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[plip.plop]

It seems games are too expensive and take too much time to make now, so it is too risky to create new ips and try something different. So companies are just following trends and trying to make the new Fortnite or whatever GAAS that would allow them to just keep updating the game with skins and content and making tons of money from it.

Nailed it.
Cost is making companies risk-averse to take a chance with a triple-A title. Easier to sell more with flashy graphics and use tried and true home cooking mechanics people know, and love. 30 FPS games will come back this generation because the majority of casual gamers want to be blown away by visuals than new and innovative gameplay. Can't blame devs for wanting to please the masses over the vocal minority.

 

[JayK47]

Sure as hell feels like it. They hired too many people to check boxes and the people who are passionate about gaming are drowned out or just left.

 

[Sanepar]

I can't connect with these generic gaas purple hair colored games. I hate them. Indies they look most all clones trying to be cute.

 

[bender]

Because those are last gen games made on hardware literally 10-20x weaker than what we have now. Talented, hungry ambitious developers should be dying to showcase their... talents. And make better looking games. Not just PS4 looking games at 60fps. That never happened in previous gens. Developers had more ambition and yes, talent.

The same things were said during the PS4 generation.

I'd say it's easier to let ambition shine through when your team isn't in the thousands, development costs weren't north of $100M, and development cycles are much shorter. The talent is obviously there, it's just often buried on these massive scale projects. There are other factors at play too, like console hardware price/power footprints not being able to keep up with the ever increasing pixel counts of modern displays. Maybe the industry will settle on 4K for a while and that hardware will catch up but then you have things like Ray Tracing. I also firmly believe that we've reached the point of diminishing returns on fidelity and reaching that high bar often results in ignoring more important facets of games, like mechanics and systems.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Indie devs are just as creatively bankrupt. Did you just watch the showcase? Half of them had identical artstyles and identical gameplay.

You don't follow indie games through these showcases, all they ever show in those is the 'hippy' stuff.

For example, there's an upcoming Kings Field inspired game which i'm pretty sure would interest a lot of people here.



Last year we had a Sonic inspired game which many think is able to fill the gap for high speed platformers Sonic still fails to fill



And then we have Ultrakill



And tons of other cool stuff. You don't watch some showcase and hope they'll shower you with something that'll miraculously interest you, you look for it yourself. There is no shortage of means to search for these games.

 

[Fbh]

For better or worse gaming as a business matured and became like any other major multi billion dollar business. Budgets have skyrocketed but so has the sales/revenue potential of games.
Most AAA games are no longer made by a group of passionate devs with a vision, they are made by executives, analysts and marketing experts in meeting rooms looking at market research, social media trends and telemetry from existing titles. The average AAA game is no different than the newest addition to the Mcdonalds menu or the latest Disney movie / Tv Show.

It doesn't mean there isn't talent involved or there aren't people with a passion for the specific area they are working in, but their contributions are limited to doing the best they can within the design established by the corporate higher ups.

For some reason Japan still seems less affected by this and more willing to invest in unique ideas and allow creative and passionate individuals to be put in charge of large projects like Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom and Death Stranding.
And of course indies and AA are where you still find a lot of stuff that doesn't feel like it was made in a factory.

 

[Black_Mamba]

Had similar thoughts while watching the PlayStation stream. Seems to me there's a widening gap between who can and who can't make great games now, and it's not only about talent but also about access to big budgets and the interference of bad creative directors and the business people's demands.

I still see a lot of talent in Japanese studios. Capcom is in excellent form, Square Enix has some talented teams, there's Kojima, Nintendo, FromSoftware, Polyphony, etc. But western studios in general are creatively and artistically dead, imo. And the most respected ones, like Sony's teams, make superhero games that are too dumb and casual for my tastes. And let's now forget the tragedy of the woke virus.

 

[Yoboman]

There is a lack of real paths from indie dev to AAA Dev

Directorial vision is under appreciated instead we get design by committee

 

[oji-san]

No. It's a matter of taste, when you have games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or even a recent game like Atomic Heart i cant say there's lack of talent, and if a remake like RE4R is bad then i like bad.

 

[Meicyn]

yes bad games were invented in 2023

 

[Kappa]

Giant publishers bad

 

[_Ex_]

Who needs talent when you have diversity?

 

[Sgt. Pinback]

I have it on good authority that literally all of the genuine talent in the entire video game industry has now been employed by the developers of 'Deep Rock Galactic'. Hope that explains a few things, OP.

 

[Jamesb0ndjr]

Why are people so constantly negative? There are more games to play then ever before. You have good games in every category that you couldn't even play them all. Great games are constantly coming out.

