I'm old enough to remember when multiplayer was a side mode to the main game instead of whole game in and of itself. Ive never had any of these issues playing singleplayer games
I'm old enough to remember multiplayer flat out didn't exist because there was no widespread internet adoption yet. The closest you got to multiplayer was playing Barren Realms Elite or TradeWars 2002 on a BBS.
I wanted to answer this as well. When Multiplayer was Hard because you actually had to understand how Networks work. I miss the times the Internet had a built in Skillcheck before entrance.
@@gfimadcat So you gathered your friends in your parent's basement to set up a LAN Party to play some pirated games all night and have endless fun? Yeah... I'm old too :(
Steve Jobs described this situation a long time ago. These studios were started and built by the product people. That's where the masterpieces came from. However, now, the salespeople are in charge. Salespeople know sales. They don't know games, they don't know development, and their definition of 'fun' is completely alien to their customers'.
Well yeah, the greedy corporatists fly in, take over anything successful, and try to make it into a ‘science’ of squeezing the most money out of something without having the talent. It’s all about the numbers going up, ‘growth’. Same is happening in Hollywood.
How hard is it for them to understand this statement? Idc if I am in a suit, understanding the field you’re in should be business 101. Awesome statement man
i will be honest, i am 68 years old and have been gaming since the mid 90's. i prefer single player games, as most of the multi player games are simply a matter of rushing around shooting at everything that moves. it gets tired and boring very quickly.
The good news is, we aren't losing great devs. We're losing companies that used to employ great devs. Many of those devs are starting their own companies and are still making great games. Don't stay loyal to a brand, the brand doesn't mean anything. Too many c-suites using the brand to rake in money using piss poor products over the last decade.
eh, there are plenty of devs that get tired of the instability of the games industry and leave to go do programming for something outside of the games industry, write stories for something not games related, do art and animation for something else. sometimes we do lose devs. They are here because they are passionate, but sometimes they are willing to give up the creativity and doing what they want for a more stable and bigger paycheck doing something less fulfilling because they need to suppor their family.
@@BestUA-camrever422 Most people just mention the games that a studio produced like the studio that made Hi-Fi rush got shut down. Watch the video again and pay attention to the games he says were condisered failures they are the ones that had their studio shut down.
Beloved IPs are getting shelved though. Suits will see a game that underperformed and conclude that franchise is no longer worth the risk. Then they'll just sit on it.
@@TurboTobs1989 oh, absolutely. That's why spiritual successors are a thing. And it's hard to not fall for an IP, but don't tie your identity to it. Creatives haven't had much say in the decision making in decades, outside of the indie scene.
@gameranx, As the leader of this project, I want to clarify the narrative around ANTHEM’s development. The developers, the heart of this creation, have poured their talent and dedication into building a game they believed in. It’s not just a product; it’s a vision they brought to life. The shortcomings you’ve mentioned are not a reflection of their commitment but rather the result of strategic decisions made at higher levels. These decisions, often driven by timelines and financial goals, can overshadow the developers’ original intent. Let’s redirect our critique towards the decision-making processes that impact the game’s development and release. We should celebrate our developers’ efforts and learn from the challenges to improve future endeavors. Peace.
That shit is a cancer to gaming tbh... Like what in the fuck do you mean I cant play the game I spent money to OWN... Fucking Thief's , dont get upset when people pirate your games assholes
it seems that win10/win11 doesn't want you to play many of these older games as many just don't work anymore, and remasters generally are bug ridden messes hastily hobbled together to make quick profits.
@@Regigigas_YT That wasn't a remaster, it was more of a remake for modern audiences, the original game has not aged well, at all, and even worse in it's voice cast (one is in jail for sex crimes and another is a nazi)
The worst part is that the company sees the games failure as "oh, people just aren't interested in gaming anymore. lets pull out entirely" instead of listening when people say they hated about the game.
I don't see that as a the worst part, or even a bad thing. A company that insist on shoveling out crap people don't want, despite what their customers tell them, deserves to go out of business. It's natures way, survival of the fittest.
@@mr.spytomThe companies are still made up of people and the personnel will still go on to make great games. That’s certainly what we saw with Black Isle. The main issue I have is that the IPs themselves will be abandoned or bought up
@@xerxes8632 that would be fine if they didn't shove down everyone else on the play ground and buy all their toys. Big companies buy up all the indie passionate studios and popular franchises, then shovel out crap. More times than not, pulling out and refusing to sell the IP, so no one else can ever expand on the franchise ever again.
@@mr.spytom Happens all the time, companies have a life span. They are born, grow up, grow old, and die. It's very rare for a company to be 100 years old. They all die at some point. Even if a company lasts for 200 years (extremely rare), the people running it at the beginning, will be long gone, and replaced. I have bought my share of crappy games, and stay away from companies that sold me those.
I agree. Obviously every company wants a profit but the problem is the business model of nickel and diming the customer. Imagine your neighbor had a lemonade stand, but instead of selling them by the glass, your neighbor wants a subscription fee. On top of that he wants you to pre-order his lemonades. But wait there's more, he also introduced microtransactions, he wants you to pay for the sugar, the water, and the plastic cups.
@@DioStandsStillI think it’s more to convey that if you want to get the most cool loot you need to grind for hours on end rather than take a game at its pace.
Yeah, single player last 20-30 hours of gameplay. Live Service games need to last 300-400 hrs between updates. Only way to sustain the game is to crrate contents with lower quality graphics, less cutscenes, and very repetitive gameplay.
Totally agree however MMO and online only games are going to have that eventually which is why they should be avoided, but why do single player stand alone games still have to be internet connected and also will not play once they choose to no longer support that game, to get rid of gamers legacy libraries and second hand games that's why, forcing you onto new online download only store platforms, your $10,00 dollar physical game library is now a collection of drink coasters, also your kids can't inherit them as they are tied to the user just like Apple song libraries are, unlike the past generations you are better off selling them off now because they are worthless later.
@@terryrwest2657 yep. Purchasing isn’t owning anymore. On top of that I recently got into pc gaming a year or two ago and physical copies are almost non existent. You don’t even have the option with a pc 90% of the time. It blows because I love having physical games
That's the main reason I don't even start with those games I don't wanna fall in love with a game only for some shmuck to prevent me from playing what I love
I'm a solo dev who dropped out of college because I almost instantly burn out when trying to adapt to another programmer's way of thinking. When I was in school minoring in game design, all I ever heard was, "you're thinking too much like a player; you need to remember that at the end of the day you're making a product". lol, lmao even. this mindset is killing the industry. they forget that game developers are artists whose tool is so extraordinarily difficult to completely assemble, because life is too short to learn how to model, animate, mix audio, compose music, voice act, write, write well, write one or more modular stories, operate a game engine or create one from scratch, write synergistic code drawing upon at least five facets of computer science considered to be entirely different professions, and then wield all of those at once for up for 10+ years... so most of us specialize and cooperate. many colleges attempt to suck the creativity out of aspiring game developers, by urging them to actively try to maximize profitability like most other businesses. Art doesn't work like that. You don't get valuable art with whatever the fuck the AAA studios' bigwigs have been on this last decade. You get valuable art when you, for the most part; put a bunch of talented developers in a studio, give them a good manager who understands the vision of the group's visionaries, and throw sandwiches at them every day for 2-6 years. "Waaaaaaah but I want my profit now!" Oh, so you only want to make 10% when you could've let your boys cook for real and gotten 110%? Understandable, have fun reading your reviews.
'Good' products are actually antithetical to what capitalists do. They want mcdonald's hamburgers (think of cheese as a dlc) rather than haute cuisine because their primary goal at this point is reducing costs, one thing they can control. Minimum cost for maximum profit, which seems fine because nobody thinks about how this is digging a hole over time. The system inevitably leads towards self destruction and collapses when costs cannot be cut anymore and profits cannot be increased.
Exactly, it truly is a plague to the industry. Profiteers just aiming for quick profits rather than putting in the effort a project deserves to make a good game people will enjoy making and playing.
@@bananar1403 just about cost man Indie studios have anywhere from 1 to 25 developers on continuous payroll. Not a hard number but this is common amount. Studios like Ubisoft will have multiple games in development at the same time often, each with between 100-300 developers on continuous payroll. It's a tradeoff. Big studios can work on multiple assets of the same type at the same time, can task multiple developers to single assets, and can do more overlapping work; the consequence is drastically increased costs. Independent studios don't have the manpower to crunch like big ones can; they also still spend a lot of money retaining their manpower relative to their total capital. You'd also be surprised how often high level developers in such organizations will work multiple jobs just to not strain their project so hard; not often, but it never happens in professional studios as they would first fire the entire subdivision before being placed in such a financial situation. tl;dr more people cost more money but work faster; less people cost less money and have more agency but work significantly slower
@@rappakalja5295 Nothing is wrong with Capitalism - there is no better system - the same companies will fail if they do things poorly, that's how it works and should work
Hopefully, companies can learn from BG3's insane popularity that you CAN Successfully do a game with a single player story, with no DLC's or microtransactions
I hate to break it but... bg3 was thought as a tabletop rpg for 1player and more, not as a single player. But yeah. I agree about multi player killing the games. You have to be accessible for everyone in gameplay and universe, making in the end meh games that we have already played a thousand times before.
There is nothing wrong with live service games, the problem is these single player game studios trying to make like service games. It takes special skills to make a Live service games and many more people working on it, 500+ people at least. good live service games are made with passion by people who want to make a good game that lasts forever. Bad live service games are made by the same single player studios you were fanboying, they have no idea how to make one, they don't have the patience nor the resources but they want the big piles of cash, so they do it anyways. And that's how they ruined the reputation of an entire game genre.
As an antisocial introvert i avoid all games that force interaction with live players. But now even single player games require online servers for absolutely NO reason.
I couldn't get into Journey because I knew the other character was a human, and while I wanted to explore an area and work out a solution myself, I had this other character standing at the spot I needed to go to, impatiently pinging me while I wandered. Ruined the fun for me.
There's plenty of them around, it whatever genre you like. I've never been into online play, and have never felt starved for choice in single-player games, and there's more choice now than ever. 'Live Service Games' are just a loud annoying toddler trying to get everyone's attention. Ignore them and they soon tire.
The weak games you mentioned also have massive open worlds, but with very little to do in them. Dishonored and Mass Effect have much smaller open worlds, but they are PACKED FULL with side stuff to see and do. Dishonored, you don't have to walk 10 miles off the story path to find some random little shack with maybe a bit of loot or a decent weapon. You may notice a window that is cleaverly hidden behind some crates in the dock area. You move the crates, only to find a locked window with a lock with a tiny key hole. A little further into the level, while sneaking through a house you find a note that the owner, had hidden an expensive weapon in his safe house in the docks but he lost the key to gambling with a gang leader. You find the gang leader but he refuses to give you the key unless you pay him. You come back a bit later, pick pocket the key from his sleeping form and then you get to travel back to collect the weapon. The weapon than turns out to be freaking awesome. Now there isn't a quest just like what i mentioned, but it is the trusting the players to work out a puzzle that rewards them with a weapon that gives them a leg up early. It is rewardign the player with actual good rewards...... Or you could just throw the weapon in a loot crate you buy with real money, and have the game avatar go collect 10 racoon claws (or some other mundane quest)
Right now.... how much time you spend in game and how much time it takes to finish a game is a sales pitch. There's also an odd perversion in customers' thinking as well - they now count how much money the game is vs how much time it takes to complete it. If it takes 10 hours to finish the game and it costs 40 dollars, it's not worth it - while if a game takes 200 hours to complete and it costs 60 dollars, it's worth it - regardless of the quality of each game. It's very interesting - but it also says that there's perversion not only in the current game developers, but also a huge percentage of the player base.
The Yakuza/Like a Dragon games have raised this into an art. They're set in only small parts of a larger city, you can traverse the whole map in a matter of minutes if you avoid fighting. But there's stuff to do around every corner, and it never feels small or restrictive in any way.
The thing about that game is that thanks to all of the leaks, gameplay trailers and the SBI controversy we knew how the game would turn out even before it came out, that pretty much sorted out all of the people who don't enjoy mediocre live service cash grabs and games who try to virtue signal and tell them what's right and what's wrong. So, the only people who bought the game were pretty much people who knew what they were getting into, probably people who liked and agreed with the SBI nonsense and have a humiliation kink, and hardcore DC/Arkham fans who will buy anything that has DC/Arkham universe characters in it.
The main cancer in the video game industry today is the board managers' misconception that it operates similarly to the film industry, where delayed releases, subpar productions, or heavily advertised expensive movies can still be profitable.
It can be, when it's not a live-service model that needs consistent interest from players buying microtransactions to stay profitable. AAA flops that weren't live service could still make bank just because the pre-order sales and initial purchases on release is most of what they needed to achieve their projected profits.
@@viralchainx9 But also presenting a delay is signs of bad planning, and delays being a trend looks like a lot of studios are confronted with horrible planning, production and design plans
When rent rises exponentially and salaries rise linearly. You are just planting the seeds of revolution. If it where not for the circuses (games, social media etc) The prooblem would have been solved a long time ago..
@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj Doesn't take much longer until people realize circuses don't feed them. And if their monthly budget gets eaten up by basics like "living under a roof", before they can fill their fridge, they won't stop. Kinda shame this trend appears everywhere in our world. Hope there's a turning point soon before everything turns ugly.
@@michaelgiertz-rath7994 unfortunately, history teaches us that the turning point IS ugly, people have to be brought to the brink before they react en masse, and that in itself is part of the problem. It will be violent, senseless and highly destructive when the 'revolution' finally comes, and from the ashes, it will be the power hungry and opportunistic would-be dictators who are most likely to seize the reins next. If you want productive and positive change, you have to do it by degrees, and keep fighting against the tide. It's a battle of inches, and you have to change people's minds one at a time. It's slow, laborious and horribly depressing, but the alternative is so much worse.
Corporate greed only works because so many people keep buying into it though. The real problem is the masses who make it work, not the few who profit from it. Sad truth, but ultimately the reason we've only seen the corporate landscape worsen over the last ~50 years.
@@michaelgiertz-rath7994 I've seen this said for over 20 years straight, and yet the problem continues to grow and people continue to take it lying down. You really do have to push the masses to an absolute breaking point before reactionaries finally outnumber the complacents, and once you hit that threshold it's ALWAYS unpleasant. We are now entering our second adult generation who are utterly without hope of owning their own home in many places. This same generation are the children of those who first started seeing wages freeze (or even reduce) whilst expenses continued to rise, and yet the changes we hoped would occur feel further from reality now than they did in the late 90s when the whole house of cards started falling.
