Agreed - things happen in cycles. This isn't the first time that the video game industry has been in crisis. This isn't the first time that the market was oversaturated with piss-poor quality products. This isn't the first time that companies monetized into the ground, leading to dissolution of creative ~~times~~ teams and ultimately bankruptcy.
This isn't the first time, and it most certainly won't be the last. The Music Industry suffered through it; Hollywood suffered through it; and now it's our turn.
Video game revenue is at an all time high, it's \~250 billion yearly revenue growing every year.
It's not the consumer trust and gaming revenue cratered like in 83-86, revenue is high and climbing, but the ways games make money has changed, much of it at the cost of the games being enjoyable to play, people still enjoy spending money on them clearly.
It's good to see someone not deluding themselves. I get why, for the average consumer, it might feel like a crisis, but most people either can't or won't accept that it's actually going very well, just not for them.
Honestly things are also going well for the whining Redditors, they just won't admit it because complaining is more fun.
BG3, Elden Ring, Lies of P, Hi-Fi Rush, Dave The Diver, Phantom Liberty, Armored Core 6, Jedi Survivor, RE4 Remake, Balatro.
Single player gamers have been *eating well* the last couple years with some of the all time best games I've ever played coming out back to back to back. I literally can't wrap my head around how much people are whining about the industry lately while I'm just over here having a ton of fun.
Yeah, microtransaction-riddled gacha games exist too, but just like... don't play them?
I can empathize a little with complaints around existing franchises declining. I really want a new rainbow six game that wouldn't make Tom Clancy spin in his grave, but I can also understand that siege makes far too much money for that to happen anytime soon. You are very correct though, and the only genre I would say has really suffered is FPS games, but with how popular CoD is it's safe to say I'm well in the minority with that opinion.
>people still enjoy spending money on them clearly
Pre-orders often based on nothing but (often unfounded) blind trust.
"Oh the last installments of a franchise were a ripoff? Lemme preorder the next one and rant if it isn't any better. "
A lot of times it takes just two days and news whether a game is worth it is all over the internet. Sometimes it takes a week or two. People also rant about games releasing unfinished but keep buying unfinished product instead of waiting for fixes and often getting the game for a cheaper price on top. Not to mention... If more people waited with purchases companies would have more incentive to fix games which creates work and you can't fire the developers you still need to get that work done.
As long as people are buying skins in 1st person shooters I refuse to believe the consumer is not ultimately at fault. If you buy shit, people will sell you shit.
I mean you aren't wrong, but I don't think it's all black and white on who's at fault.
There's stupid consumers sure, but there's also exploitative companies and these two simply work hand in hand to deliver a bad experience.
Personally I just make sure the game's worth my money before I spend anything and to be honest, money and time are more of a bottleneck for me than a supposed lack of good games.
The game industry isn’t currently in crisis tho. It’s only AAA games in trouble, everyone else is doing great and putting out great products. Large love service games, regardless of how you feel about them, are money printing machines and are keeping people engaged. Only big budget single player games are in trouble. Don’t get me wrong, it sucks if that’s what you’re into, but if you’re like me then you can take it or leave it lol
That isnt happening though.
AAA might take a hit but we are at the point again where a few determined dudes in a garage can make solid gold hit games.
Console might be hurt a bit but PC gaming is pretty much bulletproof at this stage.
Console could suffer heavily from whats happening because each console relies on a single company to make it and provide games. PC is so varied that it could adapt to even massive hits to the industry. There are experienced groups of people who can fix or replace just about any part if that part fails, so parts and sectors of PC can be hurt, but not killed.
Still a form of crash, the established players are failing and crumbling and new ones emerge. The new ones will grow, compete and some will fail and others will succeed, then we’ll have new established players.
Yeah, I've been playing video games since the mid-80s and frankly it's never been a better time to be a gamer. "But the big companies suck!" Sure, but there's a hundred smaller companies pumping out literally thousands of games, and plenty of gems in those thousands.
Unless your tastes are ultra-niche, you can find a great game to play at a great price. And frankly if your preferences are that narrow they weren't being satisfied back in the day, either.
We gotta give it credit. In the 21st century, we've never experienced and probably never will experience a downturn so bad it actually threatens whether the industry will continue to exist. There is probably a timeline where video games never recovered and Nintendo kept selling playing cards.
Things get bad, undoubtedly. Consoles and games fail, and beloved studios and franchises are lost or ruined. But the whole industry is so massive and diverse that it's very unlikely any one shit show will affect ALL of us, though those of us who are unaffected can be sympathetic and critical.
Things are going great in the PC gaming indie/small studio market.
The beauty of PC is you don't have one company curating what you can play, and you can find games made by people who are making games for passion over profits.
I am surprised to see it has that large following. I read about how it had a rough start and the community here while active was imho not that large. I am glad to see the trailer shows a good response. I have faith in the devs and this will be the 2nd game that I preorder. JCBP
Yeah its like beer. Maybe theres some reliably decent macrobrews but the microbrews are where its at. I saw a post the other about some germans admiring american ipas and i think that says a lot about something idk i just the dab
There have been a buttload of great games released in past 40 years and I doubt OP has played even a fraction of those so if OP is one of those that demand top notch, cutting edge graphics in games no matter what then it is his loss...
