Are you optimistic about gaming in terms of gaming quality?

[entremet]

I remember during the PS360Wii era there was a lot of interesting things going. Micro-transactions went mainstream, near the tail-end of that generation, there was prognosication of mobile taking over and consoles dying. Japan was struggling with HD development pipelines, and so on.

Generally, if you were a more traditional gamer that grew in the time of Japanese console dominance, things were changing. Some were very pessimistic about gaming's future.

I also remember a lot of talk about their only being Two. That Nintendo or MS would screw up or give up and would be left would be Sony and another. Sony was given the benefit of the doubt due to their historical dominance in the past two generations.

A decade later. It seems this was all hogwash. Mobile does have strong financials, but it didn't cost us console games. MTX are still with is and some games are very bad here, but I mostly avoid them outside of meaty campaign DLCs. Japan is putting out amazing work still. And all three platform holders are doing well, with the mythical fourth non platform of the PC is doing better than ever too (more competition for Steam--I kid lol-, Steamdeck, VR, more Japanese support). And portables are stronger than ever with way more options.

It's not all rosy of course--what is. Some people want smaller portable form factors--I don't think this will happen due to battery life--look at the iPhone mini. The recent console price bump, but there's also stuff like GamePass that bring tons of value.

I do think the industry, outside of game quality, has a lot of work to do obviously as we've seen with ActivisionBlizzard, Ubisoft, and so on. But in terms of finding fun games to play--I know I can't keep up time-wise lol.

 

[jotun?]

Not worried

Even if all the big money is in garbage, there will still be a bazillion good indie games

 

[Bansai]

Not really, most bigger games that launch nowadays are plagued with some technical issues. And if the game has online, I already expect a shitshow day one. Quality is usually the last concern of bigger publishers.

Of course, there's a ton of smaller, mostly indie quality games, but there's also a sea of shit.

 

[entremet]

Not really, most bigger games that launch nowadays are plagued with some technical issues. And if the game has online, I already expect a shitshow day one. Quality is usually the last concern of bigger publishers.

Of course, there's a ton of smaller, mostly indie quality games, but there's also a sea of shit.

Click to shrink...

I havent' seen this much. Last big AAA I played was Ratchet on PS5. No issues.

 

[Quinton]

Plenty optimistic. You hit the nail on the head for me -- JRPGs are my bread and butter and I was relatively worried during the PSWii60 era that they might dwindle into irrelevance. It didn't help that certain mainstream media sites were pumping out a narrative of "a tired genre" and all that jazz. (Thank you, sites like RPGFan, for keeping the flame alive online during those years. And it's OK for me to thank them! This was ages before I joined!)

But then the last generation happened. And what marvels! Dragon Quest XI. Nier Automata. Persona 5. Atelier Ryza. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. Bravely Default. Tales of Berseria. FFXIV: ARR and its delicious expansions. Even somewhat dicey games like FFXV are plenty of fun IMO. And FFVII Remake! Holy moly, what a game.

What a gorgeous generation that's continuing with Switch hits like Octopath Traveler, a Tales game that's right around the corner and might be the best entry in ages, FFXVI looks bangin'... I'm happy.

 

[GooberDooberCBC]

What I find interesting right now is the discourse regarding when things should be shown off and how long game development takes. I am not a developer but AAA games are taking longer and have had higher investments than ever before. Gamer's expectations of what AAA have also increased accordingly, all the while gamers expect a certain package day 1 and at a price point that fits their wallets. I just don't see how high quality AAA games is sustainable with either the expectations that gamers have or with the rising investment costs and time it takes to make a single game. I find it fascinating that this dichotomous take of "show this early and it might not represent the final product or wait 5-7 years but ask where is X game or franchise" to be rather off-putting in the sense that things are never as simple as X game is not in development because they haven't shown it on my timeline of when games should be shown or X game is clearly in development hell when it could be that the game clearly has high expectations and in order to avoid the disappointment of gamers who have expectations that in some cases are completely unreasonable, must take the necessary time to iron those details out or risk launching and hoping that you can build your base over the course of months to years with patches and "live updates". I think the indie scene is thriving though but AAA gaming does worry me long term.

 

[nsilvias]

for now. im a bit worried about sub services and there influence watering down game design if time played is a huge factor in these services. im already sick of most of the games i play demanding so much of my time

 

[Bedameister]

Gaming is better than ever. I'm very optimistic. Only problem is there are too many games.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

I'm at peak enthusiasm for the medium and I'm in my mid-30's and have been playing since I was 6.

The industry has some serious struggles at the AAA level but I've also never felt like I've had as many interesting and satisfying games to choose from than I do now.

 

[DeoGame]

I'm fairly optimistic. All 3 platform holders being competitively viable again is amazing and will likely breed innovation and benefits for us all. Gaming has never been this affordable or accessible. While games are alarmingly shipping unfinished, a bad launch is no longer the death sentence it once was. Indies and AA are starting to pop up enmasse again and the gap between AAA and independent is shrinking rapidly. All in all, pretty great time to play.

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

The trend towards GaaS in AAA gaming is something I don't like. Playing one game for years just is something I can't behind. I want whole experiences with clear goals.

 

[fourfourfun]

I think we are going to see mid-tier and potentially indies squeezed on the consoles - we might see the type of games change as subscription games come in and developers basically have to live with whatever the platform holder decides they want to pay for their title - we'll probably start to see more traditionally AAA type mechanics creep in to get you to play more often, logging in often, nagging you to pay money to remove barriers. The big publishers will be fine and will start to decant into their own subscription services. People will buy less individual games with subscriptions offering more than they can ever want anyway.

