Has Modern Gaming Stagnated?

[telekill]

Don't get me wrong, there are always fun games in the works, but it seems that the focus over the last few years has been first person horror. Before that it was first person military shooters. Aside from FPS games, there's a large focus on games as a service and/or online only last man standing type games.

While my favorite type of games, third person narrative driven games, are still being made, it takes forever to get these released due to the amount of work that has to be done on them. Not only building the worlds and having good writing and character development but then the polish work. While I generally am really excited to play these stories, it feels like my excitement has really fallen off the scale as so many were announced super early and then when playing them, they often fail to meet the hype. There are incredible games like Ghost of Tsushima (I count it as one of the best of the PS4 gen) and then there are fails like the last few Assassin's Creed games that I would have to force myself to complete. The greats seem few and far between.

My hype for modern gaming in general is at an all time low. I don't know if I'm alone on this or not, but I find myself going back to older games to replay those far more than looking forward to anything coming out.

What are your thoughts?

[bikingjahuty]

In more ways than one, I feel like modern gaming, at least outside the Indie scene has become too big for its own good. The development time, costs, and problems associated with developing a modern AAA game are astounding. More or less if a single AAA game fails now, even for a huge company like EA or Nintendo, it's financially disastrous for the company.


With greater expenses, comes a greater need for support and money, which unfortunately means investors. Answering to investors, especially out of touch boomers who've never picked up a game controller in their lives is often the death of creativity when it comes to modern gaming. They want games that follow the trends, not just in gaming, but in every other way as well. This also leads to highly political games or games that are way too heavy on social commentary. People don't play games to be preached to or have someone else's political ideologies sold to them. They do it to escape that shit and many other day to day issues. I feel like this is turning a lot of gamers off to games from bigger studios too.


And then also, there is that thing as old as humanity itself, greed. Yes, these big game companies have become very greedy not just with things like loot boxes, day 1 DLC, paywalled content, and many other things that require you to pay extra money to experience the full game. Greed has also, once again, stifled creativity and innovation in the industry. They're more or less playing it safe while simultaneously thinking of any way they can to squeeze an extra buck or two out of you.


More or less, mainstream, modern gaming has lost its innocence and become way to corporatized and the amount of resources required to make a game now discourage innovation and risk taking. This is why modern gaming is stagnating and why more and more people are drawn to Indie games or games released by smaller studios. Think about it, some of the biggest, most successful games over the last decade have come from small development teams working with a fairly small budget. This is not by accident as eventually people no longer get hyped about generic hero trying to save the world from overlord menace, which not so subtle political commentary scattered throughout.


On a personal level I'm already mentally prepared to bow out of modern gaming and feel like I'm probably one more console generation from doing so. As time marches on I find myself playing older games more and more. Rarely does a new release come out that gets me really excited. I find that I get more excited about games that came out 15+ years ago that I have yet to try out. On top of that the trajectory of modern gaming going all digital means I will rarely buy a game when it first comes out, and instead likely wait years until it's under $10 or so. Digital copies of games are worth way, way less to me since I'm having to forfeit my ability to actually own the game; if I'm going to essentially rent a game indefinitely I don't plan on paying the same premium. But yes, modern gaming is definitely stagnating.

[sworddude]

More or less, mainstream, modern gaming has lost its innocence and become way to corporatized and the amount of resources required to make a game now discourage innovation and risk taking. This is why modern gaming is stagnating and why more and more people are drawn to Indie games or games released by smaller studios. Think about it, some of the biggest, most successful games over the last decade have come from small development teams working with a fairly small budget. This is not by accident as eventually people no longer get hyped about generic hero trying to save the world from overlord menace, which not so subtle political commentary scattered throughout.

aside from Minecraft wich indi game has had massive triple A succes in the last decade again?

Hollowknight and cuphead where cute but I wouldn't call them massive money makers compared to the triple AAA games they don't even surpass smaller games from bigger companies let alone the cheap prices in wich these games are sold for.

It's cool that series like Shantae have seen boom in the last 10 years but again sales wise it ain't that amazing.

you could maybe count candy crush. However I wouldn't call that game a win by any stretch of the imagination.

