"What is this supposed to be, between Burning Man, a Pride rally, and Mad Max?"....😂😂😂 You hit that one right on the mark. I almost had my coffee shoot my nose laughing.
They could still maybe make it work, but only if they spent 1% of the budget they're actually spending to make the games. Instead they're spending at least triple the budget a normal game made for normal people would be expected to cost
And just like in Hollywood where they do this, they always infect existing IPs that already have a fandom because if they make their own games/shows/movies zero people show up to get force fed "The message". Case in point Concord, Dustborn, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians
Yessir, I don't think anybody would argue that Monster Hunter, Elden Ring, Zelda, or Resident Evil are not AAA. I am perfectly fine with more of those AAA games
@@raskolnikov6443 Correct take. AAA development is rotten on purpose. It's not designed to deliver good products to customers. It's not even designed to deliver long-term wealth to investors. It's designed to enrich the executives running it, and no amount of destruction of value is too high a cost to pay if it'll give the executives a single dollar more of personal wealth. AAA game development is succeeding for the purpose to which it is designed by the people with the actual decision making power.
Stellar Blade: hot girl Space Marine 2: cool dudes Deadlock: hot girls and cool dudes Monster Hunter: cool dudes and hot girls killing cool giant monsters Hmmmm, i wonder, what do they have in common?
Space Marine 2, Alan Wake 2, Silent Hill 2 "Demake", Concord, Dragon Age Veilguard, Monster Hunter World/Wilds, Deadlock have dei stuff, so no; you are wrong here.
5:40 There's the problem right there: "*annual* CoD title". Nobody demanded this. They're complaining that it's so hard to shit out a new CoD every year? Well, then how about you don't?
@@GnidelIf they have substantial reason for the yearly release, sure. There’s no reason that I should have skipped the last 4 Call of Duty games and hopped onto BO6, thanks game pass, and never skip a beat. It’s more copy and paste than sports games at this point.
Concord is such a depressingly fitting name. Just as the Concorde aircraft had a long history of tire failures, by ignoring years of red flags, one of the supposedly "safest" options exploded shortly after takeoff with major casualties.
@@Level_Eleven the woke mind virus has been trying to outlaw some books and change others to suit the "modern sensibilities" for a while, especially in libraries.
@@northzone13 I'm digging the Flashman series about a Victorian-era British soldier bouncing around between fictionalized but historically accurate mid- to late-19th century conflicts... and the character himself is a complete piece of work. Written in the 1960s-90s. Does not GAF about woke platitudes.
In every disaster there's an opportunity. I hope all indie studios rejoice and understand that if they play their cards right and come up with compelling gameplay, they can rise up real fast, leaving these triple A studios in the triple dust.
Ha! Well... Sniper Elite? GTA games? One persons propaganda is a others grate punching bag in fiction. Used to promote a political cause or point of view. And more often then not, fabricated to that end. Truth or Lies be disregarded. The message. Power control. It is not enough to remove propaganda. You would still have hurt feelings and awful games being made. And overpriced, gamble, micro-transaction crap. As a example. No blood from combat. Is that because the dev's can not make blood effects? It is not really part of any propaganda. Awful and 3 year old gameplay difficulty? Reviewer difficulty settings? AI enemies that can not even begin to make a fun game? That is not propaganda. Can polish a turd and make a complete and perfect turd of a game. No propaganda. It would still be a polished turd of a game.
Narrator: "Bigger games or more games?" Me: "Brother, that's the problem, games are becoming too big and there are too many of them. I would rather have smaller but full of content, and less but diverse games."
Pretty much this. If AAA games would still be focussed on delivering what the playerbase wants (and constantly says it wants), there wouldnt be an issue. The whole issue is that they dont.
"The message" works its way into the game because they have people who are not game developers developing the game. It comes from not having quality employees. DEI hires cannot produce good quality. And with games, quality matters a lot.
@@InkspellsBeing well written helps too, but I don't want to be preached to or subtly propagandized in any way in video games, regardless of the writer's talent. Any agenda other than making a game that appeals to the majority of players in terms of fun, aesthetics, fulfillment, immersion etc is nothing but a virus that needs to be cleansed from the gaming industry entirely. Giv'em an inch they take a mile.
I'm pretty sure comments under content that constantly complains about how woke everything is are mental illness simulators. Everything is shitty, boring and interesting and everyone is coping that it's because of some woke agenda and not corporate greed.
There are plenty of terrible, half bakes indies but most of them never make news. They die quietly and never make money. The ones we know of are true passion projects with good developers with vision. The reason AAA has problems it does is due to budget and size. When that much money is put into something people expect results, so when the expected results are delivered it is decent and when it is not it is very bad.
The problem with games now is the companies making the big titles are only worried about sales so they only focus on visuals and marketing. They make sure the game looks good enough to make a trailer, then they market the shit out of it. The rest of the time is them playing defense to make sure they don't get canceled before the game hits the stores, so they make sure to insert all the required virtue signalling. Then the game gets released and they use the good initial sales from the marketing hype to justify a loan to finance their next project before the sales numbers plummet. Personally I don't agree that there are any current Triple A titles, there haven't been for a long time. It's not enough for a game to look good to be a triple A title, the game has to also be functionally good.
Gamers are regular guys. No regular guy wants to be forced to deal with California ivory tower politics on a daily basis ESPECIALLY in their escapist video games and yet the cult member must push their recruitment message.
There's a direct correlation between identity politics and bad games. When Identity politics are in the game it means the devs are activists and not gamers. They tend to spend way more time making sure they communicate the message than they do making sure the game is actually good. Strictly because the message is the more important thing for them.
As well as the time spent on each, the message also takes priority over things that might make the game good. If adding their identity politics means adding cutscenes that everyone hates then they'll include those cutscenes at the cost of making their game worse because it's more important to them.
It's because their definition of "good" is wrongheaded. When I design a character or write a story, I try to make it good so people will like it. My idea of good is the same as other Western people's. They also want to make something "good" so people will like it. Problem is they think their "good" is everyone else's idea of good, but everyone else just don't know it yet.
funny thing is, they always argue that women also play games at the same ratio as blokes do, my answer? nah, they don't. Picture this, I know a friend of me nans, 80 yrs old vetaran bloke from limerick that served in WW2 and the wanker plays COD all day long, he's a diamond 2 btw, jesus bless his soul. And also a saw twitch streamers like "gamerdad" I think, a 60+ yrs bloke who plays LoL, "grandpagaming" also an old veteran that plays battlefield. And what do old ladies do? pfft, I'm sure not much and playing videogames isn't one of em.
It all comes down to good games. You can get away with woke in a good game, but you can't get away with woke in a bad game, and it's not easy to make a good game especially if you're focused on something else.
Mass Effect 5, Witcher 4 also. Have absolute zero faith in them. My top 2 favourite franchises, and I have zero interest in buying them at this point, reading what the studios are doing.
GTA 6 has so many DEI redflags the past few years. Starfield is a clear example Bethesda has their heads so far up Todd's and Emile's asses that any other game ends the same. Dragon Age Flopguard is a clear example BioWare hasn't learned from nearly 8 years ago with Mass Effect Andromeda.
GTA6 may still be a good game if you ignore the story because Rockstar still has a good technical record and people play online for the chaotic fun, not the story. ES6? Mass Effect 5? The Witcher 4? Those are all made by devs that can neither write, nor code.
4:13 can we just... stop putting girl boss characters in anything period? just a good character that is female works. and it's been proven for a LONG ass time that guys dont mind or sometimes even prefer to play female characters in games. so like you don't need to make a merry sue that the narrative bends over backwards to "empower", just make a character that is badass, and get a female model and va, like it's not that hard. :T
@@thatguydownthestreat i understand what you mean. Games really just need better writing IMO. I think Alloy from horizon zero dawn was a well written female protagonist.
@@RobMetal-ie5hd I loved HZD, and was shedding tears at the end credits; only a few JRPGs manage to do that to me. But I won't play HZD2. They uglified my girl. Look how they massacred my girl! I refuse to play it.
Hiring seven people to do the job one person used to do and having massive overhead staff that don’t actually produce anything made them far too expensive to produce.
Hiring seven people - *based on identity checkboxes instead of talent* - to do the job one *competent* person used to do and having massive overhead staff that don’t actually produce anything made them far too expensive to produce.
From my point of view it’s not AAA games that are suffering. It’s WESTERN AAA titles. Countries like Japan and China, especially Japan are releasing banger after banger like it’s nothing
6:58 as a woman who gravitates towards preferring games where I can either pick my gender or create a female character I can confirm as a woman I don't like playing as an unattractive female character either. In fact I specifically on occasion well look online for attractive female face models to model my character creator character off of because I like making pretty women. I don't understand this mindset that female lead games have to have a unattractive female character or that female characters created by women have to be ugly or else detract somehow from the product. As if a female character can't both be beautiful and a strong character
I agree. The only thing I don't care for is sexualization. I like the option, sure, but not forced on me. I've noticed with a lot of men, women being pretty and sexualized go hand in hand in games a lot of times and that's just not for me personally. We can make beautiful characters without bimbofying them and we can make strong, likable women characters without making them ugly.
@MeanyBooters 100% agree. I'd like to add that people who say "I don't know how to write women." Have no concept of personhood beyond gender stereotypes and I find it the most agitating and insulting to not just their own intelligence, but to their depth as a creator.
I also do not understand why you have to play as a girl while being a girl. I am a girl but never had a problem having a male character. In fact sometimes given the option i still choose to play as the male character and this has nothing to do with my sexuallity. It's just the way i like it 😆
@MeanyBooters Same. I'm a guy and I often play female characters in MMOs and action games. But I prefer to make my characters look cute or strong. More kawaii than femme-fatale. Having the option for sexy is good, having it forced sucks. At the end of the day, the appeal of character customization is being able to create your own expression in the form of a character, right? Limiting your options to just sexy character or just ugly characters is antithetical to that.
I think the core of the issue is that video games are no longer a niche or “geek” hobby; gaming it’s a multibillion dollar industry, now larger than the film industry. I think most developers are passionate about their work/art, but now there’s too much money and corporate suits behind most developers/publishers that only care about the profitability for shareholders. Shareholders don’t care about passion or art, they chase financial trends for the best returns. It’s why indies are having a resurgence (and rightly so) because there’s rarely corporate influence behind them, only passion and creativity, they aren’t chasing money making trends and instead building unique products they want to play. There’s many other issues but that’s my 2 cents.
@@wackpendejo3000 It's a shame that it connects to at least decent games as well. I love Paradox titles, but their DLC approach can destroy most wallets if you want to keep buying them regularly. Also, Crusader Kings 2 still being normally priced is just nuts to me.
14:30 Yeah, no one wants DEI BS.. I game to relax. I watch TV to relax. After getting lectured about a TPS report at work, I don't want to be lectured when I'm gaming or when I'm watching TV. Entertain, not condescend.
Too be fair, I dont even care. If they make a banger of a game full of DEI and LGBT idd still play it. The fact is that games are just mid. It's because they want to cater to as much people as possible gameplay wise. While the best games are specialized. Look at baldurs gate 3. You can be as gay as you want, noone cared.
@@danilonden3782 From what I heard from Asmongold is that BG3 started off without any DEI elements in it, so it had years to develop with a focus on good story and gameplay, it wasn't until a year or two before release did they add in DEI elements. BG3 is a classic example of how DEI can be done, make a good game first. The worst thing that can be done IMO is what Amazon did with RoP or Netflix with the Witcher and change the lore. Fans hate that.
@freethinker77 do you though? Did you find baldurs gate unplayable? Did you even think 1 second it might be woke? Probably not. But a manly devil woman that you can clap butcheeks with is pretty woke. Besides that, you probably wont, if you really do, you might be in a cult. Since i am a centreleft politically wise, but im not american, I'm probably a little woke in your view, but last of 2 went overboard for me, but last of us 2 was mid game. Would it have been as amazing as the first, i wouldnt have cared probably so much. Same goes for right wing nonesense in my entertainment, i dont care when the product is good.
