Support NeoGAF

[Jesb]

Talent. Why would you even want to enter the industry at this point.

 

[GrayChild]

The complete lack of gatekeeping and trying to make videogames as popular and profitable as all other entertainment forms. Gaming should have been left as a hobby for straight male nerds.

There, I said it.

 

[Hrk69]

The cunts who pre-order without even seeing a glimpse of gameplay

WHY

 

[Guilty_AI]

A general lack of understanding on what the industry is and how it works, both by devs and players.

 

[Sintoid]

Everyone except me

 

[Danjin44]

Japan industry is big. Back in 00' probably half of games were Japanese
And many of old houses now focus their games on international market with Japanese flavor and not for local market as local almost dried up.

Thanks to that I’m getting so many Japanese games in here, I remember back in 00’ lot of Japanese games either didn’t used make it here or it took good 2-3 years to get localized in west and now majority Japanese games coming in to west same time as Japan.

 

[Lupin3]

Whales and greed.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

The gaming community.

No matter what topic and what era.

 

[darrylgorn]

 

[Masterofchapter]

Keep being miserable

 

[Wildebeest]

Millennials who just support the same thing over and over again and have kept themselves and the industry in a state of arrested development and bloated budgets.

 

[Shifty1897]

In Asia: Oversaturated market
In the West: Ballooned game scope, excessive padding, an oversaturated market, all character design seemingly generated from the Just Dance games. DEI.

 

[Killer8]

Everyone thought it was great how we were able to lower the bar of entry for people to get into game development.

The reality is that the industry is now full of talentless people. Take this interview with the dev of that shitty Over Jump Rally demo people are hyping as a retvrn to Sega Rally:

When I was reviewing all the games I played on my Saturn back in the day, Sega Rally stood out for various reasons: it was an arcade racing game with very simple game mechanics, and it could use the built-in UE5 physics engine specifically made for vehicles, so animations or heavy programming weren't necessary.

It also had real-life models, which can be easily found and purchased: there is no need to model and texture anything! Last but not least, most environments are natural landscapes, which are quite easy to create within UE5.

We are losing that hand-made, artist's touch approach to games development and AI is only going to make it worse.

 

[PeteBull]

Since 99,99% games/industry products are made in capitalist countries, i wanna say money runs gaming industry- all the gaas/mtx/battlepass is result of devs/pubs figuring more efficent ways to get money from players while offering them less.

And thats a good thing- im sure at least some of gafers can remember every dev studio and their dog was once making their "wow-killer", then "cod-killer" and even "gta-killer" titles, some of them were actually even fairy succesful, most failed miserably.

Nowadays we are in the era of fortnite/gaas so every publisher wanna have their own gaas/ "fortnite killer"- we as a sane ppl just gotta stay strong and dont reward them with our hard earned money for bad products, it will pass, like all the gaming trends

 

[Davevil]

Keep being miserable

 

[Kerotan]

I'm generally happy I just wished companies like Rockstar would greatly expand so we could get a new Rockstar game be it GTA, RDR, New IP or a sequel to Bully, La noire every 3 year's. The current timeline is way too long.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Our generation getting older yelling at clouds

 

[theStartupSound]

In addition to the things said before:
My taste of games was built between the PSX and the PS3 and it was pretty car-centric and single player.
Today, the racing and car game genre, especially on console, is pretty small in comparison.

So, the industry is not “ruined”, but is not catering my tastes anymore.

 

[tommib]

I don’t think they’re ruined at all. I don’t have enough time to play the hundreds of games I would like to play. I do wish there were weirder titles. I wish we had current equivalents to Team Silent/Kenji Eno/Roberta Williams kind of figures. More auteurs and less made by committees massive projects.

But I really can’t complain when this year alone I’ve been playing:

Pentiment
Shadow of the Erdtree
The Thousand Year Door
GT7
Hi-Fi Rush
Stellar Blade
Still Wakes the Deep
As Dusk Falls
Tekken 8
Lords of the Fallen
Helldivers 2
Garage: Bad Dream Adventure
Another Code
Tomb Raider Remastered
Rise of the Ronin
Stasis: Bone Totem

I mean, these are are all quality titles easily available on digital stores. Just ignore the soulless industrial products.

 

[buenoblue]

Honestly I think gaming is in the best place right now. So much choice. Consoles are decent power and with PC and OLED VRR HDR and high refresh rate you can have a really crazy high end experience.

