Y'know, we all dislike DLC, and we can't really stop people from buying them, we can only just not buy them ourselves. You can encourage others not to, but you know they sell, as in game shops are in almost every AAA game now.
But the other side of this sword is that I honestly do not remember saying "I'm not going to buy this AAA game unless it costs more than the GDP of a small country just to make."
I was happy when my games were made by a team of less than 15, and the experience was fun and unique. You can't get a fun and unique experience hardly anymore with how it has to appeal to every single person on earth who has heard video games exist. It has to have mass market appeal because it cost a quarter billion dollars to make.
It'll also have to have an in game shop with high priced FOMO items and all the other garbage they can cram in there that you used to be able to unlock as you played.
There's no way this samey game with the one new thing is going to get enough people to buy it to cover the cost of making it. So the devs get sacked in favor of retaining money after the sale, even if it sells millions of copies. It won't be enough.
You wind up with this genre flavored samey game that is only a tiny bit different than all the others because this one company does this new thing. And don't worry, if new thing is accepted as innovative, it'll be copied into every other game in and out of the genre until people are tired of it.
And that's not even dipping into the always online BS that does not need to be in every title it's shoehorned onto. Or the DEI to the rescue bucks where they tack on the gayness and the brownness just to cover some of the development costs.
Anyway, none of that is why I play video games. It's probably why retro titles continue to hold their value. And for those that don't like retro games, why the indie scene is exploding in popularity. You just put the retro game in and you're playing within seconds. No in game shop, no FOMO items, no always online server.
"I'm not going to buy this AAA game unless it costs more than the GDP of a small country just to make."
It was inevitable when the graphical appearance of a game was the biggest "challenge" for most of video game's early life. The mechanical complexity of something like an action game or an RPG didn't really jump a lot from the 80s-00s, so the focus was entirely on being less blocky and ugly.
And because each game that was "mindblowing" did usually become a massive seller, it taught those companies to chase that shit forever. Look at the just released Hellblade 2, which thought that having absurdly realistic character motions and graphics would turn a niche cult sequel into a huge seller.
Its also partially a problem that games journos don't get blamed for enough. Because they will write gushing articles about beautiful graphics over and over, but their sheer lack of gaming skill or knowledge means they can't really understand or hype up anything else. So Game Corporations, who still treat games journalism as a legitimate focus, will push graphics to get that article mill going.
Unironically, I think if gamergate had happened a decade prior and prevented the strong bond between games journos and Game Corpos from forming, the graphical fidelity (and thereby budget explosion) focus might never have happened.
Y'know, we all dislike DLC, and we can't really stop people from buying them, we can only just not buy them ourselves. You can encourage others not to, but you know they sell, as in game shops are in almost every AAA game now.
But the other side of this sword is that I honestly do not remember saying "I'm not going to buy this AAA game unless it costs more than the GDP of a small country just to make."
I was happy when my games were made by a team of less than 15, and the experience was fun and unique. You can't get a fun and unique experience hardly anymore with how it has to appeal to every single person on earth who has heard video games exist. It has to have mass market appeal because it cost a quarter billion dollars to make.
It'll also have to have an in game shop with high priced FOMO items and all the other garbage they can cram in there that you used to be able to unlock as you played.
There's no way this samey game with the one new thing is going to get enough people to buy it to cover the cost of making it. So the devs get sacked in favor of retaining money after the sale, even if it sells millions of copies. It won't be enough.
You wind up with this genre flavored samey game that is only a tiny bit different than all the others because this one company does this new thing. And don't worry, if new thing is accepted as innovative, it'll be copied into every other game in and out of the genre until people are tired of it.
And that's not even dipping into the always online BS that does not need to be in every title it's shoehorned onto. Or the DEI to the rescue bucks where they tack on the gayness and the brownness just to cover some of the development costs.
Anyway, none of that is why I play video games. It's probably why retro titles continue to hold their value. And for those that don't like retro games, why the indie scene is exploding in popularity. You just put the retro game in and you're playing within seconds. No in game shop, no FOMO items, no always online server.
Just you and the game.
It was inevitable when the graphical appearance of a game was the biggest "challenge" for most of video game's early life. The mechanical complexity of something like an action game or an RPG didn't really jump a lot from the 80s-00s, so the focus was entirely on being less blocky and ugly.
And because each game that was "mindblowing" did usually become a massive seller, it taught those companies to chase that shit forever. Look at the just released Hellblade 2, which thought that having absurdly realistic character motions and graphics would turn a niche cult sequel into a huge seller.
Its also partially a problem that games journos don't get blamed for enough. Because they will write gushing articles about beautiful graphics over and over, but their sheer lack of gaming skill or knowledge means they can't really understand or hype up anything else. So Game Corporations, who still treat games journalism as a legitimate focus, will push graphics to get that article mill going.
Unironically, I think if gamergate had happened a decade prior and prevented the strong bond between games journos and Game Corpos from forming, the graphical fidelity (and thereby budget explosion) focus might never have happened.