Overall, How do you feel about the State of Video games today?

Are you happy with modern vidoegames and Game practices overall?

  • Yes! Never a better time to be alive! Digital gaming at a click of a button! Great Value!

    Votes: 30 12.4%
  • It's Ok! Things could be better and things could get worse. I'm ok with it!

    Votes: 114 47.1%
  • Kinda Disgruntled! Not enough games I want to play and getting too expensive!

    Votes: 42 17.4%
  • Shit! Most Modern releases are Shit! Prices increases while Quality decreases

    Votes: 56 23.1%

  • Total voters
    242

Gamer79

Predicts the worst decade for Sony starting 2022
I am often called the Doom and Gloom guy, so you probably know how I feel about the state of gaming. I personally dislike the direction the entire industry is going, but I do understand that many people do not share the same opinion. In fact, some people enjoy the modern approach to games and fully support it. So let's put out a consensus poll, and you can vote based on how you feel about the state of the video game business. I am curious to see how the overall board feels about the game industry.
 
I'm okay with how it is.

There's always something to play and if not, I'll find something else to do.

I also like both singleplayer games and live service/online multiplayer, so I have no issues in that regard.
 
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Prices are too high and the technology seems to be going backwards.

Meanwhile there's more games than ever to play, plus I have a backlog that one could say is massive and growing.

So I guess things are kinda ok.
 
AAA games? Haven't bought a westetn one at full price for the past decade.

Asian games, and indies, I feel are doing great.

This post is highly subjective, approximately 100%.
 
A shitshow.

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Due to a lot of factors around genres and conventions maturing and standardizing, I think the quality of the average game is higher than ever. But the consequence of that is everything feels "samey", resulting in a landscape I find more boring and the highest of highs often being lesser than the past.
 
AAA games are an embarrassment but emulation, remasters, and perpetually updated games are great.

Being able to go 100% Linux is amazing now too.
 
Tons of great talent managed by mostly incompetent "leaders", driven by all the wrong incentives dictated by the fact of being in a publicly traded company, all dragged down by petty corporate politics and real political ideologies that were part of the deal when they greedily accepted the cheap ESG money. Lots of potential and very little to show for it. It has to get worse before it gets better.
 
Put it this way I spent more the $1,200 the past 2 years buying retro consoles and new items for t hose consoles. ( new wireless controllers, ossc, scart switcher, everdrives.. ect.. ) and I has brought me more gaming joy than all of 2024 - present.
 
Could be better could be worse. Shame though when you established franchise gets hijacked and drops the ball big time.. yes looking at you Dragon Age or simply just the GAAS madness.

On the other hand if you don't like it don't touch it, just look elsewhere. But then we still have another issue with optimization seemingly also going downhill recently.. Still at the end of the day there are some solid games each year so can't say current sate is shite either, but definitely we could use some more originality or just don't try to fix a franchise that is not broken. For example there might be hope for next Battlefield after all.
 
Pretty terrible honestly. Massive greed and terrible practices and grifters galore across all media chasing whatever the current trend is rather than exploring the medium and trying something new for a change. Here's an idea, respect the consumer for once. It really is a damn shame too because it used to be my favorite hobby, replaced by other mediums that respect my dime, time and intelligence.

I feel most of the sheer genius and talent that made the industry has long since left or retired, and what's left is dire. There are quality indie devs and B-A tier stuff(that could use the support), but most people seem content to throw money at annual rehashes, always online ftp titles and adjacent gacha shite. I say let it burn and hopefully what emerges is led by free creative individuals. I wish I could say that "remasters" are decent but some like Onimusha 2 just went and let me down bigtime. I don't pay for censorship regardless of how small people claim it to be. They have to earn my money and time damn it, I'm not a charity and definitely not into bankrolling scumbags. Jesus the absolute state of the industry...
 
I'm still getting the games I enjoy and at end of the day that's all that matters to me.
 
I'm not bored. I wish we still had genres I love, like RTS and FPS (more of them) and I wish we had a lot more gory video games, but overall it's fine. For every trashy battle pass store game, you have 10s of normal games.
 
Going by these poll results I would say GAF has spoken

I'm not happy with how physical game releases is doing but there really are too many great games for me to play and not enough time to play them all and that's a good problem to have
 
It's ok.
There are things I don't like about it, specially in regards to hardware, services and pricing.
But the actual games are great IMO, lots of cool stuff coming from small, mid and big studios to the point where I find it impossible to keep up with all the stuff I want to play.
 