[pzeke]

Has Modern Gaming Stagnated?

Yes.

[...] While I generally am really excited to play these stories, it feels like my excitement has really fallen off the scale as so many were announced super early and then when playing them, they often fail to meet the hype.

This is pretty much how I felt with Days Gone.

[Cartagia]

More or less, mainstream, modern gaming has lost its innocence and become way to corporatized and the amount of resources required to make a game now discourage innovation and risk taking. This is why modern gaming is stagnating and why more and more people are drawn to Indie games or games released by smaller studios. Think about it, some of the biggest, most successful games over the last decade have come from small development teams working with a fairly small budget. This is not by accident as eventually people no longer get hyped about generic hero trying to save the world from overlord menace, which not so subtle political commentary scattered throughout.

aside from Minecraft wich indi game has had massive triple A succes in the last decade again?

Hollowknight and cuphead where cute but I wouldn't call them massive money makers compared to the triple AAA games they don't even surpass smaller games from bigger companies let alone the cheap prices in wich these games are sold for.

Anong Us sales were ridiculous.  Over 3 million on the Switch alone.  They hit well over 10 million concurrent players at one point.

And that's just wrong about Hollow Knight (and also Shovel Knight) both of which were just shy of 3 million copies at the last announcements in like 2020, putting the above the newest Fire Emblem, Arms, Mario + Rabbids, the Xenoblade games and who knows how many others.

And Cuphead sold over 6 million copies, putting it over Link's Awakening, Mario Tennis, and putting it close to Resident Evil numbers.

[sworddude]

More or less, mainstream, modern gaming has lost its innocence and become way to corporatized and the amount of resources required to make a game now discourage innovation and risk taking. This is why modern gaming is stagnating and why more and more people are drawn to Indie games or games released by smaller studios. Think about it, some of the biggest, most successful games over the last decade have come from small development teams working with a fairly small budget. This is not by accident as eventually people no longer get hyped about generic hero trying to save the world from overlord menace, which not so subtle political commentary scattered throughout.

aside from Minecraft wich indi game has had massive triple A succes in the last decade again?

Hollowknight and cuphead where cute but I wouldn't call them massive money makers compared to the triple AAA games they don't even surpass smaller games from bigger companies let alone the cheap prices in wich these games are sold for.

Anong Us sales were ridiculous.  Over 3 million on the Switch alone.  They hit well over 10 million concurrent players at one point.

And that's just wrong about Hollow Knight (and also Shovel Knight) both of which were just shy of 3 million copies at the last announcements in like 2020, putting the above the newest Fire Emblem, Arms, Mario + Rabbids, the Xenoblade games and who knows how many others.

And Cuphead sold over 6 million copies, putting it over Link's Awakening, Mario Tennis, and putting it close to Resident Evil numbers.

These are not the most succesfull games of the last decade though far from it. It ain't surpassing triple A sales any time soon was my only point. Sold a few million and have popularity online never denied that but aside from mine craft (and candy crush if we can count that as a game) no indi game has come close to triple A succes.

series like xenoblade or fire emblem even though bigger than ever are still niche at the very end of the day if where talking the actual main series games. games surpassing such titles ain't that big of a milestone. Not to mention especially in the pre 3ds era these series had trash sales fire emblem in particular with a goal of only 250K copies on average.

Also unlike those smaller titles of big companies the sales price of these games are far cheaper making the revenue allot lower aswell. Lower prices also inflate sales numbers among us is an app game of 5$ or less let alone opportunities to get it for free or play it for free depending on the device.

[Cartagia]

What the hell are you on about?  You said "they didn't even surpass smaller games from bigger companies" and I gave you half a dozen examples where they outsold exactly what you were talking about.  And yeah, sure the net revenue is lower, but when you are only paying 2-12 people it doesn't need to be higher.  And not being as big as the biggest game if all time doesn't make the success any smaller for Among Us.  What about Fortnite?  Is it a failure too because it doesn't cost anything now?

[sworddude]

Fortnite is definitely big however way different model of earnings pricy micro transactions galore it being free to play doesn't matter there

Eitherway we where talking about indi games being the most succesfull games of the decade wich aside from very few exceptions ain't true.

