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[Fredrik]

To u and many others recommending zelda, u guys gotta aknowledge that bunch of ppl arent ok with new 70$ game launched in 2023 looking much worse from 2013 ps4/xbox one games, with below 720p res in motion and still dipping to 20fps on constant basis as soon as anything cpu related is pushed.

Its not zelda devs fault, its not the games fault, its nintendos fault for not giving us with an option of stationary console that at least is on pair in terms of power with xbox series s.

I’ve been requesting a more powerful Nintendo console since Switch launch but I still think it’s okay when a game is above everything else in gameplay and fun. I’d rather pay $70 for TOTK than every other AAA game released the last couple years except Elden Ring.

 

[JackSparr0w]

Yeah I agree. I'd blame work from home WAAAAAAAY before diversity. Those are just racists being racist. Covid killed the gaming industry's desire to be great. Now everything is all Fortnite GAAS crap.

And how do you explain the decline in quality in movies and TV shows? We used to get shows like The Wire and Breaking Bad and now we get Cleopatra

People have been predicting that diversity hires will have severe negative effects and now we're witnessing the results.

 

[LimanimaPT]

Video games have been in development for 50 years. It becomes more dificult to come up with new ideas.

 

[tommycronin]

Only way to answer this is to know of all the bad games that released during the supposed era of good games in the past and compare with the present slate of games.

 

[RoboFu]

 

[Wildebeest]

AAA games have been commodified into "experiences" which most people here seem to be perfectly happy with. The thing about "experiences" is that they are formulaic and require just a large amount of money to be spent on content. But still directors and managers with a ton of experience are required, and they are limited in number.

Oddly, Nintendo resist this trend, to a degree, as do some other big studios like Remedy. This is why devs like this seem to have an unusual amount of "talent" but in a way which strongly divides opinion.

 

[FunkMiller]

One of the best games of all time came out like 10 days ago

Nintendo's off in its own world, making sure they put out high quality first party exclusives, and preparing for Switch 2. They clearly aren't suffering from the malaise and bullshit the other two companies are, which will probably ensure they dominate in console sales for years to come.

 

[Success]

Terrible bait troll thread.

Well done on getting two pages of replies so far OP.

We had Elden Ring last year and Tears of the Kingdom this and you ask such a question.

 

[NanaMiku]

Nintendo's off in its own world, making sure they put out high quality first party exclusives, and preparing for Switch 2. They clearly aren't suffering from the malaise and bullshit the other two companies are, which will probably ensure they dominate in console sales for years to come.

it's because Nintendo is a video game company. While PlayStation and Xbox are both division of a tech company.

 

[FunkMiller]

it's because Nintendo is a video game company. While PlayStation and Xbox are both division of a tech company.

True.

It feels like both MS and Sony are exerting too much control over the gaming divisions. Both Phil and Jimbo are executives at heart, rather than gamers (despite any social media or PR waffle). For all of Nintendo's faults, they do still seem to be run by people who care about what goes into their games, rather than just caring about how much cash they can squeeze out via live services.

Shame, Sony felt closer to Nintendo last gen, now they are very much the same as Microsoft.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Mostly AAA is the problem in gaming. They are either chasing trends or looking to appease the youngsters (who apparently don’t play that many games anyway).

There is a massive lack of creativity in the AAA space, if you want to play decent games, look to smaller studios or stick with studios that have a good track record. Ubisoft, EA and the like are fucking shit these days.

 

[Tams]

Yes and it’s not exclusive to games. Look at movies and music. Heaps of trash out there right now.

Other than games, Japan has heaps of trash in music and especially films and TV. Japanese TV... even with all the 'woke' nonsense, 'Western' TV is in a much better state.

 

[Kacho]

Other than games, Japan has heaps of trash in music and especially films and TV. Japanese TV... even with all the 'woke' nonsense, 'Western' TV is in a much better state.

