Ex-Playstation CEO Talks About The Collapse of Creativity in Triple A Games
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2024
- Ex Playstation CEO Shawn Laden has spoken on the "collapse of creativity" in games, shedding light on some of the downfalls of studios like Ubisoft, Bethesda, and even Sony. It's finally an opportunity for them to admit it and look at what the solutions are.
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As an independent game developer, this description of how the game industry functions is depressingly accurate. There is extremely limited risk tolerance in the investment space and even less expertise. There have been multiple cases where my team would have received game-changing investments (allowing us to scale and implement features important to our fans) where it not for a veto from an investor who was concerned with the risk profile despite them being recommended to invest in us by gaming experts they pay mid 6 figures. Often, these vetoers are not familiar with game mechanics, exit points, or any of the problems that designers dedicate their lives to solving. Innovation is synonymous with risk and that attitude has made my team, and many other teams suffer greatly.
I have stories, man. So many stories. Frankly, I wish I didn't have these stories; I wish we were just allowed to make games players love.
God, I wish layoffs started from the top down…
lol nicely put !
Yep - the executives who greenlight projects like the suicide squad game which crapped all over Arkhamverse, or Unknown 9 Awakening, Concord, Drag-Age The Failguard, etc. are the ones who should lose their jobs right before the studios that made the games get shut down.
The finance guys always saying "my fortnite clone should make as much money" and never asking "Why would anyone move to my copy when the original is still there?"
No reason whatsoever either. 🤦♂️
Because their Fortnite clone has a fresh coat of paint and one new mechanic. Tbf to the marketing guy this is one of the few industries where newer isn’t always better. Take cars for example they add a new feature and that’s enough to make people 25k on the new baseline model or even the phone industry where people upgrade every new release.
@@MichaelThompson-ux6nnupgrading to make better is the key. That's harder for games than it is for tech.
To stand up for finance, they're generally not attached to product and are doing basic math based on what they're told. Comps are just the best way to model outcomes.
Yep it's the exact reason Concord failed. OverWatch might not be as good as OverWatch 1 but it's certainly a whole lot better than Concord was and so everyone just kept playing OverWatch. Well that in Concord having the world's ugliest characters in being a woke mess
Stop calling them micro transactions. They have been macro since 2014, when you’re paying 35% the cost of a full game for a character skin, it’s not micro.
It seems micro isn't referring to the cost but the value you're getting 😂
I mean; 35% is still a F when it comes to grades.
The reason AAA creativity is dead is because AAA games aren't created, they're produced. It's a production, not a creative endeavor. It's not about creating art, it's about adhering to a checklist to maximize profits.
Here's a quote from Linkin Park:
"Once you have a theory of how a thing works, everyone wants the next thing to be like the first". Take The Last of Us released in 2013. Every big Sony game has followed that structure. Realistic, 3rd person action, big cutscenes. And people shielded Sony from valid criticism of this approach, so now they can't market and make anything other than that formula.
From a level design perspective, The Last of Us is as safe as it gets.
And yet, when Ubisoft released Child of light and Valiant Heart in 2014, with plans to release more depending on their success, they pretty much were ignored. Both were quite unique, with gameplay that was a breath of fresh air in contrast to the paint by number Ubisoft usually pop out
And what happened? They had pretty disappointing sales. The industry was listening and the message they received from gamers was "don't bother, we'll just buy the next far cry and AC instead". It's not surprising that we saw a drop of creativity in AAA games afterward (it was already a downward trend but it seemed to accelerate)
Yep and the problem with that is when you play one 3 or 4 of them you get bored,those games are one and done narratively and repetitively,they dont need a sequel take something like tlou the ending was perfect,horizon zero dawn's story was done by the end of it just like gow2018 but no they will milk those cows until even the fans are bored, i used to like the games i mentioned but now i wont bother to play the sequels
@@emongu1 Yeah except they also completely fucked up marketing those. Why is this the first I hear of either of those?
So much this. Ever since Last of Us was released I have disliked Sony's mainline games... And even though I liked the original The Last of Us, I grew to dislike it more as time went forward because Sony only makes 2 kinds of games: Linear cutscene filled "games" with the exact same control scheme and characters who yap 24/7 and tell you the answer to every single puzzle and if it isn't that its a giant open world with a lot of empty space... And don't get me started how much effort is put on the graphical side instead of making compelling systems or fun gameplay mechanics, just for the shake of realism instead of choosing a fun artstyle. Look at Hi-Fi Rush. Megaman Legends.