 

[Fess]

Have you played Zelda Tears of the Kingdom?
For me it's been pure gaming prozac.

 

[existensmaximum]

Nope. Disagree. It's consumer demand for games to be bigger and look better that's led us to the current state of gaming. And if a game looks like TLOU2 or RDR2, what exactly is wrong with that? Those games look fucking amazing.

Yeah and when did these two games release..?

 

[TheBROgamer]

The industry has experienced a brain drain, key players have left the industry due to age (retirement) or more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.

 

[mrmustard]

Everything gets fucking expensive so everybody plays it as safe as possible.

 

[FeralEcho]

i mean, elden ring came out a year and a half ago, and TOTK last week. there's 2 all-time greats right there.

All from Japan,everything worthwhile seems to come from Japan apparently.

Even yesterday's garbage showcase was saved by Japanesse trailers and announcements.Everything western was a stinking pile of garbage.

And by saved i mean it went from z-tier to shit tier.

 

[L*][*N*K]

Atomic Heart, Wild Hearts and Wo Long were new IPs, how many of them have you played OP since you love new IPs so much? This is what I noticed about people who say things like that, they all say they love new IPs yet unless they are extremely high caliber like The Last of Us most people won't even give them a chance.

 

[Represent.]

Atomic Heart, Wild Hearts and Wo Long were new IPs, how many of them have you played OP since you love new IPs so much? This is what I noticed about people who say things like that, they all say they love new IPs yet unless they are extremely high caliber like The Last of Us most people won't even give them a chance.

Correct. We want high quality games. You admit those games lack the quality of something like Last of Us, we are saying it may be due to lack of talent.

 

[kikkis]

The industry has experienced a brain drain, key players have left the industry due to age (retirement) or more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.

Also it's hard to recruit junior engineers to game industry since juniors are just deadweight that seniors have to handhold for much longer than web dev and even then they might not have the talent to succeed in game dev. Difficulty plus the poor pay and crunch culture and you have shrinking talent pool.

 

[L*][*N*K]

Correct. We want high quality games. You admit those games lack the quality of something like Last of Us, we are saying it may be due to lack of talent.

Those games are all great, games as high quality as The Last of Us comes once or twice a decade, if you think every game is going to be like that you might need to might need to get on some dopamine depletion therapy or something

 

[Represent.]

Those games are all great, games as high quality as The Last of Us comes once or twice a decade, if you think every game is going to be like that you might need to might need to get on some dopamine depletion therapy or something

I dont expect every game to be that. But I expect more than 1 or 2 other games to even come close.

The gap is wider than the Grand Canyon. And I fully expect current gen only games to look better than TLOU 2. Almost none of them do. If any.

 

[bluecowboys]

Games are too expensive to make and mobile games make a lot more money. Why take a chance making a new AAA ip when you can make a simple mobile game that makes you millions? Even if it doesn't succeed you didn't lose too much money.

Hopefully AI will help developers make quality AAA games faster and cheaper. That is our only hope in the future.

 

[L*][*N*K]

I dont expect every game to be that. But I expect more than 1 or 2 other games to even come close.

The gap is wider than the Grand Canyon. And I fully expect current gen only games to look better than TLOU 2. Almost none of them do. If any.

I don't think you have given any of those games a chance, keep waiting for this "Greatness", Maybe Sony will deliver it next year.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

• Publishers are struggling with dev times, increased expectations lead to more work on their side
• Millenials/Y are the big spenders, yet it seems platform holders and publishers desperately want to pander to the younger generations not to loose them - I think this might explain the alienation we witness time and time again on this forum, where mostly older folks lurk
• It doesn't necessarily need to be diversity hires what's seemingly destroying creativity in this industry. The scale of current projects alone, the money at risk here, the people making decisions being out of touch with the medium etc. probably are the biggest factor

 

[Spaceman292]

Bro haven't you played an indie game in the past ten years? There's plenty of talent. Just look at the Indies in the Sony show that just happened.

 

[GeorgioCostanzaX]

I agree the Japanese seem to be doing better. Most of these issues are directed at western studios.

Is it a cultural thing?

I think the issue is what Nintendo realized 20 years ago: pushing for more and more powerful hardware and graphics at the expense of gameplay is a suicide mission. Japanese developers figured out how to push art and gameplay instead of raw power and a lot of AAA western devs haven't adjusted quite as well with the notable exceptions of Indies and most first party studios.

 

[Zathalus]

I don't think so, in terms of new releases the past year we have had quite a number of good to great new games. Elden Ring, Zelda, and God of War to name a few. Many more good games released as well.

 

[AMSCD]

yeah, except for the fact that none of the games shown today came even close to the Matrix demo or the first UE5 demo. this shit is on par with RDR2, TLOU2 and other last gen games.