One thing I find interesting is how the western comic book industry continues to collapse while manga is apparently on the rise.

 

[HazukiSensei]

Diversity hires? Please man really?

Its money Back in the day capitalism worked in our favor and devs were releasing new titles like madmen because thats waht made money, trying to best the next guy. Which resulted in alittle bit of passion sprinkled in.

But the side effect of capitalism is...it evolves. Companies got better at making more money with less work, which is the goal of capitalism, profit with low costs.

Thus you have maybe...a major devoloper release a service that they make money from, and suddenly you see less games from them (valve) or a game that has continuity that keeps printing money through continuous updates where you can purchase virtually as it goes (fortnite) or you have a dev that released games like hot cakes, but now will spend alot of money of one game a gen, and collect money through its online mode (gta 5)

Its about MONEY, low risk, low costs, high profit is the game.

This diversity hire bullshit just some racist. Sexist, political dog whistle thats far less verifiable in terms of affecting quality than what im talking about.

You wanna see where gaming is gonna go? watch the money. Jesus christ guys
Lol "diversity" "Its those blacks and womenz fault!" Wtf are we doing.

 

[MagnesD3]

Making games is and always has been a business.

And chasing trends has always been the goto. It just so happens that back in the day the trends were platformers and RPGs, then it became cod shooters, then lol clones, then it became mega openworlds, then it became battle royale, now it's coop shooter. Plus there's the mobile dumpster fire.

The games people who grew up in the PS1 era and before are few and far between because they aren't really profitable minus the big brands.

But even with all that in mind, there's still plenty of great games constantly coming out. Way too many for me to even keep up with.

Eh there's plenty of "good" games, more than ever actually, incredibly few "great/masterclass games like we got way more consistently in the days of old.

 

[darrylgorn]

There's a finite amount of original ideas and we've already reached the exhaustion point.

 

[TheBROgamer]

Also it's hard to recruit junior engineers to game industry since juniors are just deadweight that seniors have to handhold for much longer than web dev and even then they might not have the talent to succeed in game dev. Difficulty plus the poor pay and crunch culture and you have shrinking talent pool.

Well said

 

[SeraphJan]

AAA games have been commodified into "experiences" which most people here seem to be perfectly happy with. The thing about "experiences" is that they are formulaic and require just a large amount of money to be spent on content. But still directors and managers with a ton of experience are required, and they are limited in number.

Oddly, Nintendo resist this trend, to a degree, as do some other big studios like Remedy. This is why devs like this seem to have an unusual amount of "talent" but in a way which strongly divides opinion.

Game design had shift from MDA (that focused on mechanic) to DDE, which focus on user experience and storytelling, at least for all the big budget games

I would say Fromsoftware also resist this trend

Personally I'm ok with both, the word "game" shouldn't be a restriction to this media

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Other than games, Japan has heaps of trash in music and especially films and TV. Japanese TV... even with all the 'woke' nonsense, 'Western' TV is in a much better state.

I want my "I woke up as a vending machine and got lost in a dungeon" series thank you very much.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

There's a finite amount of original ideas and we've already reached the exhaustion point.

This thread got me thinking. With traditional story telling (literature, film etc), there's basically an infinite amount of possible ways to recreate the medium and not bore people. You can tell different stories in games, too - but you're severely limited by a finite amount of variants of core gameplay concepts. And these concepts are limiting the kind of stories you can wrap around them, too. Maybe that's why Nintendo is so dead serious about reinve ting the wheel every time they show new hardware.

 

[Skull-Knight]

Woke devs, they are everywhere like virus

 

[Wildebeest]

Game design had shift from MDA (that focused on mechanic) to DDE, which focus on user experience and storytelling, at least for all the big budget games

I would say Fromsoftware also resist this trend

Personally I'm ok with both, the word "game" shouldn't be a restriction to this media

I believe it was already decided by the "captains" of the industry like Kotick before terminology like this came along. The key mental shift is stopping thinking about games as culture, or something like that, to thinking about them as commodities or assets, like toilet roll. It just so happens that commodification is sometimes sold in advertising terms as being shifting games away from being "mere children's toys" to being "experiences" or "art".