Every gaming company is a business but do you remember when the devs had actual passion? They worked on a shoestring budget and made new technology because they thought it was "Cool". Ultimately they wanted to make money, but they still were doing it for the love of it. Without that passion you don't have games like DOOM, Fallout, Demon's Souls, Red Dead Redemption, and more. It's easy to point at their more successful sequels and say "The originals were just a starting point for something greater" but that's a mistake. Without that original passion, you have nothing. And this is the problem with modern gaming. There is no passion. No innovation. No creativity. It's all corporate procedure. DEI slop. Millennial non-stop dialogue. It's completely the opposite of what made video games fun in the first place.
"do you remember when the devs had actual passion" That still happens today. We hear a lot about the AAA flopbusters because game journalists are bought to say how awesome they are, and how it's gamers' fault that they flopped. Meanwhile, devs with actual passion still make great games, we just have to be on the lookout for them.
who would've known the reason they remake every game is because they have no new ideas anymore ha
They have new ideas. They just don't make them because they're risky and might not make as much money as a remake.
I am pretty sure if they tried y’all would still have a problem
In defense of remakes, it teach next gen devs to show how to make a game as a training ground
Game dev is the only job you don't lose after producing 3 flops in a row costing 600 millions or more. You can't even criticise developers because people act like the suits from above dictate their every move. Sure, the suits make the gameplay decisions, the graphic and most other decisions .... no, they care about monetization, not how you feel swinging a sword.
This guy is legit the best gaming youtuber out there, not crazy about culture war, not a corporate yes man and not an angry hater. Just exceptional and honest commentary.
Right?! I am so glad I ended up on one of his videos while scrolling through yt.
this guy and bellular news im big fans of for industry news
@@topnotchindeed1536 I don't like Bellular that much. They're nice people but when I watched them they were quite sloppy and didn't seem to actually perform the duty of care.
No.
Kyle Bosman.
@@phant0mdummywhy does it have to be one or the other, stranger? There can be more than one exceptional gaming commentator.
all industries should play a game I invented. The first person talking about "recurring revenue model", gets tossed to a wood chipper and then everyone goes to work and actually do something productive.
I mean, you say this, but the games industry more than tripled its value over the course of the last 10 years when they started investing in recurring revenue models. You can't really blame game companies when they're just doing what sells. Blame the whales that drop $1,000+ on a single game.
@@qu1253 that's why I don't understand why people complain about games being shite - if people pay for this crap, it must be good, right? I think gaming channels should stop aggravating the situation and talking about the DEI crap. The message should be: that's what is bad about this game, our recommendation: don't buy it, moving on to another topic.
The worst thing a studio can do is "go public". Once that happens they aren't making games for you anymore, they're making them for the investors... And thats when creativity dies.
CDPR is next on the line. They have been talking multiplayer and game-as-a-service for a long time now ...to please the investors. The same investors that sue them after the Cyberpunk launch. Now come on, lol. And to realize their dreams (the investors dream), they have been acquiring new studios ...in America. DEI is gonna kick in and the first question they will ask is "why there is so much white dude in your company?" This is the beginning of the end.
It's that paradox that when they make a game for "everyone", they make it for no one. Because in their definition, for "everyone" means not offending whatever vocal groups attaches themselves to the project (this is an important distinction, because this results in offending potential costumers who do not have vocal representatives attached to the project), which in turn makes it stale for everyone.
Shift Up going public is better than being purchased by Sony when their studios getting deleted anyways.
This is nothing more than a natural cycle. We hear these sentiments every few years as the new kids on the block show everyone how it's done while the big boys stagnate. Then the heroes live long enough to become the villains, and history repeats.
One thing I don't understand with AAA studio, why they didn't form little teams to make smaller games
like in the 80s and 90s to 1. maybe create new IP's, 2. give there staff experience (shorter dev times) and 3. find the future lead talents for there future AAA games.
How dare you use common sense. Executives don't have any of that, they only see money.
In the modern standards of gaming, 1 million copies isn’t profitable anymore
There are developers out there making good games, you just have to look for them. AAA is finished, but gaming as a whole is still thriving.
true but AAA has the resources/manpower to make stuff that AA and indies can't.
@@abeetmameet That may be true, but indies are taking creative risks that AAAs aren’t, despite their limited budgets.
AAA is only finished until the next big AAA game comes out though. Most people are like dogs, my human left and they're gonna be gone forever, until they're back and they're gonna be here forever. This attitude will be there until GTA 6 is out next year and suddenly gaming is saved again without any changes and every bad actor escaping culpability until gaming sucks again.
