State Of the Industry

Video Games
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Ok, so this is obviously an “old man yells at cloud” type post, but does anyone else feel more and more disheartened by the industry?

The constant shift to digital only models, which have proven time and again to be non-consumer friendly; the mass layoffs by huge publishers while their CEOs continue to earn literal millions; the constant price rise of everything, often while services are stripped; the push for every games to be AAA causing companies to go bust if said game isn’t a humongous success (or even if it is) as well as a dearth of originality and experimentation; a games press who rag on every game that isn’t The Most Amazing Thing In All Of Creation.

It’s just…too much. While I still enjoy playing games, the actual industry is really starting to make me wonder if I want to keep consuming new games. There are an absolute plethora of older games I’ve missed, maybe it’d be better to go back and experience those? It might mean a bit or work with emulators and such, but at least I know I won’t be lining the pockets of some suited wanker who cares nothing for his workers, only for what yacht he’ll be buying next.

The passion you saw from game makers and even publishers 10-15 years ago seem in incredibly short supply nowdays. All we get now is earnings calls and live service.

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It definitely feels more sterile than exciting. Some of that has to do with age and my own expectations but I do agree that it’s pretty rare when I feel legitimately positive with the industry and the future of gaming. While I haven’t played it yet, Larian Studios gives me hope with how they’ve handled Baldur’s Gate 3 and their brutal criticism of the industry.

Right now I think I’m excited for the next Nintendo console but there’s a good chance it will end up being disappointing or at the very least “okay”.

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I think the AAA industry is in a serious bad spot and a major paradigm shift is needed or else worse will come.

But I do think that there is hope among a lot of indie companies and devs and that there are still great games coming out all the time. As @Roach points out, medium size companies like Larian also give me hope that there are bigger studios that don’t want any part of the B.S. that the AAA studios are trying to feed us.

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One thing PC gaming allows for is a huge number of small indie devs who keep that passion alive by putting out cool, less AAA-y games. Larian definitely showed that a big game could be well-made but I suspect Bethesda, whose creative trajectory has clearly been dipping for years might be more indicative of the AAA industry. Or EA, who seem to put almost no effort into their releases at all. Larian may have won the accolades but Bethesda and EA continue to sell a lot of games. I just don’t see any company that interested in a profit trying to be Larian.

Maybe there will eventually be some kind of reckoning where the latest reskin of Madden or FIFA or the latest live service shooter or the latest empty, been-there-done-that AAA RPG aren’t among the year’s top selling games but not any time soon. Just keep supporting that indie market, I guess.

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I feel bad that more and more single player games are always online, adding always online DRM to Steam / other client DRM.

Games like the latest Hitman games being re-done and re-bundled and changed to the point where I cannot find out what version I actually have on the EPIC store and what DLC I am missing. IO Interactive are not getting enough heat for this, so I am sure they will do it again with whatever their next IP is.

Gaming being more and more online and also whole countries just shutting down online access to publishers or Steam, like what happened with Activision-Blizzard and China or recently Steam and Vietnam (I think?) and people losing access to their entire accounts and using VPNs being dangerous because against local law AND the Steam TOS.

E-sports and game development being either bought by Saudi Arabia or heavily influenced by them. The whole Embracer Group mess also happens partly because of the money they put into gaming - or not, as in this case.

Right-wing extremists have been popping up on Steam (especially in the German-centric forums, but probably in others as well) since the moderation was changed from volunteer mods to paid mods, and nothing is being done because the paid ones only act when enough reports appear. A German gaming magazine tested the reporting and only 1% of their reports of blatant Nazi stuff were removed. Removed as in the account holder is left with nothing but a picture or text deleted or a group closed and they just open up a new one.

I could go on and on, but then I remember that there are things worse than the gaming industry, that I only have so much energy, and that I have to be careful about which battles I can and should fight, so I focus on local politics and issues instead.

Those are also the days when I look at my backlog and feel safe in the knowledge that I have great games without bullshit attached to them for two lives, so I can just stay away from whatever bad things are coming.

If a young person were to ask me what I think of them pursuing a career in the games industry, I would try to explain to them that they should also try to acquire skills that will allow them to work in another IT field, because it is a difficult industry to survive in and may not be worth trying or staying in, even in Germany where the law prevents the worst practices.