 

[BlackTron]

I’ve been requesting a more powerful Nintendo console since Switch launch but I still think it’s okay when a game is above everything else in gameplay and fun. I’d rather pay $70 for TOTK than every other AAA game released the last couple years except Elden Ring.

This, Zelda is the first game worth the price hike to me day one. Even if Nintendo games actually went down in price, I still would have bought it day one.

 

[CortexVortex]

And how do you explain the decline in quality in movies and TV shows? We used to get shows like The Wire and Breaking Bad and now we get Cleopatra

People have been predicting that diversity hires will have severe negative effects and now we're witnessing the results.

Now we also have Succession, Severance, Ted Lasso, House of the Dragon, The Bear,...

so please stop with that "diversity is bad" bullshit.

 

[kyussman]

It's a shame there aren't more Kojima or Ueda types in AAA western game development.....someone who can bring their own unique spin to a game.

 

[Fredrik]

This, Zelda is the first game worth the price hike to me day one. Even if Nintendo games actually went down in price, I still would have bought it day one.

Knowing how good it is I would’ve bought it at 2x the price.
As said in another thread I literally bought two new Switch consoles to deal with family members wanting to play it as well.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

I don't necessarily disagree with that presentation and stuff like Konami shitting out remakes because...trend but at the same time, some conveniently forget the absolute deluge of shitty copy/paste ripoffs that existed in the "golden years". Particularly on console, we had like a handful of genres to choose from that got recycled ad nauseam. I remember getting frustrated at the time that every other game released was the same platformer. Back then it was 800 shitty Street Fighter clones instead of whatever is awry now.

What some of you remember are highlight reels. Give it 20 years and yeah, nobody will remember the slew of drivel either. That's not to say complaints about a lack of innovation aren't warranted but that has always existed to a certain degree. I just think we're decades into video games at this point and it must be fucking hard to invent entire new "languages" like Nintendo did with A Link to the Past or stuff like that. It often feels much like music, everything and every combination of disparate elements seemingly has just been done. Then a game like Death Stranding comes out and it gets lambasted and ridiculed for being weird. Not saying you personally have to LIKE it but shit, that game at least thought way outside of the box and did its thing.

I don't have solutions or answers either but damn, not everything was golden and we're now swimming in a sewer. The last few years produced some of my Top 10 games and I've been playing since the NES days.

 

[MagnesD3]

This, Zelda is the first game worth the price hike to me day one. Even if Nintendo games actually went down in price, I still would have bought it day one.

I'd disagree since so much of it is just more BOTW. If it were a totally new package I'd agree with you.

 

[nkarafo]

Yes, there's much less talent now. You can blame the current hiring standards and diversity quotas. A lot of people get hired because of their gender, sexual preferences and skin color. Talent and skill comes last.

We deserve all this because we let it happen.

 

[Carmen Winstead]

OP you are right and we're living in the worst timeline for gaming.
Remakes and remasters have been prominent in all of media, most of the songs in the charts are based off a song from the 80s/90s/00s and movies get remade or reimagined too often nowadays but somehow it feels like we have reached a creative and technical plateau in gaming and only 0.1% of the devs have the guts and will to push beyond.

 

[mxbison]

You guys are so paranoid with all the mumbling about wokeness and diversity hires.

The mass of shitty colorful GaaS shooters comes from the execs/investors who couldn't care less about gaming, they want the next Fortnite and nothing else.

Doesn't make a difference which devs you hire to make these games. They don't make the decisions.

 

[Fuz]

Yes, it is.

 

[MagnesD3]

You guys are so paranoid with all the mumbling about wokeness and diversity hires.