People are just over the pushy woke movement, trying to push their propaganda everywhere, it’s nauseating. Like if you want to be woke then be woke don’t try to force your crap on me though
@@thalanothno because houses that were 100k in 2000 are 500k if not more in 2024 new games aren't $300 dollars there hasn't been a %500 increase in cost
@@l3vi23it’s suck when housing is expensive when everyone want to buy low then sell high for profit. Suddenly making housing communism doesn’t sound so bad.
I get so much as a hint of DEI or social issues its automatically a no buy. It's pretty easy to tell too as the developers can't help but tell you on social media how diverse and amazing they are and how evil you are for not wanting it.
Yep. Though sometimes, a game can have DEI showing up but still be good. Remnant 2 is a great exemple of that. The NPC in the tutorial is clear wokism at play and the plots bends over so another female NPC is the one doing everything that actually matters while you are an errend boy, but none of that shows up for the actual gameplay or in the plot of the individual worlds you play in. And the NPC from the tutorial gets demoted to a town vendor, never having any plot relevance again
Forced DEI yes. Almost all great old games have DEI subjects in them but they navigated the subjects differently. They tried to unite and not divide by using these subjects. It's not them versus us but trying to make these subjects seem normal.
@@roxstar5088 True. Most of Rockstar’s games are full of DEI and well… it’s rockstar. Their success and the greatness of their games doesn’t need to be mentioned
It's because DEI is a globalist agenda and many globalists have jobs on the boards of AAA game producing companies plus Black Rock and Vanguard owns shares in every big game development or publishing companies. Those 2 firms are also globalist controlled and pushing the agenda (they also own shares in every major movie/tv show company). Globalism is a tree with many branches and far reaching roots.
Spicy take here: Should have NEVER implemented DEI. You want a job? You gotta earn it with experience and good resumes. Otherwise GTFO and don’t come back till you have it.
A lot of people can't afford the top of the line PCs and graphics cards required for an optimal experience. The games are bloated and require absurd amounts of disc space. People are prioritizing paying for groceries and their bills over entertainment. And people dont want to be preached at with a "message" and narrative that's driven into the story with the subtlety of a jackhammer.
This too. I keep looking at some indie/smaller studio games that look great and off long play time, but are often cheaper and requires far less space. I've seen some even that have the space that the 360 could manage. Heck, a 360 could possibly run in if it were released back then.
@slydoorkeeper4783 Yeah, I've spent way more time playing smaller indie games with relatively primitive graphics than I've spent on mainstream AAA games.
@@jhhwild I definitely agree the woke bullshit is ruining everything not just games but I've always been told you gotta pay to play but to each their own shoot me some recommendations you've played 🙃
I have been gaming for over 40 years and for over the last half a decade I go out of my way now to ignore mainstream AAA. I automatically know what the writing is going to be like, how the jokes will play out, what the outfits will look like, what the women will look like, and the fast that they won't be addressed as being a women in game.
@Roy-chiltern Yeah I don't know about that, tons of good games came out up until around 2012. There are still some good ones that come out today, but they are either indie titles, or remakes and remasters that don't tamper with the original formula.
@@Particle_Ghost Thas whole line is odd. Now 2000s I was noticing something that all gamers praised. An obsession with graphics over gameplay. But graphics at least had a positive tradeoff in terms of improving mechanics as the technology advanced, and opened up some story tellers. But then it just became Hollywood movie simulator and everyone turned a blind eye to the shit Blizzard was doing to their gamer communities which of course EA being trash was copying... To such a extent that the doom of command and conquer was EA trying to mimic Blizzard and Blizzard poisoning the RTS well and EA drinking the poison. And then of course follow that almost immediately with the other BS that lead to the current devs owning the studios putting Marxism over making a playable game.
@codyraugh6599 It's really bad now, I'm probably even skipping GTA 6. The only thing in my lineup is the Snake Eater remake, Gothic remake and the Tales of Graces f remaster. Right now I'm playing Nercomada Hired Gun, very fun and underrated, Trepang 2 and Ruiner are also easily overlooked. There are hidden gems out there.
I've been hearing there's going to be an indie uprising since the mid 2000s. Still waiting. Gaming is big money, all those micro transaction laden games are raking in cash. Who wants to be an art centric indie game developer and be broke?
Do you remember when games were sold after being completed? Ryan George asks "If Video Game Companies Made Jigsaw Puzzles" and nails it. Imagine if you got only a few hundred of your 2000 pieces, and sone of it was just a drawing until they finish. And then the DLC involves the rest of the image not sold in the first puzzle
The last good AAA game I remember in 2 years was what Hogwarts and BG3. What else am I missing? I mean, you could argue Ragnarok. But all the good AAA games are coming out of the east now. Name a good western AAA game that came out in the last two years besides the ones I named.
@ True but I’m mainly speaking about only western single player games. There is space marine 2, hell divers 2, other multiplayer games from the west that did pretty well. I also don’t know if I really consider it a triple AAA game. After all when we say AAA we’re talking about the size of the dev team, and the budget. I’m pretty sure space marine two was a smaller team and a smaller budget. At least smaller than 98% of western AAA single player games.
29:40 No, Asmongold, the only reason why the cost of video games is going up, so called, is because they're spending ridiculous amounts of money on useless investments in game development, such as extreme photorealism and mocap animations, which is a waste of money and investment. They're focusing more money on extreme photorealistic graphical realism and shadowing, rather than game design, writing, gameplay, art style, innovation, and all of that. That's why everything's so expensive. Why do you think indie games are so good now in comparison?
This, very much this. Something looking nice is great but if the gameplay sucks who cares? Most games that look less realistic tend to do better. Look at Minecraft or Lethal Company ffs. Both have like 14 pixels between them total (13 for Minecraft and 1 for LC) and look how much people love them.
@@klassic9900 You’re absolutely right. Minecraft and Lethal Company are perfect examples of how engaging gameplay and creativity can outshine high-end graphics. Minecraft became a global phenomenon because it offers limitless possibilities and fosters creativity, while Lethal Company captivates players with its immersive atmosphere and fun mechanics, despite its simple visuals. It’s interesting to see that many big-budget studios still focus heavily on ultra-realistic graphics, sometimes at the expense of innovative gameplay. Meanwhile, indie games with modest budgets often deliver richer experiences by prioritizing core gameplay elements and player engagement. It’s refreshing to connect with someone who appreciates the essence of what makes games truly enjoyable.
Case in point Bethesda. Skyrim and fallout 4 100 people 4 years. Starfield 500 people 8 years. Ignoring the player retention and going as optimistic as you can it sold similarly in its launch windows meaning that extra cost and time at best got them the same as there prior cheaper games and let's be real Starfield doesn't have the legs the old elder scrolls and fallout games had for player retention and continued sales
The whole argument makes no sense when he says gamers don't have the disposable income, then references additional price discriminating monetization methods that are even more disposable than a game is. If costs are the problem, companies need to budget smarter. The market dictates the price; the company is in control of its budget.
It's not that Live Service games *require* 5 to 10 hours a day in order to be a live-service game. It's that the designers have put in 5 to 10 hourts of daily busy-work checklist bullshit and gated all the rewards behind it. It's a classic example of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". So, in the case of gaming, "play time" and "daily active users" started to become targets which the industry started to drive towards. Obviously if you're just making a game fun, then it will keep users engaged longer, and they'll keep coming back. But stupid, lazy developers short-circuit this notion by putting in make-work; checklists of dumb shit which players must do in order to get progression and rewards, instead of the old-style games where you just bought them, played them, and had fun.
Why would I spend $70 on a game that, most likely, isn't finished? 9/10 games released aren't finished. They have patches coming in for the next year and DLC (most likely pieces from the original game idea) that release in the next several years. Instead I wait for the game to be finshed before buying it. By that time the game is down to $50 or less. That's a deal in my book. I refuse to be a beta tester for the devs or let them rip me off by selling me an unfinished product.
I don't even pay $50 for them, I wait until games are $20 or less. I have so many other games to enjoy that it doesn't matter to me if play brand new releases.
Because people who have unrealistic expectations want you to. When people have unrealistic expectations of you they want you to do things for themselves. They want you to mask up for themselves. They want you to vaccinate for themselves. They want you to buy expensive games, then play them for themselves. They even want you to make origami for themselves. They want all kinds of things from you which you have no time for.
Or pay full price for a game like Forza Motorsport debacle still updating the game to fix it 5 years later to then switch off the servers for it & now a game is unplayable offline & useless for $$$ , what a SCAM !
Must not be old enough to remember when games were physical things that had to be done because there was no internet connection. They HAD to be done because once you have that disc, thats the version you play. Not until the xbox 360 geb did patch’s on consul become a thing. Games had been being patched on PC for a while but most of those games were multiplayer focused like starcraft and warcraft.
AAA games is a race to the bottom. If nobody had AAA art before, AAA art is not needed. If AAA art is not needed, the budget of games could be massively lowered. If budget of games can be massively lowered, game studios can take more risks. Classic human behavior.
- DEI pushed into movies/TV - DEI pushed into videogames - DEI pushed into companies - DEI pushed as new culture Welcome to the UN/WEF's "equity" wing of SDGs.
No one in the industry ever thought to question why the most popular mods for Bethesda games are those that improve the appearance of female characters...
The idea that "art" can be corporatized, algorithmically designed, and mass-produced is insane. A real artist will always stand above the industry because _it's different_ and not more of the same. This is where new life is made, corporate offices are where it decays.
Facts. Team Cherry, 3 people, made Hollow knight. Game Science made Wukong with under a 50 mil budget. Suits can never compete with gamers making games for other gamers.
I dont care about dei. Its just a disguise and defense mechanism of dogshit develepoers, writers to hide behind to excuse their poor work. Look at history of games, we always had dei characters. For ex: black sorc on diablo 1, black paladin diablo 2, crysis1-3 with lead black character, borderlands 1-2
@@ucankurbaga True, but they also shove it down your throat and over the years it became annoying. Back in 2017-2018 I was even a bit defensive of it, because it didn't matter much, but now it's so annoying...
I'm an old gamer. I'll be 40 next month. This transition in popularity back and forth between western games and eastern games has happened a few times before. It's a good thing. The east will double down on what makes games sell, western studios will collapse, New ones will take their place and start doing what's popular.
36 here, I've also seen the ebb and flow. The East has always put out a large quantity of good games, it's just that people don't pay much attention to them when the West is in a golden age of gaming. As a lifelong JRPG enjoyer, I never felt the 'PS3 has no games' rhetoric because a ton of great JRPGs were made for it, but the Xbox 360 had a good library of Western games so it cornered the market here. I think this is the biggest collapse for Western AAA gaming companies ever though, due to the sheer amount of money involved and the high publicity for the major failures. Gamers are finally starting to vote with their wallets, and it will be the studios that stand tall amongst the rubble of those that fell that become the new templates for game design philosophy. Then we'll be good for another decade or so until the same thing happens again.
@@edgarfriendly4731 Perhaps you're right, I don't know much about that besides the whole ET thing and I wasn't around to experience it myself so I don't know the impact it had on the gaming landscape.
11:24 Current Western AAA likes the idea of paying for ONE cash cow that they can keep running indefinitely (with MTX / battlepasses / merch etc) vs. putting "smaller" GOOD games that objectively could have shorter lifespans / less reach or otherwise is riskier... bc what if it bombs? And then Concord happens and you'd hope theyd learn
I feel like this is just a strategy to profit from bad products For example if the game/movie has bad writing, design etc they can just focus on the female protagonist aspect and say these people are sexist and thats why they didnt like it. Pull attention, profit just around this idea or blame everyone for the failure and benefit from tax cuts
The studios want action for young men, a female lead for young women, a love story for older women, and a historical backdrop for older men, all in the same movie. This is it, this is what they're looking for, the blueprint. Everything else gets passed on. That's why it all feels the same, it is the same.
