Are Western Devs the worst they have ever been these days or am I just having a bitter old man hot take?

RoboFu

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Every new western made game in the xbox showcase was just the epitome of mediocre filler titles. Generic .. done many times before .. boring looking slop.

There was only one that had any redeemable creative inspiration and that was doublefines new game.

also this has been going on for a while..its not just the xbox showcase but it did hammer it home for me.
 
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Outside clockwork revolution, yes. The only other game interesting to me was NG4 and that's a Japanese game.
 
It's just bitter old man. Depends on your definition of western too. If you mean USA studios? Maybe. If you include Europe? Then yeah you're just a bitter old man lol.
 
Nah you're right, they're just fucking awful these days. That being said, Eastern games aren't always great either, look at Square's recent string of slop.

I think we all need to just admit that AAA games are in a slump, and I think we've all mostly realized that.

I also think we all need to realize that most of the interesting titles on the horizon are AA or indie. That's the part that people have a hard time admitting to themselves.
 
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I feel like they are always trying too hard.
Not all devs, but most seems to try too hard to be funny, unique, edgy or artistic...

It's weird.
 
Western studios still put out good games but it's nothing like during the 360 era. Nowadays it's like they're copying each other's notes. A lot of stuff looks identical to the next.

Indies and Japanese games are where it's at.
 
A lot of what was shown looked flat, a lack of lightning, atmosphere.

Some solid stuff there I have no doubt but from a "wow I need to play this" perspective, nothing for me really.
 
I always feel like I have already seen these games hundreds of times and just can't care about them. But I am old gamer now, so I understand that I am certainly jaded a bit.

I also dislike games that just throw a ton of visual information and colors at you. Totally unreadable. As if the people who make the games have no basic knowledge about making what really matters pop-out.
 
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Kacho said:
Western studios still put out good games but it's nothing like during the 360 era. Nowadays it's like they're copying each other's notes. A lot of stuff looks identical to the next.

Indies and Japanese games are where it's at.
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This is it 100%. It very much feels like western games are guided by executives trying to chase trends, as opposed to individual designers chasing a vision. So it's not surprising that most of the games feel extremely homogenized.

Man, do I miss the 360 era.
 
Gaming's passed you by.

and-thats-okay-fine.gif
 
Quality dipped hard in the west once COVID hit and game developers began to slack off from home. It wasn't felt immediately, but the last couple years have honestly been brutal.
 
Modern music, games, and movies/TV are generally boring and uncreative, with a few exceptions.

And yeah I've often wondered "is it just me?" so I pick a random year from 90s/2000s/2010s and see what games/movies came out in it.

Then I realize it's not just me.
 
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Oh Blood of the Dawnwalker seems like a good time as well.

And yes, a bunch of you sound like grouchy old farts if little to nothing interests you in gaming these days.
 
This is what happens when you sell an entire generous of young ambitious people on college instead of pursuing art. All the arts get filled with mediocrity and sameness.
 
European games are better than ever
Asian games are better than ever
Indie games are better than ever
AAA games are better than ever
Cant say the same about AAA and AA American games, in fact id say the exact opposite
 
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Gaming was done once gaming companies started to hire HR people and had to follow mandates and update hiring practices. you might think this is an insane take but i stand by it 100 percent.
 
Western studios are releasing the best games this generation outside of From Software, at the same time, American studios are releasing trash after trash after forgettable games.

European and Korean developers are cooking hard, Japanese developers are strong, bit too much focus on sequels imo, and America is meme this gen
 
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As someone who works in the biz, yes, Western developers (AAAs mostly) are particularly terrible right now and it's fucking exhausting. The games are bad. The art styles are bad, the gameplay is clunky, and there's typically no originality or spark of creativity you need to be an effective twist on a well-trodden idea. The bigger problem is that there's an insane insistence on throwing in more mechanical systems or bigger worlds, or other shit that a focus test might've suggested was a good idea, but that few people in reality actually want. And ironically, that's what's massively amplifying the cost and thus, the risk, of developing said game. This is because the exec teams are typically not gamers and most don't even have a casual interest in or basic knowledge of gaming. This is especially true with big tech, where everyone wants to make a fuss about how they're "all in on gaming" but everyone staffing the project is just some reject from that company's app store or video platform. I'm rarely impressed with the actual dev teams I've met with at the big studios. I'm most definitely not saying there isn't talent there, but "go along to get along" is 10000% the order of the day. If you are really good at what you do, you should probably not be working at one of these farms.

And the Western devs are the ones that get all the airtime. You hear the industry is dying, because you will typically only hear their bullshit message parroted. The sky isn't falling. They're just fucked. But it doesn't matter - you run that line of bullshit enough times, and the whole industry starts to believe it. I think the success of Clair Obscur might have finally driven the message home that you can have a highly profitable game that actually goes all in on a novel concept, especially because that success is arriving on the heels of Helldivers II, Manor Lords, Palworld, and of course, Baldur's Gate 3. These dipshits are finally starting to pause and say "hey wait, you mean I'm a fucking imbecile?"

Anyway, Western indies are a lot better. They've also gotten into a rut of just copying the same roguelike deckbuilder piece of shit we've seen a trillion times, but there's still a genuine creative spark there for a lot of teams, and that's encouraging. I'm glad that Japan figured their shit again out at some point, because my God, somebody has to be able to deliver good games with a decent budget behind them.