This is why I only buy games from indie devs or nintendo/square because they haven't given into live service yet, and the day they do is the day I find a new hobby.
splatoon is technically live service and so is final fantasy 14 online. at least splatoon has no microtransactions, all done with in game currency. only expansions you need real money for. idk about ff14 though, i've never played it
The biggest problem with games is that I used to feel like I was playing someone's creative passion project. Nowadays I feel like I am playing 2024 Q2 profit conduit wrapped in some IP. Hard pass for me
I'm still playing Quake and Unreal Gold on a 2 years basis since the 90's. Those games never get old and are completely independent of any current corporate perversions. The fact that Epic completely removed the Unreal franchise from all digital stores goes to show how much of a thorn those (higher quality) old games are in corporate eyes.
The big thing that all companies seem to forget about is that it's the gamers like myself who enjoy a good story driven single player game more than multi-player games. And we are some of the few gamers who would go out and spend full retail price on day one. So yeah, it's very sad
@@chefcobusfourie3132 My point is that companies haven't forgotten, it just doesn't matter to them. Although we have been getting some amazing single player games in recent years.
Live service games are killing gaming for casuals. It worked during COVID because we all had a lot of time and nothing to do with it. Now people who have priorities and a life outside of video games are getting shafted especially due to the “seasons” “fomo and limited time only bullcrap”. I used to play games as an escape from stress and the world, now it causes just that.
Same here. I just want a good story, decent game mechanics, graphics can even be so-so. Just let me play it by myself at my own pace and get lost in it.
Well said. Those of us with the desire for a life in meat space and without the warm, comforting bosom of our parent's converted basement don't have the kind of time necessary to devote to live service gaming. I had a PC built specifically to play ESO and then I found out that I didn't remotely have the time I needed to keep up with other players in game. I don't know what I hate more; forced NPC companions or live service ones. Studios forcing me to play companions or multi player is going to turn me right TF off.
My sister works with a mobile game development company, and is always complaining about the suits messing with everything, and how the company is really scummy. So i ask her why she won't leave it, and she says that there are two reasons: 1) the company ate up most of the local competition, so they're literally nowhere to leave to, and 2) she still needs the working experience in the industry if she wants to sign up for another serious company (working remotely for some foreign company). I have to wonder, though, if working for another big company's gonna be any different and she won't just end up making indie games. 😁
fellow game dev here, i finished my apprenticeship in 2012, most of the people that worked as devs dont anymore. Either they changed to the suits, or the industry. The rest is having a "normal" life in indie studios/solo dev work. Buuuut: The experience and contacts you can get in a few years in one of the major corpos are insanely valuable later. Thats how you get reputation and acquaintances that will make your later ventures possible and successful.
Crony capitalism, folks! Dear socialists and capitalists both: Not everything ought to be a market. The human spirit won't be fed by profits and green lines.
100% Agree. GTAV was one of my favorites games. GTA Online was one of my most hated experiences. I don't want other people in my games. I remember a game called Motor City Online. It was my first foray into multiplayer gaming. I loved it. Right up until people gamed the system and ruined the game economy by scamming and selling in-game assets for real money. The game was online only. EA bailed on the game leaving us screwed. We were given the option of a free copy of Sims Online or Ultima Online. I chose the Sims, but never played it. They bailed on that too. I had no faith in online only games and vowed to never buy one again. Guess how that worked out...
The real problem is publishers forcing developers to go along with their insanely stupid decisions and then also forcing the developers to face all the consequences of the decisions, publishers never have to learn from their mistakes, so they'll always repeat them
This is why executive compensation should be capped at 600 grand a year and make stock options as a form of compensation a felony. Its utter insanity that this shit has been allowed to continue because the games industry is just the easiest to use as an example but its happening in all facets of the economy. This is slowly limping towards a matter of national security. Because when no one can afford the bare essentials and the wealthy just buy up everything we can no longer afford then rent it back to us it will make it far easier to revolt with nothing left to lose
it’s been approximately 60 years since this began happening, and each step gets bigger and bigger. It may have started as a limp, but things are looking like a light jog now.
I swear these live service games are brining down downfall on all these AAA rated devs and studios. Just make a decent single player game man. That's all they need to do
It's the exact same thing as renting an apartment. The trend of paying indefinitely for something rather than paying once is real and it is everything that's wrong with modern society. As long as there's demand, there will be profit. No turning point, unfortunately - we're doomed.
They're expensive to make and the greedy bastards at the top don't like the risk of bombing for a single game. Oddly enough they're more than happy to take the risk of a live service game bombing because if it is successful it'll draw way more money than a standard single player game. The risk to reward ratios are too enticing for investors to resist. It's not even remotely about quality for them, these games are just another investment made by people who know fuck all about this industry, it's audience or its own goddamn studios.
Some of the best video games were made by extremely small studios. It wasn't the ease of the technology back then, it was the fact that they could do whatever they want and not need approval from 7 different corporate departments before making a decision. The communication chain was much smaller.
A lot of the most exciting games for me are from independent studios for exactly this reason. Nothing better in my opinion than a product lovingly made by one guy in his parents' basement.
2004: hey, wouldn't it be cool if we add this thing? no one has ever done that before... Yeah lets do it! 2024: so i was thinking- NO! BAD! GET BACK TO WORK!!!!
@@ramdjow2882 how could you say that without playing the game first? i didn't play it but i don't have to play it so say i absolute hate the UI and artstyle, who cares about gameplay at that point.
@@sinu9226 ui and art style are subjective? if someone did like both they would in fact care about the gameplay. you’re logic is dumb and you’re just looking to hate for the sake of hating. i also happen to think the game is absolute shit, but i don’t go around youtube comments trying to justify that opinion to random people on the internet. get a life.
Game reviewers tend to be really generous. If a move got a score of 60 on metacritic, that's actually pretty good. For example, guardians of the galaxy volume 3 has a score of 63.
Falcon mentioned the real problem in the gaming industry and it’s not live service. Issue is the executives who don’t know, nor cares, about video games making decisions based on what all the other companies are doing. They act like day traders who look for the hottest trend only to end up buying high and selling low.
And watch, they'll turn into bears soon saying the market is bad, all as the competent privately owned studios quadruple profit and throw out even more bangers.
It's one of the biggest problems in the corporate world, in general. The MBA's took over, and so we get companies that are ran by people that don't understand the nuances of the industry. In the 90s, tech companies, gaming companies, were all ran by people who worked in the industry before having their own companies. That passion and industry know how shone through.
Pretty much what's happening to Hollywood right now, take marvel movies for example, or anything disney touches lately, I'm starting to see a similar pattern in gaming too
The biggest problem with everyone trying to make games into a live service is that they try and go into creating a game exclusively to make money. The idea should be to make a good game first, then once you feel the product is sufficient, add more content to make the game better not to make more money. All these huge developers want is just to make money not make content worthy of making money. The reason why GTA Online and Fortnite work so well is because if they didn't have any of the extra paid content the game would still be a great game. All these other corporate jerkoffs just want to milk you for every dollar, dime, nickel, and penny you have instead of making it worth it to spend money on the game to gain extra enjoyment
I blame their business analytics team, they clearly based their confidence on live service on the one or two live service games that managed to be both popular and well made... without taking into account that their game is not fortnite
"Executives will never cease to make terrible decisions while making huge bonuses" - This is precisely the problem. I'm reminded of 2005, when H.P. fired Carly Fiorina (forced her to resign) for nearly running the company into the ground, and decided to give her $21.4 million in severance pay. To put that into perspective, in 2004, her salary was $1.4 million and her bonus was $1.7 million, so the severance pay was nearly seven times her total 2004 pay.
I heard an ex-Blizzard employee say that the first real money purchasable mount in WoW raked in more revenue than Starcraft II in its lifetime. That was a kick in the nuts to all the devs everywhere.
$59.99 for the game $14.99 every 3 months for the battle pass And the cherry on top - every single time I log in to play the game, I am reminded about the cash shop. It should be illegal to ask for so much money for a product that isn't yours to own.
None of these studios wanted to do a live service, they were forced to by the publishers who are calling the shots. They were forced to make the game as fast as possible and release it before it was fully finished because the publishers were impatient to get their game out so they could make their money. The games flopped, reputations were damaged, and the studios were left to take the blame for something they never wanted to make to begin with.
Yup ya can always tell when people are lying about always wanting to make a live service game. The founders and half the staff always leave mid development to make a new studio and a new game in their wheel house like with arkane. They also literally say the most generic shit about why too.
Exactly. People always point to communism and socialism as examples of central planning, when unregulated capitalism just leads to central planning by corporate executives. Decisions made by people completely out of touch of the industries of which they are in charge
I'm going to get into game development, and if I get to the triple A space, I'm publishing all my own games. I'll turn down every publisher unless they follow what *I* want my game, my rules
@@Code_Dee "Unregulated capitalism" 🤣 If that were true, we would be forced to buy the game at the behest of the publishers because there are no alternatives rather than voting with our wallets. The world of Cyberpunk is a perfect example of so-called "unregulated capitalism," which is really just corporatism (i.e. where mega-corporations run the world rather than government). Shadowrun is the same way. Corporatism is just corrupted capitalism.
Something you touched on that companies need to accept is that ever-increasing profits, in perpetuity, is just not possible. I really wish more companies would be happy with steady profits.
This. The rich want to make their money work for them so they get richer. 200k a year isn't good enough for a rich guy. He wants 250k next year, 300k the following, and millions the next year, or he's gonna fire everybody involved. It makes me wonder if these mfers are actually human. I've never had money, maybe it does corrupt.
This right there is why the stock market is an absolute mistake. Shareholders demand increasing value in their shares. Until that goes away, nothing will change. We’ll get poorer and they’ll get richer until we have no more money to give them, and the cycle continues.
I just want to say that the game industry feels like it's being held hostage by corporates for a quick buck or some form of ransom, That's how uncomfortable the gaming industry feels at the moment...
Corporations are being held hostage by employees, which is causing this gaming problem. These companies are keeping grunt work employees around between developing the next idea for a game. The cost of these 100-1000 extra grunt workers are forcing management to push for new games faster keep these employees and not put the companies into bankruptcy. Some of these companies have half billion dollar a year payroll, mean need to sell 6 million copies of a game at $60 every year just to pay employees.
@donw4889 please. The large parent companies of these AAA studios are still making record profits - meaning "line goes up." They just want it to go up more.
the world in general is kept in hostage by shareholders/investment companies/holdings searching for the next big investment to ruin and impring their bs on.
It seems Capcom is one of the few companies that has figured out how to manage costs. "In late April, Capcom raised its revenue goals for the fiscal year to ¥152.4 million ($977M). The change was done in light of Dragon's Dogma 2's performance, which stands at 2.62 million sales overall."
not really, indy games go viral all the time and it has nothing to do with the state of the market, did you forget minecraft? terraria? undertale? random stuff things go viral, just part of the internet the things is, indy studios don't have the budget to market themselves, AAA studios literally dump like half their budget into marketing, indy studios can't compete with that and having an indy game go viral is pure luck, there's many better games to don't get such luck imo it'd take more than the usual odd viral indy game to say indy studios are getting more recognition, cuz in reality the gap is just getting bigger lol
Remember Titanfall? Remember how well that game did? Remember how good the story was? Remember how short the story was? Did anyone care? Dd anyone even play online? Im sure they did, but the game was ao fucking good that it didnt really matter. I replayed that shit 6 times.
@@sayLeotardbutsayitChinesedude, I played that game (Titanfall 2) online *so much*. A true triumph in both single player and multiplayer. Still one of the best to this day.
before later stage capitalism, way better. now it's not studios consuming others, it's conglomerates consuming studios. an unregulated market has caused an oligopoly in every. single. established. industry.
Man we really lived thru the golden age of video games 10 to 14 years ago and had no clue Edit: I have been playing video games for 30 years now so I’ve played thru most eras and that time to me was just the most enjoyable
@@SadTown99 2017? I can't think of any good games in that year. Not one. If you're thinking of Mario Odyssey or Zelda: BOTW... then I guess you have only played about 3 mario games and don't understand how tired the concept of mario fighting a spiky turtle that goes "Gwahaha!" is. Not okay to keep doing the same thing since 1986. And Zelda: BOTW is not even zelda, it's just some generic soulless garbage that was made when nintendo became extra lazy and started getting on the "open world sandbox waste of time" trend. They used to be leaders and now they are followers. Best time for gaming was the 90s to early 2000s. So many quality games, these days I STRUGGLE to think of good games out. I was lucky to have been around then.
@@Vaquix000 Old man yelling at the sky. Zelda Botw, Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Resident Evil 7, Horizon Zero Dawn etc etc Most early 3D games are straight unplayable
What once started as corporate Greed has become Corporate Stupidity. Only a couple of Live Service/Battle Royale/MMOs can be truly successful at one time. So many of them are against taking risks on new IPs, yet they’ll take an even bigger risk on a new live service or battle Royale……EXPLAIN THAT LOGIC😖😖😖
One takes longer and costs more. The other is literally designed to not even be fully complete when launched. So, if you're gonna take a shot on a new IP, why take the bigger risk?
Agreed. I'm not going to even buy a game until it's on sale these days, and I will never play one that demands a stupid season pass. Being a gamer is getting too expensive these days.
@@criticallard2090 I havent bought a full price game for a few years now, the last one being CoD MW2 a few years back, when they offered a two year run - which never happened... after that I was like never again will I preorder, or buy into something where the potential to be let down is so high.
I haven't bough a game in years that's had "DLC" because nobody's done it ethically in years. DLC on-launch, DLC in early-access, DLC in 1.0 except the game's still an unfinished mess, DLC as paid updates. I'm tired of paying for every 2% of the full game in 80$ increments. Somewhat paradoxically, all of the developers who I would choose to financially support by buying a "supporter pack" premium DLC, are all of the ethical devs who actually respect your time and money and didn't release anything like that.
I never paid more than 40€ for a game in 25 years of gaming (and i'm talking about "on release"). That's my upper limit and this limit has to go down lately because of all the economic downturn. So, good luck to companies asking high fantasy prices of 70€ and up, LOL.
@@DS-cf1zc same I loved COD as a kid Big Red 1 was my favorite and it baffles me how they expect you to pay $40 for black ops 1 on steam I am not going to lie though I bought Helldivers 2 but it advertised itself as a multiplayer game not a single player game with multiplayer and micro transactions
Kind of blew my mind seeing these exact points being made in the world's most respected business newspaper the Financial TImes a week or so after you published this...