@@ardagenc4674 100% agree, but people will stop consuming their stupid identity politics filled media eventually. Hopefully when we get to that point, we will have better media and culture.
I remember when I had my “Lol Boosie C’mon Dawg” moment with girl boss overkill- it was Sucker Punch (2011), the only realistic thing in that movie was that it was in the imagination of girls in a mental hospital. Sure it goes back to Aeon Flux (2005) and Kill Bill (2003) or even before that if you dig deeper, but that is the turning point for me when the writing quality was just shift into dog-shit mode.
The quick story is : - During Covid video games industry hired a lot of people - After Covid they were too much people working in the industry so they decided to kick out seniors because they were too expensive. - Now most of AAA studios are full of beginners (for exemple most of half of people working on Assasin’s Creed Shadows are developing a game for the first time) And I’m french, just to tell you that this problem is really global.
I guess we got lucky that Assassin's Creed VR was full of actual fans, because the story was okay, and the stealth and combat and parkour were top notch, intuitive, and let you do stuff you wish you could do on the flatscreen games before. LIKE YOU CAN NOW CHUCK CONNOR'S TOMAHAWK LIKE IT WAS BORN TO! WITH YOUR OWN HANDS!
It's funny how a few years ago everybody was like "everything is getting microtransactions, help" and now everybody is like "AAA games with microtransactions are struggling, figures"
Baldur's Gate Two was made by a team of 300 over the course of one year. the game has side quests that are longer, and of higher quality, than many games released by AAA gaming studios.
300?? 1 year??? I mean... it would be possible if most of the planning was done before by smaller team but everything from writing to making it in a year seem almost impossible with AAA game industry
@@mariow7818put 280 people together who REALLY like nerdy shit, have no sense of time, and can hyper focus on minutiae, and have 20 people herd them like cats, do that for a year, and put it all together. You'd still come out with a better game than Concord.
Oh it will and if I’m wrong everyone can come back here and relentlessly degrade me lol, but I truly feel in my bones it’s gonna be woke. They know people are so hyped for it that it’ll sell. Also go look at what the currant team looks like what what they said about older gta games, it’s all you need to know.
5:10 I don't even mind "girlboss charcaters" i mean look at Selene from Underworld, its so easy man, make her hot, edgy and cool and i'm fucking sold she's awesome i'd 100% play something based off of her, but the movie is a super serious tone there's no marvel comedy UMM! THAT JUST HAPPENED! in it so it works, it's not like the main character can't have personality, i just don't want a fucking self insert of a 30 year old cat lady who gets less play than a basketball court in Chernobyl.
Girlboss characters are amazing. The issue are 'funny' girlboss characters because they're never funny. The punchlines don't stick, the attitude is smelly and it doesn't help that Western AAA thinks being a girlboss means shaving your head down to 3cm length, dying it blue and getting 20 piercings all over your face.
Selene is a "girl" and a "boss" - but not a "girlboss" at all. "Girlboss" is a bit of a different thing. Presented by the story as perfect and better-than-everyone, generally snarky for no reason and often feels like a self insert - that's a "girlboss". None of those things apply to Selene, so she's not one. Think of it like this: if a female character in a movie feels like she'd only appeal to people who use the phrase "slaaaaay queeeeeen" unironically - it's likely a girlboss.
"Graphics don't really matter, style does" See, Nintendo is SMART when it comes to this. They saw the graphical brick wall coming and steered out of the way while they still could. Sony, on the other hand, ran facefirst right into it.
I think I dev that quit a major company gave a great example of what really has gone wrong. They said they needed a quick fix for something like an enemy needed to get added to a targeting list and said they themselves could fix in an hour, they got told by the person they were required to send it to it would take 3 weeks
its because AAA has become stale, it used to be a standard but now its a template, its supposed to be the skeleton but its turned into the whole game in a different coloured jacket.
Steve Jobs was a dick but he summarized this well with the 'bozo effect'; 2 things happen: 1. As IP becomes established, companies rely more on the marketing of that IP, and marketing/sales begins to run the company (as opposed to the engineers who built the original IP). Good engineers leave as they become dissatisfied with how they are viewed. 2. Bad managers/executives hire people _worse_ than them, so that nobody sees what a bozo they are; once you get a bozo Director, it's over; multiple organizations can now no longer change because that director represents the 'skill-cap' of their org. Inevitably, all decisions will go through them, they'll become overloaded, and the org. stagnates.
Correction: Nobody wants games developed by corporations beholden to greedy share holders who only care about squeezing every penny from a player by maximizing engagement through manipulative mechanics while simultaneously filling said games with ideological propoghanda.
I’ve still got hope for projekt red, Santa Monica, and rockstar. They’ve yet to drop anything but heaters. Hopefully REDs next game doesn’t have the same release that cyberpunk did though
@@B1u35ky from what point? Financial? That they need publisher to fund developement of their games? Sure... but that publisher does NOT influence the developement itself - hence why indie=independent
Increased the price to 70$ for worse quality. For the same amount of money you could buy Hollow Knight OuterWilds and Hades. Thats 3 10/10 games. AAA Games dont stand a chance now. Especially when people like the Avowed dude isnt fired yet with a public statement saying they dont agree.
7:45 I hate the "children game" argument, when I was like 8 years old I played Dungeon Keeper, Populous, The Settlers and the like, taking after my father. Railway Tycoon, Master Of Orion and Civ 1 and 2 were too 'boring' for me then, I considred those boring adult games, my father loved them. And I'm not even that smart, it just seems 30 years ago people didn't infantalise kids that much, kids are smarter than people think, and can learn new things and solve complex problems very fast if they find something fascinating. In fact I never managed to beat Dungeon Keeper as an adult, but I somehow did when I was 8. I'm glad my father was a gamer himself so he didn't buy into video games = bad histeria and allowed me to play what I wanted. Parents should stop being lazy putting their kids in front of a coco melon slop, play them Lord Of the Rings instead. I was maybe 9 when I finished reading The Hobbit... Also special shoutout to that one library lady who claimed I'm too young to read Conan novels when I was 11, she showed me the kids section instead - I looked at her like she is retarted. Too young to read fantasy my ass, I turned out fine, a degenerate and a loser, but fine non the less.
I still remember starting Classic Battletech with 12 or so because we wanted to play the TT so much after being exposed to the PC Games. And we couldn't even read the language the manual was written in very well (english) and still figured it out. Kids are not dumb. In fact, I know a lot of dumber adults.
@@sergueileonardoafonin7950Ridiculous and pixelated? You must be young because when Mortal Kombat came out in the 90’s it was equivalent to black magic. They managed to shrink people and put them in the god damn game as far as we were concerned. I was fking floored when that game first came out…. nothing had managed that level of realism, nothing.
Where is the money going? To inexperience DEI hires, they have to work 3 X longer to produce 50% quality. Just look at Avowed 40hrs, 2010 graphics, Started in 2018, had a direction change, set backs, people leaving, more people leaving. Don't be surprised if this thing costs 250M.
25:00 J.K. Simmons in BG3 was by far the best and only celebrity cameo I've ever cared for. And that was just his VA performance, what made it incredible was the writing with his character and his animation. They, fucking, nailed it. It didn't feel shoe horned, or there to be there to sell.
Nintendo's developers worked om mario wonder with ZERO pressure from the studio. No release date, they just worked at their own pace and whenever the game was ready they pitched it for release. Nintendo also increased their workers salary recently
Nintendo will always be a horrific but funny anomaly to me. They’re such corporate cutthroat assholes to anyone that isn’t in their circle, but are more than accommodating to anyone they employ or have an agreement with. I wouldn’t blame anyone who wants to work for Nintendo, even as they use lawsuits to murder Palworld and kill emulation. They’re so fucking evil, but they will take very good care of the minions.
@dumkunt6869 unfortunetly those pitifully studios started to invest in western studios more. Worried about capcom because some internal document leaked saying they were hiring a dei consoltant.
Over hiring was definitely a problem. Especially when your gaming company has more HR, marketing, and management, then the development team. How does a company fire 1500 people and still make games? Because they hired to many people. Then cut quality, now people are out of work and games suck because of greed.
Literally for example the new cod can’t stand more than like 3-4 matches then I’m on the home screen or on tik tok the game just drains you but in BO2 days I’d literally put in shifts on that game I’m talking day long playing sessions maybe breaks for food and restroom smh something definitely went wrong
because game studios have to DEI HIRE > DEI HIRE dont know/care about games. They just want to bark their “message”. + Media/award/journalists are also DEI HIRE. > forcing more studios to have “message” or else they will be under attack.
The biggest issue I have with modern AAA titles is that the game releases unfinished, lots of buggy stuff early on, laggy servers, anti cheat doesn’t work, and micro transactions are heavily pushed.
Meh, even if it is true or not, you can’t deny that “AAA” gaming quality has _drastically_ decreased over the years. Prioritizing profit margins through season passes and garbage microtransactions. There are very few “AAA” games I am hyped for anymore, but we are seeing it now, a select few a big name devs/publishers, and a large number of indie/AA devs are crushing it right now.
AAA is flung around and all it really means is high budget. True AAA games are the Grand Theft Autos, Call of Duties, Minecrafts and Fortnites of the world.
Ive gotten 200+ hours of enjoyment from an $10 indie passion project that 1 dude made. Why the fuug would I pay AAA prices to people to who hate me just to play a 8-10 hour game that deliberately insults me. Or some multiplayer bullshit.
As much as people are fed up with AAA games, the reason they are made is cause people are still buying them. I still see people look at game X's 300th sequel and say "Im so hyped I'm gonna pre order it asap." There are still people that walk into these games excited. Borderlands 4 trailer drops in a few days, I literally have zero expectations for it.
Endymion is a joke and his sources are basically always I know a guy that knows a guy. He's wrong 99% of the time and he obviously just makes stuff up.
@Packin-Heat. Idk about that but this video pulled up Devs LinkedIn and showed their DEI course qualifications... plus OG Rockstar creators and founders have left, I think to form a new indie studio... a common story. Sure the game will still be good regardless, but it won't be the same vibe. Personally, I felt like GTA5 was a fall off from the orginal vibe. ViceCity, SanAndreas & IV were way better than 5.
At around 20:20 in this video they hold up some examples of successful smaller indie games, like Balatro and Animal Well, but fail to note that these games are largely devoid of identity politics. If game journalists and triple A devs and publishers continue to ignore the elephant in the room, the western triple A game industry is gonna get trampled.
It’s because this big companies want to show how good their DEI manager is doing. The job role letters are the wrong way round, easiest way to destroy a company
Well, there are issues that need to be spread, like climate change, anti-consumer practices, unfair pay of workers, AI, corporate greed, mental health, and misinformation. How else can people learn about these issues? Sure people can not be as obnoxious and preachy about them, but how else can the word be spread
@Cubeytheawesome You mean the same messaging that's crammed into every other form of media? Great, keep it there. What good is escapism if you're just presented with the same shit you're trying to escape?
Rocksteady Batman trilogy: full of diabolical plans, wiping out everyone in Arkham city, joker sending his blood across the country to poison everyone, scarecrow unleashing a new formula of his toxin to ruin everyone and everything. Rocksteady suicide squad: “Batman ruined my mental health” - lesbian freeze
Killzone had such an incredible atmosphere to it. It was like Halo mixed with Saving Private Ryan. That game was incredible and the franchise had so much potential.
At least they shelved it before destroying the franchise, unlike Microsoft taking a steaming dump on their number one IP before flushing it down the drain.
28:10 What do I want in games? No live services. Good-looking characters. No woke ----. Complete experiences. Solid, fun gameplay loops. Games that don't require bleeding edge GPUs to run. Normal installation sizes.
4:07 I'm a girl and have always played 'guy games' but honestly make a game with two hot thirst trap girl boss npcs with side quests that were actually engaging and there would be no complaints. Maybe make the main quest giver or companion a man but men would come back to the hot girls if they had a good questline.
