Two reasons:
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The money is mostly spent on visual production, graphics, and big name actors to voice characters, which doesn’t automatically make a game good.
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Season passes, MTX and other bullshit being shoved down our throats in big budget games is getting even worse.
I will always choose a smaller project of passion over a lackluster, watered-down AAA game with an overinflated budget.
Ultimately it is about the money and effort being put into the wrong parts of the game, which coincidentally is the part that is easiest to show off to investors and C levels.
I wish I could get it through to my dumbass friend. She says that a game must have good graphics or else she won’t play it.
Stardew valley? Nope. It’s too blocky. Undertale? Nope. Might as well be an NES game.
My god, the games she’s missing out on…
Your friend is entitled to her own opinion and I somewhat get her. Good graphics are really nice and can add greatly to a game.
While I understand your feelings (I have such a friend myself), if graphics are most important to them, they are perfectly entitled to that opinion! I always interject, that my friend is missing out on great gameplay experiences but it is on them what they like and value most.
When I open a steam page for a game that looks interesting to me, and I find out it has 3 versions at wildly different prices and 10+ other DLC, I just pass and move on. I’m not doing external research to find out what is the difference between the complete and ultra complete and definitive deluxe director’s cut editions and whether it’s worth it, or whether I “need” such and such DLC to get the full experience. I’m instantly and thoroughly turned off by it, and I’m just not bothering. Fuck that whole mess.
For real! I have the biggest issue on that with the PlayStation store. The main list of titles only shows the most expensive version and you have to dig deeper to find the regular, lowest priced option. I swear, when I first got my PS5 and was interested in getting NHL23 I damn near had a heart attack seeing it priced over $100. Ended up just going to GameStop and picking up a used physical copy for $10.
It’s like the corporate world has made gaming into a twisted version of THEIR game. How do we grind money out of these idiots?
Well, I think that they will probably work it out in the end by going bust. Every CEO - in the end - blames the consumer, not the product nor the service.
Yeah honestly AA games deliver the experience AAA games gave 15 years ago, and that’s what I want way more than whatever AAA is today.
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It’s because video games turned into investment vehicles where companies want to make at least 50% return on their investment instead of create a fun and engaging peice of entertainment.
Video games are an art form, there’s no art i’ financial vehicules
The biggest thing I miss from yesteryear is all the low budget straight-to-handheld spinoffs. No clear place for those to exist now that dedicated handhelds are dead, and no room for quirky little side projects when publishers are putting all their resources into just a few AAAA megagames.
What about mobile games? I know the market is weird around them (low cost etc) and maybe I misunderstood your statement.
What about them? They’re all garbage.
Well the handheld thing, if you make a good game it could be shipped to mobile? Or maybe lacking buttons makes it always crappy?
Yea, eating up loads of screen space for controls and having a tiny screen are big negatives.
Processing power is waaaay less too, but that’s been a non-issue for indie quality style graphics for some years, now.
The entire market works off of freemium and piecemeal/ad models, too, which as Tim refuses to admit; people also hate!
He he I worked in the mobile game industry before smartphones, buttons (flimsy though for many phones) but man has screens gotten not just bigger but better :-)
Power is never an issue, except if you want to showcase some tech instead of making a good game, IMO.
Ya to death with all that dark pattern shit.
The screens getting better pushes directly against graphics processing increases. More pixels takes more power, after all.
Not that it’s any excuse… Modern phones are more powerful than the Switch, by a long shot.
I really wish mobile games could be good, but this is modern capitalism: It’s not about careers and good products. It’s about extracting wealth.
Well, check out a GBA/DS fat screen vs a DS lite one, it’s from that time roughly, not many more pixels but the quality is way different. But sure, a shame the whole mobile game industry is so incredibly crappy.
I don’t see how that market was better than what we have now. We still get games like those, but you can play them anywhere. You just have to stop expecting to find them from the publishers you recognize from 20 years ago. Ubisoft and EA don’t really make games for us anymore.
So basically he said that the entire game industry leans towards… Fortnite?
Has nothing to do with ‘generation’ anything and everything to do with bean counters. The fact that Minecraft is still beating them all is everything they need to know but refuse to listen to.
They don’t mean boomers, millennials, etc. When you consider games from Atari, to genesis, to 360, to what we have now with microtransactions and season passes after unloading $60+ for a premium game, there are clear “generational” divides.
