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[SkylineRKR]

My guess is that we are seeing the consequences of the real talent leaving and being replaced by people who “just do their job”.

No wonder budgets have ballooned. Those people don’t get shit done nowadays. I mean, just look at Bethesda and their output during the 360. And now it took them like a decade for Starfield. It’s a joke. Assuming there are the same people working on the games, there is no logic by which to explain why it took them so long to make the game.

So my only conclusion is that the good people have all left, given up or just don’t give a fuck any more.

What happens when the same people stay and continue to do their job you see by looking at From Software.

Western game development has become a running gag. People like the ones from SBI actively influencing how a game is made and written? All those big companies should relocate in a tent that fits the circus they represent.

Its a good example. they released too fully featured TES games on PS360. Alongside a Fallout game, and let Obsidian work on a Fallout spinoff.

Like Naughty Dog. 2 new IP on PS3. Versus nothing new on PS4, and still a no show on PS5.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

It’s like death by 1000 cuts.

- AAA games now take a bloated team of hundreds (if not thousands) 5+ years to develop

- PlayStation and Xbox need those AAA games in order to justify their existence and drive the console cycle

- as a result of being so expensive and risky, publishers are making safe, same-y, risk averse, woke, design-by-committee shit — basically turning into Disney

- low team cohesion and productivity now that everyone is working from home after COVID

- consumers are finally cutting back on purchases now that everything has become so fucking expensive

- publishers are mostly interested in finding the next big recurring-revenue microtransaction-infested cash cow game or GaaS shit, then shutting studios down and laying people off if their bet doesn’t pay off

- also shutting down smaller studios because the big publishers don’t really give a shit about making smaller scale games that might make a modest profit. They’d rather just shut them down and get those employees off their books for the year

- games releasing for $70 in a half finished state + with season passes, MTX, etc. personally I’ll never buy a AAA game day 1 again after Starfield and FF XVI last year. Fuck em


I feel like the western AAA gaming industry is in for a world of hurt. It’s just beginning. Nintendo, PC, indies, and Japanese + Korean companies will weather the storm just fine.

 

[DenchDeckard]

This new narrative that GTAVI is going to save gaming is wild. Sony will sell shit tons of ps5s at a loss and there's no evidence that people will buy another game on the platform. They'll probably just play GTA and a bit of fortnite

 

[mrqs]

Dev time for gaming got unmanageable. We are having fewer big games than ever, big studios like PlayStation haven't released a single colossal PS5-only game. Xbox hasn't released anything groundbreaking. All the major franchises are crawling after everyone failed with GaaS multiplayer games.

We haven't got a single next-gen exclusive Assassin's Creed yet - which is massive for the masses, and this is the fourth year of the PS5/Xbox Series. CoD is still releasing on last-gen.The game industry isn't growing, sure, but this generation has been struggling to get games out as they got too big and too laborious.

If we had a good frequency of massive games, we'd probably have grown and be healthier.

Game dev taking 5+ years is unsustainable.

This is a recipe for collapse.

 

[onQ123]

This new narrative that GTAVI is going to save gaming is wild. Sony will sell shit tons of ps5s at a loss and there's no evidence that people will buy another game on the platform. They'll probably just play GTA and a bit of fortnite

Lol say what?

Games are selling millions on PS5 what are you talking about?

 

[rkofan87]

I’d like to think it’s a result of consumers getting wise to the same bullshit tactics and products we’ve been continuously fed for the last decade, and voting with their wallets, but who the fuck am I kidding.

this and covid being more or less over.

 

[rkofan87]

Gaming is in declining quality past 3 years & that is true reflection from oversaturated market with game developers who don't care about gamers & their vision is only to make quick money. Most of today studios lost passion to make grate games & only direction they are heading is "make a game where they can grab most money in shortest time "
Once grate studios like Blizzard, Ubisoft Montreal, Psygnosis, Crystal Dynamics, Bioware and many more can't even develop any new game.

this.