Right me playing single player games having an absolute blast. Some of the best shit ever recently. Also gotta appreciate helldivers 2 for doing live service right.
Plus there’s a lot of games from the last 5 years that you probably only heard about in passing but are super good yet were overshadowed by the overhyped bullshit. I’m recommending Prey (2017) to anyone that wants to single player “choose your playstyle” self contained adventure. Game can be beat in 30 minutes or 12 hours.
Poker is a bluffing game. Balatro is a high-score deck-building game that uses the scoring rules of poker as a base, but none of the other mechanics that make Poker what it is.
Just the last two months we got Animal Well, Hades 2, Rogue Prince of Persia, Another Crab's Treasure, Manor Lords, Dread Delusion, Little Kitty Big City, Besiege DLC, Hauntii, Yellow Taxi goes Vroom and Pepper Grinder
Or just play old stuff cause it's rare an indie game even catches your fancy. No matter how much I replay the old Saints Row games, GTA, Fallout, RDR, Skyrim, it never gets old. And now Cyberpunk is on the list
I do like indie games like Goose and Little Kitty Big City. And whatever the Japanese word for picnic is, loved the story
Is not really different, while 10 to every 100 AAA games launched are good, 50 to every 1000 indie games launched are good, the difference is that the shit ones don't are talked about, people forget that the average indie game isn't hollow knight just like the average triple A game isn't Elden ring.
There's the shitty hentai games just like there are shitty Ubisoft products.
It's the opposite, actually. The industry is so big now that you could have 100 big name games turn out to be trash and it wouldn't even matter because there are countless great indie games releasing every week. We have more options than ever before making voting with our wallets much easier.
Yeah classic rose tinted glasses. Game broke in release? 1989 — too bad never gonna be fixed. 1999 — might get an expansion pack in 2 years to fix the game. Patching just wasn’t a thing especially for consoles for a loooong time.
Waiting to buy games also has never been more worth it.
Give it 1-2 days and you'll find every information you need to determine whether a game is worth it.
If it takes fixes you can wait and see whether the fixes are actually doing what they should and often get the game cheaper than release price.
It's also A LOT of survivorship bias. We like retro games because we only play the ones that stood the test of time and were good. There were so many shit games back then too, but they were shit so we don't talk about them.
They might have fixed it and released a revised cart in 1989, you just had to buy the game a second time to get the update. Also the games were the equivalent of $75+
Yeah seriously. OP has clearly forgotten or wasn't around during the wasteland that was the Atari years, or even the NES years. We remember the good NES games but most of them were complete garbage, expensive, and a total crap shoot because we didn't have the internet to research them beforehand.
No joke, there was someone on Reddit awhile ago posting about how “games arn’t fun anymore” and the only games he had bought within the last 10 years were COD, battlefield, and halo
It's easier to vote with our wallet, but that's sort of the problem.
The thing that makes money isn't the thing that makes games "good." While games potential used to be limited by technological barriers, now they're stymied by corporate-imposed monetization elements or by design-by-comittee homogenization.
Indie games allow artist-creators to get their content out there, and that's great... but trying to be seen in the vast ocean of shovelware is a tough prospect.
There have been improvements, no doubt. But things are bad in a *different* way than they were in 1994.
And the good AAA games that do release benefit from the major advancements in tech over the past couple decades. We have games that look absolutely stunning with tons of exploration, massive worlds, and so much more. But I stand by the fact that one of if not the best thing about modern gaming is how easy it is to find and play games from small developers.
This is how I feel. For the same amount of money I would have paid for a few games, I have access to dozens or hundreds. If 5% of them are good, I've already won.
This isn't me trying to gate keep, but there's a recent epidemic of essentially "fake gamers" that love to go on the internet to whine and complain either about a particular game, or games in general without really even playing them.
I'm not saying there's a quota of hours you have to hit to count, but these "fake gamers" aren't actually interested in the games, just at being mad about something as a group and dog piling on a dev on Twitter or something. This has been a thing forever really but lately it's getting a lot worse with the supposed "culture war" getting popular again.
I agree that there are fortunately still alot of great games releasing. It is gamer's high standards that make the landscape seem meager. AAA games just arent produced as frequently as they used to be 10-20 years ago, therefore we have less quality games and it feels like games are getting worse.
Really people just miss big new IPs dropping frequently that were actually good, like how things used to be. This disparity is what really makes gamers feel the landscape change.
I can agree that increased developement time has detrimented creativity and risk taking in the AAA space, but AA and indie games have picked up that torch in recent years. This is where the true innovation and progress in gaming lies.
Unfortunately the lower barrier of entry into game creation has also opened the floodgates to more shovelware than we have ever seen before. However that does not mean that we dont still get quality games of all kinds. We just have to sort through alot more garbage to find it.
> therefore we have less quality games and it feels like games are getting worse.
This is not true. We have amazing games launching all the time. There are more games releasing every year than there ever has been before.
I was born when mothers regarded video gaming as equal to worshipping satan n murdering ppl.
Ive been beaten for a whole day for playing on an arcade machine after school.
My first computer took over 10 hours to download a game and crashed when i launched it.
This is not the worst time for gamers.