So by shareholders you mean BLK and vanguard? Or the DEI and ESG scores they’re given? Your average shareholder has very little to do with disruption of the process of making video games.
I mean, I hold shares and I purchase video games on my home consoles. Also I make purchases on Epic games for my PC at least three times a month, even the crappy ones.😊
Biggest thing that upsets me is in 10 years I can't play most single player games I bought today cause the server will no longer be online. But I can still play titles from 20 years ago cause it's SINGLE PLAYYYERRR
For a large part it’s because the studios get forced to (BioWare) by the ones who basically own them (EA). Then we also get some studios who get sweet talked into doing it (Arkane Austin) by buttheads with controlling interest (Bethesda.)
I'm glad that you correctly identified the Profit motive as the underlying problem - Corporations need to see year on year profit increase and that leads to discussions that, more often than not, are to the detriment to the consumers, the devs and the industry as a whole
I think a lot of people have probably already heard this, but games like Helldivers 2 taught me that people aren't sick of live service games, they're tired of poor implementation of them, expensive and very limited Battle Passes that ask you for immense hours of grinding that only a small portion of players can complete, cosmetics and items or exclusive content that is blocked by a paywall and that in some cases is exorbitantly expensive, not to mention that several of these games come out incomplete with the promise that they will be complete one day, in some other cases these bad market practices are implemented in single player games in a desperate attempt to recover the investment cost of developing these games. If the live service system is well implemented, you can have a game that will be loved and loved by the community, but today the large triple AAA companies only see it as a way to milk their games more and try to force their users to let them spend more.
pay to play is garbage, grind to have a smidge of fun is garbage IMO. Its not right that in order to enjoy the thing I bought I'm expected to waste hours and hours of life or money.
That's literally why I stopped playing Destiny 2. I loved Destiny and took a break. But when I got back on to Destiny 2 there was soooo much more grind elements to get the best gear and qualify to do the good game content. I just gave up when I realized you had to spent hours and hours doing repetitive tasks to get a low chance of getting an item you need to upgrad, or even a drop. Nobody has that kinda spare time.
some of the things you said are pretty much why I've given up on MTGArena. paid for a bunchof packs for the 'latest set' and haven't opened them or the game launcher in months
I’m 27, and when I was 15 yrs old me and my friends had so much hope and excitement for the future for our fav games/gaming company’s…what a fall from grace.
I am 27 and i collect Nintendo DS games and the nostalgia of going to a store or playing a game full of content for only 20-30 bucks without additional payment is just the way things should be. The gaming industry has gone over the limit with their ingame purchases. Even if they are cosmetic, it should only be 1 payment and you get the game with everything. Thank god Nintendo Switch owners almost never have to deal with this. (Unless its dlc or something like fortnite on switch.)
Well, I'm 42 and started gaming when I was about 12. Used a C64 back in the days. Had a hell of a ride of great games, but the fall is even greater from my perspective. Today? I cling to games like "X4 Foundations" (X-Series, super nerdy and complicated game, if that's your thing). The most recent game is Dragon's Dogma 2, which is fun too. And I'm actually waiting for 12 years now for Star Citizen. Put money in. It's nerd's dream, to be part of the development, see it growing and more and more tech integrated. But most of the modern games I'm simply not interested in. Either they're too fast paced or the publisher care only about release + game passes, but do nothing about cheaters, hackers and ill balanced gameplay. They simply don't give a f*ck about their products anymore and it shows.
That’s modern capitalism. I’m not going to soap box on how that’s bad or good. It just is what it is. All the money, never ending growth, no matter how unrealistic.
@shiftymcgee9359 I'll soap box lol. In the 1930's An economist named John Keynes Predicted that by the end of the 1900's Americans would be working Fifteen hours a week Keynes was a capitalist Who predicted leaps in innovation That would lead to a world in which People didn't have to work To have what they needed to live Food, water, shelter and clothing For the most part, he was right By mid-century the Green Revolution was in effect And has spared one billion people of starvation The world isn't perfect But global issues of poverty and hunger Are in a far better place than they've ever been What he failed to predict Was the unrelenting side of capitalist innovation Consumerism hit the nation hard in the 1950's And ever since Income inequality has gotten far worse Despite having the essentials for people to live We are working more than we ever have To support this unnecessary overabundance of products Demanded by American consumerism And a false scarcity, created by One-sided distribution of resources We are so far removed from the actual idea Of "earning a living, " We use the term to explain Why 90% of us spend our lives making profits For the top 1% that own everything The only thing we're "earning" is more merchandise for A sick, spoiled culture And CEO's that can't profit enough from it We are not an artificial intelligence What part of getting a new phone every year is a fucking living What part of working for Wal-Mart is a fucking living What part of trying to look busy at a desk is a fucking living Who's living are we working to sustain How does it feel to be the latest innovation of a broken fucking system How productive is your self-destruction How free do you feel In a work-culture of burnout Heart disease Anxiety Poverty And depression Capitalism is finished Hypocrisy Scarcity If we're really being honest What'd we trade for fucking objects Me and my pals all got our degrees We're lucky to work Seventy-hour weeks That eight-hundred bucks is time well spent And life well-traded For this month's rent So don't you try to bullshit 'bout efficient ergonomics Reducing my potential down to pushing little buttons Call it the merit of earning a living Feeding hedonistic Adaptation Fifteen hours Bed by ten Burn both ends And do it again God bless American capitalism For cutting the brakes on commodification The incentive to make is all we got With no incentive to fucking stop Streaming, phones and fashion that's designed for obsolescence Look at all the poverty that's come from our abundance Lemme work for cheap For my whole life To feed a star-spangled appetite
@@shiftymcgee9359yeah exaclly and the problem is that a huge chunk of global economy is based on constant growth witch is simply not sustainable in a long perspective.
YES! The suits know that ESG riddled single-player games wont sell. That's the real reason for all the online/live-service focus. They're not allowed to create good stories and characters anymore.
People forget that Fortnite was mostly PvE focused before their PvP exploded. Epic made a game they wanted to, saw what people liked about their game, and adjusted course. Listen to the players and the money will follow
This statement is completely counterintuitive. "Made the game they wanted" -> "adjusted course to what players wanted." Players spending millions on microtransactions -> "listen to the players." -> Players want more microtransactions.
Its funny, Fortnite literally pivoted from being a ripoff of Unturned (which was a ripoff of Minecraft + Day-Z), to being a ripoff of PUBG / 'battle royale' games as a whole.
*"Ohhhhh, I see. So, if we just ignore ALL the players, bastardize every IP we can find & do whatever we want all the time then the money will follow?? That's basically what you're saying right?"* - Game Developer
Just wanted to say I really appreciate this analasys. I'm working in software (not games), too, and it's very interesting to see how other industries run into systematical mistakes.
How to I click the like button more?? This video is just… *chefs kiss*. Gotta love when Gameranx has a better understanding of basic business practices than people who’s ACTUAL job it is to do this. Falcon, I love you and your frustration with the industry. Keepin it real for us. Thank you!
Live service games don’t make sense for most game genres. There are only a limited number of gamers with a limit amount of time. You have to steal gamers from an already established live service to get them in another. While many gamers won’t even touch them
It is possible to make a live service that isn't a huge time sink. The trick is to make it stand out enough to attract players. And my example for this usually doesn't get labeled a live service because it doesn't have microtransactions, but all the other hallmarks are there (multiplayer requiring online, daily updates to the ingame shops, scheduled content drops, occasional special tournaments, etc). And that is Nintendo's Splatoon. You don't have to sink a lot of time into it to enjoy it. It the original was one of my favorite games on Wii U (was because they shut the servers down). But for the eight years that game was online, I maybe sank 80 hours into it. I never felt like I had to dedicate my life to it in order to enjoy the game. Although I will say this, Nintendo does have a unique advantage that they have an automatic fanbase that will show up, unlike anyone else in the industry.
Yeah. It always amuses me when people say things like "A 70% doesn't mean its bad." Like.. nobody actually feels good about getting a 70% on anything, lol. Barely grades as a C. Nobody really wants to buy and play C-grade products either (especially if it wants you to keep paying and buying), it wouldn't be a fucking C if its what everybody wanted.
I think barely anyone knows this about the 60-50 to 10-20 conversion, but I'm certain people know that critics and stereotypical game "journalists" are cowards.
@@burrfoottopknotThe purely independent gaming magazines were pretty honest. The first one that comes to mind was PSM before they became “PlayStation: The Official Magazine.” I do miss their artwork, lid stickers, unique demo discs, etc. On a side note, I miss the feeling of getting a new issue of Nintendo Power in the mail. Memories.
This is why I prefer (good) indie game devs over most companies. Because they’re not driven by the big profits or the new trends, they just make a really freaking good game because they want to.
I think the developers realized it was easier to pit humans against each other than try to create a "realistic" AI for enemies in game. That was what initially drove this.
It might be a part of the reason, yes, but a small one. The keyword here is recurring revenue, live service games profit margins far surpasses anything a single player game can deliver because of how long you can keep revenue going. GTA V, the most profitable media to this day, made good bucks with the single player alone of course, but it reached its 7.7 billion dollars mark relying on this concept. Freefire, Fortnite and alikes all made huge profits for its recurring appeal. It's corporate greed plain and simple.
@@joaorenz7784 Even if that's true, for a live service game to actually get that revenu,e you need a solid gameplay loop to keep the players engaged so they can spend more money. This is not what happens though, the games are not entertaining, they're no longer "games" because the "playing" part of the game was cut short in lieu of making add-on content to buy as extra.
@@joaorenz7784 Corporate greed strongly characterized by the shortsightedness it comes with. GTAV made $1B before they even dropped the online. Players want engaging open worlds that feel free and rewarding to dive deeper into. We *do* want to play with our friends though. In *co-op experiences.* Not always-online, battle pass loot shooters.
Rockstar know what they are doing when it comes to AI enemies, they are going hard with the AI in GTA 6. The AI in Red Dead Redemption 2 were pretty good. I haven't paid for a new game since the new COD MW2, hopefully developers start to learn not everything has to be live service.
I’ll bet they have. It’s probably their kid and they hate them for “being lazy” and “not contributing” while also trying to make record profits off the friends of their kids. Their heads are so far up their asses they can’t even recognize the irony in hating gamers while also trying to profit off of gamers
Very well said. Live service is not the issue, greed and bad implementation of elements just to have the elements someone else has included is the issue (and also if they include those models and then increasing the grind THAT Much that you'd need a full time work schedule of 40 hours or so to get ANYWHERE in the game without paying shitloads of money).
As a veteran grand daddy gamer since the 1980's, the trend is depressing but familiar. Every new generation of publishers/studio heads to use your phrases, think they know better. They don't and we savvy experienced gamers have seen it all before. It was a sad day when i realised Prey 2 was never gonna happen after arkane were bought. Oh well.
Dude. You were gaming in the 80s and still had enough hope in your heart to want ARKANE'S prey 2?! I'm probably the exactly next generation after you, coz I was born the year the soviet union fell, and man. I hope you get to see a company release an im-sim and NOT die sometime in your life, man.
First video game - Arcade tank game in a bar (then a kid in a college town could walk in during the day) and played in oh, about 1974/75…. Talk about OG gaming….
Im with you and cant believe how far gaming has fallen. Gaming on PC in the late 90s was incredible. The original Deus Ex was absolute mastery. The origional Prey was absolute mastery. I wish i could recall the names of so many that were and are quite frankly other than the obvious graphics 1000 times better than most the garbage out now. Probably because then, a game had to be good to make money vs now you just got to sucker in a few fools with a unlimited credit line. I'm pretty sure another one was Noone lives forever, not the 007 but it was a female super spy the game was absolutely amazing.
As a gamer from a slightly similar era (Atari 5200) I find this trend depressing. Not to say that I don't like Live Service/Multiplayer games . I love my GTA online, RDR2 online, DOTA 2) but I miss the storytelling , the Dramas, the reveals(General Shepherd anyone) , the world-building of Halo, the easy open exploration of RDR2 and the GTAs . I also don't have enough time being a responsible person in my 40s to devote undivided attention to multiplayers. I miss the single-player world.
It’s like people seeing Microsoft making lots of money selling Word and thinking we can make money doing that too. But people only want Word. They don’t need or want your random version. People only want Fortnite. They don’t need or want your random version.
Also, it's companies buying Word for their employees. Almost no regular people are subscribing to it themselves unless they have some kind of professional reason to.
...excel IS microsoft, jackass. Go read a book or something because not only was that uncalled for, but it had NOTHING to do with that person's point.@@aelinstue9431
@@aelinstue9431 We dont use Excel, we use use Google sheets to collaborate with our coworkers in real time for the fast solutions our clients need, you absolute homeless plebeian
I mean, it's not totallty true. You have to impose a final goal on you ( exemple : a rank / a build / max stats / a boss .. something like that ), and when you reach it, it's the end.
@@Safetytrousersbuilding the story snd characters. Beautiful cutscenes. I agree with you. Running around in the same 4 maps isnt really appealing to me.
I have been playing games since 1989. And I have played hundreds of games till date. But I have never paid for a multiplayer game as I find them utterly boring without any specific goal. The only multiplayer game that I played on PC is Rocket League. But I became bored of it after playing for just a month. I think this is the sentiment of majority of gamers due to which most live service games flop. There isn't a big market for such games.
The musicians have been warning us about the poisonous influence of greedy business people since the late 50s. Computer needs imagined that didn't apply to their own art, leading to the destruction of great game studios, too.
Know what else I hate in gaming nowadays? ALWAYS ONLINE SINGLE PLAYER GAMES. Why if im playing alone I have to be on their shitty server when again im just playing alone having fun on my own. I do also have a bone to pik with constant updates and patching but ehhh
That doesn’t bother me. You really need to be out of your ways to not find an internet connection anywhere. Besides, the main goal of it is to prevent piracy. Remove that and piracy becomes rampant again. You know what suffered and still tries to recover from piracy? Video games quality. It still struggle as of date.
If you have to be online to play the game, you don’t actually own the game. You just own the license and the studio can pull that whenever they want. Now think about spending 50-60+ USD to own nothing. Now you see why folks get mad about being online to playa single player game. Oh, that and frame rate/ping for a single player.
@try2bcool Not at all, there is a valid reason to it. I think what people need to do is figure out different ways to prevent piracy. I mean I literally gave 3 of my friends baldurs gate for free because they didn't have the anti piracy measures that most games have. It sucks but necessary. It's really silly I could give Baldurs Gate 3 away for free like that all they needed was to launch the game from the exe file. Your telling me that's secure?
