Did too many games release in Q3 of 2024?
howtomarketagame.com
howtomarketagame.com
The point being that new stuff isn’t just competing with new stuff but also old stuff.
On a more serious note, I'm really feeling like it's safer to buy dlc and updates for old games than new ones. I was one of the people who freaking preordered Kerbal Space Program 2, thinking it would be amazing and so excited for a new KSP. And then it was such a dumpster fire, I haven't played it more than a dozen hours. From a pure ROI in playtime vs cost, I've gotten literally nine times the value from Factorio then I have from KSP 2, and twenty times the value for KSP 1 (my most played game). And I still play both of them regularly.
Why risk wasting $60 when I know these old games are still good?
Busy waiting on bots to build out 16 lanes of copper smelting in my space age base right now, funney enough. Though I'm fixing LDS shortages.
On the topic of old games, many times the Minecraft Modding scene can solve the all the new games suck problem on its own!
I think that this will become a bigger and bigger problem for the games industry.
While movies, TV shows, literature, and music are always expressions of a particular time/culture/generation, games are usually much more universal.
E.g. young people today find Friends more problematic than funny, but have no problem enjoying Mario Kart.
Big difference is definitely that separation of realism. Literature is from a specific experience, TV shows try to reflect experiences. Games about a fat italian plumber throwing mushooms at go-karts doesn't really reflect any society in the last century.
very tru. Much unlike Rock n' Roll racing, which reflected the very real American experience of trying to get ahead in life by angrily launching missiles directly into the car in front of you, all while rocking out to Black Sabbath.
I was looking forward to a new Homeworld. Shame.
Now, if I waste $60 and four hours on an abysmal game, it's $60 that I could have used to take my kids to the movies, get takeout for my wife and I, or any number of other things. Same with the time. Five hours is time I could have spent cleaning the house, working on my side projects, etc.
I love gaming, and I destress by playing games, but it's not worth the now much higher opportunity cost to play the newer (usually worse) stuff.
That said, not all new games are terrible. Dredge is a game made last year that was absolutely phenomenal in my mind, and well worth the cost and time. Spent way too many late nights fishing in that game.
That’s why I prefer to buy older games that have received enough reviews from regular people.
I know I sound like the oldest gamer here, but I miss the ratchet and clank style games. Long enough to be engaging, very replayable, but not a full-time job.
This appears to be the reason with all the recent remakes of “not so old” games. People like us are much more likely to pay to relive our past joys in 4K resolution.
However a part of me often wonders if video games have got to the point where every viable idea has been attempted and it’s only downhill from here. When I was a teen, I definitely did NOT envision myself still playing Age of Empires 2 PvP with strangers online but scene is still here.
I'm making a list of all the games I want to play in retirement...
That’s probably not true, but I can’t think of any.
But 20 years+ ago? This would have been a dime a dozen licensed game.
Market's being captured, and there's less to appeal to when people are stuck in a service bubble instead of moving on. That's a big part of why consoles are stagnating in Gen 9; economy and a lot of people are fine with PS4's, which still is getting new games.
That said, while I'm normally the type to play 10-15 years behind, I did pick up a copy of stellar blade on launch day just on a whim and it was amazing. No ads, no parts of the story paywalled off, nothing but fun and they've put out a lot of updates since making improvements, and dropping new outfits and gameplay modes. I kind of felt like I hit the lottery buying a game I knew basically nothing about on day one and not feeling like I was ripped off later, but that should be the norm. I'm tempted to get Astro Bot although it seems pricey.
Japanese games feel just like the 2010's but slightly better graphics. They leave all that stuff to the mobile scene, but console games have about the same expectations when you hear "single player game". Unless you are addicted to buying skin DLC, there's not much add-ons to buy once a game is out. If these current western sentiments are a detractor, I'd start looking more into where a game is made in addition to all other research.
Korea (which is where Stellar Blade was made) and China (Black Myth Wukong) are entirely different stories, but similar outcomes. Let's just say they are rediscovering console/PC gaming and they are starting off from the 2000's model, not the 2020's western model.
