Gaming today is more versatile & complete than it has ever been so why is there people crying about the state of the industry?

Because they're old and antagonistic nostalgia afflicts every generation.
Us old people remember when gaming was great and have better taste maybe?

Sesame Street Idk GIF
 
That's not even the same generation
well pick one or the other it's the same thing, it's not as good, in my opinion

and i would totally understand that people think totally the opposite since games today are made for different people than 20 years ago, that's normal, gaming evolved

There's only one thing, when people pretend that gaming is so much more varied today to the point it is now impossible to categorize it as a whole, contrary to what it was before, it's just unbelievably dumb to think that. If you don't like certain trends in game-design nowadays, it really plagues the whole market, from indie to AAA. Not saying there are not exceptions, but far less than some people think.
 
Thing about being a grognard is you finally learned through decades of experience what you shouldn't have any hype for because it just isn't for you. 🤷‍♂️
 
Gaming today is nowhere near as good as the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox 360 generation

Dreamcast and OGX will always be dear to me, and alot of my alot time great games are from that era.
PS360 had the year 2007 so i mean......kinda hard to compare.

But gaming isnt in a shit place......at any one time you have banger titles to get through even just this year has already given us some games that might sneak their way into my all time greats (Exp33).

People act like they have nothing to play, but titles are plentiful and great titles at that......
 
Dreamcast and OGX will always be dear to me, and alot of my alot time great games are from that era.
PS360 had the year 2007 so i mean......kinda hard to compare.

But gaming isnt in a shit place......at any one time you have banger titles to get through even just this year has already given us some games that might sneak their way into my all time greats (Exp33).

People act like they have nothing to play, but titles are plentiful and great titles at that......
Of course it is in shit place, these days you wouldn't get a Simpson's Hit and Run, you can't even get a decent football/soccer game, there is next to no competition in the genre, you can't get decent arcade racers like Blur/Split Second/Motorstorm/Project Gotham 4 anymore, even the tennis genre has hardly anything going for it....big franchises are all but dead: Alone in the Dark, Halo, Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy, Republic Commando, Deus Ex...
 
How much do you get paid for your asinine posts?

People have standards, if i went to shop for groceries and 85% of them where rotten i would never step into the store again.

Same applies to game, but no we should suck it up and think of the devs jobs!!! its the only god damn profession where people can skate by and deliver shit constantly.

Unoptimized shit games made by 500 outsourced unskilled cheap workers that watched an indian ue5 tutorial on youtube, unreal eninge samey looking games that renders at 720p and you have to use framegen on high end hardware. i would accept it if the game where actually fun, but no they flat out suck compared to games released 10-20 years ago.
Simon Cowell Wow GIF by America's Got Talent


Google video games from 2007 and tell me this man isn't 100% correct.
Games were objectively better back then.
And you can say that about dozens of years. 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2011, 2013, etc. Its a VERY long list
 
Of course it is in shit place, these days you wouldn't get a Simpson's Hit and Run, you can't even get a decent football/soccer game, there is next to no competition in the genre, you can't get decent arcade racers like Blur/Split Second/Motorstorm/Project Gotham 4 anymore, even the tennis genre has hardly anything going for it....big franchises are all but dead: Alone in the Dark, Halo, Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy, Republic Commando, Deus Ex...

I dont know what you mean about games like Hit and Run.....small tongue in cheek games? You think they stopped existing?


Arcade Racers?
Did Forza Horizon die.
Wreckfest 2 is on the horizon
Mario kart just launched.
Tokyo Extreme is in EA right now, go support it if you want to show devs you care.
Formula Legends
Hot Wheels Unleashed and 2(hopefully it did enough to get a third game)
Sonic Crossworlds
Fatal Run
Overjump Rally
They exist.....you just arent looking and or dont care, so when they fail, the devs stop trying.

OnRush, Blur and Split/Second were made....people didnt buy them, so clearly arcade racers needed to downscale their costs of production......so we have a beavy of Arcade Racers with smaller budgets so that its still a viable genre.
Its not the industry that abandoned big budget arcade racers.....its gamers who did.


To you other point:
A new Alone in the Dark came out last year?

A new Halo is in the works....Infinte wasnt even bad, the MP was/is solid but its more Halo and Halo isnt the same MP powerhouse it used to be. I actually liked the campaign and hopefully they dont reboot the series and we get to keep following on from that ending.

