It’s true. Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they’re raving about a new one before I’ve finished that last one. I’ve got a list of 20+ games that came out this year that I still haven’t gotten around to. I might get through 5 of them before the new year. And you know, if wouldn’t hurt my ability to play more games if more of them were shorter.
EDIT: I provided this anecdote as a reason contributing to the problems that the industry is experiencing. The article is about the trouble the industry is experiencing as a result of too many competing games being released in a given year. It is not about how I feel about trying to play through many of the ones I found interesting. Apparently Schreier had the same problem on BlueSky with people answering what they think the headline says rather than what the article is about.
Hmm… newest game in my library is Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes from last year, which is a re-release anyway.
I bought 13 old-ish (pre-2022) games this year for less than $100. I have no reason to spend %60-80 of that on 1 game I probably won’t even like, and that’s if it clears the seemingly impossible “playable” hurdle.
Let me count upcoming games I look forward to playing/am curious about:
- Ninja Gaiden 4 (Happy to wait for a deep sale)
- Onimusha (Happy to wait for a deep sale and may even refund if I don’t enjoy it)
- Okami 2 (Happy to wait for a deep sale)
- Marvel: Tokon (Will definitely wait for a deep sale—$10 base game)
That’s it.
I definitely went to see more new movies at the cinema this year than I played new games. IDK where the industry is headed and I feel for all the underpaid, overworked developers at risk, but there isn’t much I can do if publishers collectively decided to abandon my favorite genres.
I don’t feel there are too many games, because I can simply buy fewer games, but I do miss the feeling that there are games that everyone is buying and we’re all playing at the same time. I felt like everyone I knew was playing BG3 and we were all talking about it all the time. I don’t want to only play those kinds of big, blockbuster games, but I do want a few of them per year.
Omg there’s too many cars I can’t buy them all.
I’ve learned to be more careful with those hyped games. I don’t like souls likes or platformers, but black myth wukong and silksong are both massively popular. I saw enough comments claiming BMW “wasn’t a souls like” that I decided to give it a try. I’m sure there are some technical deviations from the genre to claim it’s its own thing, but fit me it was just a miserable waste of $60.
Why does anyone read Bloomberg? That shit is the equivalent of the suit wearing shitty little twerp on a college campus c. 2017 being a conservative edge lord. Change my mind.
I have zero interest for Bloomberg in general, but, that’s Jason Schreier.
He’s one of the very few you could reasonably call a videogame journalist non-ironically, and I really don’t think “conservative” describes his views.
This is also a lot of covid era games/funding come to fruition imo
I dont really think this is an actual problem. Yes, theres a lot of games now, far more than ever before and more releasing in a year than some consoles had in their lifetime. But this is actually a good thing because it means this industry is more accessible than ever and we have very little limit on what experiences we can have.
The actual problem is the diversity and quality of those games due to muddy motivations. Like any entertainment industry under capitalism, artists are not just performing their art because it is their passion, its also to make a living. At the start, the core motivation is passion, a desire to create and innovate and expand on what that medium can be. When that medium reaches a point where a newbie with great talent can become an overnight sensation, then the motivations for creating art in that field become tainted because individuals start to believe that they dont need passion for the art in order to make massive amounts of money. The market will start being flooded with greedy, talentless people who are looking to cash in on the craze.
Ive been gaming since Sega Genesis, and have followed the industry closely most of my life. To this day, I believe everything in modern gaming can be connected back to the insane popularity of Call of Duty 4. Before that game, nearly every game that came out was trying to do something unique. They might share a genre, but they always did something to stand out from the crowd. Very few games were ripping off a competitor, and the ones that did normally did it so poorly that they immediately got ignored. But after the success of CoD4, that changed massively. Everyone was releasing a first person shooter with pvp multiplayer. Games that didnt need multiplayer had it tacked on per publisher demand. Japan went full on stupid and stopped making games that had that particular vibe that only Japanese games had, and even went as far as hiring western studios to redo franchises that absolutely did not need to be redone, with Capcom coming to mind as particularly bad about this. The market was flooded with low quality, cheaply made games trying to get a part of that bag that CoD4 made.
But we actually got lucky during all of this. Xbox and Steam were both platforms that attempted to lift up independent developers. Unlike the film industry, a space was created for low budget game development, and tools to make games were permitted to be accessible for very cheap. What this did was allow those artists who actually have passion in their art be able to take a pathway to creating high quality games. The ripples of that are felt to this very day, with Silksong being a perfect example of why accessibility in a medium is important.
