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.