Why Video Game Generally Suck Now.

AnonUnlimited said:

It's also saving gaming with indies. Without capitalism, indie companies can't compete.

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I don' t know that they compete, more like corpos haven't found a way to destroy basic human creativity yet. Ai is helping with that though.

JayMark said:

I don't like capitalism. I don't like socialism. But I'm fine with free market and individual incentives to profits. I hate corporatism, which is ultimately another concentration of power in the hands of the elite. It's funny how capitalists claim to want free markers but are okay with greedy corporate owners and executives gaining too much power and how socialists claim to be all about the people but are fine with greedy government officials amassing too much power. Ultimately, it seems most humans care more about their particular cult leaders being in power than overall freedom and well being of their species.

I'd generally agree that capitalism ruins gaming. Capitalism is a derogative toined coined by the marxists implying the worship of material wealth. Those only trying to amass wealth and power don't care about gaming as an art form or even as entertainment. Their only goal is to extract resources from the consumer while providing as little as possible back. Or they're trying to gain an easy audience, thus resources, by pandering to a political faction for locked in audience. *it's funny how often the people pandered too don't actually really care though.

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Marxist beef these days.

That aside, capitalism isn’t inherently a bad thing. Though, unregulated, and it spirals out of control.

As such, it is why you eventually end up in situations such as gaming, where the top branch can push out poor quality.

At the same time, it allows for independent studios. Which can meet the demand that is lacking.

SouthernMaiden said:

I don' t know that they compete, more like corpos haven't found a way to destroy basic human creativity yet. Ai is helping with that though.

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Silksong won game of the year and sold like gangbusters, meanwhile... big corporations are losing money.
It's not as simple as Capitalism vs Socialism.
It's more... who controls socialism, since socialism is also both good and bad.

Socialism is about control capitalism is about a lack of control.
However... unregulated capitalism will always become socialism, since monopolies will seek to control the market through government (which is the definition of socialism).

As someone who's played around 150games just this last 12months, my claim is there are lots of great games out there. Sure, maybe less than in the 90s-10s, but more than enough for a single person.

The problem isn't gaming, the problem is the same in all entertainment industries (except pr0n, that industry ALWAYS strives). Consumerism has stopped games and movies, TV shows, heck, even books from attempting to be art, and instead forced them to become a product you consume. Just look at the overwhelming numbers of isekai power fantasies and try to tell me those aren't unhealthy fast food aimed at an endlessly shit-consuming fanbase...

Everything needs to be shiny, appeal to everyone, offend no one, and at best (worst) be bought in incremental steps. Indie games and AA titles, at least the popular and/or successful ones, still follow the "artistic" approach of having a noticeable vision or a leitmotif; they still have heart poured into it and a charm unique to them.

AAA is all corporate greed on a checklist: Offend no one, tick off all the practices that could get the Corpo subsidiaries or tax reductions by incorporating whatever unoffensive political view needs to be pushed, the teams working on the games are the equivalent of conveyor belt workers who don't know anything about the product except their own tiny step, and the people planning the game are more interested in ticking off the boxes of what was popular at the start of "production" than "creating" something that could be popular at the end of it's creation...

Games started appealing to the common denominator, and people complain, but still buy them, and then microtransactions and games-as-a-service came along and people's habits didn't change. I love videogames, but at this point, they rank pretty low to any adult that can afford to do other things, especially if they have a 9 to 5. You're not gonna have as much fun on even something like Fortnite if you don't even have time to keep up. There's a bubble about to pop, and you can see the recent effort to make games good again, because the gaming industry is in competition for attention with social media, television, film, and real life. When you ask someone if they'd rather play the same basketball game that's been released annually for decades, or go to a nice dinner and a movie, then money is usually the determining factor. With games desperately trying to leech every dollar from their audience the last decade, it's really a matter of it you want to live in real life versus a digital one. Some people choose the Isekai route.

There's also the cultural norms around gaming. For a long time, gaming was seen as nerdy and a sign of being a loser. A lot needed to happen to change that perception. Pokemon, Mario, and more notably things like PS2, Nintendo SP and DS, and Wii that appealed to a super wide demographic. The entire gaming industry is built upon it's own reputation. The interruption literally came from external forces like social media, and internal forces like money-leeching. The gaming industry hasn't had to survive a deficit since the 80's when it seemed like it might just be a trend. In other words, the 2020's or 2030's might be the first time that they really have to adjust their business strategies to appeal to consumers.