Investors be like: “MineCoins you say🤔”
I’m gonna take a wild guess that the games with high budgets that aren’t “selling”, are just not selling “enough” to cover the “costs” of the executives. I guess it wasn’t much of a guess:
and they’re not selling nearly as well as expected," Sweeney said. "Whereas other games are going incredibly strong
Do they think that these other games “going incredibly strong” are making the money they hope to make? They’re probably making much less but managing it much better. The savings are almost infinite when you don’t approve every executive bonus pay package.
Try having an original thought.
Make something NEW
Exactly. I haven’t bought a pre-release game in a while because most of it is buggy and bland. But I bought the new Zelda game at pre-release precisely because it does something new.
If they’re intent on spending more on graphics instead of actually innovating gameplay, I’m content buying older releases that provide the exact same gameplay for a steep discount. I don’t play MP games, so my selection is pretty broad.
But I will buy a compelling new game, I’m just more into story and gameplay than graphics. Most of my money goes to indies, most of the rest goes to Nintendo, and the dregs go to older AAA games that I can get for cheap.
Well, when you invest $$$ into something that’s meant to be fun and it’s not fun, then there’s your problem. Why not invest in the game designers and scale down the graphics/fancy stuff and exec salaries?
So his big revelation is that Fortnite is really popular with kids.
“We didn’t listen to what people actually want and now less people are buying! It’s not our decision-making, it’s ‘generational change.’”
While indie studios have popped up and filled some of that void.
I mean, if studios are doing it more and more and have been doing it across a whole generation, it probably is generational change. Games take 5+ years dev time to make so high budgets are a given. If uch a game fails, it is more likely to tank a studio now. I think hes just making an observation. Nothing too shocking about that.
What Im observing though is more and more indies filling the void with smaller and cheaper games due to easy access to digital distribution. Not exactly a new take as its been hapening for over 15 years now. Interestingly, Epic seems to not take the same stance as Steam does in this space. Where steam gives pretty much any shovelware the same chances, Epic wants to be super picky about these low budget titles. Where is Epic’s Balatro?
If Tim is so focused on publishing/distributing these overblown budgeted games, Epic will miss out on the secondary gaming market where actual fun games truly live. Imo, the generational change is actually indie titles becoming the norm and AAA taking a step back.
What Im observing though is more and more indies filling the void with smaller and cheaper games due to easy access to digital distribution. Not exactly a new take as its been hapening for over 15 years now. Interestingly, Epic seems to not take the same stance as Steam does in this space. Where steam gives pretty much any shovelware the same chances, Epic wants to be super picky about these low budget titles. Where is Epic’s Balatro?
This reminds me a lot of the days of the original PlayStation (PS). Nintendo was the large, dominant company. But, they were also really, really picky with the games they let on their platform (still are). Along comes Sony with a better physical format and a willingness to let just about anything on their system. And there were a lot of terrible titles on the PS; but, there were also some real gems from smaller devs and lots more choice for people to find what they wanted to play. That openness and plethora of options drew people to the system. Sure, Nintendo is still around and still a juggernaut, but they gave up a lot of market space to Sony.
Sweeney and many of the big studios seem dead set on trying to replicate lightning. They keep churning out Fortnight clones, live service games and lootbox infested grind fests. None of this is because they want to make a game for players, it’s all a bald-faced money grab. And it comes across so clearly in their games. Yes, big budget games cost a lot of money and I don’t begrudge studios trying to make money. I’m more than happy to throw money at devs who make a great game (I just pledged ~$250 at the Valheim Board Game project, based mostly on the fact that I fucking love Valheim). I’ve also bought into way too many Early Access games, because they looked like they had the bones of good games. But, the big budget games seem to get lost trying to pump every last dollar out of your wallet and just quickly become a turn off.
I remember one particular instance in Dragon Age, where an NPC had a “Quest Available” marker floating above his head. When you talked to him, you quickly discovered that you could buy his quest and the game was happy to kick you over to the EA store so that you could buy his quest right there. Fuck that noise. I’m not against DLC, but that sort of “in your face” advertising pisses me right off. Hell, I’m one of those weirdos who likes the Far Cry series. I put tons of hours into Far Cry 5 (seriously, the wing suit was just good fun). Far Cry 6 was ok and I did finish it, though the micro-transaction spam grated on me hard. After that experience, I’m not sure I want a Far Cry 7.
And I think that points to the elephant in the room. Big publishers, like EA are so focused on making profits, they have lost sight of making a good game. Give me a solid, complete experience. Give me good controls, enough story to hold the action together and just a general sense of fun. Once that is in place, then maybe throw hats for sale on top of that. But, when lootboxes and micro-transactions are core to the gameplay and the game is balanced to force you in the direction of buying that crap, fuck your game. If the core gameplay is designed to suck so much that I want to buy cheats to bypass that core gameplay, I’ll save myself a bunch of money and just skip the game entirely. There are way too many options available out there, which don’t suck, for me to waste my time and money shoveling your shit.
