New Games Suck... Or Is It Just Me?

I think when hype jumps over from sophisticated marketing campaigns by social media bots and bought, biased or intimidated influencers and reviewers to the masses it's mostly carried by young people.

To this younger audience the excitement can be genuine because they might have experienced little to nothing like it befor. With age you can look back at a extensive library of media and will draw comparisons to game X that did aspect Y of current hype game equally good or better years ago. It's easier to impress a young audiance than a aging one.

The first media you come across with a unexpected story twist that involves some sort of mental illness explanation probably hits different than the tenth one. The first 3D RPG you played had floaty combat and it was fine until you play dark souls and the bar gets raised.
Weighty combat becames your new standard and everything that follows either takes a completely different approach that has it's own charm or they have to do similarly as good or better than what was befor, otherwise it will feel disappointing in that regard.

So they make adjustments in order to maintain profits that investors are happy with. The music industry was 'crashing' in the Napster era, then Jess Hanson created the 360 deal and everyone was rocking. Then streaming came and it was doom and gloom again.

From the RIAA this year: "Recorded music revenues grew by 4% to $8.7 billion in estimated retail value and streaming subscriptions were up 3% to 99 million over the first half of 2024 – both record highs as streaming continues to post strong growth entering its third decade in the US."

Point being, industries evolve with the times. We'll continue to have AAA, Indie games, streaming TV, movies and all forms of entertainment from now until infinity especially as being on a screen for your free time has become more normal now than ever before.

This post defined a crash as 97 percent drop. Do you see same level of market correction incoming?

How many percent drop counts as "crash"? 90%? 30? 5? You must first define it before you can make a conclusion.

Afaik the whole market has a -4.3% correction in 2022, in 2023 it's back to +0.5% again.

https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/last-looks-the-global-games-market-in-2023

https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/the-games-market-in-2022-the-year-in-numbers

So the 10000 people that lost job in 2023 was just a droplet in the ocean. The 4.3%.


Atari shock happened in a very different time. When the entire industry was dominated by Atari alone. Of course Atari died=whole game industry died.

These days gaming industry has a much wider meaning, from live service games to gacha to casino app to AAA game to indie, those are all "games".

So gaming industry "crash" literally has to happen to ALL segments above to happen. Which is going to be very hard unless WWIII etc.


You'll see signs of it. And I haven't seen any.

I see winners takes it all, most game companies are losers in the market while a few winners took all the profit. But the overall market cap didn't decrease much if you count the profit from the winners. You just selectively ignored the winners of the market.

This is different situation from Atari shock back then.



This is internet, posting personal belief is more important than google for data.

The last Crash Sony had was in 2020/2021, and you guys pretending it didnt happen...

When people said "gaming industry", they actually meant "games that they play/cared about".

It's possible for one segment, such as "AAA games", to suffer from decline due to market condition change. But AAA industry doesn't represent all the industry and not anywhere close.

There are a lot of kids playing with Roblox these days, it's part of their social life, and they aren't going anywhere. But Roblox doesn't count as games for these people.

There are also a lot of people into online gambling, to the point that a few casino app dev that I know of has 10x stock growth in the past 5 years. But casino app doesn't count as games for these people.

If you look at the whole industry, not just one segment like "AAA", it's obvious that some segments have fairly good performance. But they're mostly ignored by internet voice who only cares about AAA games and thinks it represents the whole industry.

Having good sales is easy.

Make a good game.

I just hope those woke games get remembered for being ***... not for being woke

Dont count on it.

Annnnnddddd....another anti-woke propaganda farming political traffics lol.

If you actually read the original presentation in Japanese, it is more about cultural difference(stronger need on diversity) in western regions, and how can dev can be aware of those cultural difference(diversity) when they implement content without breaking immersion and game world.

Idk how the narrative now has become "whoa whoa BN is going to spam left-wing ideology in our face now!"


"Learn from Wukong" is also a silly suggestion. If you want to avoid all political controversy in a story of course picking a very old literature is the safest route, since you can blame the dead writer for any potential controversy. But imagine a world that every story came from old literature and nothing new is create anymore. That would be the death of creativity.

I think the artists and writers should be themselves. No one can please everyone in the world, after all.

Wishful thinking but doubtful. They have to do what they are told to. Money talks.

Your post is more or less summarized by these few words. Been using the same playbook for the last 12 years, its grown tired.

based

more based

They'd do well to start with the first fundamental question:
1. Who are our customers?

Any deviation from making group #1 happy in order to "explore new markets" must always beget the 2nd question relating to the first:

2. If we do X will we piss off or otherwise alienate the group we defined from #1?

If the answer is MAYBE then we do not do that thing. No matter how many good feelies you get by calling the #1 group a bunch of bigots when they won't buy your adventure, and how many awards insiders want to give you, you're still out and your stock is toast.

[Insert literally anything for real life example]

Least in the past it was less just calling group 1 any manner of negative connotations, and more that "we'd like to try to get this group this go around" results usually the same with group 1 not being interested and group 2+ not being near enough to make it worthwhile, but at least group 1 wasnt burned completely for not giving full support

I define propaganda as "partially correct information". Saying Bandai Namco said X when they actually said something slightly different, is the definition of propaganda.

If they said actual opinions, like "I don't like Bandai Namco" "Bandai Namco's game sucks", that's not propaganda whether I dislike it or not. I would recognize it as opinions not propaganda.

