The state of the industry does not look good, especially in the AAA world.
Gearbox started firing people as soon as it was bought by Embracer
Nintendo restructures it's testing department
Skull and Bones is slashed by $25 after three weeks on sail
Relic entertainment sold by SEGA
_B: EA Losses
EA drops star wars games and fires 650
EA is looking away from licensed games
_B: Saber Sold
Embracer sells Saber interactive along with other companies. This includes Metro series and new Warhammer 40k Space marine game
Space Marine is still being made
It's being delayed though
They don't seem to care either.
Valve created an orb for video making using steam decks they had lying around. Half Life 3 is still not released.
Activision QA has a large union now
_B: Warner Bros keeps on losing path
Warner Bros Gaming would rather commit suicide squad than make another successful Harry Potter game.
They really want that Fortnite style money
This has made them lean into the DEI money like Sweet Baby Inc
How Sweet Baby Inc ruined a game called Flintlock
Interview with women who work at Mojang. Buzzfeed article says diversity will help us all.
It also means companies leaning into milking the existing player base Instead of trying to grow it.
A lawsuit is coming for game makers that accuses them of making addictive practices to make more money. The response has been, “you can't sue us for making good games”.
Why I stopped being a framerate snob… advert for Steam deck
A business model designed to milk small amounts of players, rather than selling well overall. Comparison to the Cable channel model.
This has meant the Game Developer Conference has some awkwardness.
_GDC: AAA and Creativity
It costs too much to be creative in the AAA field.
Maybe AAA deserves to die. Corporations are greedy! Become an indie!
_GDC: Scream
A group go together to start
Screaming in a park
Meanwhile Monopoly Go has a huge publicity budget.
Monopoly Go had a nearly half a billion promotional budget.
And Toys for Bob is finally making their own game
Toys for Bob is making their own game. They usually make them by assignment, and have been very successful at it. The NFC toy games were started by them, and they created Tony Hawk Downhill Jam.
Also, Capcom has raised the pay of their employees.
Capcom raises salaries in tough times
So there is a silver lining.
Welcome to what happens when people who don't play games try to sell a product while propagandising us.
Let's not lie to ourselves, a contraction in the market was coming eventually but both ESG and Lockdowns gave them the false illusion the threat was past.
It just delayed it and made the drop bigger, there'll be a purge soon and the indies this year alone shows that gamers don't give a crap about the franchises, they just want to play GOOD games.
I'm not saying they don't deserve this, I am saying we should be scared. Videogames are entertainment and technology, which is a great predictor for the rest of the world a few years later. We can see Gamergate and the responses to it, and the ultimate destruction caused by the attempt to stay in power. Now imagine that world wide.
An entire contraction of every culture and trade. The last time this happened was about 600 years ago. Almost every culture broke down and stopped trading until a new group dominated them. We are demanding a contraction because we think it works in our favor. If trade contracts, so does everything else.
I say we be like the European explorers who saw the contraction and tried to open things up on their own. Those same explorers dealt with people demanding contraction all the time. It was just as internal as it was external. It also meant dealing with crooks and pirates who would help at a price. Sorry, brain went into history mode, I won't write another paragraph.
I will say that those who seek blessings bring rain to both them and their evil neighbors. We shouldn't wish drought on one and rain on us. Lots wife was like that, and she got pretty salty about it.
At this point, gaming can't be killed. Not like it has in past crashes. Even if Steam collapsed, indie games would still be made because people want to play games. It will just be done through different funding and distribution channels.
Arcades and others were the other methods back in the day. Nintendo arrived while the crash was happening through arcades. So it's a cycle.
The Atari crash was real, but the state of PCs and development tool availability have made that impossible. Everyone has a gaming machine in their home and anybody can make games if they want to.
They can... just until the infrastructure collapses.
I guess I can't argue against that. But some people will be playing real PUBG at that point.
That's how the computer revolution really started. I still want a good BASIC to teach my kids.
There's always QBasic to teach programming fundamentals.
Why QBasic and not something more modern (Python, for example?) And if you're concerned with them learning low level concepts (which python admittedly would be bad at) why not supplement with c/c++ (or even some form of assembly of you want to get really low level?)
I think apple used to offer a ][e emulator on their website for free, though they're certainly out there if I'm misremembering. that thing ran on BASIC for it's command prompt, though it was a bit different from, say, commodore or IBM BASIC, and I know for a FACT they used to have archives of all the old manuals on their website, so you should be able to find them if you wanna teach your kids about old computer hardware at the same time...
I'll check that out.
Tbf past crashes couldn't kill gaming either. Only the regional availability of products for normie consumers. Europe was basically unaffected by Atari crash.
The Famicom came out as the crash happened.
It's nothing to be scared about. Recessions only kill weak firms. The woke will be the first ones tossed out of the lifeboats.