Yeah, I have no issue with hot girls in my games. Does nothing for me, but it doesn't hurt me in any way. But then again... I'm not desperate for validation and I don't despise hot women for existing when I'm not that hot. We accept reality and they don't.
@halfprince I think part of me just really wants to revive the bikini armor era of gaming. I liked playing a hot chick. Now people are worried about being objectifying. And if we have a strong woman she has to make sure to tell you how strong she is. It's like the GOT quote that says something like a king usually doesn't have to announce that he is a king.
Also a woman, I love having hot girls in my games. It doesn't make me feel insecure or invalidated. I see myself in the character to some degree. I think they do this to punish men and to persuade women into games (but it doesn't work).
Part of the problem with triple A is that they sell it like any other piece of junk. In my mind a AAA should stand out above the rest and be a complete package with all extras included. No other industry has top of the notch products that use the same marketing strategys as middle of the pack and lower end products.
The bubble wouldn't have "burst" if the right decisions were taken, such as NOT insulting/patronizing your own customers and not doing anything DEI related. Edit: And just saying, having real actors in video games can work if done right. Look at Metal Gear and games series from the 90's like Command & Conquer and Wing Commander.
i agree on both points. Insulting your audience and telling them not to buy it, well guess what, you dont need to tell me twice. 1stly, piracy is far easier than one thinks. 2ndly, how do these companies keep ignoring the elephant in the room - demographically speaking, games are played by men, typically younger men -> mid 30's. As for celebraties in games, some of my favourite characters/performances came from those professionals (Tobias from Freelancer, voiced by the same man who played Gimli in LOTR, John Rhys-Davies). If they are done and handled right, they can add soo much gravitas to the game. unlike most nowadays where its, oooooh look we have the current favourite celeb who doesnt care about the medium or is a professional activist, dont you want it???
What's really has to be disheartening for a developer is to work on a game for years, just to have it scrapped. Imagine putting years of your life into something just to watch it die.
No joke, I like new games and good graphics, but recently was looking what to play with a friend, and found that we gravitate to X-Box 360 era games where you had many 2-player co-op games (that even worked with split-screen on consoles). The spirit of that era was great: mainstream big games were made with love and 0 censorship, they were edgy and did their best to make the gamers happy.
also - the cost of games isn't going up perse. because there are efficiency tools that come out all the time that drastically speeds up multiple processes in game dev. So, its actually a lot easier to make games now - they just choose to spend it in stupid ways. Like massive amount of mocap for cut scenes.
-The game industry isn't dying. Stop being a conspiracy theorist : O -The game industry is dying but not to the extent you're claiming. : O -The game industry is dying but it's a good thing : X Oof, didn't get a full stack this time.
The AAA industry is not dead; it's just the Western AAA industry and LGBT pride that derailed the game industry. Eastern game developers will save the industry. Don't worry.
10:49 I agree. Live service games are just an excuse for companies to try and milk their players for more money. That's it. Non-live service games can be just as successful, but AAA studios can't slake their greed on one-time purchase games.
Absolutely. I keep thinking to myself, "C'mon, corpos. You don't NEED to constantly chase MTX money. Just make A GOOD, WHOLE PACKAGE GAME. Black Myth Wukong, Baldur's Gate 3, and Palworld. NONE of them were live-service nor had ANY DLC, and yet they sold MILLIONS."
I have a sneaking suspicion that greed isnt the factor we think it is. I have a sneaking suspicion that the money guys at these companies are seeing sales tank and things get bad, and this is their solution to the financial crisis they are facing. The more woke games flop, the more the "money people" in the companies, divorced from the actual game design side of things, push for monetization to save the company's bottom line. Lets be real, if it was greed, i think theyd actually have money, and not be in the dire straits they are now. Im betting on this being a stupid desperation move to try and combat an issue they dont even understand, because theyre being subverted from within. And on the topic of internal subversion, dont forget the peolle doing the subversion, fucking hate you. So maybe aggressive monetization and penny pinching is just another way for them to say "fuck gamers, youre all anyways."
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I've lived long enough to see all my favorite i.p.'s die.
I’m praying Ubisoft doesn’t bring back splinters cell just to destroy it
@@Lamastache stop giving them ideas
"This is MY I.P. to sit on and do NOTHING with".
Same RIP Diablo RIP FF RIP COD RIP RS RIP CS 😢 L Devs
Waiting for mass effect 4 is the same feeling as knowing you girl is about to break up with you, and your just sat there waiting for the text 😂
They're not AAA games. They're interactive HR orientations
Indeed.
That was a fantastic definition :D
What we're seeing before our eyes is the "Boeing Effect."
They aren't HR orientations....they are youth indoctrination/brainwashing vehicles.
They're barely even interactive! You can at least get the ones at the job wrong!
Gamers don’t want “The message”
When it comes to the character designs, we need less hating and more gooning
I guess they have to lose billions of dollars just to figure it out.
I read that in Critical Drinkers voice
Real lol 😂@@ignskeletons
Woah really!
"What is this supposed to be, between Burning Man, a Pride rally, and Mad Max?"....😂😂😂
You hit that one right on the mark. I almost had my coffee shoot my nose laughing.
Yeah that earned him at least one sub lol
Well put.
They hired developers and let them make games targeting the 1% of gaming audience and then complained that the other 99% didn't buy their game.
It's not even for that 1%, cause the games are not even good.
THIS
They could still maybe make it work, but only if they spent 1% of the budget they're actually spending to make the games. Instead they're spending at least triple the budget a normal game made for normal people would be expected to cost
And just like in Hollywood where they do this, they always infect existing IPs that already have a fandom because if they make their own games/shows/movies zero people show up to get force fed "The message". Case in point Concord, Dustborn, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians
I'd say they hired activists instead of developers.
"Nobody wants western AAA video games anymore" should be the title...
Yessir, I don't think anybody would argue that Monster Hunter, Elden Ring, Zelda, or Resident Evil are not AAA. I am perfectly fine with more of those AAA games
the AAA and AA coming out of places like japan are pretty solid
We can just call western AAA games “WAAA” games at this point because they’re always crying about some annoying societal message
more like "nobody wants games that try and force an agenda that we dont want."
Yall said the same last year and guess what??? BALDURS GATE 3 so you are just wromg
Imagine putting $100-$400million into a game just for the dei hire to make it a therapy sim/validation machine
probably why they wanted to increase how much the game cost to buy. between 70 and 100 dollars
We don't have to imagine! We have Concord! Yay
@@Apophis1010 and dragon age
And a dozen others before that have progressively gotten more in your face about it
the question I would be asking. is it the ceo's or is it the activist. only one of these I've got the greater power
@@Apophis1010 Had. Had Concord.
I love how manor lords a single developer game came in and showed the ppl anyone can do it
>receive mostly negative feedback for your game
>attribute it all to trolls and bigotry
>change nothing
>game is dead on arrival
what did we do wrong?
They did nothing wrong. Executives got their bonuses and will golden parachute out. Mission failed successfully.
@@kayvee256dumb take.
@@raskolnikov6443 Correct take. AAA development is rotten on purpose.
It's not designed to deliver good products to customers. It's not even designed to deliver long-term wealth to investors. It's designed to enrich the executives running it, and no amount of destruction of value is too high a cost to pay if it'll give the executives a single dollar more of personal wealth.
AAA game development is succeeding for the purpose to which it is designed by the people with the actual decision making power.
Stellar Blade: hot girl
Space Marine 2: cool dudes
Deadlock: hot girls and cool dudes
Monster Hunter: cool dudes and hot girls killing cool giant monsters
Hmmmm, i wonder, what do they have in common?
Hot people 🗿
WuKong has a Monkey and Chinese mythology and trounced all of those.
@@garywintle8023space marine 2 is my game of the year never touched wu dong monkey time
@@garywintle8023Wukong has Monke, amazing mythology AND hot spider women? GOTY
Space Marine 2, Alan Wake 2, Silent Hill 2 "Demake", Concord, Dragon Age Veilguard, Monster Hunter World/Wilds, Deadlock have dei stuff, so no; you are wrong here.
5:40 There's the problem right there: "*annual* CoD title". Nobody demanded this. They're complaining that it's so hard to shit out a new CoD every year? Well, then how about you don't?
But think of the investors!
They'll stop doing it when the average gamer grows a brain and stops paying for slop.
As a fan of Sonic, I appreciate yearly releases. I'm pretty sure that there are many CoD fans who enjoy high frequency of the series they like.
@@GnidelIf they have substantial reason for the yearly release, sure. There’s no reason that I should have skipped the last 4 Call of Duty games and hopped onto BO6, thanks game pass, and never skip a beat. It’s more copy and paste than sports games at this point.
The investors demand it
Concord is such a depressingly fitting name. Just as the Concorde aircraft had a long history of tire failures, by ignoring years of red flags, one of the supposedly "safest" options exploded shortly after takeoff with major casualties.
im tired of being asked to pay $70 to do a studio's final run of QA
I also tired of paying for any live service game trying to be my unpaid job.
Then stop.
I left QA over a decade ago because it was clear that corporations were cutting software quality/testing departments.
@@danielvaldez158oh how the irony just flies over your head
wdym QA? its more Q and no A and thn afterwards no fix either
DEI is what killed movies and games here in the west. I quit all of it and read old books or binge an anime once in a while, that's it.
Yeah, reading is slowly becoming the only escapism that the woke mind virus can’t touch… except for comics 😅
@@Level_Eleven Well if DEI gets people back to reading and rediscovering culture, maybe it's the silver lining.
Any recs for books ?
@@Level_Eleven the woke mind virus has been trying to outlaw some books and change others to suit the "modern sensibilities" for a while, especially in libraries.
@@northzone13 I'm digging the Flashman series about a Victorian-era British soldier bouncing around between fictionalized but historically accurate mid- to late-19th century conflicts... and the character himself is a complete piece of work. Written in the 1960s-90s. Does not GAF about woke platitudes.
We just want complete games with no propaganda.
The most games contain some form of propaganda, especially "golden standard" games.
@@Unresolver You know what he means, dont be a smartass, that hasnt worked out well for your life.
In every disaster there's an opportunity. I hope all indie studios rejoice and understand that if they play their cards right and come up with compelling gameplay, they can rise up real fast, leaving these triple A studios in the triple dust.
Ha! Well... Sniper Elite? GTA games? One persons propaganda is a others grate punching bag in fiction.
Used to promote a political cause or point of view. And more often then not, fabricated to that end. Truth or Lies be disregarded. The message. Power control.
It is not enough to remove propaganda. You would still have hurt feelings and awful games being made. And overpriced, gamble, micro-transaction crap.
As a example. No blood from combat. Is that because the dev's can not make blood effects? It is not really part of any propaganda. Awful and 3 year old gameplay difficulty? Reviewer difficulty settings? AI enemies that can not even begin to make a fun game? That is not propaganda. Can polish a turd and make a complete and perfect turd of a game. No propaganda. It would still be a polished turd of a game.
*terribly written propaganda is more apt
Narrator: "Bigger games or more games?"
Me: "Brother, that's the problem, games are becoming too big and there are too many of them. I would rather have smaller but full of content, and less but diverse games."
Nah, gamers just don't like being force fed politics throught a game or rushed out games full of bugs...
Not true nobody cares about the politics if the game is Well written
@@Inkspellsoh nobody cares? So you speak for everyone? I don’t want bullshit politics in my games so you’re wrong
Pretty much this. If AAA games would still be focussed on delivering what the playerbase wants (and constantly says it wants), there wouldnt be an issue. The whole issue is that they dont.
"The message" works its way into the game because they have people who are not game developers developing the game. It comes from not having quality employees. DEI hires cannot produce good quality. And with games, quality matters a lot.
@@InkspellsBeing well written helps too, but I don't want to be preached to or subtly propagandized in any way in video games, regardless of the writer's talent. Any agenda other than making a game that appeals to the majority of players in terms of fun, aesthetics, fulfillment, immersion etc is nothing but a virus that needs to be cleansed from the gaming industry entirely. Giv'em an inch they take a mile.