Exactly. There are smaller studios out there making absolute bangers. People need to get out of the "AAAA" space.
@@EldritchErik94 I just want both AAA and smaller devs to succeed. Currently AAA is mid af.
Studio's are too big for their own good, true creatives are everywhere in the industry, however their voices get overshadowed and drowned out by the flood of over valued and mediocre opinions held by people who either haven't created anything before, or they hold higher positions and overrule such creative passion in favor of corporate pandering.
The way it's always the Ex-members who speak truth
I wouldn't be surprised if executives can't say anything while employed, due to contract agreements and/or NDA's.
I'm a believer in graphics not mattering much, but only in fidelity. I think what's most important for visuals is how you style them. We need more stylized graphics to make games more unique. Look how well some games have aged, like Spyro: A Hero's Tail, because of art style choices.
I love games that lean heavily into stylization. Cell-shaded graphics like the comic book style from Gravity Rush, hand-drawn beauties like you see in games from Vanillaware, things like that. And usually, these graphics are packaged with great menu visuals too. It gives the games unique identities.
And where are the text-based RPGs? Why aren't those coming back!? Not that I've played them myself aside from text adventure segments from Saints Row 3 and 4, but sometimes the visuals are best seen in your imagination!
Its more of the aesthetic that games should focus on. the graphics of a game is just a tool to achieve the desired aesthetics.
Aesthetic is everything
@@Luckyleol That's what I'm talking about. A game's Art Style the aesthetic of a game. You're agreeing with me but you're trying to say you don't agree which doesn't make sense to me.
@@tdotsmooth Agreed, which I gave examples of like Spyro: A Hero's Tail, Gravity Rush, and Vanillaware games.
I'm making an RPG in the vein of the Wizardry games of old (combat is text only; no combat animations at all) precisely for that reason.
No matter what they do, my imagination comes up with way better things that whatever can be reasonably implemented in a game.
Incidentally, that's why I don't like the new Wizardry 1 remake in full 3D.
The combat animations are quite underwhelming compared to what I've always imagined.
Yeah, their 100th remake of Last of Us 2 made that obvious.
With each iteration of the remake Abby getting more bigger with additional raytraced chest hair. By the 1000th remake Abby would reach full primeval hulk.
Remakes are not for "the best games".
Remakes are for making money. For wh*ring out the IP you purchased or inherited.
Every franchise is treated a street walker.
Nobody asked for bloated 100 hours games that a minority finishes and are a shore to play.
Nobody asked for photorealism in graphics.
Nobody asked for games with 400 million dollars in budget.
All those trappings were self-inflicted by the games industry, trying to maximize profit above all else. Even at the cost of their company's reputation and standing with the public.
I don't like 100 hour games anymore, but i still like good graphics if the game is good.
You just described every Ubisoft game. This is incidentally why I don't ubisoft games
There were some early games that had a lot of content that felt like good value for money. But then they all started doing it and the size came from busy work rather than meaningful content. I would have said at the time that I liked that value for money. But the same quality isn't there and I don't want bloat all the time. I'm much more interested in a shorter hand crafted experience now rather than a world where they give you meaningless busy work to waste your time. Some games feel a bit half baked and you're supposed to create your own experience rather than be shown through an expertly crafted story.
@@mac1bc good graphics or good art direction?
@@----248 good point. Art direction first
As a fan of niche Japanese games like Disgaea, I'd day AA is very much alive and kicking. Maybe not as much in the West, but it's definitely alive.
FROM Software right now has about 400 employes if I'm not mistaken, but it's more like several smaller teams working on different projects, at the same time. So I guess their games technically count as AA productions, even Elden Ring. Speaking of, after the success of the game, they didn't pump hiring up mad like many companies do after big successes. Instead, they raised wages across the board, and it seems to me like they intend to remain a smaller studio. It makes sense: smaller company with big earnigns, once you find a formula that works, gives you freedom to risk and innovate, your smallest fall isn't going to break anyone's neck, compared to a AAA(A) company, where even multi-million earnings might not be enough to keep the boat afloat.
Yes, they did hire more people in the past years. Apparently, 33% up compared to 2020, but it's still a lot less than it could have been. Elden Ring raked more than one billion, most other companies would have quadrupled their employee count by now, just look at CDPR after The Witcher 3, Ubisoft after Assassin's Creed, etc.
@@personaignota That was probably mostly so that they could have a full sized team working on Elden Ring and it's DLC while they kept their other projects going as well since Elden Ring was significantly larger than anything they'd done before.
