I think that indie games are also not immune to creative bankruptcy. As much as I love indie games I feel my eyes roll whenever the words "rogue-lite" and "deck builder" get mentioned. I'm also concerned about the amount of souls-likes and Metroidvanias that are coming - and those are two genres that I LOVE.
Have to agree with you there. While I have largely liked all the new Metroidvania titles of 2024 so far (that I have played). There are a hell of a lot of them and they can't all be winners. But aside from the AI games and the shovel ware, I think the key difference is, indie game developers are always trying to do something special. Their heart is almost always in the right place.
@@indiegameculture1most of them not all. Look at how many clones and likes of vampire survivors were created. How many match three or hopa games we have. Sure there is a market for these games but many are not creative. I will not even mention asset flips based on tutorials for game engines. The issue with AAA games is they are unsustainable look at Insomniac leaks. As for Starfield it is not a bad game but not a good one either. The biggest issue I have with it is that world created have little sense. In this regards Skyrim or Oblivion were way much better. But what was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was ths update in which that took not one particular space suit which some got early but a few of higher tier space suits from a save game. I have not got this particular one but I got another one fair and square as loot and game devs decided to break my fun taking a suit which had +150 to max inventory capacity. I lost interest in this game (one thing I hated was inventory management and without said suit it gets way much worse). I play backlog games, indie games mid bigger games from time to time big budget game. But I find most enjoyment in lower budget titles or older ones. Still I believe for people who start gaming with vast library of games (especially on pc) there is a lot to choose from - games like remaster of mass effect known like legendary edition are on sales for less than 10$.
yea, but Nine Sols looks and plays SO GOOD and it's coming out May 29th. It's definitely familiar in a way, but definitely unique at the same time :D Play the demo, try it out. It's made by the same people that made that horror game that got delisted : Devotion. Also if you want a really good roguele game you haven't seen before, play Rogue Glitch, however, don't judge it at the beginning because the beginning has to build up like that in order for the gimmick to really surprise you. So beat like, the first 3 bosses and after that, you'll see the insanity that game really has to offer. That ending gets CRAZY!!!!! This is coming from someone that really doesn't like rogueles, I do like metroidvanias though.
What if I told you I'm making a souls like open world metroidvania with deck building and every time you die the monsters change and you get new cards. It's also a third person shooter battle royal survival game. It's a mod for Microsoft flight simulator. Solve puzzles and gather the royal crystals of light to craft the ultimate sword and slay the evil dark lord. Comes with a free one month subscription to my only fans.
The trend of AAA studios and publishers making bigger and bigger games has more to do with their transition from being leaders of the industry to being followers of trends (which somewhat coincides with the genesis of the term "AAA") Big games aren't just "bad" games, they're now just first and foremost vehicles of commerce for giant corporations. It's easy to lose sight of how big Microsoft is. Its market cap is currently over 3T (as in trillion) dollars. When they acquired Bethesda for $7.5B (billion), I know it's hard to understand numbers this big (1 trillion is 1000 billion), but that sale represents a TINY fraction of Microsoft's business. They don't care about a game or a franchise inherently, they care about "line goes up" potential. These giant games aren't failures, Cyberpunk 2077 earned CD Project Red several 100s of millions of dollars, that's not a failure, it's an enormous success. But to back it up a bit, in the old days of gaming, when graphics were crude, every other aspect of development needed attention to attract an audience, writing/story, worldbuilding, experimental UI, etc. and this led, by necessity, to innovation on every front. You marketed a game by what it offered that the competition did not. But as time marched on, graphical fidelity and world/game size became the primary factor that drove sales, so the reality of how we got here is mostly/largely mundane. In an effort to chase photorealism (and all that adjacent detail) in 3D games, the head count of artists and developers skyrocketed, which in turn made development costs skyrocket, which in turn made the people who held the cash that funded these games more risk adverse. It's a boring explanation. So, while it used to be that innovation in all areas drove sales, that slowly became the exception rather than the rule, graphics (in part due to the advent of the graphics card) were the main/driving force behind sales (and still is for games like COD). When you combine that with a gaming public (writ large), the mobile and console market in particular, that aren't as discerning and demanding as the PC market is (see Sony's recent PSN woes with Helldivers 2 and Ghost of Tsushima) you end up with our current market segmentation, indies/smaller games for those of us who care and spectacle gaming (or mobile monetization) for the masses. And as I've said in many places on many occasions, this is exactly the same path the music industry took starting in the mid-80s. It's the corporate playbook. Corporate executives don't see games as art but as a commodity to be sold, so they will always follow the money, which means they will always chase trends and fail to innovate. In time, this creates segmentation, a backlash, and inevitably we enter into the situation we find ourselves now. None of this particularly contradicts what you're proposed in this video, but I felt compelled to offer a slightly wider/different perspective. (though I doubt we're going to see a major decline in big budget games being made, they'll just double down on the successes and gut the middle...just like what happened to the film industry) Tangentially related, I wish modern gaming media would more commonly address the basic business models that fuel game development. Our passion for games may drive discussion of the art, but to ignore its history and where the money comes from and how that influences game development does the community a disservice.