There are a lot of games, and a lot of them suck for sure. A lot of them are rip offs, overpriced re-releases, clones, and even scams. But with that we’ve also gained so many great games, in so many genres, with new genres being molded like every month. The AAA space is arguably in a state of painful saturation, where budgets are bloated, dev times are too long, quality is poor, and prices are absurd. This will end up in whiplash against the AAA scene in time, probably sooner than later. But unlike when a similar phase happened in the Atari era, almost killing the games industry, that just wont happen this time, because the industry is not reliant on giant corpos to carry it.
What i would recommend as a gamer is to give up on the old notion that you can play all the games that come out. Especially as you get older, you wont have the time and you shouldny try to make the time for all of that. Treat games like people treat music. You cant listen to all of the music, and you shouldn’t try to. You find the type of music you like, and search that space to find more things to enjoy. Do the same with games. Dont rush through them, play them at a pace that is fun for you and lets you soak them in, and play the games that specifically appeal to you. Even if its a single game you play on repeat, if it brings you joy then it shouldnt matter.
A more controversial recommendation is stop being averse to spoilers. If your friend plays a game that you dont know if you will ever bother to play, let that friend tell you about the game. Studies have actually shown that players enjoy a game more when they go in knowing spoilers. This might not apply to all games, but from personal experience I can say letting a friend ramble about a game they love that I only have a mild interest in has not only caused me to actually play those games, but games are so rich in detail and varying experiences that I will end up having a very different experience than them that I now get to share with them. Being less averse to spoilers both helps you be able to communicate with more people about gaming, as well as gain new insight on games you might be on the fence about. This can help reduce the amount of games you feel an urge to play but cant make time for by acting as a social filter, or “word of mouth”.
Competition is what degrades quality. People who’s needs are met are more creative and more likely to take risks and more likely to try to make something unique. That’s the problem with the influx of games. You see it in everything. People who are already insulated with a secure amount of wealth are able to become creative musicians/artists and others will just try to copy what makes money, but ultimately most will fail due to the sheer amount of people competing. If every developer and creator’s needs were met before they tried creating anything then the landscape would look very different, but that’s not the world we live in.
The market is extremely competitive, and ever more so with each new developer. Everything is more accesssible yes, but that is worse for everyone besides major IPs who will always make money and those who can take risks because they are in a position to do so. This is the problem with all creative fields. It’s great for people who are already secure and terrible for everyone else.
It does feel like the market is so saturated now.
In the end it’s up to us to vote with our wallets and spend how we want.
My gaming backlog is so big … I don’t really feel the need to buy new games unless it’s something universally loved, like Clair Obscure.
Aside from that, I really ought to work on my backlog.
Whether I succeed in this impulse control is another story … Lol.
It’s the same with tv. I am very picky with my time. So i play very few games or watch very few shows.
The first and foremost problem of the Videogame Industry is the videogame corporations. They
Over work and under pay workers
Transformed modern gaming into gambling
Enable pedophiles to run rampant on their platforms while censoring people who stop them (notably Roblox)
Needlessly price hike software and hardware
Purchase popular indie studios then shut them down
Etc
Yup.
The overabundance of games is killing great games.
Can’t tell you how many fantastic multiplayer games I’ve bought only to find out they’re ghost towns or become ghost towns soon after purchasing. And it’s because players are so spread out over so many games. 20 years ago these games would have been major successes with a huge player base for years, but they’re dead on arrival or within a few months. It’s a real bummer.
That being said, I’m going to plug Mycopunk. Just got it and it’s great. Like Deep Rock Galactic and Risk of Rain 2 had a baby. We need more players though. Came out in July. Currently on sale. But base price is cheap.
There are multiplayer games from 30 years ago that still have 30 people who play on the first Friday night of each month, and they will put that in their calendar and keep the game alive.
The idea that multiplayer games need huge communities of players otherwise they are “dead” is what is killing multiplayer games.
I mean I get what you’re saying. I’ve been playing Sven-Coop for 26 years and counting. People are still playing. People are still making new levels for it.
But it’s mostly people on the older side and it’s because it was a mod for a HUGELY popular game and the mod itself used to have a ton of players.
But a lot of these new, good games never get that big following that allow for a small fan base decades later. Or even months later. Because there’s so many other options spreading gamers out.
There are three tiers of activity:
- Active enough that I can queue at any time of day and find opponents close to my skill level with good ping
- Active enough that I can queue at peak hours and find opponents
- Need to schedule games via Discord matchmaking
If I really love the game enough, I’ll put up with jumping through hoops to play it, but it does get frustrating when the games I like are a lot more convenient to play than the games I love.
Maybe smaller titles could enable players to actively communicate times to meet.
