I'm not saying story is a bad thing. It's not, but it seems like a lot of devs focus so heavily on coming up with an engaging story and good visuals that they forget to actually make the game fun to play.
I think about some of the games I've played over the years, and a lot of my favorites either had fairly limited or even downright absurd plots that basically boil down to an excuse to make the gameplay loop happen.
Just a random musing.
I'm assuming we're talking big corporate gaming.
Games are becoming more story heavy, because they are hiring (heavy hehe) non gamers to create games. At bare minimum you're getting devs and team members who are just normies. Most often you're getting communications and business degree grads, of whom most are indoctrinated.
Gone are those gamers who wanted to make games for other gamers. They don't get hired. It used to be a requirement that you were passionate about games, that you could impress that in your interview. Now that's a detriment. Like how they don't hire cops or FBI bros with high IQ. They want compliant drones who can pad their demographics numbers.
Who IS designing the games? The suits and product managers. Are they creative? No. They just copy popular and effective trends. They hire female writers for the most part, because that's another easy in to pad demographics. The code devs are a few white dudes, and 85% H-1B Asians. Sometimes a couple Canadians.
So, we're getting story heavy games. With a feature focus on pain points that can be alleviated by MTX. Game mechanics are difficult to fake and require more QA, so they reuse, copy, and stretch engines past their shelf life.
The smart talent is gone, because they realized that AAA gaming companies would all be making mobile gachas or sports betting if they could, but the C-suite paid big money for these IP's that need milking.
Makes sense.
yeah, the independent games are where it's at these days, and even that can be a craps shoot sometimes.