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[FoxMcChief]

Because game developers aren’t working as hard it seems. Games release unfinished, poorly optimized, creatively bankrupt and starting to feel the same.

I’m bouncing off games at a staggering pace these days. I’m not finishing big games like FF7 Rebirth, Starfield, DD2, Fallout 4, BG3, Dead Island 2, and tons more. They all feel the same. Bloated with extras that don’t pay off in the end, so I feel like I’m bored when I do try to finish the main quest.

I have found myself playing old school games and my Quest 3 these days.

 

[March Climber]

I have been hearing about the magic of the new development tools that will make the process so much easier, cheaper, faster, simpler, etc., for at least 20 years. Yet somehow that never, ever plays out in practice.

It’s because this isn’t a race, it’s a marathon. There will always be slight filters that filter out worse developers or that give AAA devs an edge over others. The purpose of what they’re doing is to lessen the effect of those filters as much as humanly possible.

And the reason why is simple - if some shitter studio can leverage all these tools to make a "respectable game" (whatever that entails) faster and cheaper, then the good studios can do that too, and then they can devote more resources to make it even better. So the baseline goes up.

Theoretically, yes, and if the baseline goes up that means those larger AAA studios have to keep improving so that they aren’t immediately compared with smaller devs who are said to be doing a better job than them.

This means the quality of their product must be better than the other guy, which ends up as a win/win for consumers either way.

The Nier director exclaimed his worry about Japanese developers falling behind in graphics and presentation, and he is saying this at a pivotal moment where UE5 games are about to come out and impress. I have little doubt that he looked at the Captain America game trailer and said to himself ‘99% of us can’t do this’.

On the other hand, I’m imagining the future beyond that moment, where Epic keeps working on the Japanese translations and toolsets for those developers and suddenly, and western devs will finally experience real pressure from their long term rivals across the pond who have always focused on gameplay over graphics and presentation. Suddenly, those guys are given a zenkai boost and we are seeing games come out that are visually competing with the best of what western studios have to offer, which will finally catch the eyes of the elusive semi-casual audience that provides that ‘millions sold’ metric for those visually impressive games. That sounds like a fun future.

Again, this competition would be a win/win for us consumers.

 

[Wildebeest]

Not really a hot take from him. I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying that scaling up game development isn't super hard, and it very often comes up as a critical problem in post-mortems on failed projects and studios.

 

[SHA]

The thing I see from the past that hasn't changed is there's a good time for releasing bad shit and there's a bad time for releasing bad shit and we are not there yet to be frank.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

If indies have so much innovation compared aaa why is cod best selling game of the year?

Because it does the same thing every year, just with a new coat of paint.

 

[dragonyeuw]

I don't know if it's the case of AAA getting worse per se as much as development costs have stymied innovation. Taking half a decade or more to fund a 150-300m game and it flops can shut down a studio. 2 or 3 generations back a studio could put out several games in a 5-6 year period and if one game didnt land, the next one might. But now, a commercially successful game doesn't guarantee a job for the creators because we're in a culture where the line has to perpetually go up. We've seen job losses from companies responsible for Uncharted, the Last of Us and Spider-man, for examples. It feels like the bean counters and shareholders have taken over the industry.

Perhaps this is overly simplistic, but nowadays it seems like most AAA games are made more with the goal to make the most money, instead of making the best game artistically.

 

[Punished Miku]

I blame audience tastes and publishers nearly equally. We're in a really conservative time in terms of art. Mainstream music is much less creative, mainstream film as well. The same is happening to games. Publishers do branch out at times, and those games bomb. It's a chicken and egg question on if they created this beast or if they followed the demands of the customer. I imagine it's a bit of both.

 

[Schmendrick]

Clickbait nonsense getting free advertising on Neogaf...I wish I could say this wasn`t normal.

 

[semiconscious]

They aren’t getting worse, they are getting predictable.

There is a difference there

well said. we need more games that are distinctly themselves (bioshock, arkham asylum, breath of the wild, hell, even death stranding). games that are instantly recognizable, & games that don't immediately remind you of other games...

 

[LavitzSlambert]

While I don't disagree with most of his points, I also think from the consumer side we haven't been helping. I always thought there was this weird balanced where expectations for new games kept getting higher while the price remained the same (at least in the US/Europe). I remember back during the Ps3/360 era people were way more willing to spend $60 on a 10-20 hours single player game. It's how we got games like Uncharted, Bioshiock, Dead Space, Assassins Creed, Arkham Asylum, Portal 2, God of War 3, Dishonored, Bayonetta, Alan Wake, etc

Now it feels like many people think a game isn't worth full price if it's not at very least 30 hours for a single playthrough. So everything is bloated, and there's boring sidequests, and tacked on RPG mechanics which probably aren't helping game budgets, dev times or variety.

And to be honest I'm the same, I'm waiting for sales on most stuff and if I'm spending $70 on something I usually expect it to give me dozens of hours of content. But then again the our local currency went to absolute shit over the last decade so a new Ps5 game cost over twice as much as they used to be 10-15 years ago. I distinctly remember buying Mass Efect 1 for 360 for $28.000Clp ... the cheapest I can find a game like FF7 Rebirth is $72.000clp.

Something happened around the release of Skyrim and Fallout:NV where every game was then measured on hours per dollar. It became ingrained into the gamer psyche on forums and seeped into the general public. Devs cycles started taking longer, so just adding more content to one game to make it longer (no matter how generic) made more sense to dev studios rather than starting another risky game from scratch. I think part of this is a result from the rise of PC gaming, backwards compatibility standards amongst consoles, and longer generation life cycles. There is just so many more options to play, including old classics that hold up and that are cheap. New ideas are few and far between. Nobody wants to spend $70 on a 15 hour game that reminds them of something else.

well said. we need more games that are distinctly themselves (bioshock, arkham asylum, breath of the wild, hell, even death stranding). games that are instantly recognizable, & games that don't immediately remind you of other games...

Much of the low hanging fruit has been plucked, originality is hard to come by these days. Competition is fierce, if you haven't created something completely novel, someone else has probably already done it - and now you need to compete against the lower price of an old game, or a beloved classic that your game will be compared to, unfavorably.

 

[March Climber]

well said. we need more games that are distinctly themselves (bioshock, arkham asylum, breath of the wild, hell, even death stranding). games that are instantly recognizable, & games that don't immediately remind you of other games...

Since this is an AAA-focused thread, I'll mostly agree with your statement. Anything below and it's a hard disagree.

 

[killatopak]

If you change the perspective it’s not really getting worse per se. It’s just gone mainstream. In the past, a lot of games were hyper focused on specific niches. You really got games that went above and beyond if you were the target audience.

 

[semiconscious]

Much of the low hanging fruit has been plucked, originality is hard to come by these days. Competition is fierce, if you haven't created something completely novel, someone else has probably already done it - and now you need to compete against the lower price of an old game, or a beloved classic that your game will be compared to, unfavorably.

not disagreeing. certainly haven't personally come up with any great idea myself. but it's what's seriously called for. originality's pretty much always been tough to come by, imo. not so sure that rocksteady & irrational ever considered themselves just sorta picking 'low hanging fruit', eh? their games were certifiably brilliant...

 

[Laptop1991]

He's a bit late, they've been getting worse for years, has he just noticed, we've had countless topics here on GAF about it since i joined in 2018.

 

[rkofan87]

they're not getting worse.

this indies are just getting better.