Modern Ubisoft are the prime example of this. They churn out loads of games every year and they’re just the same old formulaic crap that you’ve seen before. How can you have so much money and so many studios but you can’t get decent voice actors or writers? How can your AAA games still have clunky mechanics and absolutely no original ideas?
Oh look, it’s another shitty enemy outpost, let’s scout it with my drone/bird/binoculars and mark all the enemies so I can see them through walls. Maybe I’ll not use stealth on the next one because it’s a waste of time as the game is piss easy anyway and I’ll be able to kill all of the enemies in a straight fight. And the reward is the same either way. Now I’ve found [collectible item] 37 of 200, I wonder where the rest of them are in this massive vapid open world?
It’s the ubisoft lookout tower sinulator, you will like it while you mindlessly run around the map to fulfill idiotic chore tasks that trigger your ocd
I lived the collectibles in Anacronox, they were little golden taco trophies and their lore was that they used to be highly sought after until it came out that TACO stood for Totally Arbitrary Collectible Object and it tanked the market.
You meet a guy that held on till the bitter end but finally had to sell off his collection because he needed the money, so you give him any you find for trinkets and stuff to help him rebuild his collection.
That’s because they suck ass
These big companies have it all backwards. We don’t need them; they need us. I don’t suddenly like slot machine video games just because their fucking bean counters say so. Ever since I bought a Steam Deck, I’ve played nothing but indie and old games, and I ain’t going back. You can keep your 3 bundles and your $70-110 price tags. I’ll play 500 hours of Vampire Survivors before I’ll buy another casino that they happened to build a game around.
In the wise words of the Soulsbourne community: GIT GUD (at not making shitty games).
Company that makes its money from fraud screams at customers for not being suckers.
News at 7.
Ok. Interesting take. Let’s look at Alan Wake 2. High Budget and pretty good. One of the best games I played in recent years I would say.
And why did it sell poorly, I hear you ask? Well, maybe it had something to do with the fact that you published it on your Epic Store only, being fully aware that the overwhelming majority of PC players are on Steam (and very lazy when it comes to switching away from it). Also you didn’t produce physical copies for consoles. Download only for an environment known for being fiercely pro physical copy.
But we all know it’s not about these things. It’s about calming down investors. That’s why you use buzzwords like “metaverse” and shit. I am actually impressed you didn’t ramble about AI.
Oh and 90% of the market could not run the thing.
Because budget alone doesn’t make a good game. It’s a lack of creative vision and churning out safe bets that mean people just aren’t excited anymore.
Teams of thousands working on a game designed by committee means no single group really has a vision of the creative vision of the project.
I get it that the marketing budget is important, they need big flashy games to justify the marketing budget required to get cut-through.
Ultimately I think it’s the case that these dev teams are too large, and aren’t making true art anymore, because true art is risky.
Small studios are the ones making art, and some of them are getting cut through into the mainstream. This is where good games exist now.
The biggest thing I miss from yesteryear is all the low budget straight-to-handheld spinoffs. No clear place for those to exist now that dedicated handhelds are dead, and no room for quirky little side projects when publishers are putting all their resources into just a few AAAA megagames.
What about mobile games? I know the market is weird around them (low cost etc) and maybe I misunderstood your statement.
What about them? They’re all garbage.
They aren’t selling because they are designed as money machines first and games second.
Do I get to be the next Tim Sweeney now? As far as I can tell the bar is pretty low.
They could make so many moderate games that would sell amazingly if they just tried to… Make games instead of casinos. But no, profits must only go up, can’t have a flat year with only great success - they have to outdo themselves financially every year and squeeze everything
They could make so many moderate games that would sell amazingly if they just tried to…
100%. That’s the kind of nuanced thinking you won’t get from corporate America at this point.
You have to sue every single storefront first as well and go cry to the press that companies don’t want to do business with you when you break their ToS.
Actually I just need to stop buying garbage (which I have done). The power sits with the purchasers in this case.
Well, then you can’t be the next Tim Sweeney :(
Wait i thought you had to go over the bar, not straight into it
It’s because the games are mid or worse. Took me one google search to find a plethora of games released in the last few years that had high budgets and sold very well. God of War: Ragnarok, Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West, Doom Eternal, Hogwarts Legacy, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, The Last Of Us Part II, and so many more. These are just the ones I played. Just because the only game you guys make is Fortnite after abandoning all your IPs and that your Epic Games Store money isn’t as high as you thought it would be doesn’t mean other people aren’t making amazing games. It’s just you, my guy. I consider myself a patient gamer and I’ve bought more full price games over the last 5 years than I ever have.
Motherfucker… How many times do you you have to fail before you listen to your customers, who are screaming what they want?
This is why voting with your wallet is nonsense. They’ll never learn why they failed, only that they did
Two reasons:
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The money is mostly spent on visual production, graphics, and big name actors to voice characters, which doesn’t automatically make a game good.
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Season passes, MTX and other bullshit being shoved down our throats in big budget games is getting even worse.
I will always choose a smaller project of passion over a lackluster, watered-down AAA game with an overinflated budget.
When I open a steam page for a game that looks interesting to me, and I find out it has 3 versions at wildly different prices and 10+ other DLC, I just pass and move on. I’m not doing external research to find out what is the difference between the complete and ultra complete and definitive deluxe director’s cut editions and whether it’s worth it, or whether I “need” such and such DLC to get the full experience. I’m instantly and thoroughly turned off by it, and I’m just not bothering. Fuck that whole mess.
For real! I have the biggest issue on that with the PlayStation store. The main list of titles only shows the most expensive version and you have to dig deeper to find the regular, lowest priced option. I swear, when I first got my PS5 and was interested in getting NHL23 I damn near had a heart attack seeing it priced over $100. Ended up just going to GameStop and picking up a used physical copy for $10.
I wish I could get it through to my dumbass friend. She says that a game must have good graphics or else she won’t play it.
Stardew valley? Nope. It’s too blocky. Undertale? Nope. Might as well be an NES game.
While I understand your feelings (I have such a friend myself), if graphics are most important to them, they are perfectly entitled to that opinion! I always interject, that my friend is missing out on great gameplay experiences but it is on them what they like and value most.
My god, the games she’s missing out on…
Your friend is entitled to her own opinion and I somewhat get her. Good graphics are really nice and can add greatly to a game.
Ultimately it is about the money and effort being put into the wrong parts of the game, which coincidentally is the part that is easiest to show off to investors and C levels.
Yeah honestly AA games deliver the experience AAA games gave 15 years ago, and that’s what I want way more than whatever AAA is today.
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Has nothing to do with ‘generation’ anything and everything to do with bean counters. The fact that Minecraft is still beating them all is everything they need to know but refuse to listen to.
Investors be like: “MineCoins you say🤔”
Well then. Why not make them not shitty?
It’s the players’ fault for not buying our game.
Umm 🤔, they have weekly free games. Epic games had effectively trained me to not pay for games.
There are no game manufacturers, just licenses to rent from subscription parasites. Sell me a product as an entire industry standard. NEVER ask me to trust you. NEVER try to steal from me with legalise. My terms of purchase are ownership of my purchase with no strings attached whatsoever. I will continue to play and mod open source games or play nothing at all, but I will never cross that line. I have a 12th gen i7 and Nvidia 16 GB GPU. I can absolutely play the AAA titles of today, but there are no game manufacturers, just worthless criminal feudalism and subscription extortion parasites.