The industry over-compensating for Covid and failing to adapt afterwards is a pattern I've witnessed personally multiple times, so that's definitely part of it.
I think the bloat of the industry, and hedge-fund investment desperately seeking to make a bajillion dollars with no investment is a terrible supply-side monetization strategy that should lead to the downfall of most of the AAA industry excluding DIE incompetence, rampant corruption, and the worst quality control anywhere in the consumer marketplace.
I think the real threat to AAA gaming is clearly from 3 sources:
AA Developers
Indie Developers
Backlog
For AA Development, it's very clear that games that cost 50% of AAA development can still very clearly make at least as much money, and still be significantly better.
For Indie Developers, they'll never make billions of dollars, but if you acquire enough of them under a publisher, you can get a good, continuous, revenue stream which is really what investors are looking for. An indie Franchise could be minimally funded and still knock out several solid games from their developers that sell reliably well and have a strong community.
For the backlog, before ShortFatOtaku went off the deep-end, he made a very good comment about the fact that if AAA gaming ceased to exist today, most gamers wouldn't feel it because the backlog of games is so immeasurably massive that we'd probably see older games re-spawn in popularity simply because a whole slew of gamers finally got around to playing it again. If your new games are so bad that they work and look as bad as games from 5 years ago, how are you going to compete with those exact games now that they are on sale again, or that they are already in my library and I just want to play it but never got the chance to. I don't think there's an answer to it.
Hopefully we can start to see some of these shithole developers, publishers, and corporations go under. "Nature is healing", just as soon as we start seeing Game Journos and DIE directors get made homeless and lose their careers.
If your new games are so bad that they work and look as bad as games from 5 years ago
I don't even think this is a fair metric. Its hard to beat the point that graphics are already at in the last 5-7~ years short of going full body scans on everything. In fact trying to constantly one up your previous iteration is what has driven the cost of AAA gaming so high for these companies, as they keep paying millions of dollars more so that way the handful of people with MEGA ULTRA displays can see 5 additional pores on the character's face.
The problem continues to be that AAA companies are obsessed with making sure to kill off their previous games to keep the newest one the only one being played. Rather than let people choose which is their favorite in the series to play based on its specific gimmick or iteration, they must always be chasing a new carrot to move everyone over with. Which means a shit ton of money spent trying to one up themselves over and over, even if they creatively don't have anything to do it with.
There is a lot more factors at play, but I think everyone, consumer and company, spend so long thinking about "how is this one better than what came before?" and not enough time on "what make's this one worth playing *as well?" Being better everytime is a losing game because eventually you run out of bugs to fix and optimizations to make, whereas being also worth playing is always possible.
I don't even think this is a fair metric. Its hard to beat the point that graphics are already at in the last 5-7~ years short of going full body scans on everything.
Pretty much. Doing so also comes at the cost of design freedom. When pursuing realism at all cost one deviates as little as possible from the source scan, limiting the potential appeal and variety of character designs. The same is true for environments, made worse by the usage of outsourced photogrammetry. The whole modern content pipeline needs revaluation, with an emphasis on design, not realism.
"how is this one better than what came before?" and not enough time on "what make's this one worth playing *as well?"
Very much this, made worse by the culture of modern studios. Ultimately, ideas and execution dictate player experience. Studios being responsible to multiple external authorities while walking on egg shells internally precludes the spontaneity that resulted in some of the industries best ideas. It's not just a matter of priorities, but the ideas themselves not materialising because a creative process has been stripped of the creativity.
The industry over-compensating for Covid and failing to adapt afterwards is a pattern I've witnessed personally multiple times, so that's definitely part of it.
I think the bloat of the industry, and hedge-fund investment desperately seeking to make a bajillion dollars with no investment is a terrible supply-side monetization strategy that should lead to the downfall of most of the AAA industry excluding DIE incompetence, rampant corruption, and the worst quality control anywhere in the consumer marketplace.
I think the real threat to AAA gaming is clearly from 3 sources:
For AA Development, it's very clear that games that cost 50% of AAA development can still very clearly make at least as much money, and still be significantly better.
For Indie Developers, they'll never make billions of dollars, but if you acquire enough of them under a publisher, you can get a good, continuous, revenue stream which is really what investors are looking for. An indie Franchise could be minimally funded and still knock out several solid games from their developers that sell reliably well and have a strong community.
For the backlog, before ShortFatOtaku went off the deep-end, he made a very good comment about the fact that if AAA gaming ceased to exist today, most gamers wouldn't feel it because the backlog of games is so immeasurably massive that we'd probably see older games re-spawn in popularity simply because a whole slew of gamers finally got around to playing it again. If your new games are so bad that they work and look as bad as games from 5 years ago, how are you going to compete with those exact games now that they are on sale again, or that they are already in my library and I just want to play it but never got the chance to. I don't think there's an answer to it.
Hopefully we can start to see some of these shithole developers, publishers, and corporations go under. "Nature is healing", just as soon as we start seeing Game Journos and DIE directors get made homeless and lose their careers.
I don't even think this is a fair metric. Its hard to beat the point that graphics are already at in the last 5-7~ years short of going full body scans on everything. In fact trying to constantly one up your previous iteration is what has driven the cost of AAA gaming so high for these companies, as they keep paying millions of dollars more so that way the handful of people with MEGA ULTRA displays can see 5 additional pores on the character's face.
The problem continues to be that AAA companies are obsessed with making sure to kill off their previous games to keep the newest one the only one being played. Rather than let people choose which is their favorite in the series to play based on its specific gimmick or iteration, they must always be chasing a new carrot to move everyone over with. Which means a shit ton of money spent trying to one up themselves over and over, even if they creatively don't have anything to do it with.
There is a lot more factors at play, but I think everyone, consumer and company, spend so long thinking about "how is this one better than what came before?" and not enough time on "what make's this one worth playing *as well?" Being better everytime is a losing game because eventually you run out of bugs to fix and optimizations to make, whereas being also worth playing is always possible.
Pretty much. Doing so also comes at the cost of design freedom. When pursuing realism at all cost one deviates as little as possible from the source scan, limiting the potential appeal and variety of character designs. The same is true for environments, made worse by the usage of outsourced photogrammetry. The whole modern content pipeline needs revaluation, with an emphasis on design, not realism.
Very much this, made worse by the culture of modern studios. Ultimately, ideas and execution dictate player experience. Studios being responsible to multiple external authorities while walking on egg shells internally precludes the spontaneity that resulted in some of the industries best ideas. It's not just a matter of priorities, but the ideas themselves not materialising because a creative process has been stripped of the creativity.