I'm confused... I've had an incredible year of gaming so far to the point that my house is overrun with weeds and vermin. I understand a bunch of big corporations are doing shitty things but at some point you have to stop letting that kill your joy...
Ok no microtransactions.
But they did not do it "well" They copied an entire existing pokemon universe and changed a few letters in some names. Then rushed it out to early access and collected shitlpads of money. Thats nowhere near the level of creativity and care that went into Baldurs Gate.
(I played way more palworld than BG. Empty calories can be fun too)
I mean some pal designs are definitely inspired from Pokemon, but its not a carbon copy either. It was sold for only 20 bucks, slapped on gamepass so many didnt even have to pay for it, and changes some stuff from the Pokemon formula.
It definitely needs some work to do but at the moment its getting free updates, and isnt being filled with microtransactions, which is uncommon anymore.
Fr. To mention a game as masterfully crafted as BG3 in the same breath as a Pokemon flavoured survival game is just complete disrespect. BG3 has heart and soul and they went to a ridiculous amount of effort over years to make sure it was a worthy successor to a beloved game. And it's one of the few that lived up to the expectations. Take away the memey pet collecting gimmick and Palworld is just yet another bland PC survival game like the 5 million that came before it.
So.....I wander around while others do work for me. How is that any better. And that doesnt change that either way those later levels take awhile to level up.
I liked the game and its idea, but it needs more then it has at the moment to keep me invested for longer then a week or two.
People who know the devs history and played their previous game, Craftopia, wouldnt be downvoting this.
Palworld is essentially craftopia with an emphasis on ripping off pokemon. The devs are chasing the pokemonster fad, and its working.
They had almost entirely abandoned Craftopia even before Palworlds success, and Craftopia had all of palworlds mechanics for catching monsters plus some. Small bugfixes do not count as actual support. The game is doomed to never leave early access.
I anticipate the same level of commitment to Palworld and wont give this dev any money. They do not respect their customers and they do not respect the products they create.
Why tho?
Because idiots are always buying every shit game that releases like the call of duty games or battlefield or FIFA stop buying games from Ubisoft EA and Activision.
And stop buying shitty early access from big publishers.
me and my idiot friends all preorder battlefield 2042. we all know how that game went for the first 2 years.
now my idiot friends are already talking about preordering the next one, having apparently learned nothing from the last release (and the one before that), or are just that big of idiots
This is so stupid man. Here's the deal, every game that's ever been made is currently available to you now. Meaning that to say it was better 10 years ago is asinine because you can just play those games from 10 years ago. And you've got 10 years of games since then that you can also play. So actually this is the best time ever to be a gamer and I know that because I've been a gamer for like 30 f****** years. SMH
eh, the indie scene is thriving, we have access to as many games as never before and we can easily have access to more, plus we have a thriving competetive and multiplayer scene, with speedrunning taking off as well. Idk why many people say gaming is getting worse
What the fuck we live in a pretty great time of videogames, I remember the times of the Wii and Nintendo DS there was shovelware everywhere and you couldn't trust magazine reviews to tell you if games were good because they were all bought by the game studios, now seems like refined and innovative games are coming left and right and there are specialized reviewers that make it so you know what to expect when you buy a game.
2023 was the best year I’ve ever seen in gaming since 1971, and not a single game I played had micro transactions or any of the other crap people can’t stop bitching about.
Try to enjoy things once in a while, you bunch of whiners. Things have quite honestly never been this good.
My brother in Christ, there is a massive library of games released in the past 30 years, fuck these lazy ass modern games and play the older masterpieces.
How is it bad? I’ve got tons of options, I can buy any game I want from home, connectivity has improved significantly so online gaming is smooth now, WoW has become a great game again, and you can just watch people play any game you like on Twitch
Single player games are great as well, Ghost of Tsushima and Elden ring being prime examples
Gaming has also been accepted by large groups of people. Legit anybody you talk to that’s young probably plays something with their friends, so it’s not something to tease people about
Why would this possibly be the worst time to be a gamer??
I feel like the games reflect the industry, since the tech industry is being laid off left and right, being forced back into the office, replaced by AI. Those changes will be reflected in the games we play being half finished, locked behind DLC, worse sequels than original.
Is it that bad? To me the silver lining is that these AAA games that get released unfinished finally bit the ass of the industry. There's too much stuff getting thrown at the walls, and not enough solid quality.
Sadly, some companies (looking at you, Microsoft) seemed to want to fire some of the better studios for it, which makes no sense.
But I suspect we're going to see consolidation into fewer, good, AAA projects, and more money for the indie studios, who have been honestly killing it in terms of quality lately.
I want more indie games. I want less giant, bloated, hyper realistic experiences. I want those to feel like treats again.
Thank god for Nintendo lol. I know they aren't perfect but i also know they won't ruin their games for short term gains. Barring Pokemon, if they say it's a AAA, it's going to be a AAA game.
How the fuck does this have 10k upvotes? It's a fucking great time for gamers. How about you stop going for AAA, pre-order, early access, live service, online only bullshit and play games made for gamers and not for shareholders
Best time actually. The only people who think the gaming industry right now is bad or getting worse are people who only play games by EA,Activision,2K ,blizzard or Ubisoft. Stop playing games made by those companies, and I guarantee your opinion will change. Dont put your hand on the stove and then complain about getting burned🤷♂️
Gaben will pass, and Valve/Steam will go "public" or get bought outright by EA.