A new Mass Effect is in the works, with the knowledge of what failed in Andromeda. Fingers crossed.

I dunno about Guardians of the Galaxy, I didnt even know it was series of videogames.
The last game was good......but again people didnt buy it.

Hopefully we get another Deus Ex game if Embracer sees that people are clamoring for more games like that, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided sold like 12 million......only SquareEnix would look at that and not immediately greenlight another project.
With the money CDE is getting from Microsoft for Perfect Dark, Grounded 2 and Fable hopefully the studios will have earned enough to atleast get their own projects, Crystal gets to make another Tomb Raider, Eidos should be allowed to make another Deus Ex.



As for Football games......whose fault is it that a monopoly came about with FIFA.......well the FIFA name is no longer with EA so maybe the new FIFA game will be more up your ally and will give real competition to what is now known as EAFC.

Tennis games......the last time I played a Tennis game was Virtua Tennis, i figured they were still making them, they just arent on my radar, are they dead?

Republic Commando, I take it you mean Star Wars Republic Commando? I think everyone would love more of that, with the love the Clone Wars, Bad Batch and Battlefront get, its totally possible they make another game as a spiritual successor.
Pitch it.
hq720.jpg
 
I dont know what you mean about games like Hit and Run.....small tongue in cheek games? You think they stopped existing?


Arcade Racers?
Did Forza Horizon die.
Wreckfest 2 is on the horizon
Mario kart just launched.
Tokyo Extreme is in EA right now, go support it if you want to show devs you care.
Formula Legends
Hot Wheels Unleashed and 2(hopefully it did enough to get a third game)
Sonic Crossworlds
Fatal Run
Overjump Rally
They exist.....you just arent looking and or dont care, so when they fail, the devs stop trying.

OnRush, Blur and Split/Second were made....people didnt buy them, so clearly arcade racers needed to downscale their costs of production......so we have a beavy of Arcade Racers with smaller budgets so that its still a viable genre.
Its not the industry that abandoned big budget arcade racers.....its gamers who did.


To you other point:
A new Alone in the Dark came out last year?

A new Halo is in the works....Infinte wasnt even bad, the MP was/is solid but its more Halo and Halo isnt the same MP powerhouse it used to be. I actually liked the campaign and hopefully they dont reboot the series and we get to keep following on from that ending.

A new Mass Effect is in the works, with the knowledge of what failed in Andromeda. Fingers crossed.

I dunno about Guardians of the Galaxy, I didnt even know it was series of videogames.
The last game was good......but again people didnt buy it.

Hopefully we get another Deus Ex game if Embracer sees that people are clamoring for more games like that, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided sold like 12 million......only SquareEnix would look at that and not immediately greenlight another project.
With the money CDE is getting from Microsoft for Perfect Dark, Grounded 2 and Fable hopefully the studios will have earned enough to atleast get their own projects, Crystal gets to make another Tomb Raider, Eidos should be allowed to make another Deus Ex.



As for Football games......whose fault is it that a monopoly came about with FIFA.......well the FIFA name is no longer with EA so maybe the new FIFA game will be more up your ally and will give real competition to what is now known as EAFC.

Tennis games......the last time I played a Tennis game was Virtua Tennis, i figured they were still making them, they just arent on my radar, are they dead?

Republic Commando, I take it you mean Star Wars Republic Commando? I think everyone would love more of that, with the love the Clone Wars, Bad Batch and Battlefront get, its totally possible they make another game as a spiritual successor.
Pitch it.
hq720.jpg
The problem is, that now games are taking a lot longer to come out than before, and then when they do and if they flop then that all but ends the franchise for the foreseeable future, case in point, look at how quite regularly James Bond games came out between 2000- 2011, not much gap between the various entries, with this latest Bond game, it's taking years to release, and if it flops, or doesn't meet expectations, it'll end up like Dead Space...Alone in the Dark came out, flopped, and now we are unlikely to get a new entry for decades...The tennis genre is totally dead, and the spiritual successor to Top Spin, also had a stupid idea of having to be constantly connected to a server in order to play the game, if you aren't then you are effectively locked out of the game....Soccer games, aren't exactly thriving either....Konami threw in the PES towel, and let EA/FIFA have their own way, and now you can't even get a decent PES entry currently.....the game from the makers of SIFU-Rematch, might have been the answer to a decent soccer game, but then you find out it is multiplayer only...
 