Nintendo consoles and handhelds have almost always had a shit load of shovelware. What the fuck do you mean they are really, really picky with the games on their platform? The GBA, Wii, and Switch alone have enough to disprove this
They aren’t selling because they are designed as money machines first and games second.
Do I get to be the next Tim Sweeney now? As far as I can tell the bar is pretty low.
You have to sue every single storefront first as well and go cry to the press that companies don’t want to do business with you when you break their ToS.
Wait i thought you had to go over the bar, not straight into it
Actually I just need to stop buying garbage (which I have done). The power sits with the purchasers in this case.
Well, then you can’t be the next Tim Sweeney :(
They could make so many moderate games that would sell amazingly if they just tried to… Make games instead of casinos. But no, profits must only go up, can’t have a flat year with only great success - they have to outdo themselves financially every year and squeeze everything
They could make so many moderate games that would sell amazingly if they just tried to…
100%. That’s the kind of nuanced thinking you won’t get from corporate America at this point.
Can’t have 5 semi good games that sell pretty well, can’t only be moderately profitable! Have to shoot for the moon, have only 1 game that we bet the whole farm on!
Fuck Tim Sweeny
More like Slim Weeny
Chikka chikka Slim Weeny!
How’s about you guys spend some of that budget on QA?
Or how about they start making games people want to actually buy?
How about truly new games instead of zero-risk remakes/reboots/sequels or truly awful slop like Concord?
Or like the game instead of the credit card collection form.
Tim Sweeny when he notices that enshittification in games doesn’t seem to work very well anymore: industry is going through a “generational change”.
Motherfucker… How many times do you you have to fail before you listen to your customers, who are screaming what they want?
This is why voting with your wallet is nonsense. They’ll never learn why they failed, only that they did
I disagree. Voting with your wallet is the only metric they understand. They just ascribe different analysis as to why it failed to their boardrooms. In the end, you put 70 million into the development and marketing of a game that doesn’t sell, that is going to get attention. Complaining on Reddit won’t.
They just ascribe a different metric as to why it failed
Yeah… That’s my point. They will never say “our game failed because it was overly formulaic, unpolished, and our customers are getting sick of our bullshit”
It doesn’t fit on the spreadsheet. They will never come to the correct conclusion. They structurally cannot
It is still important that they fail. If you buy their shitty games they will still think that they are right and they would have the profit to support their opinion
Well I wouldn’t say it’s important, because it doesn’t change anything
I would definitely say it’s a waste of money to buy their bad games. They deserve to fail. I’m not happy about it, because I want good games, not for IP to be stretched so far I no longer care about it
But it’s important to understand that AAA gaming is an oligopoly and not buying their games won’t change that. It will not improve gaming. Ubisoft will close another dozen studios, buy 13 more, and learn all the wrong lessons (see current situation)
“Voting with your wallet” does not give you any control, just like recycling does not save the planet. It’s a myth to redirect our attention
Structural problems can only be solved structurally.
You seem to be mad that this doesn’t give you instant results. It’s about the long term and sending a message.
Plus, what would be the alternative? What is this magical instant fix of the industry that you haven’t told anybody?
That’s not what I’m mad about. I’m mad that it won’t ever work - Ubisoft isn’t trying to figure out why their games are failing, they’re trying to figure out how to keep the stock price projections up
Hence this article, which is signaling to wall Street “we’re going to make layoffs and hire cheaper, less experienced people”. They’ll probably do it by closing studios and buying up new ones - that’s pretty much their standard operating procedure. They buy up a studio, take their IP to add to the pile, then turn it into a formula and churn out games until the players lose interest in the IP
What’s the problem? They’re too damn big. What’s the solution? Block them from acquiring more studios and they’ll die without leaving a swath of destruction on the way down. Ideally split them up. Do the same with Microsoft and EA, and we could save the gaming industry overnight (granted, more like over the course of a few years)
Voting with your wallet doesn’t work because to the leadership of a Corp, sales aren’t what matters. Stock price matters, which is only tentatively linked to how profitable the company is, which is only tentatively linked to the quality of their products
This is why voting with your wallet is nonsense.
Not buying Star Wars Outlaws had an effect on Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Maybe it won’t amount to anything meaningful in the end, but it did do something.
It undoubtedly burned out hundreds of game devs who wasted years of their work and improved nothing about the industry
Mission accomplished?
Mission failed successfully!