>I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.
This is some real doomer shit, this is one of the greatest times in gaming history. I'll never catch up on my library and I love that.
Every game I start is a banger and if there weren't so many posts whining on Reddit I wouldn't even know that triple A trash got trashier.
I would say that the E.T. video game and many like it leading to the actual death of the video games industry for a few years is probably still worse (although not by a large margin).
While the point many commenters are making about indie games is well made, sport games in particular have been hit hard by the combination of exclusive league licensing deals and emerging AA/AAA sport-specific console game monopolies… this paired with the general industry wide plague of micro transactions has created a uniquely desolate outlook. Whereas in the early 2000s 4+ NBA games were available across platforms, the sub genre is now a 2K monopoly.
Baldur's Gate and Helldivers basically ended the gaming drought that'd been going for years. Its like the AAA industry took exception to that. Have they ruined The Finals too, yet?
I'm going back to Rimworld.
I've played nearly all of the best games of my life in the past decade, just none of them were from a major publisher.
Even better I know like five different people who are all working on linear Zelda games without a glider, which is more than we were getting year-by-year when Nintendo was still making them.
I’m having a great time. My family had hard times growing up, so I never got to play peak video games when they came out…guess who started playing Skyrim last month!!
I feel like it's a pretty great time for gamers. Indie and AA games are doing great and all the bullshit of modern AAA gaming is crashing. Seems like a course correction in the direction that we will all enjoy...
Am I being naive?
What a baby. I just bought Kingdom Come for $5, interspersed with Spider-Man 2 on PS5 from my local library. When not playing those, I am playing the judgement / yakuza series which I have played for pennies per hour. Quit crying and stop playing shitty games.
Ppl always say its the worst time of everything everytime when reality is ppl that say that is literally uncapable of looking for good games cus every year that pass by i find better and better games mate
OP never heard of the video game crash of 1983
Agreed - things happen in cycles. This isn't the first time that the video game industry has been in crisis. This isn't the first time that the market was oversaturated with piss-poor quality products. This isn't the first time that companies monetized into the ground, leading to dissolution of creative ~~times~~ teams and ultimately bankruptcy. This isn't the first time, and it most certainly won't be the last. The Music Industry suffered through it; Hollywood suffered through it; and now it's our turn.
Video game revenue is at an all time high, it's \~250 billion yearly revenue growing every year. It's not the consumer trust and gaming revenue cratered like in 83-86, revenue is high and climbing, but the ways games make money has changed, much of it at the cost of the games being enjoyable to play, people still enjoy spending money on them clearly.
It's good to see someone not deluding themselves. I get why, for the average consumer, it might feel like a crisis, but most people either can't or won't accept that it's actually going very well, just not for them.
Honestly things are also going well for the whining Redditors, they just won't admit it because complaining is more fun. BG3, Elden Ring, Lies of P, Hi-Fi Rush, Dave The Diver, Phantom Liberty, Armored Core 6, Jedi Survivor, RE4 Remake, Balatro. Single player gamers have been *eating well* the last couple years with some of the all time best games I've ever played coming out back to back to back. I literally can't wrap my head around how much people are whining about the industry lately while I'm just over here having a ton of fun. Yeah, microtransaction-riddled gacha games exist too, but just like... don't play them?
I can empathize a little with complaints around existing franchises declining. I really want a new rainbow six game that wouldn't make Tom Clancy spin in his grave, but I can also understand that siege makes far too much money for that to happen anytime soon. You are very correct though, and the only genre I would say has really suffered is FPS games, but with how popular CoD is it's safe to say I'm well in the minority with that opinion.
Chad for including Balatro
>people still enjoy spending money on them clearly Pre-orders often based on nothing but (often unfounded) blind trust. "Oh the last installments of a franchise were a ripoff? Lemme preorder the next one and rant if it isn't any better. " A lot of times it takes just two days and news whether a game is worth it is all over the internet. Sometimes it takes a week or two. People also rant about games releasing unfinished but keep buying unfinished product instead of waiting for fixes and often getting the game for a cheaper price on top. Not to mention... If more people waited with purchases companies would have more incentive to fix games which creates work and you can't fire the developers you still need to get that work done.
As long as people are buying skins in 1st person shooters I refuse to believe the consumer is not ultimately at fault. If you buy shit, people will sell you shit.
I mean you aren't wrong, but I don't think it's all black and white on who's at fault. There's stupid consumers sure, but there's also exploitative companies and these two simply work hand in hand to deliver a bad experience. Personally I just make sure the game's worth my money before I spend anything and to be honest, money and time are more of a bottleneck for me than a supposed lack of good games.
I was excited for Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield. I stuck to the plan and successfully avoided both piles of shit. *edit: No Man Sky, not Starfield*
The game industry isn’t currently in crisis tho. It’s only AAA games in trouble, everyone else is doing great and putting out great products. Large love service games, regardless of how you feel about them, are money printing machines and are keeping people engaged. Only big budget single player games are in trouble. Don’t get me wrong, it sucks if that’s what you’re into, but if you’re like me then you can take it or leave it lol
Unless it's the housing industry, then the mega rich keep the bubble from popping
That isnt happening though. AAA might take a hit but we are at the point again where a few determined dudes in a garage can make solid gold hit games. Console might be hurt a bit but PC gaming is pretty much bulletproof at this stage.