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Well said. Games are fun but the world is facing so many issues today that they really are not worth that much emotional energy.

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Yes, the AAA industry has been in “enshittification” mode for a while now, but in more recent years it totally feels like it’s been hitting a breaking point. Like everyone says, indie games and smaller companies seem to still be the bright spot of the industry and deliver the creativity and passion that’s lacking from the big corporations. At this point I think the AAA industry just needs to collapse in order to find itself again. The corporate structures that incentivize things like microtransations and live service models are what’s driving it to the ground, in my opinion.

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I don’t visit games news sites, actually this is the only video game related site I frequent. The only YouTube change I watch that is concerned with current games is SkillUp. Clearly, I’m not getting the info I should be about indie games as I’m aware of very few. So, where do you guys get your info from?

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Honestly, I just log in to the Steam suggested queue a couple of times a week. That is affected by your purchasing history, though, so no idea if yours would look like mine. I don’t even always buy but I wishlist a lot of stuff that I can come back to. Some games I’ve wishlisted I’ve been paying attention to for years. I just finished a great one called Skald: Against the Black Priory that is what I would call the epitome of well-done indie game. I’ve been waiting to play that for at least two years. The next ones I’m excited for are Death Trash, Caves of Qud and an updated version of Football: Tactics and Glory.

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There’s a couple of YouTube channels I follow, as well, like Mortisimal Gaming and SplatterCat that focus on deep reviews of the kind of indie games I tend to like.

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I find out about a lot of games here, but I do watch indie showcases like Wholesome Games, Devolver, Day of the Devs, etc. I also read several gaming sites that will feature indies and I recently started subscribing to Patch magazine, which is a print magazine about indies operating out of the UK.

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I find Steam suggestions broken because the community uses tags in bizarre ways these days (Monster Hunter Wilds is apparently a dating game thanks to tagging).

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I’m often flabbergasted at what gets recommended but when you’re checking out dozens a week, there’s always a few interesting ones.

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I don’t get “information” for indie games too much. There’s a few cozy content creators I follow but I find most indie games through Steam’s Discovery Queue, the Wholesome Direct, and Steam’s Interactive Recommender. Before Steam was recommending me weird niche games, I found a lot through there by playing around with the filters.

I’d ask @BMO more about this storefront since I know they use it a lot and I don’t, but browsing itch.io is probably a great resource as many of their games are available on Steam and other storefronts so you can use it as an indie gaming catalog basically.

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I check out Steam a decent amount, but I don’t really pay attention to the recommend stuff because everything it tries to recommend me actually isn’t of interest :man_shrugging:

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Yeah. Most of the stuff in the Discovery Queue I ignore but I have had better success with the Interactive Recommender. You could also look at curators, ones that specifically review indie games. The Wholesome Games people have one but I’m sure there’s others for ones that are less wholesome. I like the Can I Pet the Dog one too cause it’s a random assortment of games, both AAA and indie.

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I probably either click ignore or click past 80% of what the Discovery feed shows me. I don’t know why or how it determines what it thinks I might like because it’s constantly wrong.

@Roach is right, the Interactive Recommender is better because you can tweak its parameters. The biggest problem is that it tends to recommend a lot of thing I own on other platforms, which I can’t really fault it for because at least it’s making good selections and it’s not the recommender’s fault it doesn’t know what I own elsewhere.

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Does using the ignore (played on another platform) option work to filter out those repeat titles?

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Ignore mostly just prevents that game from showing up in future, so yes if you are asking if it will filter out games you own elsewhere. I don’t know what effect it has on similarly tagged games, however.

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Honestly, my advice would be to chin off AAA games and any companies that engage in scummy practices and just buy indie and AA games instead. There is SO MUCH more out there to play outside of AAA. Don’t get FOMO, just spend some time looking into it, know what you like and support what you like. The most liberating thing for me in gaming was to stop worry about playing the “next big thing”. And for the minority of big releases that i do want to play, I’ll not worry about playing it Day 1.

Play what YOU want, not what the big publishers say you should want to play.

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