Add VR and handhelds. On steam deck you can emulate pretty much all old games

And finally I've played Gotham knights and Suicide squad KTJL in the last month and yes the layout of the game is a little weird but I enjoyed them both (on 4070 ti). I had written both these games off after hearing reviews but there is a decent single player game in both titles and you don't have to interact with the gaas stuff at all.

 

[MudoSkills]

As with everything else, women.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Our generation getting older yelling at clouds

Some generations are better than others. It has always been that way, always will be.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Our generation getting older yelling at clouds

I just think we aren't looking in the right places. We live in the era of media-by-demand, yet i see many still retaining the same habits of 20-30 years ago.

 

[LazyParrot]

Unironically faster hardware. Visual improvements get smaller every generation, but player expectations, development times and the cost of staying on the cutting edge keep rising, causing developers and publishers to become increasingly risk averse. The times where more powerful hardware would generally lead to innovations in areas other than graphics are long over as well.

I honestly believe that if we stuck with current hardware but froze graphics at around the PS2 level (with modern resolutions, naturally) for a decade we'd not only get more games, but better ones, too.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Gamepass

 

[Black_Stride]

Consumers lapping up shit then wondering why the industry has gone to the dogs.
All the sinners didnt buy Spec Ops The Line then wonder why devs arent willing to make darker storylines.
They skip out on Mirrors Edge and Mirror Edge Catalyst then say EA has become soulless.....well when they gave a fuck you didnt support them, what did you expect?
EA tries again doing something remotely interesting with TitanFall and TitanFall 2......again consumers would rather NOT play these games.......are we really surprised publishers arent willing to take chances?

I would consider Ubisoft, the worst company now, even though I love some of their older IP.

Weird take considering Ubisoft almost exclusively makes whats called Ubisoft games of infinite markers, their games started a whole new genre........ignore Ubi and the industry is fine.
Saying they are ruining the games industry when they make one type of game thats relatively easy to skip is really reductive.

- Ray Tracing

Shut your whore mouth.

RTGI/DDGI is the shit, and realistically is the only implementation of RT i actually actually care about.
Im fine with screenspace, planar and highres cubemaps........but pheasant lighting........no!

 

[RoboFu]

"Gamers" whose only concern is better graphics. Everything else bad spawns from that.

gaming was so much better with smaller budgets and limited technology.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Our generation getting older yelling at clouds

Thank you for whoever golded me, doesn't show me who did on my IPad just says "someone"

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Along with a few others, I find it hard to understand why people still, in 2024, are preordering games. There's zero reason to do so now. Those online storefronts aren't going to run out of codes and 1's and 0's so why not sit back for a few days and wait for a few reviews that you think you can trust. Play one of the games that came out 3 years ago and has now finally been patched to be playable. It's half price now too.

Also, if you're one of the people who is sick of sequels and every game being the same... stop buying them!
Be the change you want to see - support new ideas, but don't sit back and say "I'll buy it on sale in 6 months" while putting down a preorder for the latest iteration in a game that won't be much different from the past five releases.

Also, I wish people would stop judging games based on their visuals. That results in targeting visuals that are beyond the capabilities of the hardware. If Series / PS5 consoles had targeted games looking roughly the same as the previous gen devs could have used the power for smooth framerates, greater scale, interesting physics, more characters on screen. It could have been glorious, new gameplay ideas could have flourished amid new experiences in well worn genres.
Instead, you got roughly the same game as last time around but with a raytracing mode that some people think looks better (but not everyone). Digital Foundry and console wars are a big part of this, IMO, and it also has the negative effect of making development more expensive to boot.

Be the change you want to see. Spend money with businesses you would like to see more games from. Celebrate, don't hate.

 

[Humdinger]

I don't think gaming is ruined, but I do think it's been a victim of its own success. Whenever you have a huge amount of money flowing into a system, the corporate types and committees will take over, and the more genuine, artistic and experimental stuff will get snuffed out. Then add to that our present-day obsessions with "representation," and you've got a mess.

Still, there are plenty of good games coming out.

 

[Rickyiez]

The greedy pig C-suite level people that have no clue about gaming that is killing the industry.

 

[Punished Miku]

Alternate headline: "PlayStation-leaning forum wonders why gaming is ruined."

I really don't see this sentiment much from Nintendo gamers, PC gamers, or Xbox gamers. Nintendo fans are happy. Gamepass fans are usually just short on time to play everything. PC gamers have never been in a better position.

