it kinda sucks. No just living in that space for a while. It comes out and goes so quickly. However, some of the recent releases have been pretty forgettable. Borderlands 4, Monster Hunter, and Donkey Kong has been some of the most forgettable and regrettable purchases I have made recently.
 
TintoConCasera said:
Yeah but who cares? If you want to talk about the game, you can just do it in many places. A game doesn't just becomes "unrelevant" because people stop talking about it, and you can play a game and have fun even if nobody knows about it.
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Yeah exactly, I mean what else is there to really say about Mario Kart World that hasn't been said already? It does not really evoke deep discussion. You'd be crazy to say that everyone just stopped playing it though. Millions of people spent $500+ to play it
 
Again this is more of a problem of stimulation overload of modern life than anything. Peoples dopamine systems are busted from never ending content that we have now.
 
Flabagast said:
Dont think so, core dev team was only 30-40 people, I guess you have much more than that on Nintendo games
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They also had hundreds of stuff made by third parties, the game was hardly only made by 40 people.

And honestly, just look at the production values of the 3 games, one look almost like a full fledged nextgen AAA, the others look like upscaled switch 1 games that would look bad even on a ps4, if nintnedo spended the same money as the studio behind exp33 for that final result, they better fire everyone in the studio :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 
Did you play them? I've played almost all of them and have fond memories. Sure, discussion has died down regarding most of the games, but that happens to the vast majority of titles that get released. It's only a handful of games each year that get talked about.

Even in the PS1/PS2/PS3 generation we remember the truly exceptional. There are a ton of games that were great that very few remember or talk about.
 
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CrimsonTide said:
Dream does not post much

But when he does we listen. We Learn
We are all witnesses to that is DR3AM
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Unironically some of my favorite threads lol
 
DR3AM said:
Mario Kart World? Lasted 2 weeks and people moved on
BF6? Oh look Arc Raiders is out
CoD? Another one?
Donkey Kong Bananza? That came out already?
Borderlands 4? Movie was better
Ghosts of Yotie? Cool
Death Stranding 2? Who asked for this?
Monster Hunter? PS4 gfx


All these games extremely well but people just moved with their lives.
Indies games like E33 , Hades 2, etc sold as well but they left a bigger impact in the gaming world.
Click to expand...
Mario Kart World is one of the most disappointing games I've ever played. It's fine, but I played the campaign once and will likely rarely if ever go back. Couldn't be more different than MK8.

BF6, CoD are always pretty frequent and come and go. I've never spent a ton of time talking about either.

Monster Hunter Wilds looked bad in the demo so I skipped it. I don't need to play this same game indefinitely. If they have nothing worth buying, I don't need to buy it again.

Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2 seem fine. I haven't played them but they both seem pretty samey though, pretty safe, and almost indistinguishable from the previous games. I pointed this out about a few other Sony games this gen and the trend continues. Very forgettable, but polished games.

I never played Borderlands so I don't care.

None of these were ever really on my radar except Mario Kart World, which was a legitimately hugely disappointing release. Donkey Kong was great but it doesn't have the same platforming depth of Mario titles. Once you explore it and collect all the things, you're pretty much done. Great game though.

I didn't hype up any of these games except MKW and DK so my track record is pretty good. They never looked worth causing a fuss over in the first place.
 
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Don't forget Outer Worlds 2. Sequel to a 5+ million seller and was supposed to be Microsoft's first $80 game. Then it came and went like a fart in the wind.
 
Only proper AAAA game in my view:
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I talk about games all the time in my circle, including a couple of those games mentioned. Most of the people I know don't really pick up the new releases, and are playing older games. A couple of work buds are currently playing ER for the first time for example. Both mentioned picking up DS 2 and GOY at some point. We'll probably be chatting about those in 6 months time.

In short, there's a very different world outside of GAF.
 
Meanwhile fellowship came out a month ago and havent played anything else since and will not play anything else for the foreseeable future.
 
AAAA game needs to be the very best if they want to stay and only a few could manage that like

Elder Scrolls VI
Fallout 5
Grand Theft Auto VI
Witcher 4
Half Life 3
 
Usually not much to talk about I guess if it's just the newest iteration of a well established formula, except maybe for the people who are obsessive about that one franchise.
 
Miyazaki's Slave said:
A game with over a 40million dollar budget is an indie game now?

I love E33…but an indie darling it is not.

I dumped 70+ hours into E33 and I think I did all of the end game content. For me it perfectly stayed its welcome.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I wish people would stop calling a $30m title an indie game.
 
Who said that those are AAAA?

Mario Kart World doesn't have the numbers that once did a time ago, but it's doing pretty great. Also, chances are that costed way less than a Forza or Gran Turismo and already sold 10mi, with possibility to sold even more

Same for BF6. It has very solid numbers nowadays, even thou has less than Raiders (at least for now)

People move on from game to game since ever, and we are living in a new online-gaming-era-thing now that every few months a new thing comes up. It's kinda like the latter 2000s when korean games changed the world. Not every game needs to have everyone always online to subject it's success
 
DR3AM said:
Mario Kart World? Lasted 2 weeks and people moved on
BF6? Oh look Arc Raiders is out
CoD? Another one?
Donkey Kong Bananza? That came out already?
Borderlands 4? Movie was better
Ghosts of Yotie? Cool
Death Stranding 2? Who asked for this?
Monster Hunter? PS4 gfx


All these games extremely well but people just moved with their lives.
Indies games like E33 , Hades 2, etc sold as well but they left a bigger impact in the gaming world.
Click to expand...

Because games are just disposable products now, and they're aimed at the mainstream masses. It doesn't help that modern generations and audiences don't understand the history and culture of what made video games fun. The creativity and imagination and expression is gone, and it was possible at a time when technology and business and greed hadn't yet invaded the space. Nowadays, 50% of a game is withheld and sold piecemeal after launch for two years. We have 200GB games that stretch over $200 for four years. Once upon a time we had a game that was like 3MB and could be beaten in 45 minutes, and to this day is infinitely still better than games that are 200GB and $200.
 
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