Those are fundamentally different.

Also lol if you think propaganda only existed for 12 years. It's an integral part of politics since FOREVER. Not even new.

Who are calling group 1 "bigots"? Some random pro-claimed ex-employee on Twitter? Or random sjw and bots on Reddit or Twitter? All I see is political influencer of both sides and posters posting political ***on Twitter, then people direct their anger at the entire industry. To the point that is ridiculous.

Vast majority of people in the gaming industry aren't involved in this war at all, it was all exaggerated by tons of rage baits fueling angers creating a non-existent enemy.



Look, here is my take for this matter. I actually don't mind people avoiding games with different political perspective. In fact I support woke games label their games properly, such as using LGBTQ tag etc, so anti-wokes won't accidentally buy them.

If "woke games" all die as a result of proper tagging then it's just marketing behaving properly.

But right now anti-woke are trying to say "games shouldn't have politics at all", which is fundamentally trying to change game as an art medium. Which I disagree with.

Literally everyone crying about how concord, dustborn, zau, ss:ktjl, acolyte, etcetc, flopped. These games and showed flopped because because of “far right bigots”

The vast majority who you say are “not involved” are actually still involved. Theyre not going on twitter or reddit or any social media to voice their displeasure, theyre keeping it simple and talking with their wallets.

Remember that discussion about sales and I was accused of being a troll? Money transcends all.

Catering to the 1% works when youre catering to the rich elites who can pay half a mil for an entry ticket to the gala.

Catering to the 1% doesnt work when youre catering to mentally ill socialists who can barely afford food (or literally eating their own ***, literally, i heard about this now you have to as well)

If you can't decide what is or isn't woke, just substitute:

I want games and shows that are written with the intent of providing an optimal experience. If there is writing and design choice that is blatantly made for the sake of pleasing blackrock and meeting diversity goals, then I don't want it.

I'm not an activist, I won't be caught dead at a protest. But, I can recognize when something is written like ***for the sake of spotlighting a social issue, and it is not enjoyable to me, so I won't buy it. This isn't 'anti-woke mob justice' or whatever, it's just refusing to give money to companies that don't make what I want.

A remote mountain town with 30 citizens does not have 8 different races and 4 different accents. That is incoherent storytelling. If they need to cram a bunch of racial diversity into this remote mountain town, I want backstory as to how the town was formed in this way. If they do it in every town, the backstory is just plain not possible. It ruins the worldbuilding.

Woke =/= bad design.

Woke =/= bad design.

Woke =/= bad design.

Woke is just left wing political ideology, that's all. Any good story will have ideology.

I am a fan of blade runner and cyberpunk genre. The WHOLE cyberpunk genre is woke, it's anti capitalism.

FF7 story is about environmentalism, which is left wing aka woke.

If you force woke to disappear from all game story, then we'll just see a bleak feature of boring story with zero ideology in it.

What you should be fighting against is bad implementation of ideology, not having ideology itself.

Right now anti-woke aren't saying they want better implementation of ideology, they said they want no ideology in video games. Which is ridiculous and kills game as an art medium.

That is what I am fighting against. There are effectively zero modern 'woke' games where the ideology is implemented in a consistant and non-invasive manner. Hence, the comment that you should substitute woke for poor writing in the service of those goals.

I don't necessarily disagree, but it's hard to say how the same people would react if they used a modicum of restraint and prioritized quality of story and design over quantity of inclusion.

Except the WHOLE Bandai Namco DEI presentation was discussing this matter. Their whole presentation literally said it is BAD implementation of DEI in your case.

Bandai Namco is literally AGREEing with your take on DEI implementation. But the whole presentation was twisted into something else by those propaganda.

I simply correct what the propaganda said with correct information.

I am giving my personal opinion on the issue at large, if Bandai-Namco is implying the same thing I said, then I fully support Bandai-Namco.

Your examples dont force any woke square peg ideologies into the round hole. It is also original content, not heavily altered to the point of bastardization.

AC: Shadows deviates from their existing forumula of a fictional main character(s) to use flawed history to forcefeed a black samurai in feudal Japan down everyones throats.

Writers have been implementing ideology for decades np. Philip K *** is basically a left wing activist who fought capitalism and slavery with his pen and his fictions.

His works are still classic though.

I would argued that "priority" in writing is non-issue. There are no such thing as "picking between ideology and quality" when it comes to writing a story. You are either good enough to craft a good story with good theme, good structure, pacing and dialogue or you don't. Nobody would intentionally sacrifice quality in writing, it's the problem of execution itself.

The priority talk are just justifying anti-politic position, that's all. "Your story suck, if you remove the ideology maybe it'll be better!"

I don't think so....

AAAA title
$70 - $130 USD depending on version

Reuses assets lol

https://x.com/rinothebouncer/status/1823801459349332273

Tell that to netflix.

I don't believe you. It seems quite likely that much of this media has an initial story and setting that is coherent. Once it gets green lit for production, DEI execs insist on adding diversity and there's not the budget to redo the entire setting. Because the diversity is an afterthought, it needs to be done as cheaply as possible, and you get the garbage we see now.

I'm not sure if you consume much english media, but it's almost a trope that Netflix shows will have entire scenes crammed in where the actors outright talk about what social issue their presence is underlining. It's completely transparent that the scene was written to ensure viewers feel the right way, and the undertones were at best implied in the source material.