These aren't Triple A titles. These are Mental Illness Simulators.
Totally agree!
I'm pretty sure comments under content that constantly complains about how woke everything is are mental illness simulators. Everything is shitty, boring and interesting and everyone is coping that it's because of some woke agenda and not corporate greed.
💯
OH, so that's why they're a MIS every time.
@@StorymasterQ Hit or MIS except its always MIS 💀💀💀
Triple A lacks integrity Indie studios put every fibre of passion and effort into their games
BeamNG drive is a good example of an indie game where the devs listen to the fan base
Bro you commented 2 minutes after the video released, you did not even watch it.
@@cryfierI do this sometimes it isn’t uncommon in UA-cam
There are plenty of terrible, half bakes indies but most of them never make news. They die quietly and never make money. The ones we know of are true passion projects with good developers with vision.
The reason AAA has problems it does is due to budget and size. When that much money is put into something people expect results, so when the expected results are delivered it is decent and when it is not it is very bad.
not even that, there just fun
The problem with games now is the companies making the big titles are only worried about sales so they only focus on visuals and marketing. They make sure the game looks good enough to make a trailer, then they market the shit out of it. The rest of the time is them playing defense to make sure they don't get canceled before the game hits the stores, so they make sure to insert all the required virtue signalling. Then the game gets released and they use the good initial sales from the marketing hype to justify a loan to finance their next project before the sales numbers plummet. Personally I don't agree that there are any current Triple A titles, there haven't been for a long time. It's not enough for a game to look good to be a triple A title, the game has to also be functionally good.
AA and Indie are what gamers want. We want games that are made by gamers for gamers to enjoy. Not the corporate cash grabs that are souless.
and by HR departments
Triple A games are always far better than indie if they’re done right, Elden Ring, cyberpunk, and wukong are great examples of this
@@keeferChiefer Key word is if done right and that's very rare these days from AAA studios.
Gamers are regular guys. No regular guy wants to be forced to deal with California ivory tower politics on a daily basis ESPECIALLY in their escapist video games and yet the cult member must push their recruitment message.
@@keeferChieferYeah, but CDPR Dead has gone full DEI, so Witcher 4 will be trash. Same with Cyberpunk 2, though I loved Cyberpunk 2077. 😟
There's a direct correlation between identity politics and bad games. When Identity politics are in the game it means the devs are activists and not gamers. They tend to spend way more time making sure they communicate the message than they do making sure the game is actually good. Strictly because the message is the more important thing for them.
it's become a cult.
As well as the time spent on each, the message also takes priority over things that might make the game good. If adding their identity politics means adding cutscenes that everyone hates then they'll include those cutscenes at the cost of making their game worse because it's more important to them.
It's because their definition of "good" is wrongheaded.
When I design a character or write a story, I try to make it good so people will like it. My idea of good is the same as other Western people's.
They also want to make something "good" so people will like it. Problem is they think their "good" is everyone else's idea of good, but everyone else just don't know it yet.
funny thing is, they always argue that women also play games at the same ratio as blokes do, my answer? nah, they don't. Picture this, I know a friend of me nans, 80 yrs old vetaran bloke from limerick that served in WW2 and the wanker plays COD all day long, he's a diamond 2 btw, jesus bless his soul. And also a saw twitch streamers like "gamerdad" I think, a 60+ yrs bloke who plays LoL, "grandpagaming" also an old veteran that plays battlefield.
And what do old ladies do? pfft, I'm sure not much and playing videogames isn't one of em.
It all comes down to good games. You can get away with woke in a good game, but you can't get away with woke in a bad game, and it's not easy to make a good game especially if you're focused on something else.
I don't even care about GTA6, ES6, or any other long awaited game from AAA studios anymore.
Mass Effect 5, Witcher 4 also. Have absolute zero faith in them. My top 2 favourite franchises, and I have zero interest in buying them at this point, reading what the studios are doing.
@ All four mentioned got DEId.
They'd be far removed from what made their predecessors great anyway. No loss.
GTA 6 has so many DEI redflags the past few years. Starfield is a clear example Bethesda has their heads so far up Todd's and Emile's asses that any other game ends the same. Dragon Age Flopguard is a clear example BioWare hasn't learned from nearly 8 years ago with Mass Effect Andromeda.
GTA6 may still be a good game if you ignore the story because Rockstar still has a good technical record and people play online for the chaotic fun, not the story. ES6? Mass Effect 5? The Witcher 4? Those are all made by devs that can neither write, nor code.
That frame at 1:40 all the guns have orange tips. Are they playing airsoft? lmao
maybe heat from firing? no clue , good eye
Probly some company rule that the digital guns can't be too realistic. Don't want anybody getting hurt.
No, we still want AAA games, we don't want interactive movies that is infected with gender politics and marvel humor.
Correct a simulation x'd with choose your own story book is tired.
ESPECIALLY MARVEL HUMOR
I haven't played many recent games nor watched any marvel movie beyond guardians of the galaxy 2, can you explain marvel humor?
@@magma1lordunfunny
Forced funny shit that falls flat. gotcha
They have twice the budget they had a few years ago, but delivering half the product they used to. How does that even happen?
Poor business practice
CEO pockets the rest. Rich gets richer, poor gets poorer.
DEI practices, hiring expensive "consultancy" firms. It adds up pretty quickly and always leads to a worse product.
BS in Yappathon is getting all the money. Executives/Managers/CEO, Even a single game Manor Lords was made by ONE person.
hiring based on race, gender and sexuality instead of hiring whos best for the job
4:13 can we just... stop putting girl boss characters in anything period? just a good character that is female works. and it's been proven for a LONG ass time that guys dont mind or sometimes even prefer to play female characters in games. so like you don't need to make a merry sue that the narrative bends over backwards to "empower", just make a character that is badass, and get a female model and va, like it's not that hard. :T
i always make female characters if im going to be playing games 8 to 12hrs and more id rather be lookin at a chick then a dude
They could be making so much money with old characters but they just make a girl that looks like a Jason and the muscles of John cena wtf
@@thatguydownthestreat i understand what you mean. Games really just need better writing IMO.
I think Alloy from horizon zero dawn was a well written female protagonist.
Mary Sue, it is named after a 50s character.
@@RobMetal-ie5hd I loved HZD, and was shedding tears at the end credits; only a few JRPGs manage to do that to me.
But I won't play HZD2. They uglified my girl. Look how they massacred my girl! I refuse to play it.
TLDR on Western games and media:
DEI contracts, bad writers, laziness, apathy, ego, entitlement
Hiring seven people to do the job one person used to do and having massive overhead staff that don’t actually produce anything made them far too expensive to produce.
Reparations
Hiring seven people - *based on identity checkboxes instead of talent* - to do the job one *competent* person used to do and having massive overhead staff that don’t actually produce anything made them far too expensive to produce.
@@paulw5039 🫡
And the games aren't even finished when they come out anymore
And the discussion between those 7 people go on forever, no wonder they get nothing done 😂
From my point of view it’s not AAA games that are suffering. It’s WESTERN AAA titles. Countries like Japan and China, especially Japan are releasing banger after banger like it’s nothing
Korea’s been killing it lately too. Lies of P and Dave the Diver were both excellent
China?
@@TarisRedwingmario murders sonic: Knuckles' vengeance part 21
Wukong@@TarisRedwing
Marvel Rivals is also another example of an Asian company coming out swinging.
6:58 as a woman who gravitates towards preferring games where I can either pick my gender or create a female character I can confirm as a woman I don't like playing as an unattractive female character either.
In fact I specifically on occasion well look online for attractive female face models to model my character creator character off of because I like making pretty women.
I don't understand this mindset that female lead games have to have a unattractive female character or that female characters created by women have to be ugly or else detract somehow from the product. As if a female character can't both be beautiful and a strong character
If I want a self insert character, I'm gonna make her how I want to look, not how I look
I agree. The only thing I don't care for is sexualization. I like the option, sure, but not forced on me. I've noticed with a lot of men, women being pretty and sexualized go hand in hand in games a lot of times and that's just not for me personally. We can make beautiful characters without bimbofying them and we can make strong, likable women characters without making them ugly.
@MeanyBooters 100% agree. I'd like to add that people who say "I don't know how to write women." Have no concept of personhood beyond gender stereotypes and I find it the most agitating and insulting to not just their own intelligence, but to their depth as a creator.
I also do not understand why you have to play as a girl while being a girl. I am a girl but never had a problem having a male character. In fact sometimes given the option i still choose to play as the male character and this has nothing to do with my sexuallity. It's just the way i like it 😆
@MeanyBooters Same. I'm a guy and I often play female characters in MMOs and action games. But I prefer to make my characters look cute or strong. More kawaii than femme-fatale. Having the option for sexy is good, having it forced sucks. At the end of the day, the appeal of character customization is being able to create your own expression in the form of a character, right? Limiting your options to just sexy character or just ugly characters is antithetical to that.
I think the core of the issue is that video games are no longer a niche or “geek” hobby; gaming it’s a multibillion dollar industry, now larger than the film industry. I think most developers are passionate about their work/art, but now there’s too much money and corporate suits behind most developers/publishers that only care about the profitability for shareholders. Shareholders don’t care about passion or art, they chase financial trends for the best returns. It’s why indies are having a resurgence (and rightly so) because there’s rarely corporate influence behind them, only passion and creativity, they aren’t chasing money making trends and instead building unique products they want to play. There’s many other issues but that’s my 2 cents.
You want me to spend $70 on garbage? In this economy?
$70 is just for the barebones edition. To get all content you have often to pay more.
@@Jeustful not to mention the DLC/"micro"transactions....
@@wackpendejo3000 i aint not paying 70$ for a incomplete game and lack of content
@@wackpendejo3000 It's a shame that it connects to at least decent games as well. I love Paradox titles, but their DLC approach can destroy most wallets if you want to keep buying them regularly. Also, Crusader Kings 2 still being normally priced is just nuts to me.
@@oneplay5570 I'm not paying $70 for any game period. $20 for most games, or $30 for a really, really good game.
14:30 Yeah, no one wants DEI BS.. I game to relax. I watch TV to relax. After getting lectured about a TPS report at work, I don't want to be lectured when I'm gaming or when I'm watching TV. Entertain, not condescend.
Did you get that memo?
Too be fair, I dont even care. If they make a banger of a game full of DEI and LGBT idd still play it. The fact is that games are just mid. It's because they want to cater to as much people as possible gameplay wise. While the best games are specialized. Look at baldurs gate 3. You can be as gay as you want, noone cared.
@@danilonden3782 From what I heard from Asmongold is that BG3 started off without any DEI elements in it, so it had years to develop with a focus on good story and gameplay, it wasn't until a year or two before release did they add in DEI elements. BG3 is a classic example of how DEI can be done, make a good game first. The worst thing that can be done IMO is what Amazon did with RoP or Netflix with the Witcher and change the lore. Fans hate that.
@@danilonden3782 I actually would still care. I find woke stuff to be so toxic that it kills my enjoyment, even if the game is otherwise good.
@freethinker77 do you though? Did you find baldurs gate unplayable? Did you even think 1 second it might be woke? Probably not. But a manly devil woman that you can clap butcheeks with is pretty woke.
Besides that, you probably wont, if you really do, you might be in a cult.
Since i am a centreleft politically wise, but im not american, I'm probably a little woke in your view, but last of 2 went overboard for me, but last of us 2 was mid game. Would it have been as amazing as the first, i wouldnt have cared probably so much.
Same goes for right wing nonesense in my entertainment, i dont care when the product is good.
People do not want bad, woke AAA games.
Real 💯
People are just over the pushy woke movement, trying to push their propaganda everywhere, it’s nauseating. Like if you want to be woke then be woke don’t try to force your crap on me though
Marxist mind virus versus free market society. Let's see which one wins
@@demonofwar1155 so who do you blame to blame the active s or CEO.
People do not want woke games period.
FTFY.