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Gaming today is more versatile & complete than it has ever been so why is there people crying about the state of the industry?
Because they have no idea what are they talking about.

There are more great games than ever, more ways get them (some free, some in gamesubs, or purchasable), more ways to play them in more platform types than ever, more business types, more genres and subgenres etc. It's also more accesible and cheaper than ever to make games, and the industry makes more money than ever.
 
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Us old people remember when gaming was great and have better taste maybe?

Sesame Street Idk GIF

I remember the days when there was little doubt that if a game was made by Activision, EA or Ubisoft that it was probably a really good game. These days, I look at all those publishers sideways.

I do agree, however, with those who are pointing to AA games. Clearly there are alternatives to the traditional publishers out there and that is a good thing, but nothing wrong with folks who wish the franchises they used to enjoy were still good.

Because they have no idea what are they talking about.

Nah.....just difference of opinion.
 
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Nope, most games are a shell of their forefathers substituting elaborate gameplay for elaborate cutscenes. Everything has been neutered from their origins in an attempt to make the games appeal to a broader audience.

This thread is factually wrong.
 
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I can see both sides of this discussion. There is a ton of uninspired paint by numbers slop out there these days. And gamers have a right to look at that slop and frustrated and disappointed. Game developers and publishers try and gaslight us into believing their slop is the best ever and that we should just all shut up and consume product and get excited for next product.

Meanwhile you've got Nintendo raising prices and doing everything they can to kill physical games and Sonys output is a total disaster this generation due to their strategy of chasing crap trends and live service trash in lieu of trying to build on their output from the PS4 era.

Innovation in the AAA space has come to a halt. New IPs come out and sell 2 to 3 million and are deemed failures and never get a chance to build on their initial offering. That stifles creativity.

On the other hand, we get a game like Expedition 33 which shows all the BS being fed to us from game companies is a complete lie. We should be swimming in games across genres by the EAs, Biowares, Ubisofts and Squares of the world that are on par with Expedition 33. Yet we aren't because these companies follow the slop formula to a T and then blame gamers when their trash like Veilguard fails.

But their are tons of good games out there. There's no denying that. Both of these things can be true. The industry can be in a bad state at the top and there can also be all kinds of cool innovative stuff in the AA and indie space. And that's kind of where we see. There are tons of good games out there. But there's also a alot of slop.

I'll enjoy the good stuff but I'm not going go pretend the shit business practices and soulless live service trash isn't a bad thing.
 
It's really because so many people only pay attention to AAA games, so the decline in their quality/innovation (mainly in the western space) makes people think the whole industry sucks.

Even some of the people that bring up smaller/indie games will often only comment about the same handful that already have broken out into a big thing already.

I'll throw a bone out of the few who just miss certain genres/sub-genres that aren't being heavily made anymore (RTS, arcade sports games, etc.)
 
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- There's little to no new AAA IP
- sequels take 4-5 years to make instead of 2-3 years
- games barely have any free unlockable content like costumes and every fun extra is nickle and dimed. (Stellar Blade/new Mario Kart are exceptions)
- entire genres have disappeared for the most part at the AA-AAA level (single-player shooters, arcade racers, extreme sports, platformers, stealth games, RTS)
- classic franchises like Mortal Kombat and Dragon Age have been ruined by progressive dev types who make the lamest shit ever.
- personal opinion here, but wayyyyy too many open world games with rpg elements and stat trees, instead of linear, action based games. From Soft is great, but way too many games just ape them now.
- another personal opinion: character designs fucking suck now. I think the last great new character designs we got were 2B and Overwatch's base roster. Nearly a decade ago.
 
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I think it's complex.

I want to make a short post, so it comes down to bulky game design to "add value" [GoWR], people not realizing they're poor if they cannot afford games when they cost less than groceries, games feeling cheap when everything feels like a money extraction to make up for the artificially low prices, GAAS being built into games, people being political warriors against certain titles and feeling like they shouldn't even exist when it doesn't matter [Volcano High critics, I'm looking at you]. People relying on AAA and sequels when they've been playing games for decades and then are shocked to find out they aren't thrilled by game types they've already played to death.
 