The point is, you're completely right, OP.
 
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I'm also having this feeling after watching yet another showcase, like something's off at this point.
So many generic or bad copycat games barely anything impressive over hours and hours of announcements, really does feel like the market is oversaturated. Even the trusted franchises can not be trusted in recent years.
But at the end of the day there are always those few exciting games to look ahead for each year, so that's fine by me.
 
Well the Western art scenes has been mostly corrupted for a good decade or two now, so I'm not sure what the surprise is!

Not all, but quite a few Japanese devs still rep and respect classic works, themes, art, music etc...and this is why some games from the East tend to be better in my opinion.

The West is mostly about shoving ugly modernism down our throats.
 
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Angry_Megalodon said:
It's everything: videogames, cinema, mainstream books.

The problem is the same.
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It's this.

This wasn't any more clear and apparent to me then when I played Expedition 33.

Expedition 33 is deep, mature, layered, and unabashedly itself. It wasn't focus tested, Corpo fucked, or cynical. It was passion and art.

It single handily renewed my belief in the medium. But also why I haven't picked up a game since. Im tired of wasting my time with slop.

(And it is the same problem across all of media.)
 
We might be getting older, but it's the world that's getting bitter. Everything sucks now, and the reasons for that are many.

The truly talented creatives were forced out of the industry years ago or moved on. Again, the reasons for that are many. This slop we see now is the result.
 
Perhaps a hot take, but the majority of Western Devs have always been bad.

Well, not always. Western PC Devs in the late 80s/early-90s were great but since then...
 
I agree,

but we definitely are in the minority.

We are in the quantity age, just more content, so long as we have more content, the better.

TikTok brains don't care about the quality of the product, they just want an unfiltered trough of slop infinitely pouring onto all their devices.

we are in the netflix era of gaming; we just aren't streaming them yet, but that will eventually be the norm soon enough.
 
RoboFu said:
Every new western made game in the xbox showcase was just the epitome or mediocre filler titles. Generic .. done many times before .. boring looking slop.

There was only one that had any redeemable creative inspiration and that was doublefines new game.

also this has been going on for while..its not just the xbox showcase but it did hammer it home for me.
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Clockwork Revolution looked generic? Are you high?
 
Walliwallipaloo said:
We might be getting older, but it's the world that's getting bitter. Everything sucks now, and the reasons for that are many.

The truly talented creatives were forced out of the industry years ago or moved on. Again, the reasons for that are many. This slop we see now is the result.
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Man, everything does suck now. Or, rather, it's just uncool. Everything feels so designed to funnel you towards some indulgence. Or some Instagram photo.

Trying to keep in mind that just getting older is a thing, but fuck, it feels everything is just uncool.

(And it wasn't all that long ago where… like… less than 10 years ago… it didn't all feel this way)

I also think people are either subliminally or flat out aware of this, and are thirsty for something real and authentic. Something that wasn't concerned with the "next big thing." It just is….
 
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This was the best event out of the bunch, which isn't saying much... But yes, I seem to be getting great at distinguishing slop with all of these. It just has that cheap look with nothing relevant to say, even the dialogue sounds like no one really tried.
 
Zathalus said:
Oh Blood of the Dawnwalker seems like a good time as well.

And yes, a bunch of you sound like grouchy old farts if little to nothing interests you in gaming these days.
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Bro, that game is made by witcher3 devs, they made polish dev studio, thats why u wont find any woke shit in it, and it will be made on relatively(compared to western games) small budget/timeframe.

en.wikipedia.org

The Blood of Dawnwalker - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, a director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and head of production for Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), left his position at CD Projekt in May 2021 following an internal investigation into workplace bullying allegations that found him not guilty. Afterward, he took an extended break to consider his next steps. Having spent 17 years at the company, Tomaszkiewicz wanted to shift to smaller projects with a smaller team, hoping to avoid the challenges he faced while working on large-scale games at CD Projekt.

In February 2022, it was announced that Tomaszkiewicz had founded a new studio, Rebel Wolves, which was working on its first game. The development team includes Tomaszkiewicz's brother and creative director, Mateusz, as well as design director Daniel Sadowski, narrative director Jakub Szamalek, and art director Bartłomiej Gaweł, all of whom previously worked on The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077. By May 2024, Rebel Wolves had expanded from around 20 to 90 team members.
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rebel-wolves.com

Rebel Wolves - a studio born out of love for RPGs

Rebel Wolves is a new studio, but our team has years of experience working on some of the most critically acclaimed video games of all time.
rebel-wolves.com rebel-wolves.com

Think of a mindset similar to what devs of robocop rouge city had(thats polish studio too, AA). Hard work, fast and efficient, 0 cash wasted on Sweet Baby and other DEI shit both in the game and in the dev team.
 
It will never be 'the worst it's ever been' unless you have started gaming at the 360 generation and never looked backwards.

If anyone needs a reminder of some of the absolute (and sometimes unplayable) garbage that some western devs used to make, look at some early AVGN videos. Here's an example of a game:

batman-forever-nes-sega-remake-v0-yipgbxfa15db1.jpg




Today's games are a dream compared to most games pre-360 era.
 
Every few years, the video game industry seems to swap places on the 'Who's the Worst (or Best)? throne. Japan takes a turn, then the West jumps on. It's a hilarious, frustrating cycle.
 
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