You don't say; I honestly can't tell the difference between most AAA titles and Hollywood films nowadays.
No, I don't buy either.
No, I don't buy either.
Nothing of value is lost. Nowadays games are manufactured dopamine-gamifying cashgrabs and movies are propaganda outlets for whatever care-free non-STEM academics have brewed up as "current thing".
2000s was the golden era of gaming. Just compare remakes of RE2 and RE3 with the original PS1 ones. Or the new Wolfenstein series with Castle Wolfenstein.
>whatever care-free non-STEM academics have brewed up as "current thing".
Ah nevermind you're one of these people that think that not being in STEM is a crime, my bad, I thought we could have a rational discussion.
>Or the new Wolfenstein series with Castle Wolfenstein.
So, better in every possible way, with more brutal and satisfying fighting than Castle Wolfenstein ever had, still killing nazis (something that everyone ought to be happy with) ? I sure hope you're not angry about the fact that your crew is made up of a polish man, a jew, a mentally ill man and other kinds of people the nazis called undesirables making it a fun clap back at them. Right ? That's definitely not what your problem is, _right_ ?
I'm sure that you have no problems with games now including deeper themes like death and being a father (God of War), vengeance (The Last of Us Part 2), atonement (The Last of Us), paranormal activities (Control), or just being straight up absolutely great games with good stories like Prey, RDR2, Divinity, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Octopath Traveler being varied and relaxing like Stardew, Terraria, being better metroidvanias than anything that came out before like Hollow Knight, Ori, amazing roguelikes like Hades, Dead Cells, Returnal, or just an infinite variety if I just go even in the last ten years.
There are new indie gems all the time. Tunic, Hades, Hollow knight, Risk of Rain, Overgrowth, Return of the Obra Dinn, Kerbal Space Program, Factorio, and the list goes on. Innovative gameplay, music, visuals are everywhere. Often indie games cater to niches. They don't appeal to everybody, which is part of their charm.
Just like blockbusters are usually average in most respects other than their budget. That makes for pretty good results on every single aspect, but given the budget, studios won't take risks by innovating too much in unknown areas.
They were still far larger than todays indie studios, todays indies are making great games but the kind of budget novel ideas had back then rarely exist for novel games today.
Still, there are AA games studios, even if most have been swallowed due to market consolidation lately.
GSC Game world (300 employees, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), Team 17 (200 employees, worms, overcooked, escapists), PopCap games, etc.
But I kind of prove your point as most I can fit in the above list mostly churn out sequels to their previously succesful titles.
On the other hand, making good and technically impressive games has become easier and cheaper over the past two decades, with indies often reaching or going above the bar placed by AAA studios back then.
Tunic was made by a single developer, for instance.
Horse armor in 2006. Oblivion was also commercially successful and showed a game would still be successful even if it was a buggy mess on release.
Blizzard introduced WoW’s cash shop in 2008 and sold its first pet, all as part of the incredibly successful Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Although really the first sign of things to come was with the trading card game and its in-game tie-ins. That was released in 2006. First pet in 2008 and the first mount available for cash at the battle.net shop was in 2010 with the Celestial Steed. Oh yes, people were upset and mad. But that mount was /everywhere/ in-game.
Worst offender by far was valve’s introduction of TF2 hats in 2009 and their continuation of cs:go loot boxes in the 2010s. This is not some outsider company btw, this is industry veteran and industry darling valve.
Golden age is such a joke.
"It's a cash grab!"
...then don't buy them? Like, I literally don't get it at all. It had zero effect on the game.
Then there loot box drops like in CS:GO, or when a game adds in little inconveniences like limited inventory tabs, character limits, or games that add a grind and a way to avoid that grind via cash (XP buffs and the like).
It also sucks when the cash shop items take away from in-game content. Pretty sure this was an issue in WoW not too long ago when Blizzard added cash shop items that looked better and had better features than the in-game items you had to earn via raiding.
Then there are games like The Sims where you pay full price for the base game and then there are like a dozen different DLC packs of varying quality. I see they now made the game free to play (I paid full price when it was released) with a subscription option but I can also go to the DLC, add all of it to my cart, and pay $1,044.37 to get all the content. Awesome!
But really, the worst offender is CS:GO. You get FREE boxes in-game, pay for keys to open the free boxes you got, and you get those addicting animations and sounds. Literal slot machines being advertised to adults and children every day. How this hasn't been banned everywhere yet is beyond me. Egregious and greedy trash
Things weren't better, you were just younger.
I was a teen in the 2000s and I had free time and every game felt new and exciting. There is 0 chance the landscape for media isn't a trillion times better now though.
Games weren't made to be cash grabs that will be edited in post.
Say what you want about games in 2000 but people draining all their savings on a game was THE news, not just another mobile/gacha game.
And if game didn't ship fully done it got panned. Today they get score based on number of dinners writer was on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsiman_(video_game)
> And if game didn't ship fully done it got panned.
Bethesda is literally one of the most revered game companies and their bugs are as iconoic as their questlines
> Bethesda is literally one of the most revered game companies and their bugs are as iconoic as their questlines
*Despite their bugs. And even Morrowind caused uproar when it corrupted your saves and what not.
Considering the guy above was talking about RE remakes and Lord of the rings, I don't think he cares about gacha games as they are not triple A.
And sure those are bad, awful but they are hardly videogames. They are rebranded fruit machines. King the dumb company behind candy crush etc has more psychologists than programmers in their office to help people get addicted.
I do not think that is a problem of the gaming industry as entertainment, because it is not a videogame, its a Skinner Machine with a couple mini games to get the conditioning going.