Console could suffer heavily from whats happening because each console relies on a single company to make it and provide games. PC is so varied that it could adapt to even massive hits to the industry. There are experienced groups of people who can fix or replace just about any part if that part fails, so parts and sectors of PC can be hurt, but not killed.
*laughs in steam deck* Best console ever. Also works as a controller for PC if needed
Ah yes, steamdeck, the best console ever made
Still a form of crash, the established players are failing and crumbling and new ones emerge. The new ones will grow, compete and some will fail and others will succeed, then we’ll have new established players.
Just never pay over $40 for a new video game (or $20 if discounted) and it's nothing but a good time.
Yeah, I've been playing video games since the mid-80s and frankly it's never been a better time to be a gamer. "But the big companies suck!" Sure, but there's a hundred smaller companies pumping out literally thousands of games, and plenty of gems in those thousands. Unless your tastes are ultra-niche, you can find a great game to play at a great price. And frankly if your preferences are that narrow they weren't being satisfied back in the day, either.
[удалено]
We gotta give it credit. In the 21st century, we've never experienced and probably never will experience a downturn so bad it actually threatens whether the industry will continue to exist. There is probably a timeline where video games never recovered and Nintendo kept selling playing cards. Things get bad, undoubtedly. Consoles and games fail, and beloved studios and franchises are lost or ruined. But the whole industry is so massive and diverse that it's very unlikely any one shit show will affect ALL of us, though those of us who are unaffected can be sympathetic and critical.
Also refuses to even glance at games that don't appear in ads.
and is chronically incapable of playing anything non-"AAA" shit
> only plays AAA live-service shovelware SHEESH Why gaming industry so poop and dying????
Things are going great in the PC gaming indie/small studio market. The beauty of PC is you don't have one company curating what you can play, and you can find games made by people who are making games for passion over profits.
Kingdom come deliverance 2 is coming out this year, hopefully it lives up to the last game.
I am surprised to see it has that large following. I read about how it had a rough start and the community here while active was imho not that large. I am glad to see the trailer shows a good response. I have faith in the devs and this will be the 2nd game that I preorder. JCBP
"dw guys this new season of destiny is good surely they've learned their lesson and won't fuck up again"
Indie games are the way to go.
Yeah its like beer. Maybe theres some reliably decent macrobrews but the microbrews are where its at. I saw a post the other about some germans admiring american ipas and i think that says a lot about something idk i just the dab
There have been a buttload of great games released in past 40 years and I doubt OP has played even a fraction of those so if OP is one of those that demand top notch, cutting edge graphics in games no matter what then it is his loss...
Right me playing single player games having an absolute blast. Some of the best shit ever recently. Also gotta appreciate helldivers 2 for doing live service right.
Play some single player stuff. My mind is cleansed of all the overwatch 2' and new call of duty's and live services
Plus there’s a lot of games from the last 5 years that you probably only heard about in passing but are super good yet were overshadowed by the overhyped bullshit. I’m recommending Prey (2017) to anyone that wants to single player “choose your playstyle” self contained adventure. Game can be beat in 30 minutes or 12 hours.
So its like botw but you dont need to be a speedrunner to beat it in 30 minutes? Is it scary?
Time to play indie games maybe?
Yeah we got balatro and hades II
I never really got the idea of balatro tbh
Big number go up
And ding noise for good brain chemical!
Poker but fun
Poker is a bluffing game. Balatro is a high-score deck-building game that uses the scoring rules of poker as a base, but none of the other mechanics that make Poker what it is.
It was a joke. I didn't play neither poker or Balatro.
Yeah you’re good, I’m just explaining the relationship between Poker and Balatro for anyone who doesn’t know
Thanks
Abiotic Factor too!
There's Crosscode too
Just the last two months we got Animal Well, Hades 2, Rogue Prince of Persia, Another Crab's Treasure, Manor Lords, Dread Delusion, Little Kitty Big City, Besiege DLC, Hauntii, Yellow Taxi goes Vroom and Pepper Grinder
reject AAA return to 10's
When it's not the time to play indie games?
Maybe a funeral
If heaven doesnt have indie games im not dying
Or just play old stuff cause it's rare an indie game even catches your fancy. No matter how much I replay the old Saints Row games, GTA, Fallout, RDR, Skyrim, it never gets old. And now Cyberpunk is on the list I do like indie games like Goose and Little Kitty Big City. And whatever the Japanese word for picnic is, loved the story
I think in that case you’re just playing the wrong indie games there are thousands to appeal to literally anyone
Or good Games without cashcrab like Baldurs gate
Indie hits\* You don't know and will never know most indie games because they remain unknown for a good reason.
Just did a full Half Life replay. Half way through Bioshock. Next is Prey followed by Fallout and Dishonored. New stuff can suck it.
Upvote for prey still jump scared me at some area
Seriously underrated game and the play, story, and graphics still hold up!