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- There's little to no new AAA IP
- sequels take 4-5 years to make instead of 2-3 years
- games barely have any free unlockable content like costumes and every fun extra is nickle and dimed. (Stellar Blade/new Mario Kart are exceptions)
- entire genres have disappeared for the most part at the AA-AAA level (arcade racers, extreme sports, platformers, stealth games, RTS)
- classic franchises like Mortal Kombat and Dragon Age have been ruined by western politics and progressive types who make the lamest shit ever.
- personal opinion here, but wayyyyy too many open world games with rpg elements and stat trees, instead of linear, action based games. From Soft is great, but way too many games just ape them now.
- another personal opinion: character designs fucking suck now. I think the last great new character designs we got were 2B and Overwatch's base roster. Nearly a decade ago.

I agree with a lot of your takes.

I'm going to disagree a bit with "Western politics and progressive types".

MK1 just sucks because it sucks. Barebones, boring single player content, ruined storyline, and a clunky kameo system, with the amazing customization options from MK11 ruined in favor of very expensive microtransactions. Yes, they've made conscious decisions in MK11 to avoid showing a lot of skin - it's evident they did, but it didn't ruin anything about the game. I would argue that Skarlet and Jade both benefitted from it.
Dragon Age sucks because it has terrible writing and they've pushed so far away from what made DA:O an incredible game. It's one of the most tragic declines in any gaming franchise. I watched "the scene", and it's just trash writing. I don't like using the word cringe, but I cringed. If you compare that to Car Seat Headrest's song "Lady Gay Approximately" which to me sounds like a song about a family dealing with a trans and/or furry person, but it's incredibly well written in the style of a 70s folk song. It hits the right musical climaxes, and it hits these perceptible moments of tension and I really enjoy the effort they put into it. I don't have to be a trans person or a furry to find engagement from that subject in the same way that I don't have to be a drug dealer or have cancer to watch Breaking Bad. The content doesn't matter - it's the delivery.

Character design: Thinking about this, I really like your picks on 2b and Overwatch, but we also live in a land of nonstop sequels. D'Vorah in MK is an awesome design. Guilty Gear has introduced some pretty good new character designs like Goldlewis Dickinson, Nagoriyuki, and Happy Chaos. Leroy Smith and Victor from Tekken 8 are great designs too. Emet Selch from FFXIV ended up becoming an incredible character because of great writing more than design, and most of the FFXVI cast and supporting characters were good too. I think this might be a consequence of a lack of new properties.

Edit: Corrected Skarlet's spelling.
 
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People don't know what they want, as a consequence they keep hitting walls trying to find "it".
The one's who do know what they like are having the time of their life.
 
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I believe that it's mental health issues involved where people feel that everything should be about them & them alone 😭.

Funny hearing that from a poster who's infamous for quoting himself using giant screenshots.
 
I agree with a lot of your takes.

I'm going to disagree a bit with "Western politics and progressive types".

MK1 just sucks because it sucks. Barebones, boring single player content, ruined storyline, and a clunky kameo system, with the amazing customization options from MK11 ruined in favor of very expensive microtransactions. Yes, they've made conscious decisions in MK11 to avoid showing a lot of skin - it's evident they did, but it didn't ruin anything about the game. I would argue that Skarlet and Jade both benefitted from it.
Dragon Age sucks because it has terrible writing and they've pushed so far away from what made DA:O an incredible game. It's one of the most tragic declines in any gaming franchise. I watched "the scene", and it's just trash writing. I don't like using the word cringe, but I cringed. If you compare that to Car Seat Headrest's song "Lady Gay Approximately" which to me sounds like a song about a family dealing with a trans and/or furry person, but it's incredibly well written in the style of a 70s folk song. It hits the right musical climaxes, and it hits these perceptible moments of tension and I really enjoy the effort they put into it. I don't have to be a trans person or a furry to find engagement from that subject in the same way that I don't have to be a drug dealer or have cancer to watch Breaking Bad. The content doesn't matter - it's the delivery.

Character design: Thinking about this, I really like your picks on 2b and Overwatch, but we also live in a land of nonstop sequels. D'Vorah in MK is an awesome design. Guilty Gear has introduced some pretty good new character designs like Goldlewis Dickinson, Nagoriyuki, and Happy Chaos. Leroy Smith and Victor from Tekken 8 are great designs too. Emet Selch from FFXIV ended up becoming an incredible character because of great writing more than design, and most of the FFXVI cast and supporting characters were good too. I think this might be a consequence of a lack of new properties.