Will give mycopunk a shot.
It’s great. It’s early access, so it needs some polishing, but it’s already pretty solid. It can be a little overwhelming at first, so make sure you’re doing one of the easier difficulties. Get your weapons and character leveled up and it starts becoming more engaging. Try out different weapons too. I was struggling until I started branching out. And keep in mind that the enemies are made up of various parts and you can blow those parts off and then other enemies can pick those parts up and use them. So learning how to take off limbs and then make sure the limbs are destroyed so they can’t be re-used is important.
Oh, and it allows gifs in the in-game chat. Something I’ve never seen in a game before. Type “/gif” followed by any keyword and it tosses an appropriate gif into the chat. It’s a lot of fun to mess around with.
Multiplayer games 20 years ago were also built to be more scalable to different numbers of players, and they mostly had bots and such, too. I might push back on how long they sustained huge player bases though. Those games were often sequeled very quickly, and most of the players would move to the next one, leaving behind a small percentage. At least the old game was always still playable for those who bought it, though.
Dear video game developers,
There are too many video games nowadays. Please eliminate three.
The answer is slow gaming. If it is not still known as a good game 5-10 years after release, it is not worth buying.
Also helps avoid games which vanish like a fart after they get your money.
That’s an answer for you as a consumer, but the article is from the perspective of the industry. If no one ever bought new games, game development would not be sustainable.
The answer to what?
I mean, that’s the problem, from the article’s perspective.
Back when I was on Reddit years ago, one of my favorite subs was the Patient Gamers one. There are a couple of similar ones on different Lemmy instances but they’re nowhere near as active.
I remember friends of mine assuring me I absolutely HAVE to get games like Atomic Heart, High on Life, Avowed, the Oblivion remaster, Starfield, Prey, the Outer Worlds, and many more. There are series that I have enjoyed in the last that have way too many entries to keep up with- 3D Sonic, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, Yakuza (with all it’s spinoff games like Judgement and others). I’m sure a lot of those games are great, but I just don’t have the time to play then all. And with hundreds of games in my backlog already, these games need to be on sale for dirt cheap and without anti-features like DRM and micro transactions and online requirements in order to get me to buy them.
So I think it’s worth asking- are there enough whales willing to buy these games for $70 or even $80 to subsidize people like me picking them up for $10 in five years? If not, perhaps these developers and publishers will need to move to a different business model. Maybe there are simply too many devs and too many games getting made.
I disagree. The PC gaming market is about $76.67B. That’s ~$4M for each of the 18,626 games, most of which are asset flip crap. Many of the remainder are by indie devs (generally <30 people). The article mentions about ~10% of those games receive 500 or more Steam reviews, so we’re probably looking at $40M on average person game w/ 500+ reviews (i.e. probably not asset flip crap).
There are only about 20-30 AAA games released every year. The indie game market size is about $5B, and that’s across platforms. Even if that was only for PC games, that’s still 85% going to AAA studios, as in those 20-30 games that get media attention.
We don’t have too many games, we have a problem where too few people buy indie games. The average successful indie studio isn’t making $40M per game, it’s likely much less than that.
Indie games are overrated, it’s still mostly crap. I don’t blame people for waiting for absurd popularity to bring actually good titles to the surface. It’s still the same general problem, I have a the time for maybe 5 games per year, and that has to compete with my existing backlog, favorites and new titles. I’m not risking that time on Indie or AAA titles without some good evidence it’s worth it.
But how on earth do you get people who only buy and play 4 or fewer games per year to look at those indie games instead of one of the same big games that all of their friends are playing? That demographic is why Grand Theft Auto, EA FC, Assassin’s Creed, etc. is so big, because they capture the people who don’t play many games. There is technically enough money to support the entire industry, but that’s not really how consumer patterns have ever worked; most of it always goes to a select few.
You’re not going to convince the Madden/FIFA/etc group because community is more important than the game itself. The same is true for the big competitive games, since again, community is more important than the game itself.
The rest of the market is massive though, and even the people who only play a handful of games still pick up the occasional game to play on their own.
The solution here, IMO, is a high profile reviewer that focuses on indie games. In fact, we don’t really need reviewers going over AAA games because their marketing departments are already handling it. I want professional reviewers who try hundreds of indie games every year and promote the top 10-20 or so. Indie games are some of my favorite, but finding them is incredibly time consuming.