What we should be scared of is companies doing hard 180s and trying to pander after calling us all pieces of shit for the last decade. Don't let them off easy, don't save them because they throw you a token bone.
Only god forgives.
Something I've noticed is that when a company gets too big and noticeable, they suddenly don't make the sales they had the previous time. This is nothing to the HD demand where a game that sold 2 million needed to sell 15 million to break even.
They're a little more than that. They allow access to DEI money. It all looks legal till it doesn't.
Nintendo doesn't run off debt so they're fine. All the rest of those are likely fucked.
They are very smart business wise.
I felt like they had been shooting themselves in the foot over franchises even before the propaganda became front-and-center. People that wanted a Call of Duty or Halo or whatever just wanted more of the same game with some fancier graphics and new maps in the end. Of course if they had just made these games instead of what they did, the game journalists and Youtubers and all the tiny voices amplified would have cried "omg it's just a DLC, don't play this, we need more changes!" You know what, people still buy the dreadful EA sports games with a roster update and a pretty menu every single year...
Sort of like how Team fortress 2 or Counter Strike got updates, but not new additions unless it was a new engine?
Exactly, it sure seems like Counter Strike still does well after however many years.
There's nothing wrong with more of the same.
That's probably Valve's biggest problem, they are competing with themselves. CS2 is competing with CS Source.
Heck, I still want the Specialists to get an upgrade.
Agree to disagree. Thousands of people being laid off is the first good thing I have seen come out of the AAA gaming industry in years. As far as I am concerned, every single one of the fuckers can join their modern audience in the line waiting for food stamps. I have just as much pity for these people as I do for the Hollywood people in that tik tok video last week who were complaining about not finding work, which is no pity at all.
That’s how I felt when I heard about the layoffs. Most games I look forward to aren’t AAA anymore anyway. Or they’re in the weird AA space like the Yakuza series. Man with No Name let you go on cabaret dates with actual Japanese porn stars and filmed them for it. Safe to say at least that franchise isn’t going woke anytime soon.
I haven't played it but I assume you mean this...
Meanwhile....
But also...
Damn, Yakuza, you confusing. I'm gonna need a flowchart for this.
They seemingly tried having the series transition to new characters with Like a Dragon, but people missed the old ones so much they just continued on both series and made a third spinoff to go alongside the other spinoff called the Judgement series.
Seemingly there are so many games because they reuse a lot of the assets between games, including characters and entire towns. They’re all hilarious though. Pretty regularly they’ll have JAV stars in the games, which I only found out after googling one of the characters that I thought was pretty hot.
Yeah I only played Yakuza 0 so far but it's one of my favorite games of all time. Just haven't had time to get into the others yet. Bumping into random AV idols and running a cabaret with them definitely felt like peak Japan gaming. Though my favorite part was probably the 80's theme. (doesn't look like any of the other entries have that?)
Different entries do different things, but Yakuza 0’s the only 80’s one as I recall. They did have a recent one that takes place in feudal Japan though, so it’s a different kind of 80’s.
You’re not filming porn, but you go to a club and pay for dates with pornstars that were filmed to be on the date with you in video format. You answer questions and give gifts trying to get into their pants. All their reactions are filmed. I don’t think you unlock an actual porno if you win, but you’re still on dates with porn stars like Ai Sayama, which apparently autocorrects to AI Saiyans.
I can't say I disagree.
From the link:
A wammen embezzling funds like her employer is her sugar daddy? Nooo Waaaaaaay!
I still think COO is a hilarious title.
Product managers ruin everything creative. They need to be reined in. Restructure these orgs to how it used to be. The product managers used to be more of a specialist/consultant. They'd show up and ask for stuff to put in the manual. Make sure the different teams and departments were syncing where they needed to. Somewhere around 2009 they were put much higher on the totem pole. Directing the creative process so it could better integrate into the monetization model. Whereas before, the monetization was integrated into the creative.
Each year after things got shittier. They all share their runbooks and best practices (I'm sure they are both called something different now). Examples like every game has a battle pass, popups, FOMO, seasonal, obvious pain points like inventory space and crafting tied to time / logins etc.
Get rid of HR as well. Let young men be themselves.
I felt a disturbance on social media as if a million barren wine aunts screeched out in anger and were suddenly silenced.
Run books is called something else, but best practices just has new stuff in it.
I think I last bought a videogame in 2017. Normally I'd buy 4 full-price console games per year before that.
I'm not paying for ugly politics!
The new 3D Kirby is a joy. It's on the east side, but the level design and story through that design is wonderful.
The one where he eats cars? I haven't kept up too closely.
Do you know if they ever made New Horizons as good as New Leaf?
I found NH to be extremely disappointing, ultimately. All your tools, EVEN THE GOLDEN ONES, have durability now, and break after a certain number of uses. You must now always carry around sticks and stones to remake your items as you go about your day. You have to fill your inventory with shovels, nets, or fishing rods if you want to grind out stuff to sell or donate.