Indie
Indie has nothing to do with the budget or number of employees, its the independence of a publisher. Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent example for that. An Indie game can be AA or AAA too, if they publish it themselves and are independent from any publisher.
Isn't that the same guy who said "Don't like it, don't buy it" Ghost of Yotei in TwitterX?
“Minimising risk,” is (ironically) one of the riskiest moves in the games industry. “Fun,” is the key to profit. The cost of the investment is not even in any gamer’s minds when they decide to buy or play a game.
I will site Robocop: Rogue City, a Double A game that got zero bad reviews, which was the best new game I played in the last 12 months. It has a little jank, but you can see a Triple A budget would have been well spent there. It’s just great fun to play.
I miss the hair... :(
Idk if I can keep watching…
He helped creating it
ikr. It's like the guy who screams that the Huns are sacking the city AFTER he opened the gates of the city wall.
17:45 Well, photorealistic doesn’t mean looking “good” and stylized doesn’t mean looking “bad”, so that’s the issue Former Sony CEO was talking about.
How well a game looks it’s not dictated by its photorealisticness but by its art direction and style (and yes, art direction it’s already a thing, there’s no need to institute a role called “director of vibes” jk of course, but it’s true).
wasn't this the same dude who said "if you don't like ghost of yotei, don't buy it"?
Here’s an idea: AAA should form small teams, give them a small budget each and tell them to make a new game. This reduces risk, increases passion and creativity and starts a new IP from scratch.
Formula replaced creativity
There's a way to 'fix' this and that's just hiring people who know what the F- they're doing.
I never found a 15--20 hour AAA game to, on the whole, be a waste of money. Those 2--5 hour AAA games from the 00's through mid 2010's, however...
Gamers have such short memories.
Nah they fired the creative people because they said they where problematic then hired activist that just spend 24/7 on twitter arguing with people being vocal on why their beloved are getting butcher because of the dei check list.
Here's another layer: they said the creative people were problematic because as they made great works in the industry, their pay and their expectation of pay rose up with each success. So now they hire cheap incompetents who hide themselves behind social constructs they don't even believe in when they make failed products. Big surprise.
I’m not complicated, I see mugthief, I tap to view
When I was younger I wanted longer games because I was "time rich" and "money poor". As an adult it has flipped for me.. I rather play an amazing 20 hour game vs a 100+ hour game.
FINALLY a youtuber says it. Game's aren't "content pipelines". It's fun gameplay (with friends for me) that matters. Why did so many people keep playing halo 3? Not because it's getting content every week. Cuz fun. And most of us got home from school or work and just relaxed. Simple.
Those AAA games made by 400 people are still made by 100 people are less; the rest is just warm flesh filling in a seat.
True due to diversity hires. Higher based on meritocracy and you'll get more even contributions and better products. Universalism is a lie.
Remnant 2... we need more games like Remnant 2. Theres secrets that require other secrets to have been found, one of the deepest class systems ive seen in a 3rd person shooter and the build variety is so expansive, ive sunk about 300 hours into Remnant 2 and STILL am finding better gear and even whole classes that refine my build. I just started the highest difficulty after 300 hours of Build refinement. I have ADD so its difficult as fuck to stay focused on one game, let alone one that requires so much RNG and repeating of levels. Brilliant game.
That class system is more shallow than your standards
Interesting how their concern about losing money when combined with a lack of understanding of what customers want is actually causing those massive losses they wanted to avoid.
Tbh, I kinda saw this coming for a while now since 2020, with the advent of Capcom coming back into prominence, and looking at the indies and seeing that their budgets and vision have long changed from the days of super meat boy, and as time has passed, more major hits have been cropping up. The PS4/Xbone era was the dark ages and now were coming into the renaissance
There is one part of gaming industry that big corporations are just too afraid to tap into were they would earn billions of dollars. They are even censoring this subject in every video game (Sony won't even allow games with this content in their store). Modders are tapping into it since at least 90's, and some of them are earning really good money (hundreds thousands of dollars each month).
I always wanted to be a game dev growing up. When I went to college, I learned how the industry is, and no longer really wanted to join the industry. But now that I found some friends who also wanted to try to make a game, we are attempting to make something as an indie dev. Which is a lot more fun [albeit very difficult] rather than being stuck doing grunt work at a AAA company making something you likely don't want to make or disagree creatively with.
Always interesting to listen to your analysis Mug.