The mass of shitty colorful GaaS comes from the execs/investors who couldn't care less about gaming, they want the next Fortnite and nothing else.

Doesn't make a difference which devs you hire to make these games. They don't make the decisions.

I'd be more worried about agenda pushing affecting storytelling in games more than the hiring process. But I guess that could matter if your hiring people based on them wanting to push those things so idk.

 

[LazyParrot]

As game development gets more expensive, developers and studios are inevitably becoming more risk averse. They're not gonna risk 50+ million dollars on some guy with a vision if they can reasonably expect to make money with concepts that have been proven to sell, be it via remakes, remasters or copying other games.

Don't like it? Get out of the AAA bubble and check out some indie games. Innovation is alive and well there.

 

[digoutyoursoul]

No . There is a lot of talent. I couldn’t do what many of them can pull off. However I think there is a lack of objectivity, thinking outside the box, risk taking and being open minded and it’s making a lot of content feel samey.

It even affects the actual showings of the games. I wouldn’t be surprised if all movie and video game trailers are made at one big independent studio. The vast majority of them have too quick cuts, that annoying boom/bass drop thing particularly in a slow motion scene, it’s getting ridiculous.

I don’t think it’s fatigue with people. Each generation you expect a step up across the board and some originality, some cleverness, things not possible on what system you played before. Look what MGS1 on PlayStation did or what the 3D GTAs did on PS2, they blew people away because it was that next step that wasn’t possible previously. It hits you immediately.

These days its copy and paste. The only way the talent might take more risks or we see some fresh new impactful games is if the consumer in droves stopped handing over their money for the games that lack that impact and originality particularly this live service rip off shit.

 

[Robb]

Nah, if anything I think there’s more. We get a lot of games constantly, a LOT more than back in the day. I think it’s only natural that we have to dig through the mud to find the gems as the industry grows bigger.

 

[SeraphJan]

shifting games away from being "mere children's toys" to being "experiences" or "art".

I don't think this is a bad thing, bigger title had the budget to achieve that.

Let the indie or small studio fill the gamey games part, as game that focus on mechanic is cheaper to make. So different audience finds what they need, interactive media is a perfect device for making the latter as well as the former.

 

[Strider Highwind]

It isn't about the talent when the bosses in charge are more dedicated to finding the next Fortnite rather than building the next God of War/Gears of War etc

If you put Michael Jordan on a shitty team with a shitty plan you're more than likely going to get a shitty result.

 

[nbkicker]

yrs ago a studio would hire the best people to be in there team, now like most work places out there , they are more bothered about having equal number of women to men and a diverse workforce no matter what the skill level, and that only leaves the places to go downhill, plus games back in the ps2/ps3 didnt have the massive numbers that seem to be in some studios today

 

[Dane]

Too many stuff, DEI hiring is not the only issue

- Poor management that is the standard in the west for decades: "hey guys let's have this ambitious idea, then when we are not screwing up by infights we scrap everything at the mid of the road and we gotta reboot and rush it out to make to the deadline"
- Better graphics demand much more workforce, that's why developers outsource chunks of assets to outsourcing companies, when they are not taking sister studios like Rockstar and Activision did.
- Zero stay culture is the standard in the west: Most of the workers in japanese studios stay for a decade or more, key staff stays almost their whole career in a single studio. In the west I only know Bethesda for doing that with many of the Morrowind staff still working on the company to this day, and Zenimax management was ruining that with their orders of multiple GaaS games in a short time. The root of the issue is a ouroboros where workers doesn't stay because companies doesn't train them, and companies doesn't train them because they're not going to stay, when its not that, I believe is the lack of multiple projects in the studio to keep them on.
- It's the trend of the day, remember that everyone wanted to have their own Gran Turismo at 128-bit generation, then in the HD generation it was with Guitar Hero and FPS.

 

[Team Andromeda]

All this because SONY have a dire summer showcase?