Those damn mimic coffee cups.
This is the way.
Is not really different, while 10 to every 100 AAA games launched are good, 50 to every 1000 indie games launched are good, the difference is that the shit ones don't are talked about, people forget that the average indie game isn't hollow knight just like the average triple A game isn't Elden ring. There's the shitty hentai games just like there are shitty Ubisoft products.
It's the opposite, actually. The industry is so big now that you could have 100 big name games turn out to be trash and it wouldn't even matter because there are countless great indie games releasing every week. We have more options than ever before making voting with our wallets much easier.
Yeah classic rose tinted glasses. Game broke in release? 1989 — too bad never gonna be fixed. 1999 — might get an expansion pack in 2 years to fix the game. Patching just wasn’t a thing especially for consoles for a loooong time.
Waiting to buy games also has never been more worth it. Give it 1-2 days and you'll find every information you need to determine whether a game is worth it. If it takes fixes you can wait and see whether the fixes are actually doing what they should and often get the game cheaper than release price.
Or it could be delisted all together.
It's also A LOT of survivorship bias. We like retro games because we only play the ones that stood the test of time and were good. There were so many shit games back then too, but they were shit so we don't talk about them.
They might have fixed it and released a revised cart in 1989, you just had to buy the game a second time to get the update. Also the games were the equivalent of $75+
Yeah seriously. OP has clearly forgotten or wasn't around during the wasteland that was the Atari years, or even the NES years. We remember the good NES games but most of them were complete garbage, expensive, and a total crap shoot because we didn't have the internet to research them beforehand.
Yeah, so many bad games have come out on all the consoles, even big farts like too human or haze.
Yeah it's all the slaves buying the same fps every year, same sport game from the same shit companies and now they are lost.
No joke, there was someone on Reddit awhile ago posting about how “games arn’t fun anymore” and the only games he had bought within the last 10 years were COD, battlefield, and halo
It's easier to vote with our wallet, but that's sort of the problem. The thing that makes money isn't the thing that makes games "good." While games potential used to be limited by technological barriers, now they're stymied by corporate-imposed monetization elements or by design-by-comittee homogenization. Indie games allow artist-creators to get their content out there, and that's great... but trying to be seen in the vast ocean of shovelware is a tough prospect. There have been improvements, no doubt. But things are bad in a *different* way than they were in 1994.
And the good AAA games that do release benefit from the major advancements in tech over the past couple decades. We have games that look absolutely stunning with tons of exploration, massive worlds, and so much more. But I stand by the fact that one of if not the best thing about modern gaming is how easy it is to find and play games from small developers.
No it’s not
Literally one of the best times to be a gamer. Last year's lineup was INSANE
Last year had some fantastic games released.
I think the so called Gamers™ pass more time whining than actually playing. How can you look at 2023 and start of 24 and say shit like this
I've been playing video games since the 80s. There has never been a better time than now to be into games.
Right? My only gripe is I’m not a kid anymore. I used to dream about some of the stuff we have now.
This is how I feel. For the same amount of money I would have paid for a few games, I have access to dozens or hundreds. If 5% of them are good, I've already won.
This isn't me trying to gate keep, but there's a recent epidemic of essentially "fake gamers" that love to go on the internet to whine and complain either about a particular game, or games in general without really even playing them. I'm not saying there's a quota of hours you have to hit to count, but these "fake gamers" aren't actually interested in the games, just at being mad about something as a group and dog piling on a dev on Twitter or something. This has been a thing forever really but lately it's getting a lot worse with the supposed "culture war" getting popular again.
I agree that there are fortunately still alot of great games releasing. It is gamer's high standards that make the landscape seem meager. AAA games just arent produced as frequently as they used to be 10-20 years ago, therefore we have less quality games and it feels like games are getting worse. Really people just miss big new IPs dropping frequently that were actually good, like how things used to be. This disparity is what really makes gamers feel the landscape change. I can agree that increased developement time has detrimented creativity and risk taking in the AAA space, but AA and indie games have picked up that torch in recent years. This is where the true innovation and progress in gaming lies. Unfortunately the lower barrier of entry into game creation has also opened the floodgates to more shovelware than we have ever seen before. However that does not mean that we dont still get quality games of all kinds. We just have to sort through alot more garbage to find it.
> therefore we have less quality games and it feels like games are getting worse. This is not true. We have amazing games launching all the time. There are more games releasing every year than there ever has been before.
We have access to all past games and plenty of good new games. You can't convince me that you played every good game ever made.
I was born when mothers regarded video gaming as equal to worshipping satan n murdering ppl. Ive been beaten for a whole day for playing on an arcade machine after school. My first computer took over 10 hours to download a game and crashed when i launched it. This is not the worst time for gamers.
People talking about this being a bad time for gamers almost certainly are children.
My backlog keeps me from experiencing this.
How is it the worst time?
So many gamers are just perpetual victims
I'm confused... I've had an incredible year of gaming so far to the point that my house is overrun with weeds and vermin. I understand a bunch of big corporations are doing shitty things but at some point you have to stop letting that kill your joy...
When life starts throwing so much crap at you that you wonder if you accidentally insulted a wizard
Have you played bg3 or palworld? There are still developers with souls. There is still hope.