> And even Morrowind caused uproar when it corrupted your saves and what not.
But it did not affect their scores, reputation or sales. Same as cyberpunk 2077 or probably Starfield later this year.
Gacha mechanics and its ilk are everywhere, from Battlefield to Diablo to Overwatch, etc. Most egregious example probably being Genshin Impact.
> But it did not affect their scores, reputation or sales. Same as cyberpunk 2077
Sure because rest of the game was amazing, but not even CP2077 escaped reviewers wrath. It got panned for poor perf and its user score on metacritic is justifiably low.
Genshing is LITERALLY a gacha, is not that it has mechanics, its the main loop of engagement. The gameplay loop is just a breath of the wild lite
> but not even CP2077 escaped reviewers wrath.
You are kinda proving the opposite to your previous point. You said back in the day reviewers would not excuse poor performance, and now they do. Instead you admitted CP2077 got its reviews affected by performance but Morrowind didn't
It's not from what I understand. Main loop is the Explore -> Fight -> Unlock. Only unlock part is Gacha.
> You are kinda proving the opposite to your previous point.
You didn't read what I wrote.
> And if game didn't ship fully done it got panned. Today they get score based on number of dinners writer was on
CP didn't invest in enough dinners, people were shitting on lack of true trans inclusion before it released.
And now those reviews matter very little because CP2077 got patched into a usable state.
What saved CD Project Red was huge preorder catalog. They were profitable before CP 2077 was released.
Arcade games were literal cash grabs, dating back to the 70s. Insert coin to continue.
When was the last time a movie like the lord of the rings was released? 20 years, when it was released. Since then movies went more into soulless 3d rendering and so on. Big budget games took a similar path, back then investors hadn't figured out that they could churn out the same game over and over with new graphics so they funded a lot of novel game ideas, but that stopped and now most big budget games are very much the same.
The landscape might be better today in theory, but in practice the culture that made those days happen is no longer there and it wont come back since what made it happen was bridging old tech skills with new tech skills, the old skills are no longer there.
Literally one movie, that was an unexpected hit is your contender for better culture?
In 2001 the highest grossing movie was Harry potter, and right below lord of the rings was monsters inc and jurasic park.
In 2002 Lord of the rings, Harry potter, Spiderman
in 2003 lord of the rings, matrix,nemo and pirates of the caribean.
Like how is that any different to now when you have pirates, spiderman, some children disney movie and fantastic beats which is just more harry potter?
> the old skills are no longer there.
Dune had more practical effects than lord of the rings. In 2001 the TV golden age had not started. Shows like the sopranos and the wire where struggling to find an audience. Friends and CSI reigned. Nowadays House of the Dragon and Last of US two high quality shows, with good use of practical effects are doing better than comparable mediocre daytime tv.
Even blockbusters are in many ways better. Andor is a million times better than anything from the 2000s prequels.
Just think about modern games like Elden Ring, BoTW, Overwatch, TLOU2, Immortality, Celeste and Hades, just to name some of the more popular yet interesting titles that came to mind.
I recently discovered L.O.L: Lack of Love (Dreamcast, 2000)[1][2] due to stumbling upon the soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto[3], and I've been meaning to try to find a way to play it.
1: https://lparchive.org/Lack-of-Love/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.O.L.:_Lack_of_Love 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZjeC4BiUuM
Interesting. In my view, the 2000s is when computer games started their downhill slide.
Something tells me a lot of this incredibly subjective and depends on when you first cut your teeth on video games.
I'm assuming the AAA game studios and Holywood know what they're doing, and money is definitely an objective. But why do they not succeed in telling an interesting story? Is it the focus on production quality? Is that the result of compromise between too many middle managers? Or simply: too much money, no one cares?
If you try to create a product for everyone, you will end up with a product so bland and void of character that noone will want it. A good product has its fair shares of fans and detractors, a bad product either has only fans or detractors.
I feel that somehow, even with all those dedicated, inspired (and underpaid) creatives working insane hours, organizational structures (middle managers?) unintentionally prevent all that creativity from bubbling up. (I'm saying unintentionally here to suppress sarcasm but also because obviously a successful product is in the organization's best interest.)
Yes.
Consider games like Octopath Traveller which aim for and sell to a specific audience (fans of jRPGs from the 90s), they succeed where the likes of CoD don't. Successful products begin by knowing who you want to sell to and why.
Developing and selling a one-size-fits-all product to everyone, that is "the Average Man", simply won't work because the Average Man doesn't exist. The US Air Force will be happy to educate anyone on this. Noone wants a bland, vapid, sanitary product "for everyone".
Well, empirically you're wrong. Unfortunately, there's enough of a market for Marvel movies and big-ass games titles to make huge profits, even if we feel they're too average, too mediocre to spend a single dime.
...But I get what you're saying. ;-)
2.5 million sales for Octopath Traveler (and OT2 doing awful).
Do I really need to pull out the sales numbers of Call of Duty, or do you admit right now that you made a horrible bad faith argument?
And please, do not use the "but sales don't mean it's good" argument either. You can _easily_ find 2.5 million people that truly enjoy Call of Duty.
People enjoying it does not mean it's good.
Otherwise McDonalds is the best cuisine of all time.
I buy the argument for games though, which historically have been much cheaper to produce and hence could be targeted to a smaller audience.
If you don't partake, maybe that's why you can't tell the difference.
Do you steal them?
CoD games from the past decade or so are particularly egregious examples, among many others. You could market them as Hollywood action thrillers and most people wouldn't notice a difference.