Edit: Corrected Skarlet's spelling.
I agree with this, the majority of these games' issues stem from the quality of the games themselves (content/writing). But I still can't help but feel like the people making these games nowadays are just lame compared to the OG 90s creatives.

Like for Mortal Kombat in the 90s/00s, I just imagine back then, it was just a bunch of nerds and tatted up dudes making characters they thought looked badass or sexy, no fucks given. Now it's like "hmmm is this appropriate. Is this too revealing. Is this cultural appropriation. Is this too much of a stereotype. Can we make this character not white. Does this test well with focus groups."

905qbm0orqpb1.jpg


Like why even do this to Raiden. ^^^

Dragon Age, can't speak on it, have only watched "the scene" as well. But yeah you're right, the issue is largely the writing itself. Though some of the dialogue really felt like it lecturing, scolding and talking down to the player regarding trans matters and was pushing the lead/director's agenda.

And just to frame where I'm coming from a bit, because I feel like I have to after making this post. I consider myself center-left and vote liberal lol.


edit: for your last point, I like your choices of new characters like Leroy, Nago, etc. You're right that some new ones show up in established series, but that lack of new IP really limits the opportunity for new chars.
 
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Not me since I'm very happy with gaming currently. Still had lots of fun with

WoW
Hearthstone
Stellar Blade
Skyrim
Fallout New Vegas
Fallout 3
Fallout 4
Morrowind
The recent few RE games
More that forgot etc etc.

Looking forward to

Resident Evil 9
GTA VI
FFVII part 3
Stellar Blade 2
Space Marine 3
Tides of Annihilation
Witcher 4
Elder Scrolls VI
Next Ratxget and Clank
Next WoW expansion
ILL
More than I forgot etc etc

Countless other AA or indies etc
 
I believe that it's mental health issues involved where people feel that everything should be about them & them alone 😭.

Coming from someone who self-quotes posts from years ago in irrelevant topics.

My man, you don't even see the irony there :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
I believe that it's mental health issues involved where people feel that everything should be about them & them alone 😭.
This is such a dumbass first paragraph to try to argue your point. But, par for the course, I guess. You put out more slop than Ubisoft.
 
Coming from someone who self-quotes posts from years ago in irrelevant topics.

My man, you don't even see the irony there :messenger_grinning_sweat:

I see the iron knee in this comment but now that you all are back from your meeting , what's the plan?

Act like I said something to hurt your feelings & run to the mods? 😭
 
Us old people remember when gaming was great and have better taste maybe?

Sesame Street Idk GIF
I remember the days when there was little doubt that if a game was made by Activision, EA or Ubisoft that it was probably a really good game. These days, I look at all those publishers sideways.

I do agree, however, with those who are pointing to AA games. Clearly there are alternatives to the traditional publishers out there and that is a good thing, but nothing wrong with folks who wish the franchises they used to enjoy were still good.



Nah.....just difference of opinion.
Man, remember when even big publishers would be connected to creative and innovative games? That was wild. Now everything just feels safe. The big studios hardly even take risks anymore.

It's insane how unique EA used to be, good too! From Road Rash to General Chaos to Haunting to Desert Strike. Man, what a time. I swear so many forms of entertainment just feel creatively bankrupt these days.
 
Man, remember when even big publishers would be connected to creative and innovative games? That was wild. Now everything just feels safe. The big studios hardly even take risks anymore.

It's insane how unique EA used to be, good too! From Road Rash to General Chaos to Haunting to Desert Strike. Man, what a time. I swear so many forms of entertainment just feel creatively bankrupt these days.
Definitely. And don't forget the EA BIG era. SSX and NBA Street were so good.
 
Because back in my day, things were better.
It's wild, I know it's probably like that for a lot of folks as they grow up and watch things change. But it's so hard to not feel like what I experienced was the peak of so many forms of entertainment. Movies, cartoons, music, video games, etc. Especially compared to what exists now, or in some cases, no longer exists at all. Man, I still miss arcades so much, lol.
 
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As the industry evolved it became a business.