I've been shifting my attention to games made by small studios lately where there is an infinite number of great games. Teyon's Robocop, Shiro's Wartales, ...
AAA studios have lost their way and I'm really pessimistic on how they will recover from that.
I feel devs nowadays put lots of not fun, repetitive, time consuming stuff in games, and it's a challenge to finish games because I get bored.
Bethesda Ubisoft Activision Dice EA Blizzard Treyarch Infinityward and many, many more have released the same games back-to-back for over 15 years Bethesda and Ubisoft games are indistinguishable from the previous game
Finally Mugthief with short hair. 👍
i have the wildest experience with these videos. when i see the chosen topics, and titles, and thumbnails, my knee-jerk reaction is to unsubscribe and hide all notifications. but when i actually watch the videos, i find them really entertaining, amusing, and well-argued.
Tripple digit slop.
You got a good understanding of whats happening in the zeitgeist of the gaming industry. Well done.
Eh, Indie Games are better than ever. Some of the AA industry is good too, as long it doesn't try to be AAA. AAA is royally *****d. I am not wasting my time and money on AAA since almost a decade. AAAA? Hello Ubisoft, goodbye and good riddance. Vote with you wallet, and value your time folks.
It's true that most of the good triple A games we've seen for a while were remakes like Resident Evil 4, Dead Space or the last of us part one. I think at least we can agree though that there's been a good amount of productivity in the indie sector, maybe even an increase of creativity there.
Graphics quality: Starfield has some great graphics (x-times better than their older titles), but now more people are playing older titles from Betehesda, because story and quest design are much better.
I also do not know, if that trend is more coming from graphics card producers, that want, that you put a new $1000+ graphics card in your $500 PC.
I'm one of the 90% who routinely watches your videos but for some reason has never hit the subscribe button. I'm subscribed now though. Thanks for the content!
15:40 Super Metroid cost as much as $80 msrp in 94 moneyz and was like a 9 hour game
STOP thinking of games in the $/hr context PLZ!
Movies cost like $7.50/hr to go see at the theater but god forbid a video game does even half that. Fill it up with slop and artificial length so people are tricked into thinking they got value
The shells of the cartridge cost more than the software itself. Stop.
It's always like this. Once business enters, love leaves the equation. Can't get the love back unless you look for indies who don't have the industry on their side.
Funny these AAA devs never think about "minimizing risks" when they push woke agendas we all know exponentialy improves risks
What a lot of these games lack is not just creativity or ingenuity, but ambition.
I really admire the old games like the original X-COM, or Emperor of the Fading Suns, games so massive and overly ambitious that they buckle beneath their own weight and are riddled with bugs and barely functional mechanics. There are a few games with that carry that torch nowadays, and they can be quite difficult for casual players to get into, such as Dwarf Fortress.
I've really been enjoying UFO 50, it's got a lot of absolutely brilliant game design in most of its 50 games. Some of them are absolute little masterpieces, and of just the right length that they don't overstay their welcome.
Cruelty Squad proves artstyle and gameplay is more important than graphics fidelity.
Just for context, Todd Sweeney also talked recently and he missed the mark about the industry but states how people want to play with their friends.
No Todd... The games failing could be played with friends of they were interested in them in the first place.
Shawn probably should have been the CEO of Sony over Jim Ryan who steered them into an iceberg.
Hey, Mug! Love the haircut! I'm gonna elaborate a bit on something you said, but from my own perspective, 'kay?
So, I'm going to talk about something I've been working on the past couple weeks or so. I'm currently working on plotting out an album using AI--hold on, I know, there's the whole legality angle to it, but hear me out with this before you judge, okay? What I've been doing is coming up with the plot on my own (it's a concept album that hopefully tells an epic story when it's done) and it's a pretty simple one, and writing down my countless notes for it. I've then been making sample lyrics for each of the songs, plotting out how I believe it should sound, and then asking friends for help and using AI as a way to determine how the vocals and musical elements COULD SOUND. Yes, I'm going to put out the raw album for free on Suno when it's done, but I'm also planning on working further on it later.
Thing is, I've had to go over the lyrics to completed songs MULTIPLE times. I'm trying to make sure the whole thing "flows" or has the right "vibe" to it, as Mug mentioned. I've gone to multiple friends as well as using ChatGPT to help me fix out verses and choruses--I'm basically using it as a gigantic thesaurus, if we're being real, but a thesaurus that has the relevant information for the specific song (lore and everything) so it has a higher chance of querying the correct lyric, and it has the syllable structure in place.