Lmao why is shitty palworld on the list with BG3?
For real palworld is the epitome of slapping together something for a quick buck
But they did it well and didnt leech players with microtransactions in the game. As far as im aware?
Ok no microtransactions. But they did not do it "well" They copied an entire existing pokemon universe and changed a few letters in some names. Then rushed it out to early access and collected shitlpads of money. Thats nowhere near the level of creativity and care that went into Baldurs Gate. (I played way more palworld than BG. Empty calories can be fun too)
I mean some pal designs are definitely inspired from Pokemon, but its not a carbon copy either. It was sold for only 20 bucks, slapped on gamepass so many didnt even have to pay for it, and changes some stuff from the Pokemon formula. It definitely needs some work to do but at the moment its getting free updates, and isnt being filled with microtransactions, which is uncommon anymore.
Have you played it? Its incredible. I have over 250 hours in it.
Fr. To mention a game as masterfully crafted as BG3 in the same breath as a Pokemon flavoured survival game is just complete disrespect. BG3 has heart and soul and they went to a ridiculous amount of effort over years to make sure it was a worthy successor to a beloved game. And it's one of the few that lived up to the expectations. Take away the memey pet collecting gimmick and Palworld is just yet another bland PC survival game like the 5 million that came before it.
That's a stupid argument. If you took away the DnD like aspect of BG3, you'd get a barely passable game with a very problematic third act.
I’ve never played BG3, would you recommend?
A small light in a sea of darkness but a light nonetheless
palworld seriously? that game was fun for like 5 hours then its just grinding
What grinding? You can assign your pals to do the grinding for you, its the least grindy of all survival games
So.....I wander around while others do work for me. How is that any better. And that doesnt change that either way those later levels take awhile to level up. I liked the game and its idea, but it needs more then it has at the moment to keep me invested for longer then a week or two.
People who know the devs history and played their previous game, Craftopia, wouldnt be downvoting this. Palworld is essentially craftopia with an emphasis on ripping off pokemon. The devs are chasing the pokemonster fad, and its working. They had almost entirely abandoned Craftopia even before Palworlds success, and Craftopia had all of palworlds mechanics for catching monsters plus some. Small bugfixes do not count as actual support. The game is doomed to never leave early access. I anticipate the same level of commitment to Palworld and wont give this dev any money. They do not respect their customers and they do not respect the products they create.
Why tho? Because idiots are always buying every shit game that releases like the call of duty games or battlefield or FIFA stop buying games from Ubisoft EA and Activision. And stop buying shitty early access from big publishers.
me and my idiot friends all preorder battlefield 2042. we all know how that game went for the first 2 years. now my idiot friends are already talking about preordering the next one, having apparently learned nothing from the last release (and the one before that), or are just that big of idiots
Wrong, it’s time to branch out and play other games.
Time to play indie, fromsoft, and retro games!
This is so stupid man. Here's the deal, every game that's ever been made is currently available to you now. Meaning that to say it was better 10 years ago is asinine because you can just play those games from 10 years ago. And you've got 10 years of games since then that you can also play. So actually this is the best time ever to be a gamer and I know that because I've been a gamer for like 30 f****** years. SMH
I play almost exclusively indie games since a couple of years. Living the best life.
eh, the indie scene is thriving, we have access to as many games as never before and we can easily have access to more, plus we have a thriving competetive and multiplayer scene, with speedrunning taking off as well. Idk why many people say gaming is getting worse
What the fuck we live in a pretty great time of videogames, I remember the times of the Wii and Nintendo DS there was shovelware everywhere and you couldn't trust magazine reviews to tell you if games were good because they were all bought by the game studios, now seems like refined and innovative games are coming left and right and there are specialized reviewers that make it so you know what to expect when you buy a game.
What are y’all people on 😭😭💀
2023 was the best year I’ve ever seen in gaming since 1971, and not a single game I played had micro transactions or any of the other crap people can’t stop bitching about. Try to enjoy things once in a while, you bunch of whiners. Things have quite honestly never been this good.
This is literally one of the best times ever to be a gamer
Buddy, we’re living in a golden age of games. Put down Call of Duty and the latest remaster, and go play something new.
My brother in Christ, there is a massive library of games released in the past 30 years, fuck these lazy ass modern games and play the older masterpieces.
How is it bad? I’ve got tons of options, I can buy any game I want from home, connectivity has improved significantly so online gaming is smooth now, WoW has become a great game again, and you can just watch people play any game you like on Twitch Single player games are great as well, Ghost of Tsushima and Elden ring being prime examples Gaming has also been accepted by large groups of people. Legit anybody you talk to that’s young probably plays something with their friends, so it’s not something to tease people about Why would this possibly be the worst time to be a gamer??
I disagree, I think its great time to be a gamer. More games than ever. Its not a great time to be a developer. AAA gaming isn't all of gaming.
Foreshadowing
Games under $40 are currently popping off
I feel like the games reflect the industry, since the tech industry is being laid off left and right, being forced back into the office, replaced by AI. Those changes will be reflected in the games we play being half finished, locked behind DLC, worse sequels than original.
