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Comment by Jaxkr | Hacker News Reader

> I haven't bought a new game since 2016, and I'll never support the gaming industry ever again :)

Oh, come on… While there may be a lot of games trying strange monetization strategies, the majority of the industry is still great.

So many amazing and innovative games have come out in the last 5 years. Breath of the Wild, Half Life Alyx, Valheim, and countless others.

Gaming is the largest entertainment industry. Larger than movies and TV. You can’t just write it off because of a few bad eggs, there’s too much to miss.

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Yep. The latest headline Zelda, Mario, and Metroid titles have been really great.

Steam also has a fantastic collection of titles. My favorites this year are all older, but great (and work well on Linux, by the way):

- Journey (I liked this way more than I expected to)

- Donut County

- A Short Hike

- Inside (from the makers of Limbo... an amazing game)

- Limbo

Each of those is pretty different from the rest, but they're all great, in my opinion, and come loaded with near-zero BS.

Just wanted to give a hearty thumbs up to Inside.

I haven't found myself feeling much motivation for games over the past 5 or so years. I'm getting old. Everything feels so predictable and boring (to me).

But Inside.

That game touched something new and nostalgic and gorgeous. I've played through it a half dozen times now just to feel it all again.

Highly recommend.

You may (or may not) be interested in Little Nightmares 1 and 2. Also Limbo from the same dev as Inside if you haven't played it.

EDIT: I see now GP recommended Limbo already.

Thanks! I'll take a look

I absolutely agree that the regressions in gaming are avoidable if you filter a bit more aggressively and that there have been many great releases still. However pretending that monetization-first game design, predatory micro transactions are "a few bad eggs" is just false, they have infested most of AAA space and have creeped into parts of the AA and indie sphere too.

Given the amount of games that release, you got it the wrong way around, it's not "a few bad eggs", it's "a few good eggs" in a basket full of bad eggs. I mean that in a proportional way, and gladly the egg basket is very big, so the few good eggs are enough to have a good time without bothering with the bad and predatory ones.

Given the amount of games that release, you got it the wrong way around, it's not "a few bad eggs", it's "a few good eggs" in a basket full of bad eggs.

I would really enjoy to something even close to evidence that shows this to be true, because this sounds...far from correct, to put it nicely.

> evidence

We are talking about a somewhat subjective topic here, so first you'd have to establish criteria to measure this, which works the other way around as well. Do you have evidence to show that the majority of games are "amazing and innovative"?

However let me try to make an argument: The example I replied to claims that "So many amazing and innovative games have come out in the last 5 years", the examples are games that stand out specifically because they are pretty different than the main stream.

Let's take a look at some numbers: in the years 2015-2021 a total of 49527 games released on Steam [1] alone, now to make a proper point for what I've said we'd have to make the number more accurate since I added some characteristics to my statements.

Nonetheless, imagine 49527 + total games released on console and then remove, let's say duplicates (re-releases, games released on multiple platforms etc.) from that list. Are you trying to tell me that if you take that resulting number that a significant percentage of that number are amazing and innovate games and that the number of "bad eggs" will be insignificant enough to deserve the classification "a few bad eggs" in a large pool?

I think that is a topic absolutely worth discussing, especially with a bit more time to spend on refining and looking at more numbers (like only AAA released, released with monetization etc.) and I find it absolutely possible that I am wrong in my sentiment, but so far I believe that your claim sounds "far from correct", or should I say "further from correct". And listing ~5 titles isn't enough to convince me, even if I add the very very good games I have played in the past 5 years (and I can certainly come up with a few dozen myself).

[1]: https://steamspy.com/

Defining AAA games is kind of hot or miss, but off the top of my head for 2020.

(Micro Transactions)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Destiny 2: Beyond Light, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, The Last of Us Part II, Fallout 76, … and it just keeps going that’s plenty to say it’s infested the AAA space.

Don’t get me wrong I understand the revenue potential, but I want a freaking warning label because any micro transactions is an instant pass for me.

Interesting, I'd have listed last of us part 2 as an example of a great game without microtransactions.

Lots of Sony first party IP is along the same lines - God of War, Horizon, etc - probably because they're invested in the console ecosystem rather than total revenue from individual titles at the expense of others.

Developer said multiplayer last of us II will have micro transactions. But I can see the argument in both directions on that one.

Personally, I thought the game was clunky but I know plenty enjoyed it and it’s clearly a AAA title.

A few people in my family play Animal Crossing: NH, and as far as I can tell from what they've told me it doesn't have microtransactions...

Sort of, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp very much had them, but Nintendo apparently changed their minds on NH based on the in app purchases message being removed from it’s ESRB page.

However, they “removed” micro transactions from the game very late, but it still infects early gameplay with a forced very slow start based on real world delays for the first 2 weeks.

> I would really enjoy to something even close to evidence that shows this to be true, because this sounds...far from correct, to put it nicely.

The majority of games by most metrics being crap rings true to me, but I have relatively little evidence.

My gut instinct (yeah, not evidence) is that the games that have the most players, either by total playtime or absolute numbers, are mobile games. Things like Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Fire Emblem Heroes, and other addictive mobile games that are effectively slot-machines.

I'd argue that these are the most predatory games in existence, and probably have the largest total play time total due to their addictive nature.

I would also guess there are more total mobile games than console or PC games due to the android play store being so easy to build for and publish to, and consoles/PC being relatively hard to build for with a smaller total playerbase.

If you search for numbers, you will find wildly large download numbers for these mobile games (which are probably not valuable, since it's free and many people download & delete I'd hope), but you'll also find very large revenue numbers, and fairly large player bases.

Do you think there's obvious metrics where traditional "buy once, pay again never" games are more prominent than any other type of game?

> they have infested most of AAA space

If every company has a certain chance of selling out every year, then by the time you get old most companies you grew up with will make bad products.

That's a pattern that happens with everything, and it's the one of the reasons why being loyal to brands is bad. There are a lot of newer studios that make non-predatory games that you should give a chance over the ones you played a decade ago.

I came out of “solo-game retirement” for two games this winter: Disco Elysium and Valheim, (which I also play with friends), neither of which I feel pressured by, beyond being well-designed play/exploration spaces. I swore off WoW and anything with daily quests awhile ago, knowing myself well enough now to be wary of those systems. Solo videogames cut into my reading time. That’s an ongoing challenge, as my future self (now, for my past self) would rather I have access to that much more information.

>Oh, come on… While there may be a lot of games trying strange monetization strategies, the majority of the industry is still great.

While it's possible to separate wheat from chaff, it's also OK for someone to move on from an entire category of things because of the chaff.

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