Too many garbage AAA games, more like.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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A lot of indies, too. And quality isn't enough to rise above the fray anymore.
I'm not going to say it's too many, because that's subjective, but in business terms it's a "red ocean"
I play indies because they're more of a "blue ocean" market, in that they push the boundaries to create very different experiences to what the industry is doing. These indies tend to trickle their way to larger studios once they prove the concept. For example:
- Minecraft - general idea of crafting being a core mechanic; now tons of games have crafting as a major mechanic
- Factorio - automation-type puzzles; didn't quite make it to AAA AFAIK, but there's plenty of other studios now making automation games
- Demon Souls/Dark Souls - FromSoftware was small-ish before those games, and now there's a whole genre
- Slay the Spire - now there's a ton of deck-building games
- Limbo - see Little Nightmares and plenty of others that have a very similar feel
And so on. Indies tend to push the boundaries (i.e. blue ocean), and larger studios fill in behind them.
I see what you're saying, and agree with your clarification. Maybe a broad term like red ocean wasn't the best choice of words.
I was thinking more about how it's harder for individual (or tiny) contributors to stand out. This is just one metric, but look at steam games tagged as "indie" released over the years. Game developers went from having stand out among dozens of other games, to hundreds.
Like I'm part of a group of solo/tiny game devs outfits, and we're seeing first-hand how a game is almost dead in the water unless you spend serious time/money on marketing.
E: forgot link
Yeah, it's pretty rough for devs, but there are still plenty of stand-out indies. It just takes a lot more work to stand out.
There are lots of identical indie games, usually found in the forms of pixel shit, asset-pack Unity crafters,, and melodramatic walking simulators.
Hey at least melodramatic walking simulators are trying to say something
Yeah, they're trying to say "I'm so deep, give me money". I seriously doubt the number of autuer-driven art-first video games breaks out of the margin of error
Right yeah, I don't like low effort games
14532 games were released on Steam in 2023. And that's Steam alone. Absolutely insane numbers.
Oh yeah, right. That's the problem. Consumers have too much choice now. It's not at all that 90% of those gamed now are badly lacking compared to what we used to have. It's not at all that publishers feel it's okay now to release unfinished products and continue development haphazardly after the game is put on sale. It's not at all that this leads to execs either pulling these dev resources as soon as the game had made good money to put these resources either on new projects or on DLC development. It's not at all that the industry has been pandering to the lowest common denominator for twenty years, making games that lack a challenge and reward you for nothing. It's not at all that games are produced by executives with business degrees rather than by extraordinarily passionate and talented creative typed like George Broussard, Chris Sawyer or John Carmack. It's not at all that in-game purchases through micro-transactions or even large transactions has skewed the incentive structures for both player and developer.
No, it's those pesky consumers, they've been given too much choice, they've become spoiled and entitled, so they won't be content with whatever crap a studio puts out, now. They won't just play the game and shut up.
That being said, I've heard that Nancon's Robocop is pretty decent. Has anyone played it?
Too many shitty, overpriced games from greedy corporations, sure.
I kinda agree. Back in the days, I was waiting for new games. Now, there are dozens of games waiting for me every time I complete one. It seems to be impossible to play everything nowadays even if you only do that. It’s not a big issue for us of course (we just have to accept we cannot play everything, and choose wisely how to use our playing time), but I can see this being an issue for the industry.
The solution to "too many games" is to make better games. Instead of making 3-4 "good" games, make 1-2 great games that stand out above the rest.
That's the way markets work, if there's too much competition, set yourself apart by being better in a meaningful way.
Can't say I disagree. There's fucktons of shovelware garbage clogging up stores. But as far as problems go, it's actually the least of the industry's worry.
There are a lot. For every game I wanted to play that pisses me off for some reason there are 10 others I can play instead.