We want AAA games but we don’t want battle passes and $60 expansions that should have been in the game already.
If AAA games had AAA quality instead of a D-, maybe people would buy it.
Sounds like the housing market lol 😅
@@thalanothno because houses that were 100k in 2000 are 500k if not more in 2024 new games aren't $300 dollars there hasn't been a %500 increase in cost
@@l3vi23 Have you seen the state of newbuilds and flips? The 500k houses are total shitboxes.
@@l3vi23it’s suck when housing is expensive when everyone want to buy low then sell high for profit.
Suddenly making housing communism doesn’t sound so bad.
I get so much as a hint of DEI or social issues its automatically a no buy. It's pretty easy to tell too as the developers can't help but tell you on social media how diverse and amazing they are and how evil you are for not wanting it.
Yep. Though sometimes, a game can have DEI showing up but still be good. Remnant 2 is a great exemple of that. The NPC in the tutorial is clear wokism at play and the plots bends over so another female NPC is the one doing everything that actually matters while you are an errend boy, but none of that shows up for the actual gameplay or in the plot of the individual worlds you play in. And the NPC from the tutorial gets demoted to a town vendor, never having any plot relevance again
@@thorveim1174 Thats Tokenism. Useful while the subject, subjected to uselessness while not.
Forced DEI yes. Almost all great old games have DEI subjects in them but they navigated the subjects differently. They tried to unite and not divide by using these subjects. It's not them versus us but trying to make these subjects seem normal.
Assasins creed gave away their agenda too quickly, lesbian or a black dude that probably didn't exist.
@@roxstar5088 True. Most of Rockstar’s games are full of DEI and well… it’s rockstar. Their success and the greatness of their games doesn’t need to be mentioned
too much DEI in the industry.
It's because DEI is a globalist agenda and many globalists have jobs on the boards of AAA game producing companies plus Black Rock and Vanguard owns shares in every big game development or publishing companies. Those 2 firms are also globalist controlled and pushing the agenda (they also own shares in every major movie/tv show company). Globalism is a tree with many branches and far reaching roots.
Yup
Exactly
Stop the 🧢. You racists aren't buying the games anyway.
Spicy take here: Should have NEVER implemented DEI.
You want a job? You gotta earn it with experience and good resumes. Otherwise GTFO and don’t come back till you have it.
Game devs aren't losing their jobs. Activists are.
A lot of people can't afford the top of the line PCs and graphics cards required for an optimal experience. The games are bloated and require absurd amounts of disc space. People are prioritizing paying for groceries and their bills over entertainment. And people dont want to be preached at with a "message" and narrative that's driven into the story with the subtlety of a jackhammer.
This too. I keep looking at some indie/smaller studio games that look great and off long play time, but are often cheaper and requires far less space. I've seen some even that have the space that the 360 could manage. Heck, a 360 could possibly run in if it were released back then.
@slydoorkeeper4783 Yeah, I've spent way more time playing smaller indie games with relatively primitive graphics than I've spent on mainstream AAA games.
You get what you pay for
@@KILFUN And I would rather pay for a fun indie game that runs great on my computer, costs less, and is often better than a bloated woke AAA game.
@@jhhwild I definitely agree the woke bullshit is ruining everything not just games but I've always been told you gotta pay to play but to each their own shoot me some recommendations you've played 🙃
I have been gaming for over 40 years and for over the last half a decade I go out of my way now to ignore mainstream AAA. I automatically know what the writing is going to be like, how the jokes will play out, what the outfits will look like, what the women will look like, and the fast that they won't be addressed as being a women in game.
What took you so long i was there in 2000 😂 man AAA been 99% casual trash for decades....
@Roy-chiltern Yeah I don't know about that, tons of good games came out up until around 2012. There are still some good ones that come out today, but they are either indie titles, or remakes and remasters that don't tamper with the original formula.
@@Particle_Ghost Thas whole line is odd.
Now 2000s I was noticing something that all gamers praised. An obsession with graphics over gameplay. But graphics at least had a positive tradeoff in terms of improving mechanics as the technology advanced, and opened up some story tellers.
But then it just became Hollywood movie simulator and everyone turned a blind eye to the shit Blizzard was doing to their gamer communities which of course EA being trash was copying... To such a extent that the doom of command and conquer was EA trying to mimic Blizzard and Blizzard poisoning the RTS well and EA drinking the poison. And then of course follow that almost immediately with the other BS that lead to the current devs owning the studios putting Marxism over making a playable game.
@codyraugh6599 It's really bad now, I'm probably even skipping GTA 6. The only thing in my lineup is the Snake Eater remake, Gothic remake and the Tales of Graces f remaster. Right now I'm playing Nercomada Hired Gun, very fun and underrated, Trepang 2 and Ruiner are also easily overlooked. There are hidden gems out there.
@@Particle_Ghost are they redoing the snake eater online part?
Because AAA stands for Absolutely Astonishingly Ass, at this point.
My girlfriend has one of those.
What about quadruple a
@RealHomeRecording yes she does 👍
I've been hearing there's going to be an indie uprising since the mid 2000s. Still waiting. Gaming is big money, all those micro transaction laden games are raking in cash. Who wants to be an art centric indie game developer and be broke?
@RealHomeRecording I bet she does 😂😂😂😂😂
Do you remember when games were sold after being completed? Ryan George asks "If Video Game Companies Made Jigsaw Puzzles" and nails it. Imagine if you got only a few hundred of your 2000 pieces, and sone of it was just a drawing until they finish. And then the DLC involves the rest of the image not sold in the first puzzle
No. We don't want bad AAA games.
Good triple AAA games are still on the menu
And will still be bought. We just reject the DEI slop.
The last good AAA game I remember in 2 years was what Hogwarts and BG3. What else am I missing? I mean, you could argue Ragnarok. But all the good AAA games are coming out of the east now. Name a good western AAA game that came out in the last two years besides the ones I named.
@@The_Primary_Axiom Space marine 2.
@ True but I’m mainly speaking about only western single player games. There is space marine 2, hell divers 2, other multiplayer games from the west that did pretty well. I also don’t know if I really consider it a triple AAA game. After all when we say AAA we’re talking about the size of the dev team, and the budget. I’m pretty sure space marine two was a smaller team and a smaller budget. At least smaller than 98% of western AAA single player games.
For the Emperor!
29:40 No, Asmongold, the only reason why the cost of video games is going up, so called, is because they're spending ridiculous amounts of money on useless investments in game development, such as extreme photorealism and mocap animations, which is a waste of money and investment. They're focusing more money on extreme photorealistic graphical realism and shadowing, rather than game design, writing, gameplay, art style, innovation, and all of that. That's why everything's so expensive. Why do you think indie games are so good now in comparison?
This, very much this. Something looking nice is great but if the gameplay sucks who cares? Most games that look less realistic tend to do better. Look at Minecraft or Lethal Company ffs. Both have like 14 pixels between them total (13 for Minecraft and 1 for LC) and look how much people love them.
@@klassic9900 You’re absolutely right. Minecraft and Lethal Company are perfect examples of how engaging gameplay and creativity can outshine high-end graphics. Minecraft became a global phenomenon because it offers limitless possibilities and fosters creativity, while Lethal Company captivates players with its immersive atmosphere and fun mechanics, despite its simple visuals.
It’s interesting to see that many big-budget studios still focus heavily on ultra-realistic graphics, sometimes at the expense of innovative gameplay. Meanwhile, indie games with modest budgets often deliver richer experiences by prioritizing core gameplay elements and player engagement. It’s refreshing to connect with someone who appreciates the essence of what makes games truly enjoyable.
Case in point Bethesda. Skyrim and fallout 4 100 people 4 years. Starfield 500 people 8 years. Ignoring the player retention and going as optimistic as you can it sold similarly in its launch windows meaning that extra cost and time at best got them the same as there prior cheaper games and let's be real Starfield doesn't have the legs the old elder scrolls and fallout games had for player retention and continued sales
The whole argument makes no sense when he says gamers don't have the disposable income, then references additional price discriminating monetization methods that are even more disposable than a game is. If costs are the problem, companies need to budget smarter. The market dictates the price; the company is in control of its budget.
Hiring big name actors doesn't help either. The size of these companies doesn't help either.
There aren’t anymore triple A game devs, there are only triple A game activist.
It's not that Live Service games *require* 5 to 10 hours a day in order to be a live-service game. It's that the designers have put in 5 to 10 hourts of daily busy-work checklist bullshit and gated all the rewards behind it. It's a classic example of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". So, in the case of gaming, "play time" and "daily active users" started to become targets which the industry started to drive towards. Obviously if you're just making a game fun, then it will keep users engaged longer, and they'll keep coming back. But stupid, lazy developers short-circuit this notion by putting in make-work; checklists of dumb shit which players must do in order to get progression and rewards, instead of the old-style games where you just bought them, played them, and had fun.
AAA stands for
A: Average
A: Absurd
A: Anti-Gamers
Nowadays
Should be renamed to accg - absolute cash cow game
What’s the difference between AAA batteries and AAA games?
One of them functions properly day 1 when CHARGED
Why would I spend $70 on a game that, most likely, isn't finished? 9/10 games released aren't finished. They have patches coming in for the next year and DLC (most likely pieces from the original game idea) that release in the next several years. Instead I wait for the game to be finshed before buying it. By that time the game is down to $50 or less. That's a deal in my book. I refuse to be a beta tester for the devs or let them rip me off by selling me an unfinished product.
I don't even pay $50 for them, I wait until games are $20 or less. I have so many other games to enjoy that it doesn't matter to me if play brand new releases.
Because people who have unrealistic expectations want you to. When people have unrealistic expectations of you they want you to do things for themselves. They want you to mask up for themselves. They want you to vaccinate for themselves. They want you to buy expensive games, then play them for themselves. They even want you to make origami for themselves. They want all kinds of things from you which you have no time for.
Or pay full price for a game like Forza Motorsport debacle still updating the game to fix it 5 years later to then switch off the servers for it & now a game is unplayable offline & useless for $$$ , what a SCAM !
Must not be old enough to remember when games were physical things that had to be done because there was no internet connection. They HAD to be done because once you have that disc, thats the version you play. Not until the xbox 360 geb did patch’s on consul become a thing. Games had been being patched on PC for a while but most of those games were multiplayer focused like starcraft and warcraft.
I hardly pay 50 or 70 and now we got companies trying to normalize $120 for their "games" its crazy.
$300 million dollar budgets, and Activision STILL cannot fix the cheating problem in Call of Duty... 💩💩💩
Exactly and players would rather complain about SBMM. When everything thing weird happening can be explained by cheating. Hit reg? Cheating.
Cheating is rampant in Battlefield games as well.
@ On PC it definitely is. Its rampant.
It's called a slush fund
@spartanx169x BOTH are a huge problem, but SBMM is worse to me
AAA games is a race to the bottom. If nobody had AAA art before, AAA art is not needed. If AAA art is not needed, the budget of games could be massively lowered. If budget of games can be massively lowered, game studios can take more risks. Classic human behavior.
Buy bryce 3d and fudge the entire process for textures
Its not about it being AAA. Its about AAA games just becoming DEI garbage.
Should've called it WAAA,Western AAA 😂
The 'A's were the asterisk hiding DEI all along.
Drop the code speak. We all know you mean BLACK.
Hate all you want. We're not going ANYWHERE!
@@leonrobinson8180 You won't go anywhere, you'll work in bauxite mine.
- DEI pushed into movies/TV
- DEI pushed into videogames
- DEI pushed into companies
- DEI pushed as new culture
Welcome to the UN/WEF's "equity" wing of SDGs.
I wonder who's pushing it all? 🤔
@@lokidarkbeard2647 White men
@Furry_Wall think a little more specific. There are certain groups and individuals pushing this and they aren't who you think.
@@lokidarkbeard2647juice
@@Furry_Wall”men”
No one in the industry ever thought to question why the most popular mods for Bethesda games are those that improve the appearance of female characters...