It's exactly the same as farmers planting too much. It doesn't matter if people love what they planted. There is a limit to what people can reasonably consume.
Only, unlike farming, I don't expect governments to intervene in the market. Video games aren't exactly a critical good.
> Like who made too many games?
Everybody.
> Who should stop making games?
Nobody.
It's simply that more games get made than anyone can possibly consume. That counts as "too many [to consume]". That doesn't mean anything should change.
It only feels weird because we recently came from a time where it felt like you could play every game coming out (except if you allow flash games, that actually hasn't been true for a longer time than it seems).
But nobody is complaining that "we made too many t-shirt designs in 2024 and I can't wear them all."
My point is that not all musicians are complaining. And nor are all the game publishers.
they don't need to complain. Just lay off people and make the rest work harder. Ubisoft is falling in real time and their grand plan to recover is "make 2 Assassin's Creed's a year for 5 years". Denial is worse than ignorance.
No one does everything. But there is a valid reason to understand these complaints. That's all that matters.
Except that the granary system is counter-cyclical and actually provides food when there is a crisis. Subsides are pro-cyclical and can't do anything in less than 6 months on the quicker case, 1 year in general.
I did not think of AI generation starting my comment but here I am with my last sentence.
That said, horror movies specifically are often very underwhelming in the themes they explore, so horror videogames don't have a high bar to beat.
- Curses!/Jigsaw
- The Longest Journey
- Trinity
- Outcast
Text/graphical adventures were like 20-30 years ahead of Hollywood, but 20 years behind paper books and fandom.
But the thing with BB is that cheap feature-phones are an important plot device, but 2008 was a turning point in that the iPhone and Android smartphones were taking the world by storm, as did fast always-on internet. I posit that it's not so much the year or time, but the technology and experiences of the time that determine if something is considered retro.
80's was cable TV and walkmans; 90's wasn't much different, but late 90's / early 2000's was marked by the rise of the internet. But people sitting at their computer doesn't make for good TV. Late 2000's to now is the era of smartphones, but again, I don't think anyone will feel nostalgic about people sitting alone together browsing Reddit or HN for hours on end.
Its a tough call for studios, as training some talent is impossible due to zero workmanship ethics from prior trauma in production environment art. And No, most don't give a fsck about AI due to the copyright liability it injects. lol =3
Entertaining people is _very_ challenging work.
John Carmack [2]: "The work in the aerospace industry is "simple" compared to the work he does in video games"
[1] https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-marke...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospa...
I'm speculating, but the writing on the wall was there since the mid-2010s. A much needed reckoning during #MeToo opened the flood gates. It broke a clearly abusive, yet stable equilibrium. The subsequent instability saw a panicked pivot into faux-inclusive corporatization & an exodus of the talented few who made these miraculous games happen. Artistic endeavors can only sustain so many MBAs.
Look at the top studios. Ubisoft & EA have yet to take risks on a single 'inspired' original IP since 2020. Both tried to pivot to mobile, only to realize that East-Asia & gambling studios had that market cornered. Blizzard & Bethesda crumbled below a pile of scandals. Post acquisition by Microsoft, neither have produced a single decent game. Sony's existing IPs are doing doing ok; eg: GOW, Remakes, Souls-like games. But, they haven't produced fresh IP or face planted with (non)releases like Concord.
We are in an interesting Liminal space for gaming. Hyped games like GTA 6 & Elder Scrolls 6 are too far away. No recent AAA game has taken over. And the choke-hold of long running games is waning(Dota, LOL, Fortnite, CS, Pokemon Go). I see a 2 year margin for a new game to take over the scene. Black Myth showed how wide-open the arena is right now. If 2077 had managed their release well, they'd have won out....but alas. For mid-sized indie game developers (eg: Supergiant Games), this is their shot at triggering this decades Fortnite/LOL moment........Or, it'll be a roblox game. It's going to be a roblox game isn't it ?
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P.S: I'm confused why costs for AAA games have ballooned. Machines, engines & tooling have improved many fold. At the same time, consumer expectations haven't changed since Crysis released 15 years ago. It should be a lot cheaper to make polished games. That's ignoring all the benefits of gen AI too.