PC will carry on like it always has and Epic won't manage to get their industry wide stranglehold on development tools and publishing platforms like they are trying to now. Nintendo will continue to be unique as nobody will be able to dislodge them from the handheld space.

Streaming and VR will carry on and gradually continue to edge its way into the marketing through sheer persistence.

On one hand it is very interesting as we are now and the most diverse set of big market names that we have ever seen - Valve, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, now joined by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix (!), and I suppose we can count Nvidia & Epic in there.

 

[cooldawn]

I haven't been at all confident in the quality of games from 3rd party publishers for a long time now, especially compared to Sony's 1st party output. As such, since the PS3 era, I've relied more and more on 1st party to deliver high-quality top-tier experiences.

I don't even feel like I'm missing out of anything outside 1st party. That's how bad I think it is right now. Maybe this generation can make things better but I'm not holding out on any type of quality revolution going on anytime soon.

 

[tokkun]

I'm optimistic about indie games.

I'm pessimistic about AAA with the wave of acquisitions going on right now. The track record for celebrated developers who were acquired by massive publishers / platform holders is pretty gruesome.

 

[Zoidn]

Absolutely! Games have never been better. I can't think of a time with a bigger variety of games I am interested in playing. There's literally MULTIPLE games that I intend to not only buy at launch, but will likely even buy overpriced "ultimate editions" of. Gaming is wild!

 

[Mathieran]

Not worried at all. So many great games

 

[Deleted member 68874]

Yes!

There is always something interesting to me right around the corner.

 

[TransEuropaExpress]

I'm at peak enthusiasm for the medium and I'm in my mid-30's and have been playing since I was 6.

The industry has some serious struggles at the AAA level but I've also never felt like I've had as many interesting and satisfying games to choose from than I do now.

Click to shrink...

That's basically me. I played some insanely good games the past few years, essentially nonstop. It's rare I even pick up a game and it straight up sucks anymore, like the 100th boring-ass platformer on SNES or something. There's such a massive variety.

 

[Ravenwraith]

I'm mixed on it. AAA gaming continues to be a bigger waste of time and money by the moment but all the talent that used to be there is funneling out into indie/AA spacies.

 

[aevanhoe]

Games are better than ever, from indies to big AAA titles. They will get even better. Unless you use nostalgia glasses, that is.

Of course there are bad games, bad practices, etc. Every era has it's challenges, issues and advantages.

 

[Quinton]

I'm at peak enthusiasm for the medium and I'm in my mid-30's and have been playing since I was 6.

Click to shrink...

Literally same.

 

[Undeniablybiased]

Tons of quality games all year every year. So I can't complain. Once you get into a rhythm and understand both your own tastes and which devs are worth paying attention to it's super easy to be pleased even if there's a lot of shit out there. The best thing is the abundance of super replayable indies that you never actually finish and provide limitless fun. If there's ever a dry spell, slay the spire is always there with new ascension levels to beat and new deck synergies to find.

 

[Jimnymebob]

I'm at the 'I wish there were more opportunities to play games I own on modern platforms without a bunch of loopholes' phase lol. Like sure there's emulation, but I just wanna put an old game in something that's currently connected and hit play.

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

More optimistic now than for most of the XB1/PS4 generation, which was a low period for me just down to my personal taste in games.

The thing I do worry about is ballooning production timelines. Going from three Mass Effect games in a generation to one. Two Elder Scrolls games in a generation to zero. Four Saints Row games to zero. And on and on. I'm not thrilled about getting to a status quo where I'm waiting a decade for the next game in a series I like.

 

[cardboardboxer]

The industry is so vast now that gaming and gamers are no longer defined by AAA franchises like in the PS360 generation, it's great.

Between the Switch going off with gameplay focused games and Yakuza giving me a new big time turn based RPG franchise to follow gaming is better for me than it's been since the SNES generation.

 

[Atom]

There will always be good games. They might not be from the publishers you want or expect, but they'll always be there.

With regards to specifically good games in particular genres I think there could be more concern. Stuff like the hollowing out of the 90s JRPG market, or the early 2000s action-adventure games. Things that you really don't see a whole lot of anymore, but even here there is a fair amount of output from indies.

Also, just as a reminder, there are thousands of amazing old games. I think it's sometimes useful to reframe perspective -- the future of gaming could be unknown, but there's a ton of good old stuff out there that isn't too hard to get ahold of (either cheap old console games and dump for emulation or through PC storefronts). Literally there's probably enough stuff that you never need to care about a new game ever again within your lifetime, realistically speaking. So while it's nice that new titles come out, and its cool to see what devs are doing with more powerful hardware and an increased democratization of game design, even if it all stopped tomorrow we'd all be fine.

 

[Vitamin_B_Complex]

They could stop making games today and I would have enough to play until I die. I am optimistic regarding games, especially because of the indie market but I am worried because of subscription models and the greed of the industry to rob you off of game ownership, once everything is just streamed, it will be very easy to lose access and delisted games are gone forever.

One thing that is great is that it seams like niche great games sell much more today than back in the day. Like the success of Persona and Yakuza and many more.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

There's more great games to play then ever before. Compared to how things were when I was a teen, it's like a faucet that runs nonstop.

 

[MonadL]

Absolutely. Personally there's far more quality games out than I have time to play. Even a relatively dry year like 2020 has seen a ton of quality releases. Unless your tastes are hyper specific, I don't see how anyone can complain.

 

[Pyro]

I'm fairly optimistic about the future of AAA. First party games and a few third party publishers still deliver, quality kickass single players experiences while the rest is GaaS, MTX, F2P, etc. that occasionally appeals to me.

And indie games are still incredibly unique experiences that are getting more spotlight than ever thanks to free games offered on Epic, Amazon, PS+, GamePass/Games with Gold, etc.