The industry needs to lean more on AA and Indie games. These smaller, but marketable releases fill the gaps in release schedules and make a console generation much more palatable
if u look at gaming as a company u only look 1 thing MONEY ! and from there those games bring happy fans and they bring good reputation but not the most money. Also ubi-sh*t is about to release the next worst ac-ever and its still seling ! If People buy that sh*t why should they stop ? and that worked not for 1 year or 3 years its over a decade.
Yoko Taro had this similar criticism of the Western side of the industry. He saw the West going through a period of segmenting between blockbuster, premium-priced video games and small-scaled indie games with little to no inbetween. That's not even remotely how the Japanese side of the industry is like. Square-Enix can put out a wide range of games from blockbuster Final Fantasy XVI to the super niche Paranormasight, and also Nier Replicant remake, Harvestella, Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveler II, etc... filling the single-A and AA space inbetween, and they're all on-brand.
I’m 35 and just now getting into, believe it or not, shmups. An entire catalog of arcade games id never heard of before (dodonpachi, gun being, the touhou games). Now I get to them experience for the first time. Really puts the gaming iceberg into perspective. AAA games are just a small slice of the immense whole.
Great video. And I think “lukewarm” is such a great word to encapsulate what’s happening in too many AAA games - the games are lukewarm, but with budgets that demand a firework in sales. I just hope publishers take away the right lessons from what’s happening now.
I grew up playing games like Rayman 3 and Billy the Hatcher. Games like that aren't made anymore as it is to complicated for indie developers but not profitable enough for AAA developers. I think they should still do those games but not on a huge budget. Keep it small and just pretty enough
An additional point would be all the games that are favoring early access releases. Baldurs Gate and Hades 2 are great examples of what can happen if you incubate your game and have it grow over time with a steady roadmap. Nice video 👍
I can't lie and say I've ever been an out-and-out Nintendo guy, but you have to hand it to them, when layoffs became the norm, they never followed suit. They have never wavered from their model, and they are reaping the rewards
The last AAA developer to make fun games??? Lol. Have you played Stellar Blade or Rise of The Ronin Or Dragons Dogma 2 or Final Fantasy Rebirth etc etc etc. None of those are on Nintendo 🫤
@scaryhours2220 , correct. Which explains why those companies are not profiting, and possibly regret their decision(s) for their exclusivity deal. But third-party exclusivity deals warrant its own video(s).
@@stripedrajang3571 really? Well with Stellar Blade selling a million copies in pre orders alone and Helldiver's 2 reaching over 8 million copies Id imagine Sony profiting a bit. Final Fantasy Rebirth is another story lol
People are slow to catch on.Gamers catch up fast. For example,Ass Creed 3 and Far Cry 3 and Fallout 3 were all abandoned after a few hours by me....and still these franchises fool people to this day.
Its not about good or bad open worlds,its about time plenty of good open world i don't even go near. It was cool when you had a couple of good open world games a generation, skyrim, oblivion, fallout, assassins creed,GTA, Red dead redemption. But now all they want to make are these bloated open worlds, there's no time to dedicate to them, so i myself just stay away from them, i pick one or two that i find more interesting and play them over the years, took me 4 years to finish breath of the wild. For the rest i play more linear games, and if i can't find them this gen, i will play previous generation games. And from what i read on comment sections more people are put off by them, so how to they expect to make their investment if they keep making games people just don't want to play or don't have the time to. In the 360/ps3 generation i averaged a new game to play every week, and i bought them, now i am happy if i finish one a month, and a barely buy a game because i have a huge backlog of ps4 games, plus game pass, plus PSPlus games, and a some switch games to finish. At 44 i just don't have the time and the younger generations, my kids they stick to PC where they can play alot of games they like without paying anything, roblox, minecraft and stuff of the sort, or worse they lose ton of time in fortnite. Haven't had one asking me to buy a game in god knows how long. Open world fatigue is real, every game now just feels a copy of the previous one.