There is a point system called Nook Miles in the game where you have to complete infinitely repeating "quests" to earn them, and then can buy things from Tom Nook like upgrades, hairstyles, crafting recipes (oh yea, you craft 90% of your furniture, say goodbye to sets).
You still can't kick out the villagers you don't want, you have to wait for them to randomly decide they want to move, then wait 1-2 days for them to pack up and GTFO.
I also remember the inventory and menu-ing feeling very sluggish, especially compared to PC games I was playing at the time like FF14. That's a game that can run on the PS3, and it's faster to open and close windows than a modern day Switch title.
The island customization and terraforming is excellent, but a bit finicky when it comes to corners and edges. Things you think you should be bale to change simply won't budge.
6/10, not what it could have been, and definitely not what it should have been. Watch a youtuber play it instead and try to enjoy that.
Yes, the one where he eats cars and takes on an apocalyptic wasteland that should be in the book Akira.
I haven't played the new Animal Crossing, but I am told it's very good by those who play.
Ahh, gotcha.
Thanks! I'll look into it.
That Mojang article: “ Having this form of representation for a gaming giant like Minecraft is imperative as more and more people who identify as women are seeing opportunities for themselves as players and employees within an industry's culture that didn't initially invite them to play.” Good lord. Queue the Chris-Chan invasion.
They don't even have women in the game. The character everyone thinks is a girl is based on the long red haired designer. It's all very sad, because this really is a big time favorite of mine.
Proof that it's easier to take autistic men and call them women than to get actual woman to do coding.
True
Well fuck. Space Marine 2 is gonna be gay and will feature an ugly butch lesbian now, isn't it?
Wow. The fucking (((DEI))) shit is killing the gaming industry.
It isn't killing it so much as reanimating the corpse for a different purpose.
Space Marines 2 already had a dangerhair somewhere in it's development, so I wasn't expecting anything at all to begin with.
Given what I last heard about the KOTOR remake being horrible and then imploding, if the same dev is working on SM2, then my expectations have gone even lower.
The addiction thing is especially funny with the "you can't blame us for being awesome" defense.
It didn't work for big tabbacco when it actually made sense. And it won't work now either with boomer judges at the helm.
Congressional hearings won't happen because too many are using games for money and power.
And they weren't using tobacco? I don't buy that angle.
The AAA industry dying would probably have an incredibly positive outcome for gaming as a whole, since it would chase off speculators, investors, and tourists, and refocus on actual passion and skill.
I'm much more worried about other industries being hit by the competency crisis, like airplanes, power plants, and plumbing.
I think a new form of investing is needed. That's the problem, most of the methods used are various laundering fronts.
Great compilation.
Some of this should go in their own posts
Feel free to pick out what you want and post that. I created these giant posts because I was posting too much and was told to stop.
I want space Marine 2 to arrive and be awesome.
The Emperor protects.
I hope so, but I sense heresy.
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
For a second I was worried about my Roadside Assistance...
Only in Pacific Drive.
It's about interest rates.
After nearly 15 years of free money (interest rates around 1-2%); the free money sink has finally been turned off. Interest rates are back up around the "average"; I think they're at about 7% vs. the average being 6.5%.
Businesses all over have been taking out shitloads of loans since the money has been basically free. Now the money is not free and we're seeing belt tightening and layoffs all over the place. This is because of interest rates and has nothing to do with AAA gaming being a piece of shit (which it has been for a long time before these layoffs started occurring).
The only saving grace is that lots of DEI/ESG bullshit was propped up by the infinite free money. Now that companies need to actually make money instead of taking out loans constantly; we will see them actually buckle down and return to (somewhat) a meritocracy.
That's great for investments and retirement plans. Those small kine percents meant a lot of people not retiring and holding stuff off.
That's just NOA so nothing of value was lost.
Very true, and a small part of it no less.
Good
The death of the triple a gaming industry cannot come fast enough. I wish death upon all triple a gaming companies from consoles to pc.
You can say that again.
On the bright side, Distant World's Universe is still great.
Looks like given all this, maybe I'll check back in a few years and see how it's coming.
I can always go back to playing older titles. I've been playing a game from 2006 lately that got a fan translation because it never came out over here. Tales of Destiny 1 Director's Cut. I'm genuinely having fun with it.
The translation scene is really nice. Nintendo has looked the other way for Mother 3.
The death of the triple a gaming industry cannot come fast enough. I wish death upon all triple a gaming companies from consoles to pc.
We're in a recession.
Soon to be a depression
Again
...honestly, I've used last-gen hardware for so many generations that anything above 30FPS is a treat rather than an expectation, so as long as the game doesn't drop to the point I literally can't function, I'm usually fine