What's happened is that the real talent is gone. They have been replaced with people who want to work from home. dont want to stay past 5PM. dont want to be criticized at work. want to push an agenda instead of graphics fidelity. want to shitpost on twitter instead of actually work for a living.

Sony went three years in between e3 conferences and showed up with one game with gameplay and that too so last gen people think its cross gen. one game. they have 20 studios. full of lazy bums who dont want to work.

Oldmanyellsatcloud.jpeg

 

[Spaceman292]

I can't connect with these generic gaas purple hair colored games. I hate them. Indies they look most all clones trying to be cute.

The good thing about the purple GAAS games is that they almost always tank immediately after release.

 

[mxbison]

Too much money involved. Low risk high profit is the only goal.

The people at the top couldn't care less about vision or innovation or even video games in general.

 

[CortexVortex]

Blaming diversity is the dumbest thing I've heard all week.
AAA games are just too expensive and big nowadays, no wonder most want to play it safe.
But that's fine because there are plenty of amazing indie and AA games out there.

 

[mckmas8808]

No, I'm not talking about dev team size, before somebody comes in here telling me about how 6 squillion people worked on the latest Ubisoft game.

I'm talking about genuine, high level talent. True creative visionaries with extreme passion and drive. Have these people been poached by other tech jobs or what? Because I'm trying to find an explanation for what is turning out to be the most disappointing console generation I have ever seen. Today's showcase solidified that for me.

Everything is a reboot or remake, or a sequel. That's if it's not a shitty GAAS. Everything is seemingly stuck in development hell.

I hate to be that guy, but I also have to wonder if the extreme emphasis on diversity while hiring is having an effect? Is the industry pushing away talented people in the name of checking boxes? Just a question, not necessarily a conclusion.

Today? Yes. Outside of Nintendo, video game devs just suck now. PC games are releasing in poor shape, MS can't make a good AAA game to save their lives, and now Jimbo's Playstation has nothing big to show (outside of Spiderman 2) for the last 2 years!!!

They all are working on A.I. and self driving cars now. The big tech heads are gone. Gaming will never be the same. GAAS is here and it's freaking sucks monkey cock. And worse all, the execs LOVE GAAS. So we can't even boycott that genre away at this point.

 

[mckmas8808]

Blaming diversity is the dumbest thing I've heard all week.
AAA games are just too expensive and big nowadays, no wonder most want to play it safe.
But that's fine because there are plenty of amazing indie and AA games out there.

Yeah I agree. I'd blame work from home WAAAAAAAY before diversity. Those are just racists being racist. Covid killed the gaming industry's desire to be great. Now everything is all Fortnite GAAS crap.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

The talent is always there. There's just so many hurdles preventing it to break through.
You can't let talent run unbridled in high-profile productions because big studios are under tremendous scrutiny regarding content, diversity hiring, crunch and all the usual song and dance.
On the other end of the spectrum, talent can only do so much if the money just isn't there.

It's a creative dead end where basically every dev is forced to keep doing the same thing again and again if they've struck gold once (Yacht Club Games have been doing Shove Knight spinoffs for how long now? Eight years?), or chase trends and hope they can differentiate their game enough for it to stand out of the crowd.

 

[Ivan]

"Play more indies" argument sounds worse than ever after this...

And they have the freedom, why are the results so shitty?

 

[TheGodfather07]

That wasn't the issue with the showcase. The issue was sony didn't bring their big players to the show. No naughty dog, sucker Punch, santa monica, housemarque, bluepoint, bend studio etc..

We got 3rd party stuff but it was sony first party that was missing... at a playstation showcase!

 

[Banjo64]

Western AAA studios are at an all time low in my opinion. Not being ironic, it is based Japan keeping this market afloat. Nintendo, From Software, I don't like their games too much but Capcom are on a massive role too.

AA and indie is the way forward to supplement the Japanese releases. Just look at Plucky Squire and Sword of the Sea, they looked better than Sony's first party Fairgame$ and Spider-Man 2.

Supergiant, Gears for Breakfast, Moon Studios - there's a few fantastic teams that we can look forward to seeing more from.

 

[chromatic9]

I'd question the hundreds of millions if not a billion people not bringing much to the table and stop referencing games from a single country of 120m.

Even stranger is Japan while making top games for the west are more interested in different games now for themselves so it's very impressive. You could be forgiven to expect nothing to come out of Japan like Elden Ring.

 

[NanaMiku]

And most western devs have to spend time and resources to make graphic whores happy. I'm soooooo glad most Japanese devs stopped bothering with that nonsense.