I was at E3 2001, for the reveal of Xbox and GameCube. Gaming was still kinda all over the place, and everyone had a shot. There was a God Games parking lot area where they showcased crazy things like Max Payne, it was just press and media, it felt like a celebration of games. Developers sent me preview copies, merch, review copies, and I would talk to devs directly.

I was at E3 2005. So different. Publishers wall gated developers. Everything would go through them, PR, and such. The industry has changed.

And it continued to change until we got to where we are now. Where it's a business, not a fun kinda in your basement experimenting and seeking attention. As such, focus groups, executives who never game, came into the fold and are looking else where to "do that thing over they do, it's safe".

Still, we got indies, we got some AA devs who defy this, and that's great too. But that charm and audacity of the 2000s, not just in games but in movies and TV shows, will never be replicated.
 
Modern gaming is like digging through a pile of crap to find the gold except you have hundreds of resources to help pinpoint the gold, and the crap washes right off.
 
Simon Cowell Wow GIF by America's Got Talent's Got Talent


Google video games from 2007 and tell me this man isn't 100% correct.
Games were objectively better back then.
And you can say that about dozens of years. 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2011, 2013, etc. Its a VERY long list
In 2007 everyone was complaining about the price of the PS3, grey/brown dudebro games on the X360 and the Wii graphics.
 
So much choice. Play gaas, 4 player coop or woke game?
The industry is not fine because kojima and from release a game every few years. It's not fine because of everything else
 
OP, still butthurt that GAF thinks PS5 is the worst Playstation? Well let's see, just looking at the devs/series I care about:

- BioWare went from releasing 3 Mass Effect and 3 Dragon Age games in a single generation to a mismanaged clusterfuck that is barely on life support

- Bungie still milking Destiny 2, and their next game looks like a bomb

- Bethesda's Starfield was mediocre. God knows when Elder Scrolls 7 will release and whether it will be any good

- after releasing Fable 2, 3, and 1 remaster on 360, Lionhead gets stuck working on Fable Legends, then the game is canceled and Lionhead shut down. New Fable game has been in development since ~2018 and will probably suck

- Final Fantasy XVI is one of the most boring and disappointing games I've ever played


I could go on and on. This generation sucks. Nintendo are the only ones who can still get execute
 
Man, corporations really broke people in the last twenty years. Used to be that companies made products and when the products didn't sell, they took the L and hopefully came out swinging next time.

Now products don't sell - especially movies, TV shows or video games - and it's because the audience are ungrateful impatient malcontents, or because some so-called grifter has turned the tide of opinion on an otherwise good product by the sheer power of personality alone.

And instead of coming back stronger, they moan about all the hard work they put in, how proud they are of the product and how much abuse they've had to put up with.

It's a free market, and there's never been more choice. If your product is only okay and half your dev team are on Twitter telling their own customer base they're all fascists for not liking the game they've made, then yeah, you're gonna get steamrolled. And if you're a loud mouth tosser full of your own importance people will take pleasure in watching you eat shit. That's just good old schadenfreude.

We're not obliged to buy products or support this industry, that's not how free markets work. We don't have to sit here counting our blessings, because they're not blessings, they're luxury entertainment products and we buy them at our own discretion.

Why ordinary punters feel the need to lobby against their own on behalf of private firms is beyond me. They deliver the goods; we buy. They don't bring the goods; we don't buy. It's not a charity, it's a business.
 
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And instead of coming back stronger, they moan about all the hard work they put in, how proud they are of the product and how much abuse they've had to put up with.
Ubisoft just released new free content for AC Shadows and they are still adding new things for Star Wars Outlaws but Neogaf will pretend this isn't happening.
 
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People these days are too much into their hobbies, like TOO MUCH, for real, so many of them take it too personal, they're like those mindless sport teams fanatics that make their obsession part of their personality.

You see all those videos about "gaming is not fun anymore", like they probably play too much to the point of fatigue and can't realize it that they most probably need to take a break and do something else elsewhere.

Also many people can't stand that they're not children or teenagers anymore and that we're not in the 90s and 2000s, you can see that between Xbox/PS fanboys trying to reduce each other, like back in the days when exclusivity matter for more than Nintendo.
 
Because there are a subset of people that just can't live without a boogeyman, and the funny thing is that boogeyman never comes. Been gaming since 1982 and the constant whining since the days of forums has never changed, they just want to see how many people they can rile up.

