I don’t want to be negative nancy, but it honestly just feels like the entire Gaming landscape is falling apart. There’s virtually no gaming journalism left, the only news outlets covering games appear to be inundated with ads, AI generated articles, or both, and individual games are so expensive and “safe” that it leaves almost no room for anything unique.
And I’m sorry, but I just don’t think indie studios are prepared to take up the mantle of making “professional-quality games”. I would love to believe there is space for “AA studios”, but nobody seems to really be competing in that space. Things either have astronomical budgets, or shoestring budgets, with nothing really in between.
It just sort of feels like games are just becoming these throwaway products that aren’t even designed to entertain. There are almost no outlets willing or even able to call out major publishers or developers for shady business practices, and it’s effectively choking out a lot of the sense of gaming community that formed since the dawning of the internet at a part of our daily lives.
Just seems like we’re in a super depressing state of the industry, and I really don’t feel like we’re going to see a lot of “labors of love” over the next few years. Hell, even games that do well are seeing their devs dismantled.
Just seems like the industry is in a bit of a hopeless state.
The industry is bigger than it ever was. Gaming is no longer something that only nerds, geeks or little boys enjoy. The average target audience has expanded a lot, mainly because gaming is something a lot of people simply do not let go as they grow up. It's not like G.I.Joe action figures where you stop playing once you hit puberty (or sooner). As a result, the audience expanded. And as the audience expanded, so did the industry. Dev teams became publishers, publishers became companies, companies became corporations. Budgets got higher, and the games multiplied.
Like ...
a LOT.
There are a LOT of games right now - old, new, niche, mainstream - it's very difficult for a publisher/developer to make their game stand out to the gamer / consumer in order to ensure they'll make a profit.
And that's where marketing stopped being an afterthought and became one of the most important aspects of a video game. Games are no longer made based on an idea a developer has - games are now made based on what the marketing teams say that will sell. As a result, a lot of games which are being made are not the games the devs want to make. And THAT is what is harming the industry, because when you take risks and create something new, you have a chance of creating a trendsetter.
You get Street Fighter II and the fighting game genre is established globally. You get Doom, which established the FPS on the western market. Final Fantasy VII made the West aware of JRPGs and even had a few western devs attempt to mimic it. You get King's Quest and graphic adventures become a thing and then you make Day of the Tentacle and point and click adventure games became a thing. You get Dune II - The Battle of Arakis and the Real Time Strategy games were created. You get Resident Evil and the Survival Horror genre is established, and then you got Resident Evil 4 and the shoulder-view shooter became a thing. Game after game after game after game would take risks, which would mean failure, but could also mean a new genre, a new trendsetter.
Which was the last trendsetter? Demon's Souls creating the Soulslikes, and Dark Souls making it a thing? And when was that? Almost fifteen years ago? Can you grasp the notion that the last time we had a game which established a genre was 15 years ago, and that was because (based on what I've heard online) the stars were aligned in the most bizarre way possible? When an AAA game costs 50-200 millions to make today, how many chances can you get? How much can you afford to risk being a failure instead of the next trendsetter?
The industry has become overbloated with content and overblown budgets which are hurting creativity. Developers are no longer allowed to take risks, and those who do create games which look like they were six gaming generations ago. And I don't see that changing anytime soon, because video games are right now the #1 entertainment industry on the planet, but I think that slowly the bubble is beginning to burst. AAA games are flooding the market, indie games are flooding the market, there's just too much content with barely anything interesting to someone who was gaming for years. It's just ... too much.
I think there's just too many games who look the same, play the same, feel the same. Story tropes have been overused, level design is almost identical, the industry is slowly eating itself by turning what was once an eccentric little restaurant into a soul-less fast food company which is not interested in giving you a meal you'll remember for days to come, but just wants to take your money by giving you something which barely resembles food. 'Cause otherwise they'll be out of business.
But I am someone who has been gaming since '87. Younger people are probably a lot less cynical than me.