You can't really fault these companies for atleast trying. Live service games make tonnes of money. The most important things is if they learn from their mistakes and improve
Just to be clear, COD made more money than Baldurs Gate 3. Madden made more money than Baldurs Gate 3. Fortnite made more money than Baldurs Gate 3. GTA Online made more money than Baldur Gate 3. Monopoly GO! made more money than Baldurs Gate 3.
Even though I kinda hate Rockstar for their treatment of RDO... Rockstar has one thing they do better than anyone else... their single player experiences are FULL fledged single player games - like packed with content. Their single player games arent just a gimmick that leads to their online games.
Records have been showing we want single player meaningful experiences. Look at God of War. Nier Automata. Red Ded Redemption 2. Screw live service games and always online games. I want games I can play years from now
But NO! Corporations don't want you to play games years from now. They want you to pay for a new game or at least a new season pass EVERY YEAR! That's one of the reasons Epic completely removed any trace of the Unreal franchise (Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament etc) from any (digital) store worldwide. "Wouldn't wanna give them ideas now, would we?" - some greedy corporate fck at Epic, probably
I remember when single player games where the biggest thing for games and multiplayer was for a select few games and mmo games The problem with all these live service games is they think that after launch that their job is done no cause the one thing makes a lot of these live service games like destiny 2, gta v and fortnite so successful is they have been providing a steady stream of new content for players and don't just abandon it when it gets to hard and it's also worth mentioning that they don't go out of the genre that they are known for
Here’s the thing about Live service that these suits are not understanding……YOU CANT CHARGE FULL PRICE IF YOUR INTENT IS TO MAKE IT LIVE SERVICE. It’s like dude if you’re that desperate to make Fortnite or Warzone money at least do it right lol
Gotta disagree. Forza Horizon 5 is incredibly successful in terms of financial success, yet the base game costs 60 EUR. It's all about the game being worth it, not about the price itself. Even a bigger price is ok IF what you're getting is worth paying that much.
Good point! I think it's also about the big question mark for consumer's budgets, too. They aren't considering we have no idea how much we're going to end up spending on these live service games... Will I end up loving this game and it's going to cost me $200 this year (Rocket League cosmetics), or will I play it for an hour and hate it (Fallout 76) ... ?
@@quantumvideoscz2052 I’m referring the likes of Suicide Squad, when you’re being blatantly predatory buy locking almost EVERYTHING behind a paywall. If you want people to buy the battle passes and all of the additional colors for your 20$ skins don’t charge full price. Forza is a different story they aren’t blatantly disgusting with the additional purchases and their a lot of the content isn’t paywalled
True, but corporate greed doesn’t fully infect an industry if they don’t think/ know they could make money yet. Industries start off on passion and innovation, then gets ruined when something catches the general public’s eye and makes massive profit. That when these bozos come in wanting a piece of the pie. Thinking they know what there doing, bc they made a lot of money somewhere else
"I realize it's easy to take a big ol' dump on live service games... and I will continue to do that!" Amazing one liner, right there, mate. Keep it up with the good insights :)
There is a reason why so many indie studies deliver huge hits, much more often than in the good old days. These indies gather around an idea and see it through. True, usually it changes a lot during that time, but the general principle usually remains. And as they all share an idea everyone there is on board and dedicated. While I miss the good old massive games of the big studies, I welcome the fresh ideas of the indies, albeit on a smaller scale usually. And for that the majority of my gaming money over the last years did not go to any of the AAA studios.
After BG3 came out, developers flooded onto the Internet to tell us they weren't going to make games like BG3. This is good news because it tells me that I didn't need to waste money on games for a long time.
Here's the thing I don't ever buy a game because it's from the developers of xyz because the actual people who make it might be completely different and making 1 good game isn't generally enough to make you good at making another. Indie games whoever tend to interact more with their audience and make changes based on what their community likes so they do tend to make better products a second time but you should also watch someone else play a game before you do. Personally I prefer to go a step further and "acquire" a "demo" of the game so I can see if I enjoy it before I buy it.
One big problem with the industry today is that all these game companies are now owned by suits who don't play/like games. It's just product. They're completely out of touch with their target audience.
But I think we have to stop pretending that there isn't a gigantic group of people who enjoy things we think are stupid. They keep doing these things because LOT'S of people seem to buy and enjoy it.
@@Pawnbandif that group is that big then they shouldn’t be going under like that and warning their shareholders of profit losses. You should probably watch the video again.
@@Pawnbandwell it cant be that big otherwise we wouldnt be having massive companies doing layoffs and shutting down studios. Its mismanagement plain and simple. If you want to see a publisher in touch with their target audience look at New Blood.
It should be a requirement for a CEO to have played through at least 2 full-story single player games and talk about them at length during the interview. Or in some way prove that they’re actually a gamer.
Ooooh or have CEOs be voted on by fans of the studio! And yes, @lyianx definitely chosen from within! I worked in a studio for 4 years. Not a single person in the upper management team played the game we were actually working on. Some of them barely knew the game at all… and of course, when it came to it, 130 people (including myself) who actually played the game got laid off.
Ironically, for some reason that I will never understand, it is not uncommon for a company to hire someone with zero experience in its industry as its new CEO. It absolutely boggles my mind how they expect that person to be successful growing/expanding the company in an industry which is completely foreign to them.
That's how the gaming industry used to be. The problem is that since gaming has become a huge industry, it's treated more like every other business as opposed to being made by gamers for gamers. Now it's just like any other media company.
CEOs are appointed by boards, appointed by Shareholders. You're taking about a pipe-dream. You know what the only requirement for a CEO is? To make money for the shareholders. They're not a charity.
I think the worst part about this is how so many players actually want this. I can't count the amount of times I've seen people claim that a developer (many of whom are indie) have "abandoned" their game because it's been a couple weeks since they last updated/patched it or added new content. So many people pay $20 for a game and expect every game to be a live service game, and this attitude has infested AAA single player games too, and out of touch ceos are seeing this and jumping on the band wagon. Live service games are oxymoronic, players want unlimited replayability from their games when that is literally impossible. At some point you just have to stop playing a game and move on.
@@AbsoluteSkycaptain I would argue that those comments are directed towards games that failed to incorporate all the stretch goal content because they either ran out of money or moved on to a more successful project.
@@X2011racer You would say that, and then be completely wrong. I've seen people ASKING FOR MICROTRANSACTIONS. This whole fucking situation has become one giant case of mass brainrot.
2004 - You go into a store to find a game
2024 - You go into a game to find a store
:(
Micro transactions and Battle Passes are the future of Gaming. Deal with it.
@@Mitch93636 Just take that boot entirely in your mouth. Do not resist.
@@Mitch93636 "future"
@@Mitch93636 No thanks
@@Mitch93636 We are dealing with it...by not buying that shit.
I'm old enough to remember when multiplayer was a side mode to the main game instead of whole game in and of itself. Ive never had any of these issues playing singleplayer games
I'm old enough to remember multiplayer flat out didn't exist because there was no widespread internet adoption yet. The closest you got to multiplayer was playing Barren Realms Elite or TradeWars 2002 on a BBS.
I wanted to answer this as well.
When Multiplayer was Hard because you actually had to understand how Networks work.
I miss the times the Internet had a built in Skillcheck before entrance.
Uncharted 4.
i'm old enough to remember when multiplayer meant you had 2 controllers plug in the consoled with split screen and a friend sitting next to you
@@gfimadcat So you gathered your friends in your parent's basement to set up a LAN Party to play some pirated games all night and have endless fun? Yeah... I'm old too :(
Steve Jobs described this situation a long time ago. These studios were started and built by the product people. That's where the masterpieces came from. However, now, the salespeople are in charge. Salespeople know sales. They don't know games, they don't know development, and their definition of 'fun' is completely alien to their customers'.
Well yeah, the greedy corporatists fly in, take over anything successful, and try to make it into a ‘science’ of squeezing the most money out of something without having the talent. It’s all about the numbers going up, ‘growth’. Same is happening in Hollywood.
How hard is it for them to understand this statement? Idc if I am in a suit, understanding the field you’re in should be business 101. Awesome statement man
Wild quoting Steve Jobs on the subject of corporate greed and ego
Agreed, they are trying to make sure their games follow their quarterly profit schedule.
@@PurplePanda1233 Something something right twice a day, you know how it is.
i will be honest, i am 68 years old and have been gaming since the mid 90's. i prefer single player games, as most of the multi player games are simply a matter of rushing around shooting at everything that moves. it gets tired and boring very quickly.
Time for a return of Myst.
Exactly! I'm 62 and I've been playing video games since 1980 when I was 18 years old.
Yes! Give me a GOOD STORY to experience! 👍
60 and the same.....
The good news is, we aren't losing great devs. We're losing companies that used to employ great devs. Many of those devs are starting their own companies and are still making great games. Don't stay loyal to a brand, the brand doesn't mean anything. Too many c-suites using the brand to rake in money using piss poor products over the last decade.
eh, there are plenty of devs that get tired of the instability of the games industry and leave to go do programming for something outside of the games industry, write stories for something not games related, do art and animation for something else. sometimes we do lose devs. They are here because they are passionate, but sometimes they are willing to give up the creativity and doing what they want for a more stable and bigger paycheck doing something less fulfilling because they need to suppor their family.
Genuine question but what devs and what companies are you talking about?
@@BestUA-camrever422 Most people just mention the games that a studio produced like the studio that made Hi-Fi rush got shut down. Watch the video again and pay attention to the games he says were condisered failures they are the ones that had their studio shut down.
Beloved IPs are getting shelved though. Suits will see a game that underperformed and conclude that franchise is no longer worth the risk. Then they'll just sit on it.
@@TurboTobs1989 oh, absolutely. That's why spiritual successors are a thing. And it's hard to not fall for an IP, but don't tie your identity to it. Creatives haven't had much say in the decision making in decades, outside of the indie scene.
All these once great studios really became Dutch from RDR2. "I have a plan", "We just need more money"
hahaha
Love this
Dutch "I have a plan john".
John "You always have a plan dutch"
Dutch "This is a good one. It's live service."
RDR2 was also a legendary single player game as was The Witcher 3 (both weren't mentioned)
@gameranx, As the leader of this project, I want to clarify the narrative around ANTHEM’s development. The developers, the heart of this creation, have poured their talent and dedication into building a game they believed in. It’s not just a product; it’s a vision they brought to life. The shortcomings you’ve mentioned are not a reflection of their commitment but rather the result of strategic decisions made at higher levels. These decisions, often driven by timelines and financial goals, can overshadow the developers’ original intent. Let’s redirect our critique towards the decision-making processes that impact the game’s development and release. We should celebrate our developers’ efforts and learn from the challenges to improve future endeavors. Peace.
It grinds my gears when a single player game is always online or need a connection to fucking launch every time
That shit is a cancer to gaming tbh... Like what in the fuck do you mean I cant play the game I spent money to OWN... Fucking Thief's , dont get upset when people pirate your games assholes
fr
Amen....
💯 agree
How else could they collect data
Just stuck playing older games. Thank God for the modding community. Singlehandedly saving old games and just games in general.
it seems that win10/win11 doesn't want you to play many of these older games as many just don't work anymore, and remasters generally are bug ridden messes hastily hobbled together to make quick profits.
@@michael_stocker but yes most remasters are just cash grabs. There are only a handful of remasters that are actually better than the original.
@@tacticalmattress Case in point: Persona 3 Reload
I can see from the Xbox 360 logo that you are indeed a veteran. Godspeed, ya magnificent bastard
@@Regigigas_YT That wasn't a remaster, it was more of a remake for modern audiences, the original game has not aged well, at all, and even worse in it's voice cast (one is in jail for sex crimes and another is a nazi)
The worst part is that the company sees the games failure as "oh, people just aren't interested in gaming anymore. lets pull out entirely" instead of listening when people say they hated about the game.
I don't see that as a the worst part, or even a bad thing. A company that insist on shoveling out crap people don't want, despite what their customers tell them, deserves to go out of business. It's natures way, survival of the fittest.
@@xerxes8632it’s bad when it’s a company that has made great games before, but it’s probably still because of new owners and new developers
@@mr.spytomThe companies are still made up of people and the personnel will still go on to make great games. That’s certainly what we saw with Black Isle. The main issue I have is that the IPs themselves will be abandoned or bought up
@@xerxes8632 that would be fine if they didn't shove down everyone else on the play ground and buy all their toys.
Big companies buy up all the indie passionate studios and popular franchises, then shovel out crap. More times than not, pulling out and refusing to sell the IP, so no one else can ever expand on the franchise ever again.
@@mr.spytom Happens all the time, companies have a life span. They are born, grow up, grow old, and die. It's very rare for a company to be 100 years old. They all die at some point. Even if a company lasts for 200 years (extremely rare), the people running it at the beginning, will be long gone, and replaced.
I have bought my share of crappy games, and stay away from companies that sold me those.
“The mindless pursuit of profit over sensible business planning is the real problem here.” could be said about many problems in society right now.
bingo
I agree. Obviously every company wants a profit but the problem is the business model of nickel and diming the customer. Imagine your neighbor had a lemonade stand, but instead of selling them by the glass, your neighbor wants a subscription fee. On top of that he wants you to pre-order his lemonades. But wait there's more, he also introduced microtransactions, he wants you to pay for the sugar, the water, and the plastic cups.
We have become the Ferengi from Star Trek
Quarterly profits are the only thing that matters. That means 3 months is the limit of their thinking ahead
capitalism is killing everything from the planet to our video games
“They’re demanding the consumer to also crunch games”
What a frighteningly succinct way of summarising this whole issue.
imagine grinding for hours at the job and coming home grinding for a game💀
@@DioStandsStillI think it’s more to convey that if you want to get the most cool loot you need to grind for hours on end rather than take a game at its pace.
Yeah, single player last 20-30 hours of gameplay. Live Service games need to last 300-400 hrs between updates. Only way to sustain the game is to crrate contents with lower quality graphics, less cutscenes, and very repetitive gameplay.
aint nobody grinding this piss that's currently coming out lol most of the games I've heard of past few years have truly failed, no wonder
I used to play Genshin and stopped because of this, thank god I never spent any money on any live service game
The worst part about live service singleplayer games is at some point you just can’t play it anymore as soon as the company stops supporting the game.
Just a complete joke, has to be the worst decision ever. I can still play 1985 Mario Bros, almost 40 years later
Totally agree however MMO and online only games are going to have that eventually which is why they should be avoided, but why do single player stand alone games still have to be internet connected and also will not play once they choose to no longer support that game, to get rid of gamers legacy libraries and second hand games that's why, forcing you onto new online download only store platforms, your $10,00 dollar physical game library is now a collection of drink coasters, also your kids can't inherit them as they are tied to the user just like Apple song libraries are, unlike the past generations you are better off selling them off now because they are worthless later.