I currently have around 5 songs of a planned 12 to a point where I'm almost happy with them. This is literally just a passion project; yeah, I'm going to eventually see about recording my own version of it, but I'll need an actual vocalist, as my voice is pretty gross nowadays. Thing is, trying to get the right "vibe" and to get songs to "flow" correctly, while also having them "flow" correctly in the entire ALBUM structure so that it feels like it tells a story has been genuinely exhausting. I used to laugh at the idea of a "director of vibes" but.. I kind of get it, now, for a project like this.
Anyway, this is my outside perspective is all I'm saying--I don't know a damn thing about making video games. The most I can manage with code is bricking a computer in an endless loop! (Yeah, that's pretty bad, huh?) But, that's what I've been working on, and it's been driving me mad, but I genuinely want it to be done. Once I finish all the tracks, have them in the correct narrative order, then I'm going to have to.. god, this is going to sound mad.. I'm going to have to download the tracks and edit them using Audacity JUST to get them where I want them... BEFORE I go into recording an actual album of my own. For those of you who think is roundabout and insane: yes. Yes it is. There is zero denying that this is an insane way of doing things, but well.. I have no musical training, and my hands freeze up when I try to learn guitar, so.. yeah..
Still, I'm gonna do it, even if I have to hold it as a potential passion project for the rest of my days. As I said, the AI version will be out there and free if anyone wants a listen. (It's currently hidden until I finish it, though. NO EARLY PREVIEWS! Fair warning, it is power metal, though, so I hope you like screeching guitars and epic lyrics as well as quite a few catchy choruses. Also, some of the songs are not solely power metal, so look forward to that. As I said, concept album--it's gonna be WEIRD!)
Anyway, sorry for ranting so long in this comment, Mug; you're a good dude, and I love your channel. I should really chuck a dollar your way, at the very least, with how much enjoyment I get out of your videos. I just really don't want to use Patreon is the thing.. they're kinda scummy for a company. Alright, well, take care everyone, and I wish you all a pleasant day. I'm going to completely avoid working on any other tracks for the day, because I didn't sleep last night while working on one of them. (NOW I understand why audio engineers get paid so much! IT AIN'T FUN! And I'm just doing the bastardized version of that! Lordy, Lordy..)
This is what happens if you keep firing the people who made the good games and replace them with DEI hires and narcissist buttkissers! See Naughty dog! xDD Games don't need to have a single 40-50 hour playthrough, but a motivating reason to play it multiple times! I've played Last of Us 1(even got the fancy Joel edition) once on PS3 and i'm good forever.. Wukong however, i've already completed twice and i still feel like i havent seen half of it!
Firing workers regardless of their performance is causing low morale to the industry
Another Great Video! 👍 ... miss the hair though lol
It’s like they only try to make certain gamers happy and not the entire gaming community
*Double A games have dominated my Xbox since 2017 and will be the standard of gaming in the future when Rockstar, EA, 2K and SEGA are the last independent AAA developers standing* 🕵
for a micro scale of whats happening to the gaming market i use the mmo market, an mmo comes out and is huge, than a dozen companies decide they want a piece of the pie, make their own mmo which is an overmonitized mess, the population becomes split among a bunch of mmos, mmos become unprofitable, most of them fail, the publishers say mmos are bad businesses, there is a void of mmos for 10 years, than a company that actually has an interesting idea for an mmo drops one, mmos become popular again, rinse and repeat. currently we are in the "population split, everything is unprofitable" stage. You cant have 50 games all demanding 100+ hours of playtime and expecting the gamer population to buy and play them all. I myself JUST finished my first playthrough of BG3, which is considered one of the best mmos this decade, and i didnt even get around to it till it had been out for a year. Not to mention the other playthroughs i could do ect ect.
I have the time and I don't like live service games. I want long, involved, and detailed single-player games. I believe the reason so many people don't complete games is because the games suck, and the players moved on to find better games to play.
Yes, because the industry stopped hiring artists and engineers, and just started hiring any warm body that wanted to be in the biggest, fastest growing content and monetization factory on the planet.
Creativity equals risk sadly. Today's games are geared towards known buying trends.
Back in the day, plenty of studios went under, only for their underselling Creative masterpieces to concerned brilliant by modern audiences
Instead of churning out unwanted crap like "Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered" and wasting a sh*t ton o cash in the process, how about creating some new fresh IP idea's. Oh and while your at it, get rid of this infection called DEI
Sony spent $400m on a new IP called concord and it only sold 25k copies
They went from a boy's club: creative, functional
to a girl's club: money-driven, behavior-oriented, socially suffocating.