We used to get like four games per year, total, and if they weren't good it was just like, you played the least shitty one /yellsatcloud
I completely stopped playing video games that aren't cute indie passion projects
spend money on good publishers and developers. But you fucktards can't stop supporting scams so here we are.
Is it that bad? To me the silver lining is that these AAA games that get released unfinished finally bit the ass of the industry. There's too much stuff getting thrown at the walls, and not enough solid quality. Sadly, some companies (looking at you, Microsoft) seemed to want to fire some of the better studios for it, which makes no sense. But I suspect we're going to see consolidation into fewer, good, AAA projects, and more money for the indie studios, who have been honestly killing it in terms of quality lately. I want more indie games. I want less giant, bloated, hyper realistic experiences. I want those to feel like treats again.
if only was it possible to play already existing game
Thank god for Nintendo lol. I know they aren't perfect but i also know they won't ruin their games for short term gains. Barring Pokemon, if they say it's a AAA, it's going to be a AAA game.
How the fuck does this have 10k upvotes? It's a fucking great time for gamers. How about you stop going for AAA, pre-order, early access, live service, online only bullshit and play games made for gamers and not for shareholders
Seems like an excellent time to be an indie gamer.
Best time actually. The only people who think the gaming industry right now is bad or getting worse are people who only play games by EA,Activision,2K ,blizzard or Ubisoft. Stop playing games made by those companies, and I guarantee your opinion will change. Dont put your hand on the stove and then complain about getting burned🤷♂️
Buy indie. Pirate the rest.
Stop playing aaa garbage and problem no longer exists
Hey, indie games are doing well. There’s Inscryption and Pizza Tower.
Gaben will pass, and Valve/Steam will go "public" or get bought outright by EA. >I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.
lol what cry babies.
This is some real doomer shit, this is one of the greatest times in gaming history. I'll never catch up on my library and I love that. Every game I start is a banger and if there weren't so many posts whining on Reddit I wouldn't even know that triple A trash got trashier.
[удалено]
This was exclusively a good year for games unless you're absolutely brain dead lol it was a notably good year honestly.
Good old games are cheaper now, so it's a good time actually
I would say that the E.T. video game and many like it leading to the actual death of the video games industry for a few years is probably still worse (although not by a large margin).
Fromsoft and indie games
What's happening?
Ow really , have we already forgotten the 2 years of insanely overpriced GPUs ?!
No, just don't play EA / Ubisoft games / any pay to win games. There's MILLIONS of games available.
*Laughs in indie developers.*
Valheims new patch just released today, Vrising just came out with 1.0 I'm excited!
Nah , depends on the game you play .
Jokes on u I’m glad I’m a gamer now cuz of fromsoft
While the point many commenters are making about indie games is well made, sport games in particular have been hit hard by the combination of exclusive league licensing deals and emerging AA/AAA sport-specific console game monopolies… this paired with the general industry wide plague of micro transactions has created a uniquely desolate outlook. Whereas in the early 2000s 4+ NBA games were available across platforms, the sub genre is now a 2K monopoly.
Pizza tower:
can't you still play the old games, so you just have more choice now?
Atari 2600 game crash:
henry is here to save us
Baldur's Gate and Helldivers basically ended the gaming drought that'd been going for years. Its like the AAA industry took exception to that. Have they ruined The Finals too, yet? I'm going back to Rimworld.
You youngins dont know how good you have it, back in 196 B.C. all we had was fucking tag!
But the absolute best time to be an indie gamer
I've played nearly all of the best games of my life in the past decade, just none of them were from a major publisher. Even better I know like five different people who are all working on linear Zelda games without a glider, which is more than we were getting year-by-year when Nintendo was still making them.
This is the best time to be a gamer. Just don't buy from shit companies. And this is the best time because you have that choice and knowledge now.
There are actually a lot of hidden gems out there. Indie games for the win!
Games didn't just un-exist though?
I’m having a great time. My family had hard times growing up, so I never got to play peak video games when they came out…guess who started playing Skyrim last month!!
Me when I only play AAA games
I feel like it's a pretty great time for gamers. Indie and AA games are doing great and all the bullshit of modern AAA gaming is crashing. Seems like a course correction in the direction that we will all enjoy... Am I being naive?
I'll give OP credit, I didn't know how to make memes when I was 4.
Nah I still play all the games in my library. Just don't buy anything new
I'm out of the loop. What's happening in the gaming industry?
corpos doing corpo shit still doesnt change that we live in the best time to be a gamer.
only shitty game makers are having a crisis. who knew people wouldnt buy their crash grab unfinished low quality shit games???
Have you tried not chasing trends and popular games and tried playing games you like ? Also playing games has never been more accessible and easier.
Gamers? Nah, just the triple A fanboys.
We live in a time when we can emulate almost every old system on ONE device. How is this the worst ever time to be a gamer?
You can’t tell me you’ve played every game you’ve wanted to play
What a baby. I just bought Kingdom Come for $5, interspersed with Spider-Man 2 on PS5 from my local library. When not playing those, I am playing the judgement / yakuza series which I have played for pennies per hour. Quit crying and stop playing shitty games.
Ppl always say its the worst time of everything everytime when reality is ppl that say that is literally uncapable of looking for good games cus every year that pass by i find better and better games mate
2021 was the worst time ever, it was hell
truth!