-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
The Game Industry Is Choking Itself To Death (The Jimquisition)
- Thread starter Empyrean Cocytus
- Start date
To death you say?
Yeah, I just stick to short single player games now. I cant imagine feeling like I have to play all of this other crap.
RE2 and DMC5 have been my year so far.
There's some game coming out this week that's not DMC5, and I just wonder why they wanted their game to be ignored?
We need to ship calendars to these publishers.
As much as it's cool to be all "I only like indies now, no AAA" like it's still cool and 2007 or something, there's too many of those too.
Yeah, I just stick to short single player games now. I cant imagine feeling like I have to play all of this other crap.
RE2 and DMC5 have been my year so far.
There's some game coming out this week that's not DMC5, and I just wonder why they wanted their game to be ignored?
We need to ship calendars to these publishers.
As much as it's cool to be all "I only like indies now, no AAA" like it's still cool and 2007 or something, there's too many of those too.
Last edited:
User Warned: Drive-by Posting
I don't know how y'all watch this hyperbolic/always negative drivel. I'm in this hobby for fun and stress relief not to pile on negativity and stress.
This is a pretty negative comment, so it seems you're all for it.
The reason for stuff like this exists is because the Game Industry has a lot of problems that are not being fixed and it's becoming more noticeable by the day.
only way you can ignore threads is by clicking. but yeah posting is not required.
Too many games that demand our attention competing with each other like Anthem vs APEX as an example from the same publisher in the same month.
I always give Jim the time of day, and I will again now, but woof, that's a Jim Sterling title if ever I've seen one.
This thing you call a fun stress relieving activity is a lot less fun when being constantly bombarded by half finished products that constantly strive to bilk you of all your money just to get anywhere.
He's got a strong point, and why this console generation has me fatigued in terms of what games they've offered; were it not for the amazing single-player games of 2017, I would be upset by it all around.
Fighting games have stopped producing games with a lot of content and instead now focus on the eSports aspects, there's a new trendy FPS/TPS every half a year (from Overwatch, to PUBG, to Fortnite, and not to Apex Legends), and even the single-player releases I mentioned previously have this bad trend of sometimes launching half done and then trying to improve itself through numerous updates (I love Final Fantasy XV, but this was a terrible aspect of its content flow, especially with the second season of the DLC outright getting cancelled).
I made a thread a while back about how recent games like Ace Combat 7 and Resident Evil 2 (which even Jim mentioned) were great because they focused on making their content as enjoyable as possible and not focusing on making the games extremely long for no reason.
As someone who has very little free time to begin with, this recurring theme of games wanting you to put a lot of time into them, and wanting that time immediately, has indeed been pretty awful.
Fighting games have stopped producing games with a lot of content and instead now focus on the eSports aspects, there's a new trendy FPS/TPS every half a year (from Overwatch, to PUBG, to Fortnite, and not to Apex Legends), and even the single-player releases I mentioned previously have this bad trend of sometimes launching half done and then trying to improve itself through numerous updates (I love Final Fantasy XV, but this was a terrible aspect of its content flow, especially with the second season of the DLC outright getting cancelled).
I made a thread a while back about how recent games like Ace Combat 7 and Resident Evil 2 (which even Jim mentioned) were great because they focused on making their content as enjoyable as possible and not focusing on making the games extremely long for no reason.
As someone who has very little free time to begin with, this recurring theme of games wanting you to put a lot of time into them, and wanting that time immediately, has indeed been pretty awful.
Last edited:
I somewhat get the point with service games being games that can demand a lot of time.
But that said, there's always been more games coming out that anyone could hope to play and thst people with regular lives can only play a fraction of. Same with movies, tv shows, books etc.
So I don't see it as the game industry being at risk or anything. At most it will just be the case that publishers realize there's only space for so many service games that need people playing and spending longterm. So EA putting out those two close together may be a "see which sinks and which swims" thing as they decide which to invest mkre in longterm.
And even then I think more peoole play multiple of those than many here realize. Many more are like me and bounce around between these games when there are new expansions, special events etc than the diehards who play daily/weekly for years. Despite not being a hardcore player, I still spend money on expansions for Destiny etc. I don't buy cosmetics though, so games like Apex and Anthem aren't getting MT money from me.
Lots of people are on mobile though. That script is great but the x's to hide threads in the forum pages and the word filtering options only works in chrome desktop.
I think he makes some valid points. If every game tries to be a "live service" in some way, it´s impossible to have time for them all, specially when you put limited events and similar gacha inspired mechanics in the mix.
And if every game is 50-60 hours long + dlcs, it´s impossible to have time to play them all, even if you like them, so most of them are doomed to be comercial failures. Here in Spain past year, every major october AAA release was discounted from 30 to 60% in november. Some of them were even discounted in 1-2 weeks like Battlefield V and Fallout 76.
And if every game is 50-60 hours long + dlcs, it´s impossible to have time to play them all, even if you like them, so most of them are doomed to be comercial failures. Here in Spain past year, every major october AAA release was discounted from 30 to 60% in november. Some of them were even discounted in 1-2 weeks like Battlefield V and Fallout 76.