I'm sick of photorealism in most AAA games. I also agree that games don't have to be 100 hours long. Dragon Quest 11 might have been one of my favorite RPGs of all time, but I am not sure it had to be that long. But also if I am being forced to spend 60-70 dollars, it better be a good freakin game and take at least a decent amount of time to complete.
I already hesistate to buy a full priced game, if its barely going to take up any of my time, I am less likely to pay that price at all.
Can we just use budget to determine a game's grade?
X < $500,000 = C
X > $1,000,000 = B
X > $10,000,000 = A
X > $50,000,000 = AA
X > $100,000,000 = AAA
You know what, I'll do everything I can for a system like this to happen.
Real talk, I kinda hate the AAA label, because it tends to be inaccurate. It's not AAA, it's not A at all, it's a B. A very, very, overbudgetted, big, B. It's a Big B game.
I wish games were shorter. I've been going back and playing older games that last anywhere from 6 to 15 hours and having a blast.
3 seconds in and I’m already writing a comment, just to congratulate you on your haircut. And your 50,000 subscribers that came with it.
Gameplay time does matter. But thats because we were getting games that were 4-6 hours long for full price. I don't think anybody is going to complain about a 40-50 hour linear well written RPG experience for full price. We don't need games that are 220+ hours to beat. Very few games don't overstay their welcome. I think BG3 took me 110 hours to beat but it felt like 30 hours. I was never bored. But thats an execption.
My fear is videogame publishers push for even stricter control over their games, such that your only choice is to buy their newer shittier games.
Watch Dogs Legion is a AAA game that tried to innovate with the idea of "Playing as anyone", which sucks
Innovation isn't always good, I think that game might have been the last spark of creativity from Ubisoft, despite being a horrible idea from the get go
Silent hill 2 Is the perfect game for me right now, not too short, high quality. Now tears of the kingdom I started over a year ago and I’m still not finished with it. High quality, but feels like its wasting my very little time that I do have
Gaming has always had ups and downs in a continuous cycle through the decades so these things shouldn't be unexpected.
Came to the same duration vs quality conclusion in 2011 when Skyrim and Portal 2 dropped. Skyrim is obviously good, but it's like a smorgasbord. There's so much there, tons of options, but at best they're good, none are truly great. Portal 2 is just a quality experience from beginning to end. The puzzles are interesting, the writing hilarious, the game is less than 10 hours.
Looking back P2 is the better game. The value isn't there if looking at it through that sort of lens, but imagine we evaluated other art like movies by that same criteria? If that was the case people might actually like the Hobbit trilogy.
it’s because the suits control the game so much that it leaves no space for creativity to thrive
The Golden Age of Gaming Titans is over.
Just give other Studios a Chance and let the old GODS die.
We don't need Ubisoft...but Ubisoft needs YOU!
The budget exploded when every games had to be massive open worlds. Decades ago, an open world meant freedom, now they are just formulaic time wasters. I didn't think I would ever say that but I miss linear games (Like the first two Metro games). I'm glad it's kinda back with Space Marine 2. Not every games needs to be Elderscrolls or Farcry.
There's a lot of AA game developers, especially Japanese. Nihon Falcom has been quietly plugging along for decades with Ys and the Trails series. That company only has like 60 employees.
Pulling your hair back will not get us to forget about you shaving it off. 100k straight razor shave, lets go!
It's not just AAA that's bankrupt. It's most indie games besides rare exceptions. I was on GOG these past few months and even playing games in the same genre they are radically different games. So different I often have to read a manual to see how it's even played. I can't remember the last time a modern game needed tutorials. All the RPGs are the same all FPS are the same. All RTS are the same. You know exactly how it will play just from the genre name now
best part: no gamer wants larger games! we want good games!
give me 1/4 of cyberpunk with the same level gameplay and immersion and we are more than golden!
replayability is way more important than insanly large games you wont finish anyway.
Hmmm... a "strategic advisor" for TenCent talking about the decline of creativity in gaming... I agree, but given his position, this guy is very much a part of the problem.
It’s not a collapse- it’s been an active attempt
Yes, there's been a major brain drain in the industry as talented people are forced out or become disillusioned with management or hiring practices, and leave.
Also, nice haircut, Mug!
i dont even agree that games need to be shorty they just need to be better not shorter, i love the long story lines, just now adays the story and dialog are so bad and sometimes get stuck with slide show cinematics and its just for the bin.
keep up the good vids, finally someone who is not an angry hater or a yes-dude. good commentary, love it.
