I’m sure some of you will want to reply to this post and say “don’t you really mean single player games are dying ?” While that’s partially true I think there is more to it than that.
Games use to made with world building in mind. Characters , stories arcs maybe in some cases a message to share. Games did this with a combination of a story and a single player campaign to get you acquainted and a multiplayer component to keep you coming back. Yes in many cases multiplayer was just tacked on but in many cases it added value and further established world building. In the end you’ve at least experienced a cool story.
To me these days most games are made in service of a battle pass or an excuse to release a permanent “early access game”
Oh look a new battle royal survivor game with the unique twist of combining other games mechanics into one. You can play with your friends ! You can farm things and make things ! Does making these things really move any needle in any significant way? Does the farming open up new locations and enemies to fight ? Or better yet special story moments ? Most of The time nope. And the worst of times you just get a shiny new hat!
I see little value in investing time into another game when I can see bar move another 3 percent. I understand there a social aspects but I’d argue the games do little for them and those social aspects can be had without the game to begin with. Or everyone playing their own game. To me all you’re doing is killing time with yet another run of the mill game.
I’d like to see a resurgence of games made with a singular intent and purpose. In service of telling a story and building a world. And seeing profits come in from there. No battle pass no service …
No nothing was ever perfect and there was always junk games. To me now it just feels like it’s getting worse.
Any way I’ll go back into my retirement home now and stop yelling at that cloud…
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Hot take: This post belongs in unpopular opinion. While I don’t agree. You’re entitled to your opinion. If you’re enjoying spent time I don’t think it’s wasted. If you enjoy sitting for hours waiting for fish, even though I think it’s a waste of time, it’s time well spent for the one spending it.
This sums it up perfectly. No point arguing about the objectivity of something that is subjective
Hotter take. ALL games are designed to waste time.
1970s: Space Invaders comes out with deep, story-driven world building
1980s: Super Mario Bros comes out with deep, story-driven world building
1990s: Mortal Kombat comes out with deep, story-driven world building
2000s: Counterstrike comes out with deep, story-driven world building
2010s: Minecraft comes out with deep, story-driven world building (this one is funny because you dig deep and build worlds)
2020s: There are no good games that really build a world with a good story! Definitely not Elden Ring, BG3, Ghosts of Tsushima, DOS2, Clair Obscura, etc…
Games use to made with world building in mind. Characters , stories arcs maybe in some cases a message to share.
My first videogame console was an Atari 2600, there wasn’t even a single thing of your list in any game there
Do you still play those games? A lot?
No, very sporadically, then the nostalgia hits me hard enough. I was just ponting that maybe your nostalgia is kinda skewing your viewpoint too.
Kingdom come deliverance 2, clair obscur, silksong, split fiction, citizen sleeper 2, ball x pit, blue prince, dispatch, hades 2, silent hill f, escape from duckov, outer worlds 2…
And that’s only last year and only the games I’ve played. I don’t have the time or the energy to try all the games that I want to… But sure, focus only on the bad stuff…
I am not saying there aren’t any good games. My argument is there are fewer and fewer year in and year out. Especially at high production levels.
For every 4 decent games I find 500 absolute rubbish. Not to mention the high profile games that had their servers up for a month or less. can’t say I’ve heard that often in my life time.
Sure you can point out to 4 games and claim victory and piss on my grave. But from perspective you’re missing the point…
My argument is there are fewer and fewer year in and year out.
When there are far more games being made in the first place, good and bad, I do not think you are correct at all. There are still tons of great games coming out, but you don’t seem to want to look for them as you’ve already shot down previous comments bringing up critically acclaimed modern hits.
I think nostalgia has you remembering the best games of the past, forgetting about all the slop that used to come out back then too, and losing perspective of the actual time scale in between those hits. If you compare the very best games from a full decade to just the average game that came out last year, that comparison will be very misleading.
Every medium is going to have more bad than good. That’s just how shit works.
Yes, ofc there’s lots of rubbish, it’s easy to make games. There’s tons of shit music. There’s tons of shit paintings, there’s tons of shit in every type of art. But there’s also more good stuff than ever before. And the previous stuff hasn’t gone away either, it’s just more and more. You can’t possibly enjoy all the good art that’s out there. Are you sure you still enjoy video games? Maybe that’s the issue…
Look up the year 2005 or whatever. Tell me how many you’ve played and how many you’ve enjoyed from that year. Some years are better than others especially if you have very particular tastes, but there’s no way there were more good games before than now.
Most of the games I’ve mentioned had budgets in the millions, but here’s some more big budget games from last year that were well received:
Mario kart world
ghost of yotei
ninja Gaiden 4
south of midnight
arc raiders
Death stranding 2
donkey Kong bananza
stellar blade
Elden ring: nightreign
metal gear solid delta
Dying light: the beast
And that’s only a few that come up in a quick search. I’m not trying to piss on your grave… but just because EA, Ubisoft and Activision aren’t making good games anymore doesn’t mean others aren’t.
How do you feel about the narrative and worldbuilding in Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc?