@@terryrwest2657 yep. Purchasing isn’t owning anymore. On top of that I recently got into pc gaming a year or two ago and physical copies are almost non existent. You don’t even have the option with a pc 90% of the time. It blows because I love having physical games
That's the main reason I don't even start with those games
I don't wanna fall in love with a game only for some shmuck to prevent me from playing what I love
I'm a solo dev who dropped out of college because I almost instantly burn out when trying to adapt to another programmer's way of thinking. When I was in school minoring in game design, all I ever heard was, "you're thinking too much like a player; you need to remember that at the end of the day you're making a product".
lol, lmao even.
this mindset is killing the industry.
they forget that game developers are artists whose tool is so extraordinarily difficult to completely assemble, because life is too short to learn how to model, animate, mix audio, compose music, voice act, write, write well, write one or more modular stories, operate a game engine or create one from scratch, write synergistic code drawing upon at least five facets of computer science considered to be entirely different professions, and then wield all of those at once for up for 10+ years... so most of us specialize and cooperate.
many colleges attempt to suck the creativity out of aspiring game developers, by urging them to actively try to maximize profitability like most other businesses.
Art doesn't work like that.
You don't get valuable art with whatever the fuck the AAA studios' bigwigs have been on this last decade.
You get valuable art when you, for the most part; put a bunch of talented developers in a studio, give them a good manager who understands the vision of the group's visionaries, and throw sandwiches at them every day for 2-6 years.
"Waaaaaaah but I want my profit now!"
Oh, so you only want to make 10% when you could've let your boys cook for real and gotten 110%?
Understandable, have fun reading your reviews.
'Good' products are actually antithetical to what capitalists do. They want mcdonald's hamburgers (think of cheese as a dlc) rather than haute cuisine because their primary goal at this point is reducing costs, one thing they can control. Minimum cost for maximum profit, which seems fine because nobody thinks about how this is digging a hole over time. The system inevitably leads towards self destruction and collapses when costs cannot be cut anymore and profits cannot be increased.
Exactly, it truly is a plague to the industry. Profiteers just aiming for quick profits rather than putting in the effort a project deserves to make a good game people will enjoy making and playing.
I have a question with game development, why does it cost so much for like AAA companies to make a game(idk if you can answer)
@@bananar1403 just about cost man
Indie studios have anywhere from 1 to 25 developers on continuous payroll. Not a hard number but this is common amount.
Studios like Ubisoft will have multiple games in development at the same time often, each with between 100-300 developers on continuous payroll.
It's a tradeoff.
Big studios can work on multiple assets of the same type at the same time, can task multiple developers to single assets, and can do more overlapping work; the consequence is drastically increased costs.
Independent studios don't have the manpower to crunch like big ones can; they also still spend a lot of money retaining their manpower relative to their total capital. You'd also be surprised how often high level developers in such organizations will work multiple jobs just to not strain their project so hard; not often, but it never happens in professional studios as they would first fire the entire subdivision before being placed in such a financial situation.
tl;dr more people cost more money but work faster; less people cost less money and have more agency but work significantly slower
Back in the day a team of 10 people or higher was considered a AAA studio now its a indie 😂 times sure have changed
The worst part about this, from a purely gaming perspective, is all the lost IP and great ideas that never even came to fruition.
anthem would have been amazing as a single player action rpg heck imagen a armored core style game with mass effect rpg and decisions.
Well never get another arkham game again…
@@ImNotFine44*side eyes meta quest 3* yeah… never again…
i miss resistance but sony basically killed it
They don't have great ideas anymore, just Californian sensibilities.
The trend is called corporate greed
Capitalism*
The cooperate time limit of exponential growth.
@@rappakalja5295 Nothing is wrong with Capitalism - there is no better system - the same companies will fail if they do things poorly, that's how it works and should work
@@rappakalja5295 Nope. Plenty of good games are still made by independent people. Capitalism has nothing to do with it, please spare us the politics.
@@rappakalja5295 without capitalism there wouldn't be a games industry
Hopefully, companies can learn from BG3's insane popularity that you CAN Successfully do a game with a single player story, with no DLC's or microtransactions
If you have six years and extremely deep pockets.
@@mal2kscthat's the bare minimum requirement to make award winning best selling games tho 😂😂😂😂😂
I hate to break it but... bg3 was thought as a tabletop rpg for 1player and more, not as a single player.
But yeah. I agree about multi player killing the games. You have to be accessible for everyone in gameplay and universe, making in the end meh games that we have already played a thousand times before.
Yes, but it's very rare. Otherwise, it's hard for SP games to make money.
Ace Combat 7 as well, best selling game in the franchise by at least 2 million copies, and Ace Combat 04 was a PS2 Bundled title.
Boycotting Live service games is my passion.
There is nothing wrong with live service games, the problem is these single player game studios trying to make like service games. It takes special skills to make a Live service games and many more people working on it, 500+ people at least. good live service games are made with passion by people who want to make a good game that lasts forever. Bad live service games are made by the same single player studios you were fanboying, they have no idea how to make one, they don't have the patience nor the resources but they want the big piles of cash, so they do it anyways. And that's how they ruined the reputation of an entire game genre.
I’d have to pay attention, or care about them enough to boycott them.
@@MEYH3Myap yap yap. That’s all I read. 🤫
@@axel2x748 Left 4 Dead 2, Warframe, Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2 are all great games. doesn't matter what you think.
So many better options, everybody need to stop looking for friends online 😂
As an antisocial introvert i avoid all games that force interaction with live players. But now even single player games require online servers for absolutely NO reason.
I couldn't get into Journey because I knew the other character was a human, and while I wanted to explore an area and work out a solution myself, I had this other character standing at the spot I needed to go to, impatiently pinging me while I wandered. Ruined the fun for me.
"As an antisocial introvert"
Pls go outside lil bro
@@kaiki-desu8193 pls , try to understand, lil bro. he dont feel emotions you feel.
Sounds like the majority lmao
@@kaiki-desu8193 dude.. im a disabled 44 year old woman 😅
Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but the decline of single player games is something that really bothers me. I just don't care about online play
I agree with you. Being able to enjoy something solo is amazing!
Same, I never really cared for online multiplayer games.
There's plenty of them around, it whatever genre you like. I've never been into online play, and have never felt starved for choice in single-player games, and there's more choice now than ever. 'Live Service Games' are just a loud annoying toddler trying to get everyone's attention. Ignore them and they soon tire.
I still play solo lol, you just need to find the right game. Though most of them are old so unless you REALLY like them, theres no point.
Same here, I'm basically a full on story mode player. I play to experience the story.
The weak games you mentioned also have massive open worlds, but with very little to do in them. Dishonored and Mass Effect have much smaller open worlds, but they are PACKED FULL with side stuff to see and do. Dishonored, you don't have to walk 10 miles off the story path to find some random little shack with maybe a bit of loot or a decent weapon.
You may notice a window that is cleaverly hidden behind some crates in the dock area. You move the crates, only to find a locked window with a lock with a tiny key hole. A little further into the level, while sneaking through a house you find a note that the owner, had hidden an expensive weapon in his safe house in the docks but he lost the key to gambling with a gang leader. You find the gang leader but he refuses to give you the key unless you pay him. You come back a bit later, pick pocket the key from his sleeping form and then you get to travel back to collect the weapon. The weapon than turns out to be freaking awesome.
Now there isn't a quest just like what i mentioned, but it is the trusting the players to work out a puzzle that rewards them with a weapon that gives them a leg up early. It is rewardign the player with actual good rewards...... Or you could just throw the weapon in a loot crate you buy with real money, and have the game avatar go collect 10 racoon claws (or some other mundane quest)
Spot on, you should get rewarded for being good at a game not just buying shit
💯 spot on.
And yeah...
Those games are WEAK!
Right now.... how much time you spend in game and how much time it takes to finish a game is a sales pitch.
There's also an odd perversion in customers' thinking as well - they now count how much money the game is vs how much time it takes to complete it. If it takes 10 hours to finish the game and it costs 40 dollars, it's not worth it - while if a game takes 200 hours to complete and it costs 60 dollars, it's worth it - regardless of the quality of each game.
It's very interesting - but it also says that there's perversion not only in the current game developers, but also a huge percentage of the player base.
The Yakuza/Like a Dragon games have raised this into an art. They're set in only small parts of a larger city, you can traverse the whole map in a matter of minutes if you avoid fighting. But there's stuff to do around every corner, and it never feels small or restrictive in any way.
Suicide Squad getting 60% is criminal, it should've gotten 20 at most.
20 is fucking generous dude.
-10
I'd say 10% in initial release. It became 12% when Joker was added. lol
Live service isn't why its bad though.
The thing about that game is that thanks to all of the leaks, gameplay trailers and the SBI controversy we knew how the game would turn out even before it came out, that pretty much sorted out all of the people who don't enjoy mediocre live service cash grabs and games who try to virtue signal and tell them what's right and what's wrong.
So, the only people who bought the game were pretty much people who knew what they were getting into, probably people who liked and agreed with the SBI nonsense and have a humiliation kink, and hardcore DC/Arkham fans who will buy anything that has DC/Arkham universe characters in it.
The main cancer in the video game industry today is the board managers' misconception that it operates similarly to the film industry, where delayed releases, subpar productions, or heavily advertised expensive movies can still be profitable.
Indie games ftw
It can be, when it's not a live-service model that needs consistent interest from players buying microtransactions to stay profitable. AAA flops that weren't live service could still make bank just because the pre-order sales and initial purchases on release is most of what they needed to achieve their projected profits.
Delayed releases are usually a good thing most the time bc the product is usually finished
@@viralchainx9 But also presenting a delay is signs of bad planning, and delays being a trend looks like a lot of studios are confronted with horrible planning, production and design plans
Delayed releases are fine in video gaming, aslong as the quality then is there
corporate greed is definitely killing more than just the game industry. sucks to be a microcosm.
When rent rises exponentially and salaries rise linearly. You are just planting the seeds of revolution. If it where not for the circuses (games, social media etc) The prooblem would have been solved a long time ago..
@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj Doesn't take much longer until people realize circuses don't feed them. And if their monthly budget gets eaten up by basics like "living under a roof", before they can fill their fridge, they won't stop.
Kinda shame this trend appears everywhere in our world. Hope there's a turning point soon before everything turns ugly.
@@michaelgiertz-rath7994 unfortunately, history teaches us that the turning point IS ugly, people have to be brought to the brink before they react en masse, and that in itself is part of the problem. It will be violent, senseless and highly destructive when the 'revolution' finally comes, and from the ashes, it will be the power hungry and opportunistic would-be dictators who are most likely to seize the reins next. If you want productive and positive change, you have to do it by degrees, and keep fighting against the tide. It's a battle of inches, and you have to change people's minds one at a time. It's slow, laborious and horribly depressing, but the alternative is so much worse.
Corporate greed only works because so many people keep buying into it though. The real problem is the masses who make it work, not the few who profit from it. Sad truth, but ultimately the reason we've only seen the corporate landscape worsen over the last ~50 years.
@@michaelgiertz-rath7994 I've seen this said for over 20 years straight, and yet the problem continues to grow and people continue to take it lying down. You really do have to push the masses to an absolute breaking point before reactionaries finally outnumber the complacents, and once you hit that threshold it's ALWAYS unpleasant. We are now entering our second adult generation who are utterly without hope of owning their own home in many places. This same generation are the children of those who first started seeing wages freeze (or even reduce) whilst expenses continued to rise, and yet the changes we hoped would occur feel further from reality now than they did in the late 90s when the whole house of cards started falling.
This is why I only buy games from indie devs or nintendo/square because they haven't given into live service yet, and the day they do is the day I find a new hobby.
i personally hate nintendo for all the shit they give the fans
@@samuelcalkins307 Yeah, but we can't deny that they launch and have some bangers on their consoles
AMEN!
splatoon is technically live service and so is final fantasy 14 online. at least splatoon has no microtransactions, all done with in game currency. only expansions you need real money for. idk about ff14 though, i've never played it
@@yoshicakebut those are online games though right?
The biggest problem with games is that I used to feel like I was playing someone's creative passion project. Nowadays I feel like I am playing 2024 Q2 profit conduit wrapped in some IP. Hard pass for me
This is the biggest thing for me too. It used to feel like a body of work. Now it just feels like a UI wrapped around a shop
Ghost of tsuchima was amazing!!
Alan Wake 2. That was a passion product.
@@yarikonings Alan Wake 2 is overrated… and a completely different game than the original
I had given up completely until Elden Ring arrived. Haven't enjoyed a game that much since Witcher 3
no wonder many people are going back to old games and emulators are beginning to be more popular than ever
Errr... that is a wonder. Even with all this big money being sprayed at Live Service games, there are still *MANY* other games getting made.
Or maybe because emulators are free? With how grocery prices are nowadays I doubt anyone would easily spend 400 on a switch or smth.
I'm still playing Quake and Unreal Gold on a 2 years basis since the 90's. Those games never get old and are completely independent of any current corporate perversions. The fact that Epic completely removed the Unreal franchise from all digital stores goes to show how much of a thorn those (higher quality) old games are in corporate eyes.
@@marcdwonn9772 totally true. recently replaced the god of war games and the skate games too and they are just simply good games with no trickery
@@marcdwonn9772Agree. Most of the games on my PC and Steam Deck are 90s action games.
The big thing that all companies seem to forget about is that it's the gamers like myself who enjoy a good story driven single player game more than multi-player games. And we are some of the few gamers who would go out and spend full retail price on day one. So yeah, it's very sad
Same. I LOVE a story driven single player game
Full retail price is a lot less than a couple in game skins
@@harmoen you missed my point. But okay
@@chefcobusfourie3132 My point is that companies haven't forgotten, it just doesn't matter to them.
Although we have been getting some amazing single player games in recent years.
Even that has been successfully monetized as a live service (Genshin Impact, for example).
“The mindless pursuit of profits instead of rational business practices”. Literally what’s wrong with the world. Well said
Live service games are killing gaming for casuals. It worked during COVID because we all had a lot of time and nothing to do with it. Now people who have priorities and a life outside of video games are getting shafted especially due to the “seasons” “fomo and limited time only bullcrap”. I used to play games as an escape from stress and the world, now it causes just that.