Chasing graphic is so stupid. We now get massive size game reaching 100GB because of 4k textures.... They''re so focused on graphic that they forget the gameplay lol

 

[Gone]

Diversity hiring.
Political correctness.
High cost of game development.
"Light" work loads.

 

[Danjin44]

Chasing graphic is so stupid. We now get massive size game reaching 100GB because of 4k textures.... They''re so focused on graphic that they forget the gameplay lol

That how we get games like Order 1886, glorified E3 tech demo that costs full price.

 

[PeteBull]

Have you played Zelda Tears of the Kingdom?
For me it's been pure gaming prozac.

To u and many others recommending zelda, u guys gotta aknowledge that bunch of ppl arent ok with new 70$ game launched in 2023 looking much worse from 2013 ps4/xbox one games, with below 720p res in motion and still dipping to 20fps on constant basis as soon as anything cpu related is pushed.

Its not zelda devs fault, its not the games fault, its nintendos fault for not giving us with an option of stationary console that at least is on pair in terms of power with xbox series s.

 

[GooseMan69]

"Light" work loads.

Good point. The way I see the Reee crowd talk, they expect it to be a 9-5, rather than an artistic project that you throw yourself into. Not because of boot licking, but because you care deeply about the art. The same way a great band will put in serious hours at the studio.

 

[BbMajor7th]

yeah, except for the fact that none of the games shown today came even close to the Matrix demo or the first UE5 demo. this shit is on par with RDR2, TLOU2 and other last gen games.

What's happened is that the real talent is gone. They have been replaced with people who want to work from home. dont want to stay past 5PM. dont want to be criticized at work. want to push an agenda instead of graphics fidelity. want to shitpost on twitter instead of actually work for a living.

Sony went three years in between e3 conferences and showed up with one game with gameplay and that too so last gen people think its cross gen. one game. they have 20 studios. full of lazy bums who dont want to work.

Despite the consolidation, too much talent left big studios, and games take too long to make, PLUS everyone wants to work from home and by work from home, I mean sit on their couch and do nothing.

This is why so many games are delayed or release like shit.

Yes, let's blame all the lazy underlings for sitting on their arses instead of giving it their all... back in reality, it doesn't matter where you're working from or how, strong leadership and creative vision are what deliver great products. Cynical cookie-cutter games geared primarily towards chasing trends and making money aren't being greenlit by some junior designer who's busy doing laundry when they should be working. That said, even If the rank and file are slacking off, then I'm hardly surprised; no one's going to want to go the extra mile for generic games that are doomed to failure.

Getting paid those ridiculous salaries at the top of a company means taking responsibility for the work that company does: if staff are unmotivated and productivity is dipping, your job is to figure out why and fix it; if products are failing to find an audience and a market, you need to ask what went wrong; if parent companies or shareholders are pushing things in the wrong direction, you need to have the courage to stand your ground and convince stakeholders to believe in your vision - you take the six-figure salary then you take the responsibility that comes with it.

Also, the graphical demands argument is hard to take seriously having just watched Tears of the Kingdom sell 10 million copies in three days. If Sony and Microsoft were releasing 4K/60 versions of Tears of the Kingdom, with solid art direction and outstanding gameplay, people would soon forgive them. Honestly, when I think about what mechanics TOTK has achieved on such basic-ass hardware, and wonder just how much further you might be able to push that on a Zen II processor with 16GB of RAM, I want to cry.

Everyone's like 'Breath of the Wild is the most influential game of the last twenty years!' Meanwhile, I'm looking around at all the gliders finding their way into open-world games and thinking 'woooo.... way to miss the fucking point'. The sad truth is that Breath of the Wild had next to zero impact on the industry and as a result, major players are still marching ahead with the same narrow vision they've had for the past decade.

 

[CortexVortex]

Good point. The way I see the Reee crowd talk, they expect it to be a 9-5, rather than an artistic project that you throw yourself into. Not because of boot licking, but because you care deeply about the art. The same way a great band will put in serious hours at the studio.

Even if someone cares about a project, it's perfectly fine to do "only" 40 hour per week though. There's more to life.

 

[GooseMan69]

Even if someone cares about a project, it's perfectly fine to do "only" 40 hour per week though. There's more to life.

It's perfectly fine, but that's how you end up with games that are just "perfectly fine".

 

[PeteBull]

It's perfectly fine, but that's how you end up with games that are just "perfectly fine".

Some1 isnt talentend and doesnt wanna sacrifice life/work balance- fine, just dont expect them to get paid well, nothing is free, gaming dev is super competetive business, avg devs will make avg games, so in the 70s metacritic, which will usually get bad sales, aka bomb= studio clousure