I feel like the decline of AAA open-world games is overstated; Elden Ring and post-2.0 and Phantom Liberty Cyberpunk are amazing, some of the best games of the last couple of years. Ubisoft slop is bad, and Bethesda hasn't updated their design characteristics in 15 years, but judging all open-world games off them is very silly.
Fromsoft games I will give you, they never miss. But Cyberpunk proves the point to an extent. Yes, it's great now, but it should never have been released in the state it was. Showed no respect to consumers at all. That being said, I appreciate that the failure was in that case down to the audacious of the product, not laziness
Open world games are not failing on their own merit, gaming company and publisher executives and investors are pushing unrealistic "line go up forever exponentially" ideas with shrinking deadlines, bloated feature lists and safe themes to developers. Indie is just not at a scale where investment creates a self fulfilling prophecy of doom due to downward pressure on devs, the level of control is therefore lesser, but this also means little profits most of the time making such games remarkably unappealing to investors. They would rather sink 300k on a game that may make them 600k to infinity with live service "micro" transactions 5 years later than to spend 30k on 10 games that will bring them 450k in 2 years.
I love and play mostly indies (main reason I got Steam Deck), and yes - AAA do a lot of bad choices as well (following trends, excessive mtx). At the same time - we get great games like Helldrivers 2 (that is prob AA, but published by Sony).., at the same time indies that are where creativity thrives have the same issue of copycats and lacklustre trends chasing. Like how many f crafitg survival games we need, or extraction shooters, or 30000 soulslikes/rouglikes/metrodvanias. I def like many of these games, but (sad I know) I wish flopping to some whenever I see yet another survival game. Same way I wish flopps of AAA live services games. Yes - I know indies scene is larger and has more to offer (thanks to smaller teams and smaller budgets), but the amount of trends chasing is borderline sad.
Well it's actually not all gamers that are causing issues for the AAA industry. The real problem is that the free money loans from banks are over due to intrest rates hikes in the last few years so they have to go with ESG money since that's the cheapest money which requires them to hire a DEI departement which is useless and costs money. These DEI hires are causing a bunch of games to fail due to their interference in the development process. And now the gamers who are mostly fed up with the state and price of AAA games and treatment of the audience by developers and community managers hired under the DEI program, about time but hey better late then never. Ow and I almost forgot... companies like EA and Activision have an executive team that costs close to 1 billion a year.
Not quite the same subject but the most amusing thing about Startfield’s mediocrity (to me) is how many people that lost their minds over IGN’s 7/10 review score keeping their mouths shut and acting like they weren’t blowing things out of proportion.
If you’re using Starfield as an example then you’re off my guy. Starfield actually tried doing something new in the AAA space. If it wasn’t Starfield then it just would’ve been more Fallout or Elder Scrolls. Not every swing will hit but it doesn’t mean studios shouldn’t try new things. In fact if games like Starfield fail then you’ll just end up with more safe checklist-y stuff like the current AC or more mtx CoD/Fifa/Fortnite The reason we get games like Suicide Squad is because commentators such as yourself or the these “gaming journalists” tear original IPs a new asshole for one reason or another. Why should they try new things when the old and predatory is already helping them make hundreds of millions
Stop making excuses about Bethesda they made Skyrim in space They couldn’t even change the name of the protagonist and just created space shouts Starfield was a lazy lazy game
This console generation has been particularly weak on every front because every platform is filled with remasters/ports. As graphics reached a point where they slow development so much, gameplay/fun factor took the passenger seat as every developer tries to make its game as “showcaseable” as possible. Every major studio that is not trying to do another Ubisoft copy-paste open world game (not that they are succeeding) is taking half a console generation to get a game ready for launch.