The idea that "art" can be corporatized, algorithmically designed, and mass-produced is insane. A real artist will always stand above the industry because _it's different_ and not more of the same. This is where new life is made, corporate offices are where it decays.
Based take with fitting profile picture.
It worked with music.
Facts. Team Cherry, 3 people, made Hollow knight. Game Science made Wukong with under a 50 mil budget. Suits can never compete with gamers making games for other gamers.
Indeed, it's like making parodies with no original content.
@@poppyrider5541Which music?
Big companies need to realize that people want :
1. Cool shit
2. Badass characters
3. Engaging stories
4. Hot girls
Games that can be beat. I don't want to play it non-stop forever, even if it's an MMO.
I just want great story with engaging gameplay and there's nothing.
I dont care about dei. Its just a disguise and defense mechanism of dogshit develepoers, writers to hide behind to excuse their poor work. Look at history of games, we always had dei characters. For ex: black sorc on diablo 1, black paladin diablo 2, crysis1-3 with lead black character, borderlands 1-2
@@ucankurbaga True, but they also shove it down your throat and over the years it became annoying. Back in 2017-2018 I was even a bit defensive of it, because it didn't matter much, but now it's so annoying...
Engaging gameplay even if there is like Hardly a good story. Game will hold up. Good story poor gameplay will fade after the hype
I'm an old gamer. I'll be 40 next month. This transition in popularity back and forth between western games and eastern games has happened a few times before. It's a good thing. The east will double down on what makes games sell, western studios will collapse, New ones will take their place and start doing what's popular.
36 here, I've also seen the ebb and flow. The East has always put out a large quantity of good games, it's just that people don't pay much attention to them when the West is in a golden age of gaming. As a lifelong JRPG enjoyer, I never felt the 'PS3 has no games' rhetoric because a ton of great JRPGs were made for it, but the Xbox 360 had a good library of Western games so it cornered the market here.
I think this is the biggest collapse for Western AAA gaming companies ever though, due to the sheer amount of money involved and the high publicity for the major failures. Gamers are finally starting to vote with their wallets, and it will be the studios that stand tall amongst the rubble of those that fell that become the new templates for game design philosophy. Then we'll be good for another decade or so until the same thing happens again.
The UN and Visa, basically globalists behind wokness, are trying to censor Asian media. Let's hope they don't succeed otherwise it's over.
@@midastheunwise2423 Adjusted for inflation I'd estimate the scale to be around as big as 1983.
@@edgarfriendly4731 Perhaps you're right, I don't know much about that besides the whole ET thing and I wasn't around to experience it myself so I don't know the impact it had on the gaming landscape.
The beauty of a competitive global market.
11:24 Current Western AAA likes the idea of paying for ONE cash cow that they can keep running indefinitely (with MTX / battlepasses / merch etc) vs. putting "smaller" GOOD games that objectively could have shorter lifespans / less reach or otherwise is riskier... bc what if it bombs?
And then Concord happens and you'd hope theyd learn
honestly the movies industry has the same problem gaming has with the girlboss characters in movies for men.
It's been going on for a couple decades now in the movie industry
I feel like this is just a strategy to profit from bad products
For example if the game/movie has bad writing, design etc they can just focus on the female protagonist aspect and say these people are sexist and thats why they didnt like it. Pull attention, profit just around this idea or blame everyone for the failure and benefit from tax cuts
The studios want action for young men, a female lead for young women, a love story for older women, and a historical backdrop for older men, all in the same movie. This is it, this is what they're looking for, the blueprint. Everything else gets passed on. That's why it all feels the same, it is the same.
@@ardagenc4674 100% agree, but people will stop consuming their stupid identity politics filled media eventually. Hopefully when we get to that point, we will have better media and culture.
I remember when I had my “Lol Boosie C’mon Dawg” moment with girl boss overkill- it was Sucker Punch (2011), the only realistic thing in that movie was that it was in the imagination of girls in a mental hospital. Sure it goes back to Aeon Flux (2005) and Kill Bill (2003) or even before that if you dig deeper, but that is the turning point for me when the writing quality was just shift into dog-shit mode.
The quick story is :
- During Covid video games industry hired a lot of people
- After Covid they were too much people working in the industry so they decided to kick out seniors because they were too expensive.
- Now most of AAA studios are full of beginners (for exemple most of half of people working on Assasin’s Creed Shadows are developing a game for the first time)
And I’m french, just to tell you that this problem is really global.
Yeah I know there is a tons of reasons but I wanted to be quick
u wrong....they hired woke developer's to spread propoganda on Lbgqi genderfluidity , female.empowerment, diversity crap
I guess we got lucky that Assassin's Creed VR was full of actual fans, because the story was okay, and the stealth and combat and parkour were top notch, intuitive, and let you do stuff you wish you could do on the flatscreen games before. LIKE YOU CAN NOW CHUCK CONNOR'S TOMAHAWK LIKE IT WAS BORN TO! WITH YOUR OWN HANDS!
I mean, COVID may have been a small factor, but the elephant in the room is woke ideology.
Gamers want AAA games, they just dont want "AAAA" games with no soul and predatory microtransactions.
It's funny how a few years ago everybody was like "everything is getting microtransactions, help" and now everybody is like "AAA games with microtransactions are struggling, figures"
Baldur's Gate Two was made by a team of 300 over the course of one year. the game has side quests that are longer, and of higher quality, than many games released by AAA gaming studios.
300?? 1 year??? I mean... it would be possible if most of the planning was done before by smaller team but everything from writing to making it in a year seem almost impossible with AAA game industry
@@mariow7818put 280 people together who REALLY like nerdy shit, have no sense of time, and can hyper focus on minutiae, and have 20 people herd them like cats, do that for a year, and put it all together.
You'd still come out with a better game than Concord.
1 year? lol bro early access was 3 years alone
@@Max-nn4udlol I played early access the entire time. It was long and fun. Could only play act 1, but 200 hours later I still enjoyed act 1
@@Max-nn4udwait... Baldur's Gate 2 was released in 2000.... Pretty sure early access wasn't a thing yet...
GTA VI being woke will be the end of AAA games.
Is that confirmed?
@@phexusonly time will tell
@@phexus watch endymions video about it, it is woke🤮
0 chance GTA 6 flops lol
Oh it will and if I’m wrong everyone can come back here and relentlessly degrade me lol, but I truly feel in my bones it’s gonna be woke. They know people are so hyped for it that it’ll sell. Also go look at what the currant team looks like what what they said about older gta games, it’s all you need to know.
5:10 I don't even mind "girlboss charcaters" i mean look at Selene from Underworld, its so easy man, make her hot, edgy and cool and i'm fucking sold she's awesome i'd 100% play something based off of her, but the movie is a super serious tone there's no marvel comedy UMM! THAT JUST HAPPENED! in it so it works, it's not like the main character can't have personality, i just don't want a fucking self insert of a 30 year old cat lady who gets less play than a basketball court in Chernobyl.
I definitely wouldn't call Selene "girl boss" at all.
Written and acted well enough, but certainly not girl boss.
Girlboss characters are amazing.
The issue are 'funny' girlboss characters because they're never funny. The punchlines don't stick, the attitude is smelly and it doesn't help that Western AAA thinks being a girlboss means shaving your head down to 3cm length, dying it blue and getting 20 piercings all over your face.
Selene is a "girl" and a "boss" - but not a "girlboss" at all.
"Girlboss" is a bit of a different thing. Presented by the story as perfect and better-than-everyone, generally snarky for no reason and often feels like a self insert - that's a "girlboss". None of those things apply to Selene, so she's not one.
Think of it like this: if a female character in a movie feels like she'd only appeal to people who use the phrase "slaaaaay queeeeeen" unironically - it's likely a girlboss.
@@TheMaleRei funny enough, she is but I would never think about her being one because she's interesting and the action is good.
"Graphics don't really matter, style does"
See, Nintendo is SMART when it comes to this. They saw the graphical brick wall coming and steered out of the way while they still could. Sony, on the other hand, ran facefirst right into it.
I think I dev that quit a major company gave a great example of what really has gone wrong. They said they needed a quick fix for something like an enemy needed to get added to a targeting list and said they themselves could fix in an hour, they got told by the person they were required to send it to it would take 3 weeks
its because AAA has become stale, it used to be a standard but now its a template, its supposed to be the skeleton but its turned into the whole game in a different coloured jacket.
Sorta like comic movies?
Incredible analogy
@@MrGamman3yt I would say movies in general.
Steve Jobs was a dick but he summarized this well with the 'bozo effect'; 2 things happen:
1. As IP becomes established, companies rely more on the marketing of that IP, and marketing/sales begins to run the company (as opposed to the engineers who built the original IP). Good engineers leave as they become dissatisfied with how they are viewed.
2. Bad managers/executives hire people _worse_ than them, so that nobody sees what a bozo they are; once you get a bozo Director, it's over; multiple organizations can now no longer change because that director represents the 'skill-cap' of their org. Inevitably, all decisions will go through them, they'll become overloaded, and the org. stagnates.
I wish it had a chance to be stale. Please give me similar games to the 2000s. If anything it feels like they're being a bit too 'creative'.
Correction: Nobody wants games developed by corporations beholden to greedy share holders who only care about squeezing every penny from a player by maximizing engagement through manipulative mechanics while simultaneously filling said games with ideological propoghanda.
Indie = Passion
AAA = GIMME MONEY
FROMSOFT = We got you boys
Fromsoft is essentially AAA
@B1u35ky yes, indeed
I’ve still got hope for projekt red, Santa Monica, and rockstar. They’ve yet to drop anything but heaters. Hopefully REDs next game doesn’t have the same release that cyberpunk did though
@@B1u35ky from what point? Financial? That they need publisher to fund developement of their games? Sure... but that publisher does NOT influence the developement itself - hence why indie=independent
@@SpecShadow aaa not from a publishing standpoint but from budget and quality level for sure
2:35 when you said this I thought of letting them all burn to restart and cleanse the rot. Like the painted world in DS3
Increased the price to 70$ for worse quality. For the same amount of money you could buy Hollow Knight OuterWilds and Hades. Thats 3 10/10 games. AAA Games dont stand a chance now. Especially when people like the Avowed dude isnt fired yet with a public statement saying they dont agree.
True those are all 🔥
7:45 I hate the "children game" argument, when I was like 8 years old I played Dungeon Keeper, Populous, The Settlers and the like, taking after my father. Railway Tycoon, Master Of Orion and Civ 1 and 2 were too 'boring' for me then, I considred those boring adult games, my father loved them. And I'm not even that smart, it just seems 30 years ago people didn't infantalise kids that much, kids are smarter than people think, and can learn new things and solve complex problems very fast if they find something fascinating. In fact I never managed to beat Dungeon Keeper as an adult, but I somehow did when I was 8. I'm glad my father was a gamer himself so he didn't buy into video games = bad histeria and allowed me to play what I wanted.
Parents should stop being lazy putting their kids in front of a coco melon slop, play them Lord Of the Rings instead. I was maybe 9 when I finished reading The Hobbit... Also special shoutout to that one library lady who claimed I'm too young to read Conan novels when I was 11, she showed me the kids section instead - I looked at her like she is retarted. Too young to read fantasy my ass, I turned out fine, a degenerate and a loser, but fine non the less.
I still remember starting Classic Battletech with 12 or so because we wanted to play the TT so much after being exposed to the PC Games.
And we couldn't even read the language the manual was written in very well (english) and still figured it out.
Kids are not dumb. In fact, I know a lot of dumber adults.
same, I played Mortal Kombat at that age, even with ridiculous and pixilated graphics, it's still gorey. Also Jurassic park and Diablo 2.
Dude same, I got in trouble when I was at school for trying to read Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings
@@sergueileonardoafonin7950Ridiculous and pixelated? You must be young because when Mortal Kombat came out in the 90’s it was equivalent to black magic. They managed to shrink people and put them in the god damn game as far as we were concerned. I was fking floored when that game first came out…. nothing had managed that level of realism, nothing.