 

[MrMephistoX]

I feel like AI could actually help gaming: right now things like backgrounds, enemy design, generating HD textures. crowds etc are very labor intensive and expensive but if innovative creators can take some of the tedious reprieve tasks off their plate it could lead to innovation.

 

[Corian33]

While I play the occasional AAA big budget game, most of the new stuff I buy is the $40 AA tier stuff or even smaller. I love strategy games of all types and there are tons of great new titles all the time in that scope of developer size. Developers not concerned with appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Games industry is going through the same thing as other forms of media and the rise of YouTube. Making a big budget bloated project with hundreds of people and tons of waste doesn’t make sense when a handful of people, or even one passionate individual can make content that’s just as enjoyable and cheaper and more accessible.

 

[Woopah]

This new narrative that GTAVI is going to save gaming is wild. Sony will sell shit tons of ps5s at a loss and there's no evidence that people will buy another game on the platform. They'll probably just play GTA and a bit of fortnite

The evidence is that the vast majority of console owners buy many games.

System sellers can convince people to get a game, but then those people buy and play other games as well.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Lack of creativity and passion. Easier to copy paste then to have an idea and create something out of it.

 

[TGO]

They're downsizing in order to upsize their profits.
But the lack of actual productivity over a long period of time also doesn't help and even affects those who are more productive
If a studio doesn't have a game selling a considerable amount for a long time what is the publisher earning back while the Devs take almost a decade to release one game.
Think about it.
This long dev cycle isn't good for the industry and in some respects Devs have bought it on themselves by learning too heavy into the "anti crunch" situation.

 

[Gp1]

In addition to everything that has already been said, even the development cycles were messed up during c19. That's why we had so many great game in 22/23. Now the market is going downwards after so many large projects and longer development cycles.

It will probably recover after a while.

 

[EverydayBeast]

The gaming industry has years of experience dating back to pac man, today there’s balance between all the forms of entertainment.

 

[SHA]

Almost everyone is doing his own thing, pretty much every AAA is running on survival mode, therefore, there isn't a clear vision of the next big thing; gamers trying different genres, different types of games, that's scarcity mindset, scarcity mindset typically have lost it's touch with the latest games, meanwhile, Mmos, gatcha, gaas, is doing better than ever and there is no sign of weaknesses at all.

 

[Hudo]

Playstation has historically been a third party console, so nothing unusual here. GTA 3 bolstered PS2 just as FFVII and Resident Evil did for the PS1.

Sony used both first party and third party games to convince people to buy a PS4, and they are successfully doing the same thing to get people to upgrade to PS5s. There's nothing sad about it.

I know. I was trying to be cheeky.

In fact, Sony's main business pillar since the PS1 was third-party supremacy. That was also the main attack point against Sega; backdoor deals with third-parties. Playstation first-party was never the main thing; but still was quite strong during the PS1 and PS2 days.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Who cares what business leaders think.

Business strategy in games is one of the most discussed topics on NeoGAF. So...plenty of people?

There was a belief in tech sectors people would continue working and studying from home even after covid. Turns out their expectations were too optimistic.

That's a pretty vague statement. I'd have to see some specific quotes from these CEOs that shows significant resources went to this permanence line of thinking. I bet they're hard to find.


What's likely happening is the power of narrative and people's proclivity to slot events into that narrative. People want to believe CEOs are greedy / dumb, and want to think they themselves are smarter. Therefore layoffs = CEO is greedy / dumb rather than it just being natural market volatility.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

"Healthy" the last few years with DLC, MTX, UNFINISHED GAMES, MANDATORY DAY 1 PATCH, WOKE GAMES NOBODY ASKED, LIVE SERVICES, BUYING STUDIOS AND CLOSING STUDIOS, etc...?

Which parallel universe are your coming from seriously for didn't see all of this coming ?

Advice: go back to there, it's going to burst here, soon or later.