 

[Tams]

I want my "I woke up as a vending machine and got lost in a dungeon" series thank you very much.

I mean, I'm currently watching and enjoying 'Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill'.

It's hardly sophisticated though.

 

[nemiroff]

In the Atari 2600 days (and this is not far off) a normal professionally developed game meant a guy or two working for 3 to 6 months (still not kidding) on a salary (=budget (+marketing and logistics)). The code could probably fit a sheet of A4 depending on the font size.. How's talent meant to stick out comparably today when you have up to 1500 developers on a 5 year project strictly run by management, investors and metacritic.

There are more "talent" in the industry today by far, but they are engulfed like drops of water in the ocean and affected by strong currents.

 

[Wildebeest]

I don't think this is a bad thing, bigger title had the budget to achieve that.

Let the indie or small studio fill the gamey games part, as game that focus on mechanic is cheaper to make. So different audience finds what they need, interactive media is a perfect device for making the latter as well as the former.

Good or bad, "experience" focus is buying into hype and commodification. Focussing on mechanics is not cheaper or easier, otherwise everyone would be Nintendo, and a lot of indies simply don't have the resources to do it. It is not like if you buy a boomer shooter that looks like a throwback to the 90s but cleaner and with less technical limits, you are getting better or cleaner level design than Quake or Duke3d. Possibly they are also focussing on "experience" because that is in the air they breathe.

 

[Gambit2483]

In the Atari 2600 days (and this is not far off) a normal professionally developed game meant a guy or two working for 3 to 6 months (still not kidding) on a salary (=budget (+marketing and logistics)). The code could probably fit a sheet of A4 depending on the font size.. How's talent meant to stick out comparably today when you have up to 1500 developers on a 5 year project strictly run by management, investors and metacritic.

There are more "talent" in the industry today by far, but they are engulfed like drops of water in the ocean and affected by strong currents.

Maybe the question should be rephrased to "creative talent" or "creative leads" then...

 

[KXVXII9X]

AAA games have been commodified into "experiences" which most people here seem to be perfectly happy with. The thing about "experiences" is that they are formulaic and require just a large amount of money to be spent on content. But still directors and managers with a ton of experience are required, and they are limited in number.

Oddly, Nintendo resist this trend, to a degree, as do some other big studios like Remedy. This is why devs like this seem to have an unusual amount of "talent" but in a way which strongly divides opinion.

I love "experiences" and I'm not really seeing much here. Zelda TotK is the epitome of an "experience." I still value gameplay though and a lot of stuff out right now is very "been there, done that."

 

[SeraphJan]

Good or bad, "experience" focus is buying into hype and commodification.

Experience focus doesn't necessarily has to be like that, neither does mechanic games are free from it

Focussing on mechanics is not cheaper or easier, otherwise everyone would be Nintendo, and a lot of indies simply don't have the resources to do it.

Not really, many mechanic driven game could be done by very small team and still be successful, Stardew Valley was made by one person

It is not like if you buy a boomer shooter that looks like a throwback to the 90s but cleaner and with less technical limits, you are getting better or cleaner level design than Quake or Duke3d.

This is a bit strawmaning to cherry pick one example out of an entire scene. Small studio could make all types of game

 

[Rudius]

DEI has destroyed vision

Woke culture killed ambition in game development

I think woke culture kills creativity, risk taking and quality in general, but not realy ambition.

 

[KXVXII9X]

Other than games, Japan has heaps of trash in music and especially films and TV. Japanese TV... even with all the 'woke' nonsense, 'Western' TV is in a much better state.

I love their music since they still incorporate jazz/funk/rock and still have a variety of instruments (I guess their best music takes the best parts of western music), but their TV and anime is really stagnant. It is depressing.

 

[Caio]

No. There are simply much more whining gamers who pretend to know more than developers, who would not be able to develop simpler games than Pac Man.
Elden Ring, Zelda, GOW, TLOU Part II, Ghost of Tsushima say HI.