Gaming is awesome, I mean sure there are little things I'd change but I litrelly don't have enough time to play all that I want to. Whether you're into shooters, turn based rpgs, action, old school classics, adventure, jrpg, rpgs, on and on... The choices are endless and at 46 I litrelly never have a dull gaming moment anymore
 
I agree with this, the majority of these games' issues stem from the quality of the games themselves (content/writing). But I still can't help but feel like the people making these games nowadays are just lame compared to the OG 90s creatives.

Like for Mortal Kombat in the 90s/00s, I just imagine back then, it was just a bunch of nerds and tatted up dudes making characters they thought looked badass or sexy, no fucks given. Now it's like "hmmm is this appropriate. Is this too revealing. Is this cultural appropriation. Is this too much of a stereotype. Can we make this character not white. Does this test well with focus groups."

905qbm0orqpb1.jpg


Like why even do this to Raiden. ^^^

Dragon Age, can't speak on it, have only watched "the scene" as well. But yeah you're right, the issue is largely the writing itself. Though some of the dialogue really felt like it lecturing, scolding and talking down to the player regarding trans matters and was pushing the lead/director's agenda.

And just to frame where I'm coming from a bit, because I feel like I have to after making this post. I consider myself center-left and vote liberal lol.


edit: for your last point, I like your choices of new characters like Leroy, Nago, etc. You're right that some new ones show up in established series, but that lack of new IP really limits the opportunity for new chars.

The Raiden one was really hard for me to swallow, even though I get where they're coming from with the Shaolin monks and what not. It's almost weird that Raiden wasn't Asian in the original games, but like you said, it was much less refined. Simultaneously, if we think about Sub-zero I'm really glad that he's not an NYC Italian mobster like he was in MK3, and is now very much Asian. So they've made choices that have worked, and choices that haven't. You could also argue that Johnny Cage was the focus test group character - it's not really clear why Liu Kang would have wanted Johnny around when every other person from Earthrealm was Asian until the addition of Cyrax. [I'm excluding Kameos]

I am sure every game developer goes through "does this work with focus groups". Somehow, The Game Show summer reveal showed us the exact same game with the exact same trailer - anime booty followed by guns being assembled and ammo loaded on 3 different occasions.

Going back to EA:

I read somewhere that EA was pretty hostile to the nerdier side of videogamers now. I wish I could easily cite it, but as a company I often feel they have no solid direction outside of the casuals which they really specialize in. It's hard to argue that any company has tanked legendary developers and series harder than EA.


The Dragon Age scene absolutely feels like scolding, and that's a pretty poor way to foster understanding.

I grew up right next to a reservation. We played the Flag Song at every single sporting/school event, and it typically was at community events like rodeos too, and always at veteran based events. I went to many pow wows as a kid, and a sweat as a teenager with my friend. I still take pride in how the tribe shared their culture with us, so it could be part of my upbringing. Fast forward to last few years when land acknowledgements have become popular, and I was at a Portugal. The Man concert and snowboarding movie, and the land acknowledgement person was essentially scolding us, and I hated that so much. It was such a bad vibe, not to mention how awkward it was. They could have opened the show with a song from the Arapahoe or Ute tribes [admittedly very difficult as both people were forced far away from their lands - but someone from the Wind River wouldn't have been too hard], or even a story and share that culture, but they didn't go that direction.
 
Perhaps maximum versatility and "completeness" via overly accessible storefronts to low tier developers isn't actually what people want if it means trading up games that are truly worth the time and attention.
 
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Lots of great games out there, and they can be had for reduced prices a few months after release (except Nintendo). But it takes forever for devs to make games now. During the 360/PS3 era, Rockstar made GTA4 plus 2 standalone expansions, Red Dead Redemption 1, and GTA5. Last gen they made ONE new game (RDR2). And now we are waiting for fucking 2026 for GTA6. Also games are too expensive to make. Somehow Spider-Man 2 cost more than Spider-man 1 to make, which I don't understand. Unless the moderate increase in graphical detail led to tremendous costs in regards to asset creation.
 
Simon Cowell Wow GIF by America's Got Talent's Got Talent


Google video games from 2007 and tell me this man isn't 100% correct.
Games were objectively better back then.
And you can say that about dozens of years. 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2011, 2013, etc. Its a VERY long list

nah this year has been great so far, last year was too.
Don't know what people see in the past,
 
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