 

[Crayon]

It's just correcting. Give it a minute, you might like the outcome.

 

[EverydayBeast]

The gaming industry has years of experience dating back to pac man, today there’s balance between all the forms of entertainment.

 

[Raven117]

They thought covid numbers would last forever

This. It’s covid pull back that most “home” tech is going through.

 

[Fafalada]

My guess is AI replacing people

This hasn't even remotely begun yet. When it does - things will get a lot worse.

It's weird that all this is going on while games are selling at record rates .

As a certain YT channel once said - companies want all of the money, all of the time

 

[Raven77]

In chronological order:

If you don't understand this, it would take far too long for me or anyone else to explain it to you.

If you know though, you know.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Dev time for gaming got unmanageable. We are having fewer big games than ever, big studios like PlayStation haven't released a single colossal PS5-only game. Xbox hasn't released anything groundbreaking. All the major franchises are crawling after everyone failed with GaaS multiplayer games.

We haven't got a single next-gen exclusive Assassin's Creed yet - which is massive for the masses, and this is the fourth year of the PS5/Xbox Series. CoD is still releasing on last-gen.The game industry isn't growing, sure, but this generation has been struggling to get games out as they got too big and too laborious.

If we had a good frequency of massive games, we'd probably have grown and be healthier.

Game dev taking 5+ years is unsustainable.

This is a recipe for collapse.

Exactly. And then your game finally comes out, and it doesn't live up to the forecasts both critically and commercially. Thats a huge blow and it will lead to even less risk taking and more focus testing. This risk/reward at play here will eventually bite.

On top of Assassins Creed I mentioned ND already, but Sucker Punch released a PS4 launch window game, and then GoT during the twilight year of the PS4. And the latter is already 4 years old by now. I wonder if its even worth it keeping these studios up, considering they deliver one project every 5+ years. And if that next project crashes like Redfall, and I suspect Hellblade 2 soon, then good luck. There is almost no margin of error left here.

And its ironic, because the PS3 was so hard to program for. The PS4 would shorten development cycles and time to pixel remember? Yeah, about that.. bar the perf and IQ issues I fucking miss the PS3. I have it hooked up even.

I do think that with a higher rate of output and less trend chasing, the margin of error increases, the industry would be healthier and more studios could sustain. They could also keep the price a bit lower, which factors in as well since consumers likely purchase less on impulse the more expensive software becomes. Thus consumers becoming more selective, and certain games and genres being ignored. Its causality.

 

[Madserb2023]

The industry thought that the surge in people playing games during the pandemic would last for some bizarre reason. Nintendo is going to come to the same conclusion soon, maybe they have. They would have to be naive to think that Animal Crossing would even have sold half the number it did if it wasn't for the pandemic.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Who cares what business leaders think. They are slaves to investors who are slaves to making crazy bets based on theories like "business cycles" and playing chicken with wild bets to take money from the biggest suckers who think the overhyped investments have real value.

Hundreds of thousands of companies and industries didn’t do enough to validate the concept of “business cycle” for you?

 

[Wildebeest]

Hundreds of thousands of companies and industries didn’t do enough to validate the concept of “business cycle” for you?

People can talk about rational theories like supply and demand, but it is a fig leaf over the irrational gambling over speculation on already overvalued assets.

 

[Negotiator]

Exactly. And then your game finally comes out, and it doesn't live up to the forecasts both critically and commercially. Thats a huge blow and it will lead to even less risk taking and more focus testing. This risk/reward at play here will eventually bite.

On top of Assassins Creed I mentioned ND already, but Sucker Punch released a PS4 launch window game, and then GoT during the twilight year of the PS4. And the latter is already 4 years old by now. I wonder if its even worth it keeping these studios up, considering they deliver one project every 5+ years. And if that next project crashes like Redfall, and I suspect Hellblade 2 soon, then good luck. There is almost no margin of error left here.