Exactly I find myself stressed after gaming it feels more like a chore at times I hate how it's no longer enjoyable
Same here. I just want a good story, decent game mechanics, graphics can even be so-so. Just let me play it by myself at my own pace and get lost in it.
Have you played all the half life's yet?
I would say FOMO is my least favorite game mechanic
Well said. Those of us with the desire for a life in meat space and without the warm, comforting bosom of our parent's converted basement don't have the kind of time necessary to devote to live service gaming. I had a PC built specifically to play ESO and then I found out that I didn't remotely have the time I needed to keep up with other players in game. I don't know what I hate more; forced NPC companions or live service ones. Studios forcing me to play companions or multi player is going to turn me right TF off.
My sister works with a mobile game development company, and is always complaining about the suits messing with everything, and how the company is really scummy. So i ask her why she won't leave it, and she says that there are two reasons: 1) the company ate up most of the local competition, so they're literally nowhere to leave to, and 2) she still needs the working experience in the industry if she wants to sign up for another serious company (working remotely for some foreign company). I have to wonder, though, if working for another big company's gonna be any different and she won't just end up making indie games. 😁
That's quite sad
mobile games are the upmost scumfuckery when it comes to in-game purchases...
Has she considered starting a game development business of her own?
@@Warrior1Spartan I’m sure, but there will be a major pay cut or it’s too time consuming
fellow game dev here, i finished my apprenticeship in 2012, most of the people that worked as devs dont anymore. Either they changed to the suits, or the industry. The rest is having a "normal" life in indie studios/solo dev work.
Buuuut: The experience and contacts you can get in a few years in one of the major corpos are insanely valuable later. Thats how you get reputation and acquaintances that will make your later ventures possible and successful.
Turning every commodity into wall street is fucking the whole planet over big time
Try cruelty squad if you play on PC, I got it at full price and don't regret it although i have seen it on heafty discounts.
>wall street turning everything into a commodity
Crony capitalism, folks!
Dear socialists and capitalists both: Not everything ought to be a market. The human spirit won't be fed by profits and green lines.
@@crusaderACR Go talk to some people who survived the Iron Curtain, and edecuate up on how a 12oz CAN OF PEPSI was a MONTH's wages in 1970s Ukraine.
@@crusaderACR When your main complaints in life are about video games, you have it pretty good lol
100% Agree. GTAV was one of my favorites games. GTA Online was one of my most hated experiences. I don't want other people in my games. I remember a game called Motor City Online. It was my first foray into multiplayer gaming. I loved it. Right up until people gamed the system and ruined the game economy by scamming and selling in-game assets for real money. The game was online only. EA bailed on the game leaving us screwed. We were given the option of a free copy of Sims Online or Ultima Online. I chose the Sims, but never played it. They bailed on that too. I had no faith in online only games and vowed to never buy one again. Guess how that worked out...
The real problem is publishers forcing developers to go along with their insanely stupid decisions and then also forcing the developers to face all the consequences of the decisions, publishers never have to learn from their mistakes, so they'll always repeat them
This is why executive compensation should be capped at 600 grand a year and make stock options as a form of compensation a felony. Its utter insanity that this shit has been allowed to continue because the games industry is just the easiest to use as an example but its happening in all facets of the economy. This is slowly limping towards a matter of national security. Because when no one can afford the bare essentials and the wealthy just buy up everything we can no longer afford then rent it back to us it will make it far easier to revolt with nothing left to lose
Bingo
it’s been approximately 60 years since this began happening, and each step gets bigger and bigger. It may have started as a limp, but things are looking like a light jog now.
@@dr._breens_beard why you think the focus on cheap gaming? They are the circus of the bread and circus.
That's literally what the video is saying lol
I swear these live service games are brining down downfall on all these AAA rated devs and studios. Just make a decent single player game man. That's all they need to do
It's the exact same thing as renting an apartment. The trend of paying indefinitely for something rather than paying once is real and it is everything that's wrong with modern society. As long as there's demand, there will be profit. No turning point, unfortunately - we're doomed.
it worked with mobile users and they try to force everyone else into that monetization
some people just dont want junk games
Investors. The cancer that's killing gaming.
They're expensive to make and the greedy bastards at the top don't like the risk of bombing for a single game.
Oddly enough they're more than happy to take the risk of a live service game bombing because if it is successful it'll draw way more money than a standard single player game. The risk to reward ratios are too enticing for investors to resist.
It's not even remotely about quality for them, these games are just another investment made by people who know fuck all about this industry, it's audience or its own goddamn studios.
I blame the publishers 💯
Some of the best video games were made by extremely small studios. It wasn't the ease of the technology back then, it was the fact that they could do whatever they want and not need approval from 7 different corporate departments before making a decision. The communication chain was much smaller.
A lot of the most exciting games for me are from independent studios for exactly this reason. Nothing better in my opinion than a product lovingly made by one guy in his parents' basement.
2004: hey, wouldn't it be cool if we add this thing? no one has ever done that before... Yeah lets do it!
2024: so i was thinking- NO! BAD! GET BACK TO WORK!!!!
Proof that a diversity of ideas is not always a strength.
these falcon mini-essays are honestly more interesting than the top 10 list format, please make more
Agreed. This one is what made me subscribe after lurking for a couple of years. :)
Too bad he always too busy talking only about soulborn games
Falcon is hot too
@@INikeAir What are you even on about?
A 60 score for Suicide Squad is way too high
I heard the actual gameplay was good just a bit repetitive. The story is bad and mission variety. Yeah no I think a 60 is about right
@@ramdjow2882 how could you say that without playing the game first?
i didn't play it but i don't have to play it so say i absolute hate the UI and artstyle, who cares about gameplay at that point.
@@ramdjow2882 but your pros only reaching at 45, 15 points are extra
@@sinu9226 ui and art style are subjective? if someone did like both they would in fact care about the gameplay. you’re logic is dumb and you’re just looking to hate for the sake of hating. i also happen to think the game is absolute shit, but i don’t go around youtube comments trying to justify that opinion to random people on the internet. get a life.
Game reviewers tend to be really generous. If a move got a score of 60 on metacritic, that's actually pretty good. For example, guardians of the galaxy volume 3 has a score of 63.
Falcon mentioned the real problem in the gaming industry and it’s not live service.
Issue is the executives who don’t know, nor cares, about video games making decisions based on what all the other companies are doing.
They act like day traders who look for the hottest trend only to end up buying high and selling low.
And watch, they'll turn into bears soon saying the market is bad, all as the competent privately owned studios quadruple profit and throw out even more bangers.
Honestly it's a case of corporates holding game studios hostage and holding back the game industry for a quick buck.
It's glorious witnessing how little knowledge y'all have with regards to shareholders.
It's one of the biggest problems in the corporate world, in general. The MBA's took over, and so we get companies that are ran by people that don't understand the nuances of the industry. In the 90s, tech companies, gaming companies, were all ran by people who worked in the industry before having their own companies. That passion and industry know how shone through.
Some of the blame also has to land in the lap of the dipshits who keep pre-ordering this shit. NEVER PREORDER.
🧀“Cheeses from various countries” = obligation #1
eat all cheeses speedrun any%
Do you know the definition of insanity?
Wanting infinite growth from a finite system.
Perpetual motion machine
Greed has no boundaries
You know what we used to call "infinite growth"?...
"Cancer", we used to call it "cancer" 😉😅🥲
I’m afraid the government needs to ACTUALLY govern these fuckers.
But it’s not finite. The people in charge can extract value merely from their own deceptions, and there is no limit to gullibility.
I remember when my video games didn’t have ads every time I press the pause button. DLC also used to be something worth looking forward to
Back when Windows wasn't seeing itself as a live service portal..
Honestly I'm starting to think that the Gaming industry just has to crash and get rebuild by passionate devs
Probably the only thing that will fix the issue. Though the issue will ensure this is what happens.
The triple A part of it maybe, but indie games are thriving
Pretty much what's happening to Hollywood right now, take marvel movies for example, or anything disney touches lately, I'm starting to see a similar pattern in gaming too
kenshi was made by one man and these AAA studious think they deserve love
It's the course of nature, all super powers eventually fall, eventually they rise up again.
The biggest problem with everyone trying to make games into a live service is that they try and go into creating a game exclusively to make money. The idea should be to make a good game first, then once you feel the product is sufficient, add more content to make the game better not to make more money. All these huge developers want is just to make money not make content worthy of making money. The reason why GTA Online and Fortnite work so well is because if they didn't have any of the extra paid content the game would still be a great game. All these other corporate jerkoffs just want to milk you for every dollar, dime, nickel, and penny you have instead of making it worth it to spend money on the game to gain extra enjoyment
I love when they drop buggy near non functional, but the microtransaction shop works perfectly
Executives will never cease to make terrible decisions while making huge bonuses.
From their POV that sounds amazing
because they all want to be kotick with a 70 billion dollar payday from big daddy microsoft
I blame their business analytics team, they clearly based their confidence on live service on the one or two live service games that managed to be both popular and well made... without taking into account that their game is not fortnite
.. and thats the problem. They are able to bail safely, taking their money with them, while the studio falls down to earth in a burning pile.
"Executives will never cease to make terrible decisions while making huge bonuses" - This is precisely the problem. I'm reminded of 2005, when H.P. fired Carly Fiorina (forced her to resign) for nearly running the company into the ground, and decided to give her $21.4 million in severance pay. To put that into perspective, in 2004, her salary was $1.4 million and her bonus was $1.7 million, so the severance pay was nearly seven times her total 2004 pay.
I heard an ex-Blizzard employee say that the first real money purchasable mount in WoW raked in more revenue than Starcraft II in its lifetime. That was a kick in the nuts to all the devs everywhere.
Hello fellow Pirated Software enjoyer.
Status flex isn't a single player.
And then bethesda committed sin with the oblivion horse armor
@@EmeraldAbyss77horse armor was first
$59.99 for the game
$14.99 every 3 months for the battle pass
And the cherry on top - every single time I log in to play the game, I am reminded about the cash shop.
It should be illegal to ask for so much money for a product that isn't yours to own.
None of these studios wanted to do a live service, they were forced to by the publishers who are calling the shots. They were forced to make the game as fast as possible and release it before it was fully finished because the publishers were impatient to get their game out so they could make their money. The games flopped, reputations were damaged, and the studios were left to take the blame for something they never wanted to make to begin with.
Yup ya can always tell when people are lying about always wanting to make a live service game. The founders and half the staff always leave mid development to make a new studio and a new game in their wheel house like with arkane. They also literally say the most generic shit about why too.
Exactly. People always point to communism and socialism as examples of central planning, when unregulated capitalism just leads to central planning by corporate executives.
Decisions made by people completely out of touch of the industries of which they are in charge
I'm going to get into game development, and if I get to the triple A space, I'm publishing all my own games. I'll turn down every publisher unless they follow what *I* want my game, my rules
@@Dovah_SlayerYou have no idea how the gaming space works then. You'll never get anywhere near the triple a space without a publisher.
@@Code_Dee
"Unregulated capitalism" 🤣
If that were true, we would be forced to buy the game at the behest of the publishers because there are no alternatives rather than voting with our wallets. The world of Cyberpunk is a perfect example of so-called "unregulated capitalism," which is really just corporatism (i.e. where mega-corporations run the world rather than government). Shadowrun is the same way. Corporatism is just corrupted capitalism.
Something you touched on that companies need to accept is that ever-increasing profits, in perpetuity, is just not possible. I really wish more companies would be happy with steady profits.
This. The rich want to make their money work for them so they get richer. 200k a year isn't good enough for a rich guy. He wants 250k next year, 300k the following, and millions the next year, or he's gonna fire everybody involved. It makes me wonder if these mfers are actually human. I've never had money, maybe it does corrupt.
Basically, Capitalism
@@Native_Creationspecifically late stage. Its trying to milk a bubble before it breaks, leaving whoever’s left to hold the bag.
This right there is why the stock market is an absolute mistake. Shareholders demand increasing value in their shares. Until that goes away, nothing will change. We’ll get poorer and they’ll get richer until we have no more money to give them, and the cycle continues.
I just want to say that the game industry feels like it's being held hostage by corporates for a quick buck or some form of ransom, That's how uncomfortable the gaming industry feels at the moment...
Corporations are being held hostage by employees, which is causing this gaming problem. These companies are keeping grunt work employees around between developing the next idea for a game. The cost of these 100-1000 extra grunt workers are forcing management to push for new games faster keep these employees and not put the companies into bankruptcy. Some of these companies have half billion dollar a year payroll, mean need to sell 6 million copies of a game at $60 every year just to pay employees.
@donw4889 please. The large parent companies of these AAA studios are still making record profits - meaning "line goes up." They just want it to go up more.
@@donw4889 that is a truly insane take. i mean... wow.
the world in general is kept in hostage by shareholders/investment companies/holdings searching for the next big investment to ruin and impring their bs on.
It seems Capcom is one of the few companies that has figured out how to manage costs.
"In late April, Capcom raised its revenue goals for the fiscal year to ¥152.4 million ($977M). The change was done in light of Dragon's Dogma 2's performance, which stands at 2.62 million sales overall."
Honestly, friend, it's been fantastic. The new features on 4ra are just what we needed
fortunately with big studios shitting the bed, a lot of indie studios are getting the love they deserve
And then bought out by the Big Studios almost instantly.
@@taylemgames2652 😂
not really, indy games go viral all the time and it has nothing to do with the state of the market, did you forget minecraft? terraria? undertale?
random stuff things go viral, just part of the internet
the things is, indy studios don't have the budget to market themselves, AAA studios literally dump like half their budget into marketing, indy studios can't compete with that and having an indy game go viral is pure luck, there's many better games to don't get such luck
imo it'd take more than the usual odd viral indy game to say indy studios are getting more recognition, cuz in reality the gap is just getting bigger lol
Anyone remember how awesome games were when other studios didn't eat up other studios? 😮
Or how they were willing to take risks to make unique games.
Remember Titanfall? Remember how well that game did? Remember how good the story was? Remember how short the story was? Did anyone care? Dd anyone even play online? Im sure they did, but the game was ao fucking good that it didnt really matter. I replayed that shit 6 times.
@@sayLeotardbutsayitChinesedude, I played that game (Titanfall 2) online *so much*. A true triumph in both single player and multiplayer. Still one of the best to this day.
before later stage capitalism, way better. now it's not studios consuming others, it's conglomerates consuming studios. an unregulated market has caused an oligopoly in every. single. established. industry.
