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.
I'm starting to get tired of these inane "musings" posts.
Now co-op actually getting traction again after years of stagnation is some insane conspiracy? Normal gamers who have friends and siblings have lamented the loss of things like splitscreen gameplay for years. Co-op making a surge is hardly some conspiracy, if anything it's something to be celebrated.
I'm not a huge co-op person but plenty of my friends, their friends, and my siblings friends are.
Yeah, companies will take advantage of it if it gets popular, but they take advantage of everything that can get popular, that's just their nature as corporations.
Just because co-op games aren't for you, that doesn't mean they're intended to ruin the fucking game industry through some absurd casualization nonsense (and on that note, games like Dark Souls have had co-op multiplayer since the beginnings of their franchises). I think you're just out of touch with what a lot of regular people want in their games. A lot of people like having fun with their friends in games. For some it's multi-player, others it's co-op, and some it's both. Gaming has been a social experience since the early days when people would crowd around arcade machines, and co-op has been a thing for at least 3, if not possibly 4 decades in gaming. It's really not hard to figure out.
As someone who games to avoid people I agree with this. If I'm going to play with someone I'd rather it be a friend or a sibling than Chinky Chan's cheat program.
Yeah. I'm not one of OP's haters, but it's getting a bit much, even for me. I get having a passion, but he gets upset about the weirdest stuff, too. And then presents it as something everyone else should get involved with or something too.
There are such things as trends, and when one game hits it big there will be mimics. That has been going on as long as there are video games. We've had a few big coop hits recently, so we'll probably see more coop games trying to ride the wave. It's not a psyop. And we also had eras where coop was big in the past, too, such as Left 4 Dead going big.
It's not like this forum is bursting with content each day so if someone wants to share random thoughts about whatever, I say go for it. It's easy enough to hide the thread and move on if it isn't interesting.
Just a gut feeling, but it feels like the majority of them are from Lethn.
This is exactly why I brought up Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic as viable co-op games even if I personally don't like it all that much. The rest of the titles that are going to keep inevitably popping up? They're just cash grabs through monetisation. Aside from maybe stuff like Manor Lords and Kingdom Come deliverance that are both indie titles. We haven't seen a major push from AAA studios to create real singleplayer content realistically for decades. If they do any kind of singleplayer it's always some crappy walking simulator that can barely count as a game.
Suicide Squad and Redfall are just as (not)-playable in single player as in squad co-op. Starfield is single player only. The God of War Games are single player. TLOU 2 was single player. Dead Space Remake and RE4 Remake were single player. Zelda TOTK is single player. Pokemon is primarily single player. Mario is singleplayer. Hogwarts Legacy is singleplayer. Dead Island 2 is primarily single player.
Everything FromSoft makes is primarily single player. Stellar Blade is single player. I don't think Atomic Heart was AAA, but it's single player and got hype.
Single player games are absolutely still being made. You just forgot all of them.
I should state I don't play Nintendo games at all so I'm primarily looking at the PC gaming market, I don't do consoles. I feel like looking at most of the titles singleplayer is simply tacked on as an optional afterthought. As for the other games you've listed, Hogwarts Legacy yes, Dead Island 2 also yes and Atomic Heart but you're right I think that's more classed as an indie game. It did pretty well considering and was very much like a bioshock style experience.
The other titles you list are old as fuck though lets be real by current standards because let's not forget we're in 2024 now and I don't really even bother counting the 're-masters/re-makes' as new games and I'm not interested in paying £60 or whatever ridiculous price they've tacked on to play an old game again. Yes I know some will be different to a degree but meh.
Also why even mention Starfield? I definitely don't count broken woke cancer as a legitimate video game reeeee.
So… you’ve arbitrarily disqualified over half the examples given (you said ‘decades,’ but the GoW stuff is too old? Or maybe it was Elden Ring snd Armored Core you meant with that?), then still admit to three titles (which is more than the two you have)? You want an AAA game, but you also don’t count anything that’s a woke, shallow game with a buggy release (i.e. almost all of AAA?)
I mean, I could find you even more titles (Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man 2, Far Cry 6, Like a Dragon: Isshin, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth), but they’d all fall under at least one of your arbitrary disqualifications.
If you want to say “the only games I think are ‘good,’ on the one platform I pay attention to, are co-op,” thst would be one thing. But you said “the industry isn’t making any of these games,” and you’re just… really, really wrong.
Recognizing a potential market is not the same thing as artificially creating said market. If it somehow leads to a bubble, it'll pop, big deal. That's their problem if that's the case.
Multiplayer games in general have the potential to be infinite income vortexes, as companies have figured out. That has a lot more to do with the games as a service model and the nature of online multiplayer games in general though rather than just co-op.
As for singleplayer, there are western AAA companies that try to make singleplayer content... they usually just suck dogshit at it, and are also often pozzed and not worth supporting. (Unless by "real" you mean quality, which is more of a cultural and talent problem than a lack of intent to create the content in question).
I haven't played in quite a while, but the most DRG had was a handful of cosmetic bundles right? Nothing impactful, no premium battlepass shit, and they kept doing free expansions. Just a one time purchase of $30.
Helldivers is AA. DRG maybe not even that. Ghost Ship got acquired and their parent was also acquired but they're a 32 person company now. I believe they were smaller at launch.