I think in a few years we will see open world games that developers or players will be invested in for years to come. Which means AI based solutions to keep people playing the games and modding and paid (Tested) mods to give people more options. Developers can capitalize on this if they are doing this the right way, and should they achieve this then we can see games like Saint Row, Cyberpunk 2077, and the older GTA games lasting way longer as all of these open world games become actual simulations over just a plain open world game. Perhaps we could see failed games like Anthem being repurposed by better ideas with AI so people actually have a reason to play these games again. We need to remind ourselves that we take gaming too much for granted to play one game and move on to another. Why not expand the possibilities in fair ways to gamers and developers.. And the importance of not only preserving these games but also the source codes.
I agree with those viewpoint but one thing that is usually overlooked it the mass layoffs of employees. Sure, games will get smaller and hopefully more creative and more cost efficient, but it will come at the cost ove 1000s of employees who will lose their livelihoods and is a direct consequence of companies borrowing money for basically no cost and mass hiring people during and shortly after covid 19
This is an insane take. You either are young or severely sheltered and outta touch to think losing your job is “no big deal.” There is no guarantee that these people get another job in the industry or even with comparable pay and benefits. Not to mention the lack of certainty and security. And all these problems become even more dire if you have a family to support or have some unexpected accident or medical emergency.
Going to take a major crash and a ton of house cleaning for gaming to get back on track. Even then, not sure what good it's going to do because consumers are supporting a lot of the problems in the industry. One of the biggest mistakes the industry made was focusing on pleasing the casual gamer over passionate gamers. It's a lot easier to please casual gamers with cinematic tripe (TLOU), big but empty open worlds, and games with flashy graphics but abysmal art direction.
Upcoming AA is the future. AAA is imploding. The faster AAA crashes the faster the reset. AA budgets coupled with Ai should mitigate costs and dev time.
We shouldn't smash the Open World concept so much because it is not the real culprit here. I mean we know many OW games like Elden Ring, Skyrim, Horizon, Fallout, Far Cry etc. brimming with awesome quests and/or bosses. Freedom loving gamers love Open Worlds, and no, it's not just about avoiding the frustration of potential roadblocks. It's about creativity and agency. The culprit is a management that wants to spend all their budget on marketable traits and only pennies on what makes a game good.
Oh believe me, I'm not. Open worlds have the potential to be the most vast, detailed and interesting games on the market, but as you say, the corporate entities pushing them are the reason why the just don't butter everyone's biscuit like they used to
I'm not buying an Xbox or PlayStation to play gta6, so I have zero hype for it, if it comes to PC in the future I may buy it but I will have at least a years worth of reviews and performance to look over before I make that choice. I'm expecting it to be a DEI riddled nightmare so will make sure I have popcorn for launch day.
I dunno, it's been in development for so long that I think it's unlikely that it'll flop like other major releases. Much like FromSoft, Rockstar don't really miss the target. Except for the remasters, but that was a stinky cash grab 😂
Scale of games isn't the problem,if anything I believe scale has been stagnant for nearly a decade now. The problem is lazy unskilled devs that rely too much on AI and game engines to do their work for them rather then developing the skills necessary to get the job done. Combine that with the fact the publishers have basically been printing money no matter what sorta slop they put out has created an environment of laziness and entitlement that focus on making their jobs easier rather then building a quality product.
It's the hubris and the greed of Microsoft that's killing these studios. And I'm telling you now, they aren't done gutting their studios. I predict that after Avowed, Obsidian is going to get hit.
For the industry, yes. A lot of jobs and companies will disappear. And we will probably see a lot less AAA games with longer release windows for the same quality of game. But as much as I don't want people to suffer and lose their livelihoods, I feel it does need to happen for the industry to heal.
my problem with the current AAA aproach to gaming is simple and I'm using Ghost of Tsushima as an example. People talk a lot about how it's this amazing game that is unlike any other. But the experience feels like every other game I've played. I explored this open world when I played my first Ubisoft game. The combat can be found in like every third person game with Hack n' Slash combat released after 2017. And it contains a story that gets too attached to its film inspiration to let you experience that story for yourself but will certainly tell it to you, a very common feature of most AAA games today. I don't think GoT is a bad game or think less of anyone who likes it. But because the experience never took any risks that could potentially sour the overall game it never achieves the heights it sets out to climb. I'm absolutely confident that the game's design document was a single page with "Don't try to reinvent the wheel" written on it with a samurai doodle next to it. The real irony in this situation is that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice does almost everything GoT set out to do and even has some similar starting spots even down to the Kurosawa inspiration and beats it in almost every aspect the year before GoT even releases.