And its ironic, because the PS3 was so hard to program for. The PS4 would shorten development cycles and time to pixel remember? Yeah, about that.. bar the perf and IQ issues I fucking miss the PS3. I have it hooked up even.

I do think that with a higher rate of output and less trend chasing, the margin of error increases, the industry would be healthier and more studios could sustain. They could also keep the price a bit lower, which factors in as well since consumers likely purchase less on impulse the more expensive software becomes. Thus consumers becoming more selective, and certain games and genres being ignored. Its causality.

I've been saying this for a long time that it would be healthy for the industry to revert back to PS3-level production values, but few people believed me back then.

With modern development tools I would gladly accept a new Uncharted game every 1-2 years, 10 hours is also the sweet spot for most people finishing games (even Amy Hennig has admitted it):

How long is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves? | HowLongToBeat

How long is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves? HowLongToBeat has the answer. Create a backlog, submit your game times and compete with your friends!

howlongtobeat.com

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the console space has been infested by former PC/RPG players who demand 200-hour open world games with tons of RPG elements/mechanics, otherwise they're not willing to spend $60.

So yeah, bring back franchises like Uncharted 2-3, bring back the iconic MP (along with F2P/MTX) and you're golden.

But do they have the balls to do that? I doubt it. The game industry is on a self-destructing path that is strongly reminiscent of the Lehman Brothers meltdown back in 2008.

If anything, Nintendo realizes that staying on PS360 production values allows them to have a healthy output of AAA games.

Switch 1 is like a portable Wii U/PS360, Switch 2 will be a portable PS4 and by the time they'll release Switch 3 (portable PS5), AI tools will be commonplace in game development.

In my eyes Nintendo is the big winner of this generation and they've predicted the self-destructing AAArms race since the GameCube era. Hell, they might even save the industry once again, just like they did with NES back in the 80s.

 

[violence]

Companies expanded to take advantage of the Covid growth. You can just fire those people when you don’t need them anymore.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I've been saying this for a long time that it would be healthy for the industry to revert back to PS3-level production values, but few people believed me back then.

With modern development tools I would gladly accept a new Uncharted game every 1-2 years, 10 hours is also the sweet spot for most people finishing games (even Amy Hennig has admitted it):

How long is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves? | HowLongToBeat

How long is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves? HowLongToBeat has the answer. Create a backlog, submit your game times and compete with your friends!

howlongtobeat.com

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the console space has been infested by former PC/RPG players who demand 200-hour open world games with tons of RPG elements/mechanics, otherwise they're not willing to spend $60.

So yeah, bring back franchises like Uncharted 2-3, bring back the iconic MP (along with F2P/MTX) and you're golden.

But do they have the balls to do that? I doubt it. The game industry is on a self-destructing path that is strongly reminiscent of the Lehman Brothers meltdown back in 2008.

If anything, Nintendo realizes that staying on PS360 production values allows them to have a healthy output of AAA games.

Switch 1 is like a portable Wii U/PS360, Switch 2 will be a portable PS4 and by the time they'll release Switch 3 (portable PS5), AI tools will be commonplace in game development.

In my eyes Nintendo is the big winner of this generation and they've predicted the self-destructing AAArms race since the GameCube era. Hell, they might even save the industry once again, just like they did with NES back in the 80s.

Well personally I don't need a 25 hours Uncharted game with lots of forced walking and RPG elements. I abandoned the franchise with 4, but what I played of Lost Legacy (the 4h trial) was actually solid.

With these games being expanded with bloat and useless loot they indeed did create an environment where a 10 hour game is being passed off as not worth your cash. But in reality, if that game is good, chances are you replay it while you put a bloated AC game away before you are halfway through. I replayed the RE2 remake, DMCV etc a ton. Those games didn't overstay their welcome at all.

So to not come with a game thats being ignored because its short, they insert lots of filler and repeated content that gives useless rewards like EXP. Tomb Raider, God of War, AC they all do this.