I remember how great gaming was pre-fortnite…
Man we really lived thru the golden age of video games 10 to 14 years ago and had no clue
Edit: I have been playing video games for 30 years now so I’ve played thru most eras and that time to me was just the most enjoyable
2017 was one of the best years for gaming for sure
@@SadTown99 2017? I can't think of any good games in that year. Not one. If you're thinking of Mario Odyssey or Zelda: BOTW... then I guess you have only played about 3 mario games and don't understand how tired the concept of mario fighting a spiky turtle that goes "Gwahaha!" is. Not okay to keep doing the same thing since 1986.
And Zelda: BOTW is not even zelda, it's just some generic soulless garbage that was made when nintendo became extra lazy and started getting on the "open world sandbox waste of time" trend. They used to be leaders and now they are followers.
Best time for gaming was the 90s to early 2000s. So many quality games, these days I STRUGGLE to think of good games out. I was lucky to have been around then.
@@Vaquix000Holy shit dude, calm down.
1994 to 2014 was best gaming years.@@Vaquix000
@@Vaquix000 Old man yelling at the sky. Zelda Botw, Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Resident Evil 7, Horizon Zero Dawn etc etc Most early 3D games are straight unplayable
13:31 Helldivers 2's developer, Arrowhead Games, has this as their motto: "A game for everyone is a game for no one." That's why they succeeded.
And yet they made an even more grave mistake by shacking up with Sony, the worst publisher in the industry. Well... tied for worst, right beside Epic.
true
some gamers like one type of gameplay, whereas others like another type
And then Snoy greed came...
@@BenchongDy Still in the top 10 most played games on steam. May not have kept their full potential but they're clearly very successful to this day.
And then they fucked up the game with buffs and nerfs
What once started as corporate Greed has become Corporate Stupidity. Only a couple of Live Service/Battle Royale/MMOs can be truly successful at one time. So many of them are against taking risks on new IPs, yet they’ll take an even bigger risk on a new live service or battle Royale……EXPLAIN THAT LOGIC😖😖😖
One takes longer and costs more. The other is literally designed to not even be fully complete when launched.
So, if you're gonna take a shot on a new IP, why take the bigger risk?
I personally don't pay for games that ask $70+ when you have to pay $30 for a season pass to complete the game
Agreed. I'm not going to even buy a game until it's on sale these days, and I will never play one that demands a stupid season pass. Being a gamer is getting too expensive these days.
@@criticallard2090 I havent bought a full price game for a few years now, the last one being CoD MW2 a few years back, when they offered a two year run - which never happened... after that I was like never again will I preorder, or buy into something where the potential to be let down is so high.
I haven't bough a game in years that's had "DLC" because nobody's done it ethically in years. DLC on-launch, DLC in early-access, DLC in 1.0 except the game's still an unfinished mess, DLC as paid updates. I'm tired of paying for every 2% of the full game in 80$ increments.
Somewhat paradoxically, all of the developers who I would choose to financially support by buying a "supporter pack" premium DLC, are all of the ethical devs who actually respect your time and money and didn't release anything like that.
I never paid more than 40€ for a game in 25 years of gaming (and i'm talking about "on release"). That's my upper limit and this limit has to go down lately because of all the economic downturn. So, good luck to companies asking high fantasy prices of 70€ and up, LOL.
@@DS-cf1zc same I loved COD as a kid Big Red 1 was my favorite and it baffles me how they expect you to pay $40 for black ops 1 on steam I am not going to lie though I bought Helldivers 2 but it advertised itself as a multiplayer game not a single player game with multiplayer and micro transactions
Kind of blew my mind seeing these exact points being made in the world's most respected business newspaper the Financial TImes a week or so after you published this...
It's not about making good games anymore, it's about appeasing shareholders. That is what's killing single-player games.
Everyone knows shareholders don't own computers, so they can't play games.
Thats what is killing games, you can leave out the single player part
So by shareholders you mean BLK and vanguard? Or the DEI and ESG scores they’re given? Your average shareholder has very little to do with disruption of the process of making video games.
I mean, I hold shares and I purchase video games on my home consoles. Also I make purchases on Epic games for my PC at least three times a month, even the crappy ones.😊
Shareholders have zero influence on what games get made.
Biggest thing that upsets me is in 10 years I can't play most single player games I bought today cause the server will no longer be online. But I can still play titles from 20 years ago cause it's SINGLE PLAYYYERRR
Plenty of indie games that don't run on this. Many better games, too.
I cannot fathom why these triple-A studios don't simply LISTEN TO THEIR CONSUMERS!
Maybe they think they know better than us 😂
Their parent company tells them what to make and how to do it.
They stopped listening to gamers and listened to the shareholders.
@@denshonibingo
For a large part it’s because the studios get forced to (BioWare) by the ones who basically own them (EA).
Then we also get some studios who get sweet talked into doing it (Arkane Austin) by buttheads with controlling interest (Bethesda.)
I'm glad that you correctly identified the Profit motive as the underlying problem - Corporations need to see year on year profit increase and that leads to discussions that, more often than not, are to the detriment to the consumers, the devs and the industry as a whole
I think a lot of people have probably already heard this, but games like Helldivers 2 taught me that people aren't sick of live service games, they're tired of poor implementation of them, expensive and very limited Battle Passes that ask you for immense hours of grinding that only a small portion of players can complete, cosmetics and items or exclusive content that is blocked by a paywall and that in some cases is exorbitantly expensive, not to mention that several of these games come out incomplete with the promise that they will be complete one day, in some other cases these bad market practices are implemented in single player games in a desperate attempt to recover the investment cost of developing these games. If the live service system is well implemented, you can have a game that will be loved and loved by the community, but today the large triple AAA companies only see it as a way to milk their games more and try to force their users to let them spend more.
pay to play is garbage, grind to have a smidge of fun is garbage IMO. Its not right that in order to enjoy the thing I bought I'm expected to waste hours and hours of life or money.
That's literally why I stopped playing Destiny 2. I loved Destiny and took a break. But when I got back on to Destiny 2 there was soooo much more grind elements to get the best gear and qualify to do the good game content. I just gave up when I realized you had to spent hours and hours doing repetitive tasks to get a low chance of getting an item you need to upgrad, or even a drop. Nobody has that kinda spare time.
some of the things you said are pretty much why I've given up on MTGArena. paid for a bunchof packs for the 'latest set' and haven't opened them or the game launcher in months
exactly
Online multiplayer game sure OK. but don't you ever say that it would ever be nice in a single player game or you are the problem
I’m 27, and when I was 15 yrs old me and my friends had so much hope and excitement for the future for our fav games/gaming company’s…what a fall from grace.
I'm 37, 12 years ago was already a declining gaming industry. My best games were all before 2012 except for 2 (RDR2 and Witcher 2).
same here, just turned 25
I am 27 and i collect Nintendo DS games and the nostalgia of going to a store or playing a game full of content for only 20-30 bucks without additional payment is just the way things should be.
The gaming industry has gone over the limit with their ingame purchases. Even if they are cosmetic, it should only be 1 payment and you get the game with everything. Thank god Nintendo Switch owners almost never have to deal with this. (Unless its dlc or something like fortnite on switch.)
That’s just growing up
Well, I'm 42 and started gaming when I was about 12. Used a C64 back in the days.
Had a hell of a ride of great games, but the fall is even greater from my perspective.
Today? I cling to games like "X4 Foundations" (X-Series, super nerdy and complicated game, if that's your thing). The most recent game is Dragon's Dogma 2, which is fun too. And I'm actually waiting for 12 years now for Star Citizen. Put money in. It's nerd's dream, to be part of the development, see it growing and more and more tech integrated.
But most of the modern games I'm simply not interested in. Either they're too fast paced or the publisher care only about release + game passes, but do nothing about cheaters, hackers and ill balanced gameplay. They simply don't give a f*ck about their products anymore and it shows.
This is why I play retro style games by indie developers. No micro transactions in those.
YEH! Bro, I agree.
Too bad I’d rather be pulled apart by wild dogs.
I don’t do nostalgia.
Live service games are just killing studios in less interesting ways than I can Noita myself.
@@Saje3DEh I get it but stuff like 'Animal Well', 'Demon Turf' and 'Selaco' are all worth it.
This' why i'm still playing older game. Some niche like M&B Warband that somehow still have an active multiplayer scene. Old is gold afterall
Remember, corporations don't want some of the money, they want ALL the money.
If they stop changing good things, then they’ll probably get more money
That’s modern capitalism. I’m not going to soap box on how that’s bad or good. It just is what it is. All the money, never ending growth, no matter how unrealistic.
@shiftymcgee9359 I'll soap box lol.
In the 1930's
An economist named John Keynes
Predicted that by the end of the 1900's
Americans would be working
Fifteen hours a week
Keynes was a capitalist
Who predicted leaps in innovation
That would lead to a world in which
People didn't have to work
To have what they needed to live
Food, water, shelter and clothing
For the most part, he was right
By mid-century the Green Revolution was in effect
And has spared one billion people of starvation
The world isn't perfect
But global issues of poverty and hunger
Are in a far better place than they've ever been
What he failed to predict
Was the unrelenting side of capitalist innovation
Consumerism hit the nation hard in the 1950's
And ever since
Income inequality has gotten far worse
Despite having the essentials for people to live
We are working more than we ever have
To support this unnecessary overabundance of products
Demanded by American consumerism
And a false scarcity, created by
One-sided distribution of resources
We are so far removed from the actual idea
Of "earning a living, "
We use the term to explain
Why 90% of us spend our lives making profits
For the top 1% that own everything
The only thing we're "earning" is more merchandise for
A sick, spoiled culture
And CEO's that can't profit enough from it
We are not an artificial intelligence
What part of getting a new phone every year is a fucking living
What part of working for Wal-Mart is a fucking living
What part of trying to look busy at a desk is a fucking living
Who's living are we working to sustain
How does it feel to be the latest innovation of a broken fucking system
How productive is your self-destruction
How free do you feel
In a work-culture of burnout
Heart disease
Anxiety
Poverty
And depression
Capitalism is finished
Hypocrisy
Scarcity
If we're really being honest
What'd we trade for fucking objects
Me and my pals all got our degrees
We're lucky to work
Seventy-hour weeks
That eight-hundred bucks is time well spent
And life well-traded
For this month's rent
So don't you try to bullshit 'bout efficient ergonomics
Reducing my potential down to pushing little buttons
Call it the merit of earning a living
Feeding hedonistic
Adaptation
Fifteen hours
Bed by ten
Burn both ends
And do it again
God bless American capitalism
For cutting the brakes on commodification
The incentive to make is all we got
With no incentive to fucking stop
Streaming, phones and fashion that's designed for obsolescence
Look at all the poverty that's come from our abundance
Lemme work for cheap
For my whole life
To feed a star-spangled appetite
@@shiftymcgee9359yeah exaclly and the problem is that a huge chunk of global economy is based on constant growth witch is simply not sustainable in a long perspective.
Don't forget chasing ESG money instead of sales money
This right here.
YES! The suits know that ESG riddled single-player games wont sell. That's the real reason for all the online/live-service focus. They're not allowed to create good stories and characters anymore.
spot on
Lol yeah but gameranx would never admit that.
Sales money is a gamble
ESG money is selling to, what? 500 people? them being the decision makers.
People forget that Fortnite was mostly PvE focused before their PvP exploded. Epic made a game they wanted to, saw what people liked about their game, and adjusted course. Listen to the players and the money will follow
This statement is completely counterintuitive. "Made the game they wanted" -> "adjusted course to what players wanted."
Players spending millions on microtransactions -> "listen to the players." -> Players want more microtransactions.
@@thedarkemissary You're adding absolutely nothing here.
Its funny, Fortnite literally pivoted from being a ripoff of Unturned (which was a ripoff of Minecraft + Day-Z), to being a ripoff of PUBG / 'battle royale' games as a whole.
*"Ohhhhh, I see. So, if we just ignore ALL the players, bastardize every IP we can find & do whatever we want all the time then the money will follow?? That's basically what you're saying right?"* - Game Developer
@@Coconut-219bro if games didn’t copy each other we’d still be playing pong rn
Just wanted to say I really appreciate this analasys. I'm working in software (not games), too, and it's very interesting to see how other industries run into systematical mistakes.
How to I click the like button more?? This video is just… *chefs kiss*. Gotta love when Gameranx has a better understanding of basic business practices than people who’s ACTUAL job it is to do this. Falcon, I love you and your frustration with the industry. Keepin it real for us. Thank you!
Live service games don’t make sense for most game genres. There are only a limited number of gamers with a limit amount of time. You have to steal gamers from an already established live service to get them in another. While many gamers won’t even touch them
And most of the gamers who DO play them are playing World of Warcraft, Path of Exile or Fortnite.
It is possible to make a live service that isn't a huge time sink. The trick is to make it stand out enough to attract players. And my example for this usually doesn't get labeled a live service because it doesn't have microtransactions, but all the other hallmarks are there (multiplayer requiring online, daily updates to the ingame shops, scheduled content drops, occasional special tournaments, etc). And that is Nintendo's Splatoon. You don't have to sink a lot of time into it to enjoy it. It the original was one of my favorite games on Wii U (was because they shut the servers down). But for the eight years that game was online, I maybe sank 80 hours into it. I never felt like I had to dedicate my life to it in order to enjoy the game. Although I will say this, Nintendo does have a unique advantage that they have an automatic fanbase that will show up, unlike anyone else in the industry.
Fun fact: 60-50 ratings are basically 10-20 ratings. Critics just don't have the balls to give that low of scores anymore.
Yep, there's lots of 80s out there for some seriously trash titles.
Yeah. It always amuses me when people say things like "A 70% doesn't mean its bad." Like.. nobody actually feels good about getting a 70% on anything, lol. Barely grades as a C. Nobody really wants to buy and play C-grade products either (especially if it wants you to keep paying and buying), it wouldn't be a fucking C if its what everybody wanted.
I think barely anyone knows this about the 60-50 to 10-20 conversion, but I'm certain people know that critics and stereotypical game "journalists" are cowards.
You don't understand how aggregates work. Tons of critics give low scores all the time.
These games are perfectly playable. They're just mediocre.
@@burrfoottopknotThe purely independent gaming magazines were pretty honest. The first one that comes to mind was PSM before they became “PlayStation: The Official Magazine.” I do miss their artwork, lid stickers, unique demo discs, etc.
On a side note, I miss the feeling of getting a new issue of Nintendo Power in the mail. Memories.
This is why I prefer (good) indie game devs over most companies. Because they’re not driven by the big profits or the new trends, they just make a really freaking good game because they want to.
I think the developers realized it was easier to pit humans against each other than try to create a "realistic" AI for enemies in game. That was what initially drove this.