@@sergueileonardoafonin7950 same, Sega Mega Drive, MK Ultimate and Demolition man definitely was not my age at that time
Where is the money going? To inexperience DEI hires, they have to work 3 X longer to produce 50% quality. Just look at Avowed 40hrs, 2010 graphics, Started in 2018, had a direction change, set backs, people leaving, more people leaving. Don't be surprised if this thing costs 250M.
25:00 J.K. Simmons in BG3 was by far the best and only celebrity cameo I've ever cared for. And that was just his VA performance, what made it incredible was the writing with his character and his animation. They, fucking, nailed it. It didn't feel shoe horned, or there to be there to sell.
Nintendo's developers worked om mario wonder with ZERO pressure from the studio. No release date, they just worked at their own pace and whenever the game was ready they pitched it for release. Nintendo also increased their workers salary recently
Nintendo will always be a horrific but funny anomaly to me. They’re such corporate cutthroat assholes to anyone that isn’t in their circle, but are more than accommodating to anyone they employ or have an agreement with. I wouldn’t blame anyone who wants to work for Nintendo, even as they use lawsuits to murder Palworld and kill emulation. They’re so fucking evil, but they will take very good care of the minions.
The Japanese are a lot smarter with their money. I don't know why Western companies like developing their games in the most expensive cities.
Do you hve a link for these? This is interesting!
@SillyOmega
Most of them anyway. Konami, Sony, and Square Enix love to blow their money on pointless investments.
@dumkunt6869 unfortunetly those pitifully studios started to invest in western studios more. Worried about capcom because some internal document leaked saying they were hiring a dei consoltant.
Over hiring was definitely a problem. Especially when your gaming company has more HR, marketing, and management, then the development team. How does a company fire 1500 people and still make games? Because they hired to many people. Then cut quality, now people are out of work and games suck because of greed.
I dont get how game studios dont understand the concept of "Good games generate money"
Literally for example the new cod can’t stand more than like 3-4 matches then I’m on the home screen or on tik tok the game just drains you but in BO2 days I’d literally put in shifts on that game I’m talking day long playing sessions maybe breaks for food and restroom smh something definitely went wrong
They don't want money, they want to force you to behave a certain way.
because game studios have to DEI HIRE > DEI HIRE dont know/care about games. They just want to bark their “message”.
+
Media/award/journalists are also DEI HIRE. > forcing more studios to have “message” or else they will be under attack.
That's not always true for films so I don't understand why it would be for videogames
Not really, if the servers for BF3 were available for PS4 people would still play it.
The biggest issue I have with modern AAA titles is that the game releases unfinished, lots of buggy stuff early on, laggy servers, anti cheat doesn’t work, and micro transactions are heavily pushed.
Meh, even if it is true or not, you can’t deny that “AAA” gaming quality has _drastically_ decreased over the years.
Prioritizing profit margins through season passes and garbage microtransactions.
There are very few “AAA” games I am hyped for anymore, but we are seeing it now, a select few a big name devs/publishers, and a large number of indie/AA devs are crushing it right now.
AAA is flung around and all it really means is high budget.
True AAA games are the Grand Theft Autos, Call of Duties, Minecrafts and Fortnites of the world.
@ Either way, higher budgets doesn’t always equate to higher quality games especially in that market
6:44 *"Nobody wants that.* Women don't want that, and men don't want that." 👌
They should have been making medieval 3 or empire 2 instead of that.
Ive gotten 200+ hours of enjoyment from an $10 indie passion project that 1 dude made.
Why the fuug would I pay AAA prices to people to who hate me just to play a 8-10 hour game that deliberately insults me. Or some multiplayer bullshit.
What’s the game? Is it on Steam?
I’m sitting at over 1700 hours in Stardew Valley…
1000+ hours over here on an indie game.
A few days ago I finished Vladik Brutal, a Half-Life inspired FPS game made by one russian guy.
@ Any recommendations? Please?
I still play FTL and Binding of Isaac on occasion and I have easily a couple of hundred hours in each. Some of the best money I ever spent!
As much as people are fed up with AAA games, the reason they are made is cause people are still buying them. I still see people look at game X's 300th sequel and say "Im so hyped I'm gonna pre order it asap." There are still people that walk into these games excited. Borderlands 4 trailer drops in a few days, I literally have zero expectations for it.
Endymion put out a video on how bad Rockstar has gotten with DEI, good chance new GTA has a bunch of "the message" in it.
Endymion is a joke and his sources are basically always I know a guy that knows a guy. He's wrong 99% of the time and he obviously just makes stuff up.
@@Packin-Heat. Lol your kind gets so mad when you're called out.
@Packin-Heat. Idk about that but this video pulled up Devs LinkedIn and showed their DEI course qualifications... plus OG Rockstar creators and founders have left, I think to form a new indie studio... a common story.
Sure the game will still be good regardless, but it won't be the same vibe.
Personally, I felt like GTA5 was a fall off from the orginal vibe.
ViceCity, SanAndreas & IV were way better than 5.
Upping this comment for posterity.
@@Packin-Heat. LOL
At around 20:20 in this video they hold up some examples of successful smaller indie games, like Balatro and Animal Well, but fail to note that these games are largely devoid of identity politics. If game journalists and triple A devs and publishers continue to ignore the elephant in the room, the western triple A game industry is gonna get trampled.
It’s because this big companies want to show how good their DEI manager is doing. The job role letters are the wrong way round, easiest way to destroy a company
People who want social politics in game don't play games. They just want to tell people what to think.
Well, there are issues that need to be spread, like climate change, anti-consumer practices, unfair pay of workers, AI, corporate greed, mental health, and misinformation.
How else can people learn about these issues? Sure people can not be as obnoxious and preachy about them, but how else can the word be spread
@@Cubeytheawesome News media, obviously...
@@brain_tonic but the trust of news organizations has dwindled. I take it you heard about how MSNBC & CNN have been on a downfall?
@Cubeytheawesome You mean the same messaging that's crammed into every other form of media? Great, keep it there. What good is escapism if you're just presented with the same shit you're trying to escape?
Rocksteady Batman trilogy: full of diabolical plans, wiping out everyone in Arkham city, joker sending his blood across the country to poison everyone, scarecrow unleashing a new formula of his toxin to ruin everyone and everything.
Rocksteady suicide squad: “Batman ruined my mental health” - lesbian freeze
Killzone had such an incredible atmosphere to it. It was like Halo mixed with Saving Private Ryan. That game was incredible and the franchise had so much potential.
At least they shelved it before destroying the franchise, unlike Microsoft taking a steaming dump on their number one IP before flushing it down the drain.
The last killzone was a mediocre crapfest that put the franchise into its title.
Indeed😮😮😮😮
@@newsynapsrliti2059n0 But the first one was sooooo sick.
28:10 What do I want in games? No live services. Good-looking characters. No woke ----. Complete experiences. Solid, fun gameplay loops. Games that don't require bleeding edge GPUs to run. Normal installation sizes.
Yes!!
4:07 I'm a girl and have always played 'guy games' but honestly make a game with two hot thirst trap girl boss npcs with side quests that were actually engaging and there would be no complaints. Maybe make the main quest giver or companion a man but men would come back to the hot girls if they had a good questline.
Yeah, I have no issue with hot girls in my games. Does nothing for me, but it doesn't hurt me in any way. But then again... I'm not desperate for validation and I don't despise hot women for existing when I'm not that hot. We accept reality and they don't.
@halfprince I think part of me just really wants to revive the bikini armor era of gaming. I liked playing a hot chick. Now people are worried about being objectifying. And if we have a strong woman she has to make sure to tell you how strong she is. It's like the GOT quote that says something like a king usually doesn't have to announce that he is a king.
Also a woman, I love having hot girls in my games. It doesn't make me feel insecure or invalidated. I see myself in the character to some degree. I think they do this to punish men and to persuade women into games (but it doesn't work).
Part of the problem with triple A is that they sell it like any other piece of junk. In my mind a AAA should stand out above the rest and be a complete package with all extras included. No other industry has top of the notch products that use the same marketing strategys as middle of the pack and lower end products.
The bubble wouldn't have "burst" if the right decisions were taken, such as NOT insulting/patronizing your own customers and not doing anything DEI related.
Edit: And just saying, having real actors in video games can work if done right. Look at Metal Gear and games series from the 90's like Command & Conquer and Wing Commander.
I legit don't understand what's they expect by insulting people who are supposed to buy
i agree on both points.
Insulting your audience and telling them not to buy it, well guess what, you dont need to tell me twice. 1stly, piracy is far easier than one thinks. 2ndly, how do these companies keep ignoring the elephant in the room - demographically speaking, games are played by men, typically younger men -> mid 30's.
As for celebraties in games, some of my favourite characters/performances came from those professionals (Tobias from Freelancer, voiced by the same man who played Gimli in LOTR, John Rhys-Davies). If they are done and handled right, they can add soo much gravitas to the game. unlike most nowadays where its, oooooh look we have the current favourite celeb who doesnt care about the medium or is a professional activist, dont you want it???
"How does it feel to have lived long enough to watch all your favorite franchises go down in flames?"
I don't feel anything anymore. Complete apathy for the industry.
dragon age failguard doesn't exist in my world
hope all of the game studios wake up from reality before they Remake chrono trigger.
Resident evil is still going great tbh.
What's really has to be disheartening for a developer is to work on a game for years, just to have it scrapped. Imagine putting years of your life into something just to watch it die.
I am back to playing 20 year old games because none of the current slop is appealing.
The AAA industry is definitely dead to me.
Same currently playing wizardry
No joke, I like new games and good graphics, but recently was looking what to play with a friend, and found that we gravitate to X-Box 360 era games where you had many 2-player co-op games (that even worked with split-screen on consoles).
The spirit of that era was great: mainstream big games were made with love and 0 censorship, they were edgy and did their best to make the gamers happy.
@@stanislavkimov2779 Me and a buddy have been enjoying remnant 2 so far as fun game tho I do miss Army of 2
I’m playing goldeneye and quake
Giving Gothic and first Sniper Elite another run rn, great games (just don't play Gothic with english localisation, it's terrible)
We just need AAA games that are actually AAA. Thats it, nobody hates AAA games
also - the cost of games isn't going up perse. because there are efficiency tools that come out all the time that drastically speeds up multiple processes in game dev. So, its actually a lot easier to make games now - they just choose to spend it in stupid ways. Like massive amount of mocap for cut scenes.
-The game industry isn't dying. Stop being a conspiracy theorist : O
-The game industry is dying but not to the extent you're claiming. : O
-The game industry is dying but it's a good thing : X
Oof, didn't get a full stack this time.
The AAA industry is not dead; it's just the Western AAA industry and LGBT pride that derailed the game industry. Eastern game developers will save the industry. Don't worry.
10:49 I agree. Live service games are just an excuse for companies to try and milk their players for more money. That's it. Non-live service games can be just as successful, but AAA studios can't slake their greed on one-time purchase games.
Absolutely. I keep thinking to myself, "C'mon, corpos. You don't NEED to constantly chase MTX money. Just make A GOOD, WHOLE PACKAGE GAME. Black Myth Wukong, Baldur's Gate 3, and Palworld. NONE of them were live-service nor had ANY DLC, and yet they sold MILLIONS."
I have a sneaking suspicion that greed isnt the factor we think it is.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the money guys at these companies are seeing sales tank and things get bad, and this is their solution to the financial crisis they are facing.
The more woke games flop, the more the "money people" in the companies, divorced from the actual game design side of things, push for monetization to save the company's bottom line.
Lets be real, if it was greed, i think theyd actually have money, and not be in the dire straits they are now.
Im betting on this being a stupid desperation move to try and combat an issue they dont even understand, because theyre being subverted from within.
And on the topic of internal subversion, dont forget the peolle doing the subversion, fucking hate you.
So maybe aggressive monetization and penny pinching is just another way for them to say "fuck gamers, youre all anyways."