Donkey Kong was one of the first games that had a story in arcades … was it complex ? No. But it was a draw for people …
If that’s enough of a narrative for you, most of the games you’re complaining about also have narratives with at least that much depth to them.
You could also take it a step further and say “all games are just tech demos”
Like all they exist to do is proof-of-concept type stuff showing off what people can do, instead of making a piece of entertainment for the people.
Is every leisure activity not just wasting time if viewed through this lens?
A great many of the games I grew up with were descended from coin-op design principles and so were designed to delay progress as much as possible.
So true! Remember the good old days with games like Expedition 33, Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil 9? Those were the best. It’s a pity games like that don’t get made anymore.
WTF are you talking about.
Not a fan of those games …
Fuck off then, stop hiding your “I don’t care for the current trends in gaming” behind a boomer-ass “they don’t make em like they used to” take. There’s tons of good games and there’s always been a bunch of low-effort garbage to sift through. We used to call it “shovel-ware”.
Then it sounds like the real issue here isn’t that the narrative-driven games you talk about in the OP don’t exist at all, but that these games just aren’t being laser-targeted at whatever specific and narrow set of tastes you have.
And honestly, to an extent I do get where this kind of frustration comes from. I’ve felt like my tastes have narrowed with age too, and I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about certain genres that have completely faded from relevance. But I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that this isn’t an industry problem, it’s a me problem. Just because my kind of specific niche favorites don’t get catered to doesn’t mean that good games don’t exist at all.
So what kind of story driven games are you a fan of?
They are not “most games”. They might be most games you’re aware of, because those games spend the most money on marketing. The type of game you want is downright abundant, and even some of the games you’re ranting about have more substance than you give them credit for, though they may not be your cup of tea.
From last year, check out Split Fiction, The Alters, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (it has a season pass, but you can take it or leave it), Dispatch, or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. From this year, I can recommend Escape from Ever After first-hand, and I’ve got plenty on my radar that I hear good things about.
4 good games doesn’t make up for 500 other absolute trash ones.
I did say it was a hot take didn’t I ?
You’re not playing 500 games per year. Realistically, you’re playing a dozen or so if you’re a real enthusiast. Focus on the ones you like, support them with your time and money, and the market makes more of them. There are so many good games coming out in a year that I can’t keep up with them; I’ve got a spreadsheet and something resembling an Agile planning methodology to get through them more efficiently, and I still don’t have a chance of playing everything that looks good. Hardly any of those have any microtransactions (I definitely don’t buy them in the ones that do), and none of them waste my time.
There’s something like 5000 releases on steam a year, mostly indie
Of course most are trash. It’s literally anybody and their mom releasing.
There’s also more amazing games coming out per year than ever. We’ve been in a golden age of releases for a few years now. Feels better than the 90s and early 00s.
Indies still seem to tackle such.
Major games, at least by production value or how much they could spend on ads, are usually bland, and/or if carrying a message, it’s dubious at best.
Meanwhile, indies are more free to do what they want, instead of having to follow orders of someone pushing an agenda or that just cares for profit based on brand.
If you’d be willing to sift through, you can find way too many good titles on places like Steam, GOG, and in a surprising quantity even on Itchio, plus other places, sure.
I mean all entertainment is really there to kill time. Thats really the main point of having fun. I would say things are worse then that. They (at least tripple-A games) are designed to extract as much cash as they can and get you addicted.
There was a time where it seemed AAA game developers and publishers released games that attempted to extract cash from the population by releasing a game that was such a quality experience that people will pay for it.
Oh well.
You know where there term “AAA” comes from, right?
Games used to be a niche - made by gamers for gamers. Now it’s gotten more mainstream so we have more industry around it. Good games aren’t gone, just don’t get advertised, same as everything else that is worthwhile
As for social aspects of the games, I don’t agree with your take. We don’t have time to be hanging out in pubs every weekend anymore. Hopping in VC to do some “base building” requires less scheduling
There’s a lot more to what destroyed hanging out in the pub than scheduling, but yes, the games themselves have a lot of value in the socializing part of the equation.
There’s a lot more to what destroyed hanging out in the pub than scheduling
For sure but even if you switch out computer games to board games, that is still not the same. People moved, a lot of games need space and hauling the box, etc
In school we used to have breaks, we were hanging out just because of that. Now most often we don’t even work together anymore. Unless one has a job that forces them to come to the office or is one of that ~1% of the workforce that prefers to, and can have a chat at the water stand, I think for many people the reality is that if not for online games, they wouldn’t hang out with anyone anymore
I mean, funny enough, I head to a pub to play board games every other week, including tonight. I was more referring to suburbia and sprawl destroying “third places”, as well as younger folks’ tendency to drink less. It’s possible that online gaming expanded our ability to choose our social circle more than simple geography used to dictate.
most entertainment is about killing time. Some really great stuff has come out in recent time. I think the problem is more stuff overall with about the same amount of good stuff.
I think you’re right. The pure percentage of shovelware that is just designed to show ads, collect revenue, and suck time is higher than ever before. There’s less money in blockbuster games from major studios, too - I think - and they’re trying to sell subscriptions and loot boxes.