Around the time of Wii or Skyrim, games got so amazing that even non-gamers could understand the appeal, and it set a standard going forward that was hard to keep up with while maximizing profit. The rise continued with YouTube and Twitch being perfect counterparts to the industry, but with the rise of social media and bigger soapboxes for negative voices, things began to change. With games becoming less consistently amazing, and a certain demographic of people in the gaming community becoming more vocal, the stereotype of the "loser" gamer started making a comeback. While some people flex hundreds of hours on games, hustle culture started rising with social media, effectively creating 2 demographics in the younger generation. You're either a consumer of content or an addict to it, or you're the one making the content.

Realistically, 99% of people are consumers, but most people don't want to see it that way whilst still judging others for it. When you bought a Wii, or when you were playing Skyrim, or GTA 5, you were partaking in a cultural phenomenon that even non-gamers could appreciate, but now when you're playing CoD: Black Ops 17, and you're not generating income from it, the loser stereotype is back. The economic disparity has gotten so out of control, that if you're not making money, it's easy to judge what others are doing.

Now, I don't hate gaming. I love gaming. That's the thing. I love gaming, and I'm lucky if I have even one day a month where I can enjoy games. When I see someone putting in like 400 hours on Elden Ring, I'm thinking how they have the time to do so if they're a functional adult. It's not that I don't want to, but imagine how people that don't like gaming feel. I know plenty of people that immediately associate being a gamer with being a loser, and I can see why. Remember, gaming has been in increased competition with social media for almost twenty years now, and social media is very skewed towards hustle culture and flexing.

To bring it all back, I think a lot of dedicated gamers dropped off as the games became more stale, because they compared it to what they could do in real life. It's not that they won't be back for something like GTA 6, but there are so many things to do in life that gaming seems like a lesser return on investment. Children don't have money, so they rely on their parents. Adults have money, and after accounting for dating, flexing, traveling, and other things, gaming gets a smaller cut. If you spend $70 on new shoes or a shirt, it socially does more for you than on playing a game.

RE7 came out recently, and despite it's amazing reviews, there's absolutely nothing that makes it a must-buy for fans that aren't hardcore. That's the problem. They're not even trying. Most games either require you already be a fan, that you dedicate lots of time to building non-transferable skills, or that you spend loads of money. This turns a LOT of people off to gaming, especially when most of our culture and algorithms revolve around seeing people living their best "real" lives.

Ultimately, I'd say if you want make gaming great again, you have to make actual good games that aren't objectively a waste of time. I know someone's gonna say "but it's not a waste of time because I like it," which cool. There's just a lot of recreation that you can engage with that also leads to real world benefits. Even the games that do result in transferable skills are usually far less popular than the basic slop we get these days. If you're playing 2K, it's hard to say it's a better use of time than playing basketball IRL.

Once again, I love gaming. I used to rationalize it as $60 buying hundreds of hours of content versus 4 movie tickets for 90 minutes of content. The more I grow into adult life though, the more ways I can think of spending $60 and 60 minutes more efficiently. Especially when you're just reaching early adulthood, every hour you spend playing a game is a potential hour you could have used to benefit your social or professional life. The Wii was popular because even a grandmother could get behind the idea of exploring a cultural innovation while getting a bit of exercise. Now gaming has returned to the stereotypical picture of a scruffy unemployed person in a dark room, and if you don't have a camera in front of you while viewers pay you $20 every couple minutes, it seems like a waste of time.


Final take; I really only engage with games where I get 100% of the content for my purchase, and I almost exclusively game as socialization for long-distance friends. If the game is the exact same if I watch it on YouTube, there's no reason to buy and play it. If the game requires that I constantly play for matchmaking advantage, then it's not for me. Between those two things, that eliminates so many games, and the remainder still have to compete for my time. Games need to start appealing to and respecting adult time, otherwise the industry might come in direct conflict with the actual money-holders. If I had a kid, there's no way I'd be letting them near any game that has addiction and financial irresponsibility built into it so they can stare as a screen mindlessly for hours on a daily basis. The reputation of gaming is tanking due to corporate greed stifling true innovation.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Did you ever try Dwarf Fortress @JayMark ?

Bay 12 Games: Dwarf Fortress