 

[Moriarty1889]

Blackrock and its kind forcing DEI bullshit into everything

100% EXACTLY. DEI trash initiatives that push race over everything. Political agendas being the emphasis of stories. GAAS have also ruined gaming with devs putting out half baked garbage that needs endless patches to complete the game while filling it with mtx’s. There are very few original ideas left anymore and devs are just looking for ways to exploit customers. Sad state of gaming today indeed.

 

[ReBurn]

I wouldn't say it's being ruined. It's just evolving and I'm done evolving. I'm starting to age out.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Modern audiences

 

[R3TRODYCE]

Social media whiners.

 

[Madserb2023]

We run the industry. We don't live in the Communist Gaming Union. Nobody is forced to buy games. They only make what they think will sell. People do spend huge amounts of money on all the things we complain about on here.

 

[PropellerEar]

Who could it be?

 

[BbMajor7th]

Digital / Big data.

Data-driven decision-making has become a cancer at the heart of most media industries. Companies will not do anything that doesn't already have an existing data precedent. That's why mainstream gaming has become a repetitive sludge of safe sequels, copycat design and endless remakes. Truly disruptive, innovative ideas don't have a data precedent - if they did, they wouldn't be disruptive or innovative. For me, it's a major, but rarely discussed, problem with the industry. And everyone has data now, even indie devs can spend hours on SteamDB looking at what's working - what's popular and trending - and attempt to replicate it. It's why the indie space has become so safe and derivative in the same way - everyone's been taught to think like a computer.

 

[ReBurn]

We run the industry. We don't live in the Communist Gaming Union. Nobody is forced to buy games. They only make what they think will sell. People do spend huge amounts of money on all the things we complain about on here.

I think it's more nuanced than that. It's true that the only power we have is whether we buy what the industry is selling. It has reached the point where my particular wallet doesn't have the voting power it once did. It matters less than the wallets of teens and twenty-somethings who grew up online (and in echo chambers) and have moved toward games built for their preferences.

 

[SimTourist]

Going beyond PS2 level graphics was a mistake. A game shouldn't take more than 2 years to make.

 

[Evil Calvin]

Shareholders.

Publishers pander to them and release unfinished games or games where they boast how much money they can make by shoehorning in various MTX

 

[Edmund]

Game Journalists. All gaming news outlets should just report on games. Not politics. Not fanboyism. If you're a game journalist or editor, you behave like a professional.


DEI/Sweet Baby Inc/Forced Diversity. I consider myself left leaning and appreciate diversity and inclusiveness. But some of these woke nonsense is too much. On the other extreme, I can't stand the anti-woke as well.


Mobile Games.

 

[Doctor Hades]

I personally think its this desire to push GaaS down our throats. Then there's lootboxes and microtransactions. And finally, battlepasses.

I'm just generalizing for the industry, even though there are successful IP who manage all these aspects well.

I would consider Ubisoft, the worst company now, even though I love some of their older IP. Kotaku the worst journalistic piece on this front. And fucking "influencers" who just hype anything for money.

I've never cared for competitive or co-op online gaming personally, I'm more of a solo RPG gamer, so live service games have never appealed to me. However, I have tried a few of the so-called "free-to-play" ones but always came away underwhelmed, like I'd just wasted my time playing a dull grindfest that prioritised making as much money out of the gamer as possible over delivering a compelling gameplay experience. It baffles me how anyone enjoys those kind of games unless they have deep pockets...?

Sadly, this game model has meant that instead of getting one or two excellent expansions for games like Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 we have instead just had online modes that the publishers love because that is where they can make even more money from gamers.

Still, as long as there are enough quality single player games coming out then I'll continue to buy those games and support the developers and industry as I do now. What I will not do though is pay for microtransactions in any game and so far I never have nor have I ever felt remotely tempted. Hell, I don't play mobile games because they are a cesspool of microtransactions and endless pop up ads and I would honestly hate to see traditional gaming go the same way.

 

[JackMcGunns]

Jaded gamers
Tribalism
Cancel culture
DEI


Just to name a few.

 

[Duellist]

One word

Microsoft

 

[Interfectum]

Bloated budgets, DEI hires and DEI writing in games.

 

[Dr. Suchong]

Who could it be?

OP said "Ruining" not "Saving"

 

[AJUMP23]

Human Resources.

 

[Laptop1991]

Publishers because of the money they make now off MTX and stores and every bit of monetization going, but you can also make a case it's the people who keep buying them, and they are not actually paying for really good complete games either, it won't stop until it hit's their profits.