It might be a part of the reason, yes, but a small one. The keyword here is recurring revenue, live service games profit margins far surpasses anything a single player game can deliver because of how long you can keep revenue going. GTA V, the most profitable media to this day, made good bucks with the single player alone of course, but it reached its 7.7 billion dollars mark relying on this concept.
Freefire, Fortnite and alikes all made huge profits for its recurring appeal. It's corporate greed plain and simple.
@@joaorenz7784 Even if that's true, for a live service game to actually get that revenu,e you need a solid gameplay loop to keep the players engaged so they can spend more money.
This is not what happens though, the games are not entertaining, they're no longer "games" because the "playing" part of the game was cut short in lieu of making add-on content to buy as extra.
@@joaorenz7784 Corporate greed strongly characterized by the shortsightedness it comes with. GTAV made $1B before they even dropped the online. Players want engaging open worlds that feel free and rewarding to dive deeper into. We *do* want to play with our friends though. In *co-op experiences.* Not always-online, battle pass loot shooters.
Rockstar know what they are doing when it comes to AI enemies, they are going hard with the AI in GTA 6. The AI in Red Dead Redemption 2 were pretty good. I haven't paid for a new game since the new COD MW2, hopefully developers start to learn not everything has to be live service.
@@LSClubhouse Fk yes, co-op games are for me at least, is the best between it and multiplayer.
It’s like executives have never actually encountered a gamer.
Chances are they haven't, at least not conciously.
I’ll bet they have. It’s probably their kid and they hate them for “being lazy” and “not contributing” while also trying to make record profits off the friends of their kids. Their heads are so far up their asses they can’t even recognize the irony in hating gamers while also trying to profit off of gamers
When would have the met a gamer, they've never played a game?
Early 2000's: Game is art
Late 2010's: Game is Business
Developers!! Please just let game be game!!
Art is business: since forever
Games have always been a business. They just used to be *better* at it.
Now what will 2020s be?
@@AndrewDaPro Buzz Lightyear: "Microtransactions. Micros everywhere."
Very well said. Live service is not the issue, greed and bad implementation of elements just to have the elements someone else has included is the issue (and also if they include those models and then increasing the grind THAT Much that you'd need a full time work schedule of 40 hours or so to get ANYWHERE in the game without paying shitloads of money).
As a veteran grand daddy gamer since the 1980's, the trend is depressing but familiar. Every new generation of publishers/studio heads to use your phrases, think they know better. They don't and we savvy experienced gamers have seen it all before. It was a sad day when i realised Prey 2 was never gonna happen after arkane were bought. Oh well.
we are gonna reach another E.T. situation
Dude. You were gaming in the 80s and still had enough hope in your heart to want ARKANE'S prey 2?!
I'm probably the exactly next generation after you, coz I was born the year the soviet union fell, and man.
I hope you get to see a company release an im-sim and NOT die sometime in your life, man.
First video game - Arcade tank game in a bar (then a kid in a college town could walk in during the day) and played in oh, about 1974/75…. Talk about OG gaming….
Im with you and cant believe how far gaming has fallen. Gaming on PC in the late 90s was incredible. The original Deus Ex was absolute mastery. The origional Prey was absolute mastery. I wish i could recall the names of so many that were and are quite frankly other than the obvious graphics 1000 times better than most the garbage out now. Probably because then, a game had to be good to make money vs now you just got to sucker in a few fools with a unlimited credit line. I'm pretty sure another one was Noone lives forever, not the 007 but it was a female super spy the game was absolutely amazing.
As a gamer from a slightly similar era (Atari 5200) I find this trend depressing. Not to say that I don't like Live Service/Multiplayer games . I love my GTA online, RDR2 online, DOTA 2) but I miss the storytelling , the Dramas, the reveals(General Shepherd anyone) , the world-building of Halo, the easy open exploration of RDR2 and the GTAs . I also don't have enough time being a responsible person in my 40s to devote undivided attention to multiplayers. I miss the single-player world.
It’s like people seeing Microsoft making lots of money selling Word and thinking we can make money doing that too. But people only want Word. They don’t need or want your random version. People only want Fortnite. They don’t need or want your random version.
Also, it's companies buying Word for their employees. Almost no regular people are subscribing to it themselves unless they have some kind of professional reason to.
We don't use Word we use Excel, Jesus tell me you don't have a job without telling me you don't have a job.
@@aelinstue9431 are you ok? you sound really mad for literally no reason. calm down its not that important
...excel IS microsoft, jackass. Go read a book or something because not only was that uncalled for, but it had NOTHING to do with that person's point.@@aelinstue9431
@@aelinstue9431 We dont use Excel, we use use Google sheets to collaborate with our coworkers in real time for the fast solutions our clients need, you absolute homeless plebeian
It's just exhausting with Live Service games. I don't even want to talk about it anymore.
I quit online games years ago because they are time consuming without an end so no purpose to play them.
I mean, it's not totallty true. You have to impose a final goal on you ( exemple : a rank / a build / max stats / a boss .. something like that ), and when you reach it, it's the end.
And single player games have a firm end. It's hours enjoying a game that counts.
@@Safetytrousersbuilding the story snd characters. Beautiful cutscenes. I agree with you. Running around in the same 4 maps isnt really appealing to me.
@@marvin_demon Once Human is doing it right. That is live multi-player service but plays like a single player game. It has cut scenes.
I have been playing games since 1989. And I have played hundreds of games till date. But I have never paid for a multiplayer game as I find them utterly boring without any specific goal.
The only multiplayer game that I played on PC is Rocket League. But I became bored of it after playing for just a month. I think this is the sentiment of majority of gamers due to which most live service games flop. There isn't a big market for such games.
Business executives and shareholders are pure poison in the creativity well.
The musicians have been warning us about the poisonous influence of greedy business people since the late 50s. Computer needs imagined that didn't apply to their own art, leading to the destruction of great game studios, too.
Hey hey... these new writers are saving games either...
Know what else I hate in gaming nowadays? ALWAYS ONLINE SINGLE PLAYER GAMES. Why if im playing alone I have to be on their shitty server when again im just playing alone having fun on my own. I do also have a bone to pik with constant updates and patching but ehhh
That doesn’t bother me. You really need to be out of your ways to not find an internet connection anywhere. Besides, the main goal of it is to prevent piracy. Remove that and piracy becomes rampant again. You know what suffered and still tries to recover from piracy? Video games quality. It still struggle as of date.
@@MrMOGHammer That is utter nonsense.
If you have to be online to play the game, you don’t actually own the game. You just own the license and the studio can pull that whenever they want. Now think about spending 50-60+ USD to own nothing. Now you see why folks get mad about being online to playa single player game. Oh, that and frame rate/ping for a single player.
@try2bcool Not at all, there is a valid reason to it. I think what people need to do is figure out different ways to prevent piracy. I mean I literally gave 3 of my friends baldurs gate for free because they didn't have the anti piracy measures that most games have. It sucks but necessary. It's really silly I could give Baldurs Gate 3 away for free like that all they needed was to launch the game from the exe file. Your telling me that's secure?
@@MrMOGHammerDont defend this bullsht practice.Which ubisoft id pulling off.
You can't really fault these companies for atleast trying. Live service games make tonnes of money. The most important things is if they learn from their mistakes and improve
Modern game producers seem to be allergic to money
AAA producers
There has been an indy renaissance
Valheim
Battlebit
Manor Lords
Subnautica
Stardew Valley
All amazing games
I think they just aren't gamers and have no idea what the hell gaming is and what it is about. Video games should be made by gamers.
*publishers
works for me. i can spend it elsewhere.
Just to be clear, COD made more money than Baldurs Gate 3. Madden made more money than Baldurs Gate 3. Fortnite made more money than Baldurs Gate 3. GTA Online made more money than Baldur Gate 3. Monopoly GO! made more money than Baldurs Gate 3.
Even though I kinda hate Rockstar for their treatment of RDO...
Rockstar has one thing they do better than anyone else... their single player experiences are FULL fledged single player games - like packed with content. Their single player games arent just a gimmick that leads to their online games.
For now.
...yet.
@@themonsterunderyourbed9408 to be continued... :P
Fromsoft is a better example. If the single player of GTA 6 remains pure, must be appreciable.
Records have been showing we want single player meaningful experiences. Look at God of War. Nier Automata. Red Ded Redemption 2. Screw live service games and always online games. I want games I can play years from now
But NO! Corporations don't want you to play games years from now. They want you to pay for a new game or at least a new season pass EVERY YEAR! That's one of the reasons Epic completely removed any trace of the Unreal franchise (Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament etc) from any (digital) store worldwide. "Wouldn't wanna give them ideas now, would we?" - some greedy corporate fck at Epic, probably
I remember when single player games where the biggest thing for games and multiplayer was for a select few games and mmo games
The problem with all these live service games is they think that after launch that their job is done no cause the one thing makes a lot of these live service games like destiny 2, gta v and fortnite so successful is they have been providing a steady stream of new content for players and don't just abandon it when it gets to hard and it's also worth mentioning that they don't go out of the genre that they are known for
Here’s the thing about Live service that these suits are not understanding……YOU CANT CHARGE FULL PRICE IF YOUR INTENT IS TO MAKE IT LIVE SERVICE. It’s like dude if you’re that desperate to make Fortnite or Warzone money at least do it right lol
Gotta disagree. Forza Horizon 5 is incredibly successful in terms of financial success, yet the base game costs 60 EUR. It's all about the game being worth it, not about the price itself. Even a bigger price is ok IF what you're getting is worth paying that much.
@@quantumvideoscz2052 fo5 is well known and its like fo4
Good point! I think it's also about the big question mark for consumer's budgets, too. They aren't considering we have no idea how much we're going to end up spending on these live service games... Will I end up loving this game and it's going to cost me $200 this year (Rocket League cosmetics), or will I play it for an hour and hate it (Fallout 76) ... ?
@@quantumvideoscz2052 I’m referring the likes of Suicide Squad, when you’re being blatantly predatory buy locking almost EVERYTHING behind a paywall. If you want people to buy the battle passes and all of the additional colors for your 20$ skins don’t charge full price. Forza is a different story they aren’t blatantly disgusting with the additional purchases and their a lot of the content isn’t paywalled
@@zeroglitch13 Yeah, definitely agree on that.
corporate greed isnt a trend, its always been there, they're just finding more ways to be greedy
Micro transactions big bother is live service
True, but corporate greed doesn’t fully infect an industry if they don’t think/ know they could make money yet. Industries start off on passion and innovation, then gets ruined when something catches the general public’s eye and makes massive profit. That when these bozos come in wanting a piece of the pie. Thinking they know what there doing, bc they made a lot of money somewhere else
"I realize it's easy to take a big ol' dump on live service games... and I will continue to do that!"
Amazing one liner, right there, mate. Keep it up with the good insights :)
There is a reason why so many indie studies deliver huge hits, much more often than in the good old days. These indies gather around an idea and see it through. True, usually it changes a lot during that time, but the general principle usually remains. And as they all share an idea everyone there is on board and dedicated. While I miss the good old massive games of the big studies, I welcome the fresh ideas of the indies, albeit on a smaller scale usually. And for that the majority of my gaming money over the last years did not go to any of the AAA studios.
Finally someone said it! I miss the days when one could play the games just for themselves, and the games were a complete package FROM THE GET-GO.
‘Short term thinking and trend chasing’. Basically sums it up
After BG3 came out, developers flooded onto the Internet to tell us they weren't going to make games like BG3. This is good news because it tells me that I didn't need to waste money on games for a long time.
Here's the thing I don't ever buy a game because it's from the developers of xyz because the actual people who make it might be completely different and making 1 good game isn't generally enough to make you good at making another. Indie games whoever tend to interact more with their audience and make changes based on what their community likes so they do tend to make better products a second time but you should also watch someone else play a game before you do. Personally I prefer to go a step further and "acquire" a "demo" of the game so I can see if I enjoy it before I buy it.
One big problem with the industry today is that all these game companies are now owned by suits who don't play/like games. It's just product. They're completely out of touch with their target audience.
But I think we have to stop pretending that there isn't a gigantic group of people who enjoy things we think are stupid. They keep doing these things because LOT'S of people seem to buy and enjoy it.
@@Pawnbandif that group is that big then they shouldn’t be going under like that and warning their shareholders of profit losses.
You should probably watch the video again.
@@Pawnbandwell it cant be that big otherwise we wouldnt be having massive companies doing layoffs and shutting down studios. Its mismanagement plain and simple. If you want to see a publisher in touch with their target audience look at New Blood.
It should be a requirement for a CEO to have played through at least 2 full-story single player games and talk about them at length during the interview. Or in some way prove that they’re actually a gamer.
I honestly feel like a CEO should be promoted from within, not hired from outside.
Ooooh or have CEOs be voted on by fans of the studio! And yes, @lyianx definitely chosen from within! I worked in a studio for 4 years. Not a single person in the upper management team played the game we were actually working on. Some of them barely knew the game at all… and of course, when it came to it, 130 people (including myself) who actually played the game got laid off.
Ironically, for some reason that I will never understand, it is not uncommon for a company to hire someone with zero experience in its industry as its new CEO. It absolutely boggles my mind how they expect that person to be successful growing/expanding the company in an industry which is completely foreign to them.
That's how the gaming industry used to be. The problem is that since gaming has become a huge industry, it's treated more like every other business as opposed to being made by gamers for gamers.
Now it's just like any other media company.
CEOs are appointed by boards, appointed by Shareholders. You're taking about a pipe-dream. You know what the only requirement for a CEO is? To make money for the shareholders. They're not a charity.
I think the worst part about this is how so many players actually want this.
I can't count the amount of times I've seen people claim that a developer (many of whom are indie) have "abandoned" their game because it's been a couple weeks since they last updated/patched it or added new content.
So many people pay $20 for a game and expect every game to be a live service game, and this attitude has infested AAA single player games too, and out of touch ceos are seeing this and jumping on the band wagon.
Live service games are oxymoronic, players want unlimited replayability from their games when that is literally impossible. At some point you just have to stop playing a game and move on.
The number of times I've seen people refer to a complete single player indie game as "dead" because it doesn't get weekly updates is maddening.
@@AbsoluteSkycaptain My blood pressure raises slightly when I see those comments lol
@@AbsoluteSkycaptain I would argue that those comments are directed towards games that failed to incorporate all the stretch goal content because they either ran out of money or moved on to a more successful project.
@@X2011racer You would say that, and then be completely wrong. I've seen people ASKING FOR MICROTRANSACTIONS.
This whole fucking situation has become one giant case of mass brainrot.