I know there will be some more organic titles like Helldivers 2 getting popular and of course the much loved Deep Rock Galactic. I wonder though if we're going to see more and more co-op based stuff being pushed as devs seem completely uninterested in trying to solve the issues of multiplayer games if they can't retain control of the playerbase. The co-op genre by itself I don't have a problem with, I'm just not that interested in it.
Seems that the next logical conclusion for these bastards is to start making a push for catering to casuals and console players a lot more and pump out boring online only co-op scenarios that aren't remotely challenging and then proceed to spam microtransactions in peoples' faces. My reasoning for this is that it gives players something 'new' to try and they don't even have to worry about all of the problematic stuff like balance or hacking that often comes with more competitive based titles.
This makes sense to me, but it's so damn cringe because it's the safe and easy option and bores me to death. More and more it's becoming clear that AAA studios are simply not interested in catering to gamers who want to be challenged because it's too much of a challenge for them to make something good.
TLDR: Smol pp AAA studios are pussying out of the overall gaming market to cater to normie console peasants by trying to normalise co-op gaming and avoid all other genres.
Nothing artificial about it. I’d love more co-op games. I don’t want to play PvP with my friends, and even in the days that I did we had plenty of games and ways to avoid the sweat and grind of a modern PvP game. It’s very difficult to chill and screw around in a modern PvP game unless you like burning most of your time in pre and post game stuff watching the suck my dick emotes they paid real money for then sitting in a lobby for 15mins for all this click ready shit, then half the games you gotta go to a warmup area then fly in and parachute, it goes on and on.
Haven’t tried Helldivers, but I played through all of Outlast Trials with a friend and despite being a tough horror game it was a blast.