Not very happy. I can still find games to fill my time because most releases these days are huge time sinks but I really miss those early 00 days, where shorter AAA games were the norm and also released much more frequently. Everything takes so long now and when it's finally released I'm baffled at why it even took as long. Minus the pre development RDR2 took 5 years to make. I think it's unlikely we will see a game with that attention to detail anytime soon, hence no game should take longer than that to make.
 
AAA games are the worst they've ever been.
Mostly garbage with some 8-9/10 here and there.
Long, bloated, boring, soulless, poorly paced, badly written messes.

The rest are pretty good to great though!

My advice:
Get a retroid flip 2 with a best of collection up to PS2 era.
Focus on AA games.
Get the occasional great AAA game. 1 per quarter is enough.
Cancel every subscription.
Focus on few quality games. Respect your time.
Have Rocket League permanently installed in your system of choice.
 
I wish we had more soccer games (RIP, PES! 🥲).

Aside from that it's a great time to be alive! Especially for retro gamers!
 
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I have to talk myself out of buying games constantly because there's too many good ones.

When I read some of the comments about how shit gaming is these days I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality.
 
Kinda the same as the Movie Industry, some rare gems but mostly multi million dollars trash that some sell on name alone and some flop.
The only difference is our Remakes are better and more faithful then the film Remakes.
 
I think the distinction folks are making here is important. AAA gaming is about as low as it's ever been. Very low creativity, always chasing the trends, games not respecting your time, BS tiers and addons and ways to squeeze money out of you at every angle. But then something like Expedition 33 comes out and changes my entire outlook. That's a game that feels like it was designed with the player in mind, not the bottom line.

On the indie side of things, I think things have never been better. Ease of access for players is incredible. Releasing a game on major platforms has never been easier. Learning how to code and create a game has never been easier.

My concern now is that big publishers will see the tanking AAA market, riddled with diminishing returns and high risk and move to poaching indies and then ruining that market as well.
 
I don't care much about price increases because I'm not poor, but the output is sorry indeed.
Most people aren't happy with spending £70 on the piece's of shit that comes out these days, having them come in and ask for £80 or £90 isn't a question of if you can afford it.
People are happy to pay for good games, not so much for the shit the industry is spewing out and then telling us we don't actually have any long term access to it.
 
AAA gaming is dying*

* = If you don't factor in Japanese games
* = If you don't factor in Chinese games
* = If you don't factor in Korean games
* = If you don't factor in Nintendo
* = If you don't factor in the pandemic setbacks
* = If you don't factor in Publishers outside of the old guard (EA, Ubisoft, WB)
* = If you don't factor in recent successes from 2023, 2024, and 2025

Gaming is doomed*
 
It's shit mostly. Granted to be fair we had a lot more games coming out back in the day thus we had a lot more shit quantity wise in addition to a lot more good games.

And to be fair, I'm saying this as someone that played games for decades as an adult. IF I was 20...I think I would feel differently.

And certainly the production values and some of the creature comforts are much improved today.

I can find fault in the better production values as well though. Not only only does it help lengthen development times and cost. But the simpler graphics of old games...helped make them more distinct. Helped the player get into games easier ...just tracking targets often easier ...although go too far back and maybe it goes back the other way again (because sht is way too abstract to easily make heads or tails of.) And production value limitations helped graphic and sound details stand out more. They had to focus on what counted back then out of necessity.

I remember in particular the rocket trails of rpgs in BF1942. They really stood out visually (how they floated in the air) and the sound of them too whizzing by your head. There wasn't nearly as much "background" sound and graphical details then. And that helped something like the smoke trail of an rpg make a bigger impact ...arguably more so than in today's BF where it's constant explosions and overload of graphical details.
 
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It's ok. Things could certainly be better, but things could most certainly be worse.

I just hope it gets better before it gets worse.
 
At this point I feel like there's too much legacy content out there to get too bent out of shape over where the industry is going. Yeah, alot of things I'm personally not a fan of, but I've found my little space in the corner where I stay a few years behind releases and typically getting games in the $10-20 range, retro emulate, and play alot of Indies/older AAA. I'm not that susceptible to FOMO or following trends that don't interest me.
 
There are way more games I want to play than I can find the time to play, so it's good

Would not mind a little industry crash that would let me catch up
 
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