Is the looter shooter genre dead? Or is the most prominent genre entry (borderlands) just insufferably woke? I would play the hell out of BL3 if not for the leftist narrative, characters, and dialogue.
If Warframe, a F2P game from over a decade ago, is the only game people are playing in the genre then yes its pretty dead.
For all Borderlands' faults it avoided all the pitfalls that kill the rest of the genre. Which is constant live service FOMO design (so you need to keep playing forever) and the power creep from that that makes it all pointless to play anyway because next month better will drop. Which is why it was able to keep trucking despite its pandering until the EGS exclusivity killed any momentum B3 might have had.
BG3 killed the momentum of BG3. Maybe they knew they had to take the EGS money, or maybe it was a coincidence, but a LOT of players turned on the franchise because it went extra woke in number 3.
That would have killed a portion of it, but you are vastly overestimating the amount of people who are tuned into such things. Its why games like BG3 (solid typo to give me a good example) are able to be massive successes despite being absurdly woke too, even if people here will swear its not (because they like it so it gets a pass).
But putting an extra wall in between them getting it (and even knowing it released because Steam isn't going to advertise a game not on it) will absolutely kill any possible momentum. Especially after a long stretch of time, wherein most people stop paying attention to your series, where you dropped a legitimately awful prequel in the middle.
Now the wokeness of Borderlands 3, on top of it being a stale dead genre released far too late to recapture its prior popularity, has certainly killed any momentum it could have going further. With the Tiny Tina series flopping and the mockery of the live action series proceeding to bury it from there.
I wouldn't say it's dead as Warframe is doing fine. And it's 11th year, so I think you hit the nail on the head that the narratives that just turned people off.
A lot of these live service games die off because they have no clue that the setting itself is important. Despite some of the minor pandering Rockstar does, GTA V has lasted more than a decade because the core game is still set around the setting of being a criminal. The most pandering expansions, the Casino Heist and probably Drug Wars still had the whole your robbing a casino and dealing drugs for big money.
I think it's just a talent drain at these franchises and they become woke to compensate off ESG, now that's drying up, they're fucked.
The talent drain is a direct result of diversity hiring mandates, imo, so I think it’s still the fault of woke in the end. If I were a talented and skilled straight white male dev, I can’t imagine working for a AAA studio where I’m expected to carry the load while simultaneously being public enemy number one. All that for crap pay and no job security? No wonder indie and AA are dominating.
Is the looter shooter genre dead? Or is the most prominent genre entry (borderlands) just insufferably woke? I would play the hell out of BL3 if not for the leftist narrative, characters, and dialogue.
If Warframe, a F2P game from over a decade ago, is the only game people are playing in the genre then yes its pretty dead.
For all Borderlands' faults it avoided all the pitfalls that kill the rest of the genre. Which is constant live service FOMO design (so you need to keep playing forever) and the power creep from that that makes it all pointless to play anyway because next month better will drop. Which is why it was able to keep trucking despite its pandering until the EGS exclusivity killed any momentum B3 might have had.
BG3 killed the momentum of BG3. Maybe they knew they had to take the EGS money, or maybe it was a coincidence, but a LOT of players turned on the franchise because it went extra woke in number 3.
That would have killed a portion of it, but you are vastly overestimating the amount of people who are tuned into such things. Its why games like BG3 (solid typo to give me a good example) are able to be massive successes despite being absurdly woke too, even if people here will swear its not (because they like it so it gets a pass).
But putting an extra wall in between them getting it (and even knowing it released because Steam isn't going to advertise a game not on it) will absolutely kill any possible momentum. Especially after a long stretch of time, wherein most people stop paying attention to your series, where you dropped a legitimately awful prequel in the middle.
Now the wokeness of Borderlands 3, on top of it being a stale dead genre released far too late to recapture its prior popularity, has certainly killed any momentum it could have going further. With the Tiny Tina series flopping and the mockery of the live action series proceeding to bury it from there.
I wouldn't say it's dead as Warframe is doing fine. And it's 11th year, so I think you hit the nail on the head that the narratives that just turned people off.
A lot of these live service games die off because they have no clue that the setting itself is important. Despite some of the minor pandering Rockstar does, GTA V has lasted more than a decade because the core game is still set around the setting of being a criminal. The most pandering expansions, the Casino Heist and probably Drug Wars still had the whole your robbing a casino and dealing drugs for big money.
I think it's just a talent drain at these franchises and they become woke to compensate off ESG, now that's drying up, they're fucked.
The talent drain is a direct result of diversity hiring mandates, imo, so I think it’s still the fault of woke in the end. If I were a talented and skilled straight white male dev, I can’t imagine working for a AAA studio where I’m expected to carry the load while simultaneously being public enemy number one. All that for crap pay and no job security? No wonder indie and AA are dominating.