The problem is the cost to develop the games and the length graphical fidelity, and even the trend chasing are not actually related. The cost is because the development teams are 1,000+ people, and less than half those people are having a positive contribution on the development. Games are getting bloated in length and chasing better graphics because of the Games as a Service/Live Service demands of investors, but the actual development cost is getting bloated because the development team is absurdly large and filled with incompetent people who are more of a detriment to the development than a positive; no studio needs an HR team that is larger than the art and coding departments combined.
Space Marine 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Black Myth Wukong, Lies of P, etc all prove that quality gameplay and graphical fidelity has little to do with both budget and team size, particularly as development tools get better and better. Once (because it seems too much to hope it would be an "if") the finance department realizes that smaller teams on much smaller budgets can do more than a large team on a much higher budget, we are still going to get the same trash we get now, just the predatory live service and other trash games will be produced by a team of 200 instead of 1,000+. And that means the trash will be even more profitable and still get chased until the finance guys are forced to ask the obvious question, "Can the market even support another game like this? Why would players want to leave their current 100 hour open world or predatory live service for our 100 hour open world or predatory live service?"
Because the finance guys are still going to want the games to be a life brand, a commitment that will capture a permanent host to leech off. And that mindset will only stop when enough of those games pushed by that cynical, parasitical attitude fail. And failure is going to hurt less when the budgets aren't as high, but the potential profits are astronomical. And that means the hemorrhage will be slowed.
The only hope we have outside of a crash of these large publishers, is that finance departments, seeing less spent on smaller teams, will give a budget to additional studios that aren't chasing trends as a hedge against failure or in the hopes of additional profit that won't cannibalize existing/developing products, and hopefully those better games exceed expectations and start to be seen as the norm alongside the GAAS/Brand-is-life mindset and not as the, "We make them to cover our bases," it will start out as.
Maybe I'm alone in this opinion, but it really irks me how a lot of what I'd consider basic functionality in games has fallen by the wayside over the years. Take local multiplayer, for example. Split screen and LAN were pretty much ubiquitous in the 2000s. That's basically gone, now. Not even Halo has split screen multiplayer anymore. Technology improves and yet I can't do something as basic as play a game with someone in the same room or even house as me. Some people will defend this by saying that games nowadays are too graphically demanding to make split screen viable, to which I call BS. RareWare did split screen on a console that had barely a fraction of the computing power we have now. If we could make it work on such limited hardware (albeit with a lot of compromises), what's the excuse now? Others will say it's unnecessary because you can just play with your friends over the internet, to which I also call BS. There's a reason why depression and loneliness are at an all time high, and that's because we spend so much of our time at home interacting through Teams and Discord. There is simply no replacement for being face to face with the person you're hanging out with.
Also, optimization and file sizes are a joke. Not only does the average AAA game want 1/5 of your hard drive space for one game, but they don't even look that much better than games that came out 5 years ago that take up less than half that space. Yeah, I get that SSDs and especially hard drives are super cheap nowadays, but I'm not made of money believe it or not, and not everyone lives right next to a big city with easy access to fiber internet that allows them to download Black Ops 6 in an hour.
There would not be a collapse, there would be actual passionate gamers and gaming writers, as they would at least see some shortcomings. I am not talking about casual or mainstream gamers, but gamers who've spent countless of hours nearing 20k hours played in various games. They would know to a great degree what works and doesn't.
As long as Capcom and Fromsoftware keep up the bangers, the rest of the AAA industry can go under for all I care
Capcom is beginning to regress
I know a person who only cares about graphic, to the point they played uncharted 4 at launch without knowing the previous three games because they had shitty graphics.
I know people who likes to buy remakes even though they have the original game just because they want to play it with better graphics and see what new things the devs added.
and that's why we're not having better, cheaper and newer games
When the money men started forcing gameplay decisions upon the creatives it was over
Nintendo is a AAA company. I really don't understand why people ignore Nintendo every time they discuss modern gaming,
They cater to children and refuse to innovate. What's there to talk about?
@@Chainsawwed they refuse to innovate? In all their games? Really?
Nintendo sells a console that's less powerful than the average smartphone for a massive markup and regularly weaponizes the legal system to shut down fan projects and bully competition (see Palworld v. Nintendo). There isn't much to talk about, really.
Great video! In terms of money spent on graphics I feel like it would be useful to ask the players how they would divide the budget if they were to create their 'dream game'. If you had a 100$ (hypothetical) how much would you spend of it on graphics?