Allot of smaller games of sony and Nintendo did surpass 3 million sales though. that allot of games happen to be lower than 3 million is pretty obvious. Just mentioning those that if indi games where the most succesfull thing this decade why do allot of the popular ones have lesser sales than even smaller side titles on such systems.

Still though while indi games are definitely in the uprise

Stuff like hollow night and cuphead is excellent

But I'm pretty luke warm for games such as fortnite and candy crush succesfull or not It's not something that has tons of creativity. And among us as popular as it is it's an app game. the social aspect is nice but for an actual game it's pretty small it's not as exciting as something as cup head not by a longshot.

The stuff from indi devs that actually gets pretty popular ain't the most creative stuff usually fairly simple even, while indi games with great potential get stuck around the smaller side titles of bigger companies.

[Cartagia]

So Fortnite doesn't count because it's on a different financial model?  Want me to go grab those goalposts you moved?

You also aren't taking into account development costs.  There's a reason Days Gone isn't getting a sequel despite decent sales, but Hollow Knight is.  The return on investment is much higher for the indie games, making them all more successful per invested dollar than only the biggest of mainstream hits - and that plays directly into telekill's original post - the big corporations keep pumping more and more money into generic titles  that barely change from year to year.

[sworddude]

Indi games have limitations though

If you want high end grapics and visuals indi games can't provide that. they usually rely on a great art style.

I do however have my doubts that titles such as hollo night or shovel night made more profit than even fire emblem tree houses

Since the game cost 3 -4 times more rarely any game sales and it has dlc. Not saying it doesn't happen but i think your overestimating it. Not to mention that nintendo usually spends less on development than most companies.

can we also not forget that xenoblade 2's development team was only 40 people

also if where talking small indi dev teams. I think money isn't always the most important thing so even if it wasn't worthwhile they might still make a new game for fun.

Still mobile games are where the actual money is at. Best dollar to dollar investment pretty sure. even though it's a succes it's not a great thing if you'd ask me since the games are pretty subpar.

[dhaabi]

Indi games have limitations though

If you want high end grapics and visuals indi games can't provide that. they usually rely on a great art style.

can we also not forget that xenoblade 2's development team was only 40 people

I'd just like to note that then-independent studio Ninja Theory developed Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice with a team of ~20 people and a dwarfed budget compared to AAA projects while still accomplishing AAA quality. There will always be outliers.

No, indie games generally will not reach the insurmountable sales numbers that some franchises and studios achieve. But—from your initial point asking which indie games have achieves success in the last decade to some AAA titles—what needs to be defined is what success is. And, to any marketing team, the profit margin is what will almost always be considered first in defining success. Because Ninja Theory was able to work with a small budget on Hellblade while yielding profitable results, Microsoft saw the studio as a huge investment and acquired them.

[sworddude]

Indi games have limitations though

If you want high end grapics and visuals indi games can't provide that. they usually rely on a great art style.

can we also not forget that xenoblade 2's development team was only 40 people

I'd just like to note that then-independent studio Ninja Theory developed Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice with a team of ~20 people and a dwarfed budget compared to AAA projects while still accomplishing AAA quality. There will always be outliers.

No, indie games generally will not reach the insurmountable sales numbers that some franchises and studios achieve. But—from your initial point asking which indie games have achieves success in the last decade to some AAA titles—what needs to be defined is what success is. And, to any marketing team, the profit margin is what will almost always be considered first in defining success. Because Ninja Theory was able to work with a small budget on Hellblade while yielding profitable results, Microsoft saw the studio as a huge investment and acquired them.

Indi companies come in all shapes and sizes.

while 10M is definitely a small budget for triple A standards it's still on the pretty high end of indi, allot of indi games would kill to have that budget. i'd argue allot of Nintendo's smaller titles having a budget close or lower than that.

Games like shovel knight or hollo knight had a budget of around 200K,

Meanwhile you also have Goliath's such as gamefreak

The developers of pokemon one of the most profitable ip's of all time is technically still an indi company in the current era.

[weirdfeline]

The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf will save gaming.

[pzeke]

The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf will save gaming.

You bet your ass it will!