Agree to disagree, I suppose, but for the person whose only game every year is Assassin’s Creed, I don’t think you’re going to convince them that they should play Silksong or Expedition 33 and that they’d prefer them if only they knew about them. Even if the games aren’t multiplayer, it’s often a common touchstone for a group of friends to talk about and bond over. You or I might rail about handholding in one game that the mass market plays, but that handholding is a large part of why those games are mass market. The indie stuff we find more appealing are often answering a need, for a much smaller base of potentially interested people, who are sick of the mass market stuff, because we play more games in general.
As for a solution for your personal problem finding indie games, I know it’s one that Second Wind has been putting effort into addressing. This may sound odd, but in multiple cases, I’ve found niche games to scratch a certain itch I’ve had just by going to the Steam search and filtering by tags, and at least that cut down the research time dramatically. I understand the frustration though, because I’m having a similar hard time finding out if a game is built to last with things like offline multiplayer, and it’s something that reviewers often don’t care enough to mention at all.
only game every year is Assassin’s Creed,
How did they settle on AC? Is that the only game that would ever appeal to them, or did one of their friends introduce them and they got hooked? How many of them played Balatro or Among Us and other “viral” games?
The way to market to these people is to get that one person in a friend group to try something new and sell their friends on it. I used to only play a handful of games too, and back then it was mostly StarCraft and Halo. Then a friend introduced me to FTL, Factorio, and Minecraft (back when the last two launched, not what they are today), and I fell in love with indie games. All it takes sometimes is a single experience to show people what they’re missing.
Second Wind
I took a quick look, and it seems to be a mixed bag of content, from first time experiences with games to meta discussions on what makes parts of games great and interesting. Looking at last dozen or so videos, it’s mostly bigger games like Borderlands, Hollow Knight, and Subnautica. If you play any indie games, you’ll hear about those (and Borderlands isn’t even indie).
I think what I’m looking for is something that goes over the top new games from the last month or something, with deeper dives between those videos.
I’ve found niche games to scratch a certain itch I’ve had just by going to the Steam search and filtering by tags
I’ve done the same, and it’s way more miss than hit. When I finally find a hit, it’s usually a few years old, and is going for a fraction of the launch price.
For any given game, I can usually find a decent review by some random fan on YouTube, but going the other direction is a lot harder.
How did they settle on AC?
How did you lose interest in Assassin’s Creed? Maybe you didn’t, but I did. Call of Duty, too. Part of the reason why is why those people still come back to it, like sanding off rough edges that were maybe desirable to us. The top dog franchises will change from time to time, but I don’t think you’ll be able to will that change into existence with a recommendation. The Game Awards do have a tangible effect on sales and can make that change, but only up to a few games per year, at most.
I think what I’m looking for is something that goes over the top new games from the last month or something, with deeper dives between those videos.
It’s a fairly recent effort from Second Wind, with similar gripes as to what you mentioned, which is why I brought it up. This is specifically the show that they do that I was thinking of, seemingly twice per month, and there’s also Yahtzee Tries.
How did you lose interest in Assassin’s Creed?
The story went nowhere.
Wishlist
That format looks like exactly what I’m looking for! Thanks!
I didn’t like Yahtzee tries as much, probably because it was like a Let’s Play with banter instead of an actual review.
EVE ONLINE UNTIL I DIE
I’m still playing Doom, the original!
please, don’t. I’m on another 3 month break from EVE and I don’t want to go back just yet but…please…don’t I’m tired boss.
this has been my life since 2003. EVE, take a break, EVE, another break, EVE, so on and so forth.
Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they’re raving about a new one before I’ve finished that last one.
That’s why i only wishlist games that i’m interested in. by the time i get around to them, there’s usually a sale and/or price drop. Some games have been on my wishlist for years, while I’m working through my backlog, waiting for their price to drop even further.
You dont have to buy every game a reviewer hypes.
I literally can’t. The article is speaking from the industry perspective of sustaining its jobs though.
There are enough people to buy the new games. The market for games has expanded along with the number of games in the market
Did you read the article at all? That is the entire point. That there are too many games relative to the number of gamers.
Lots of people here didn’t read the article and took the headline to be a personal problem rather than an economic one, lol.
You’re both wrong though, just because there are 93% more games than 2020 doesn’t mean they’re following the same end goal as other games, it’s like comparing fanfics on wattpad to published books.
The end goal for all of them, unlike fanfics, is to sell enough copies to make their development costs back and be able to make another game. Even if you discount the stuff that no one has heard of, the point of the article is that there’s so much competition that even making a game that does well critically isn’t enough to save it; and it used to.
Did you? Do you not critically think about the content of any text you read?
And it’s a problem that will hit the smaller dev studios harder.
As they are the ones fighting for attention. Especially on the monopolised PC marketplace.
