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.
This has to be some of the most retarded sperging you've done. I've occasionally run searches for coop games over the years, and there has been a substantial DROP in the last 2-4 years. And they're something that AAA studios have rarely ever chased. And I just did another search, barely anything worth mentioning that's come out in the last year, save for obviously Helldivers 2 and BG3.
You know what trends AAA studios chase a lot? 3rd person shooters. Hero shooters. Battle Royales. MMORPG's (less so in recent years). Call of Duty clones. Casual "playing house" types of games. MOBA's. Minecraft stylized shovelware. And maybe not AAA studios, but there have certainly been a fuckton of sidescrollers and pixel-graphics games. As well as clones of games that appeal to mobile markets.
And now we have multiple Stray-like trends coming out, where you also run around as a cat. (Which admittedly, I don't find entirely unappealing, but it is a fantastic example of the silliness that happens when trends influence creativity.)
It's not sperging in the slightest, I bring this up because their multiplayer games are tanking hard, they're going to have to bring something out to replace it or go bankrupt.
That's a fair possibility. Might've been better to lead with that rather than calling it a new trend this early in the whole thing.