Same here most triple AAA storyline. Don't have that spark they did back in the last few console generations or they focus too much on chasing the newest trend. Or the game are way too big. And empty
Second this. As I say in the video, Ubisoft gets the brunt of the hate, but Sony do the exact same thing more or less. They just aren't as on the nose with their formulaic practices, they space them out a little more, and they vary the IP's instead of milking one dry like AC
Yea, you want to be careful with those AAA companies trying to weasel their way into indies...they already tried it with the i!i bullshit....I'm sure they tricked a lot of people with that, but they didn't trick me, especially making that prince of persia game the main attraction at the end...being in cahoots with a AAA company, automatically disqualifies you from being indie...Like, a dev can quit from a AAA company and then be on their own, but when the publisher that is backing you up is a AAA company, you aren't indie. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people, all of the time, and I hope that people realize that AAA is trying to infiltrate into indie. Also, don't buy any games that have a EULA attached to them if you can, those are extremely harmful to the customer, and I'm so surprised that people haven't figured that out yet...especially with what's been going down with games lately....EULAs also usually signal that a bigger entity is part of the creation of that game, which is a great indication that you shouldn't support it. Also BOTW and TOTK are not Zelda games. They don't have the core structure of what a Zelda game is known to be.
In the most traditional sense, no. But they all have the Open World feel. It's very hard for an indie studio to actually match AAAs resources and make the kind of game you're referring to. Best example is Sable, a true indie open world that's huge in scope, and in my eyes brilliant, but its a very buggy game with a lot of issues you need to overlook.
On the premise: no, Starfield was great. Metacritic 83, from a consensus of 90 Xbox reviews. 85, on PC. The negativity and furore you’re stating as fact was a distorted social media bubble IMO, compounded by a RU-vidr pile-on to hop on the negative hype train. So, I reject your premise on this one. The reality is pretty different from the discourse.
It's not as bad as the discourse made it out to be. Absolutely, This is not me piling on the game, but more the bloat and industry practices it represents. But, from a personal standpoint having played it a fair bit, I thought it was very lacking and vacuous. But hey, that's just my opinion. If you liked it, more power to ya ☺️
Yah..ITS WORSE. It was beaten by the Dildo simulation Spore from 2008. When a NES game is better then your corpse of an Engine. Wildwater is STILL better then most pirate games..hey Scull and bones I need to beet you again instead if the China man.
Starfield was ok ,but the longer I played the more disappointed I got . It has so much potential but they played it too safe . Just look at the survival elements , they flat out said they backed away from the survival aspects because it was too punishing. That is AAAs problem they play it too safe to try and appeal to a larger crowd. Passionate, talented, and enthusiastic people push the bounds , they stand out , to be great one needs to stand out ! Playing it safe means never standing out. Safe is boring and that is why AAA is in the state it is in.
What? Starfield absolutely wasn’t great. Everyone I’ve known that played it left disappointed, including myself. It’s not a runaway negative hype train - the game legitimately has some of the dullest writing we’ve ever seen from Bethesda. The world is so barren and the game is fraught with exhaustive loading screens. But let’s even forget about negativity on the internet for a second - let’s try and measure positivity. How are this supposed large majority that loved this game participating in terms of doing positive displays of fandom? Right now, on Steam, there’s literally 10x the people playing Fallout 4 (a game nearly a decade old) over Starfield. AO3 has over 30k fanfics about Fallout, 20k for Elder Scrolls… and just a little over 200 for Starfield. It’s not just because of the Fallout TV show, either. Baldur’s Gate 3, released around the same time, still has about 8x the players that Starfield has currently. 25k fanfics compared to Starfield’s 200. Everyone loves the companions and their writing and performance in that game, even despite the far more complex and newbie unfriendlier gameplay. You literally just need to look at the amounts of Rule 34 for the characters of both game to see that literally nobody gives a shit about any of your Starfield companions. When players really and truly connect with an RPG’s story and characters and world, you can see the positive expression of that in what they create and how they engage. They do things out of passion, even despite negativity. If this was all just a small minority and a negative hate train, we should still see SOME signs of engagement from this supposed majority that loved this game. Instead, other RPGs (even other Bethesda RPGs) are showing those signs of life. Nobody really engages with a story they’re bored by.
Sweet baby ink and company's like them had a hand in destroying the game industry. Starfield and Suicide Squad were 2 of their projects. Plus a lot more.