All of his points are definitely valid for me. I've played maybe a few hours of Apex Legends and haven't touched it for two weeks now and I'm not even remotely interested to any of the big games he lists that were released in February.
Man, that closing sendoff might well be the best he's ever put together. And I'll go to bat for Jim and say he DID put out a positive video last week about Nintendo and Pokemon and all things Sobble and I watched it and it was glorious. So they do, in fact, exist.
Thank god for indie developers for serving me as a customer.
They're the ones that respect my time and they're the ones that get my money.
Thank god for indie developers for serving me as a customer.
They're the ones that respect my time and they're the ones that get my money.
He's not wrong. I noticed it as everything started moving to GAAS. Where I would buy many games before, I only would invest in destiny and maybe another game or two at best, but even my off games started requiring more time such as they were changed to be deeper experiences. Kind of turned my off to gaming in general and now I only play on my switch as the portability fits into my life a bit better.
I thought he made a lot of sense. I have no idea how people can balance more than one Destiny or Division type game. And I do miss when most games weren't all trying to become 80 hour or more experiences that want to keep me invested forever. I still find it satisfying to beat a game and not have to worry about DLC or events; I loved how I could finish God of War and not have to go back to it, if that makes sense.
Did you completely skip 2018? Aaand 2016, and 2015...
Are we gonna bounce back and forth every month?
January was GREAT thanks to RE2 and KH3 - Gaming is saved
February was AWFUL because of Crackdown 3 and Anthem - Gaming is dying
March is GREAT thanks to DMC5 and Sekiro - Gaming is saved
January was GREAT thanks to RE2 and KH3 - Gaming is saved
February was AWFUL because of Crackdown 3 and Anthem - Gaming is dying
March is GREAT thanks to DMC5 and Sekiro - Gaming is saved
That's not what the video is all about, though.
He has a great point. After Anthem's rocky launch I really wonder how sustainable this model is. How many GaaS games can come out at full price with crappy launches before people don't care anymore? Anthem might be the one to break people. And idk how many people actually wanted Anthem to be what it is in the first place. Fallout 76 is a more extreme example, but based on their previous work? Nobody can say they wanted Fallout to be like Destiny or Anthem to be what is essentially a Mass Effect Destiny.
It's also why games like Apex Legends and Tetris 99 are awesome not only because they're free, but because they are what they are. They'll get additions over time but at the immediate release, these games were not only perfectly functional but great fun at the outset. All the extra stuff to come for these games feel like welcomed supplements rather than anxiously awaited QOL improvements.
But even then, they get in the way of the time I want to play Smash and Rocket League, finish the 100% for KH3,
It's why I'm glad RE2 was what it was. Or why I'm glad that a studio like Ninja Theory could independently publish a game like Hellblade; a complete experience for a decent price that I can play and be done with.
It's also why games like Apex Legends and Tetris 99 are awesome not only because they're free, but because they are what they are. They'll get additions over time but at the immediate release, these games were not only perfectly functional but great fun at the outset. All the extra stuff to come for these games feel like welcomed supplements rather than anxiously awaited QOL improvements.
But even then, they get in the way of the time I want to play Smash and Rocket League, finish the 100% for KH3,
It's why I'm glad RE2 was what it was. Or why I'm glad that a studio like Ninja Theory could independently publish a game like Hellblade; a complete experience for a decent price that I can play and be done with.
He's got a point and I've been saying this since the live service craze began. There's a finite amount of time and every game is trying to take all of your time. It's probably the thing I dislike the most about this gen. I've recently become extremely selective with what I play due to the time sink. It's gotten to the point that I've now started to disqualify games based on the studio or publisher. Ubisoft game? Don't care what it is, I'm not playing. Treyarch game? Don't care what it is, I'm most definitely not playing. In fact, I'll go ahead and say that the vast majority of games I've enjoyed this gen has come from first party publishers. Third party AAA games, imo has been quite terrible this gen. EA's output for the most part have been entirely rubbish. Ubisoft output has been filled generic content and repetitive gameplay systems that their products feel homogeneous. I could go on and on but I for one am already looking forward to the end of this gen.
Who said gaming was saved? RE2 is a remake of an old game and it didn't save anything. If I recall, Jim trashed KH3 and tbh, it wasn't even a good game.
Who said gaming was saved? RE2 is a remake of an old game and it didn't save anything. If I recall, Jim trashed KH3 and tbh, it wasn't even a good game.
These threads are labelled clearly. I don't understand why people can't help themselves but do posts like this.
And it's always not so.subtle personal attacks and ad homenims aimed at Jim and never what he is discussing
You mean the few indie games you pick out of all the hundreds that get released on Steam every week?
Because you made a choice to winnow down the list of games you wanted to buy and play. Consumers do this all the time. It's probably not as big a deal to consumers as he's making it.
Jim trashed the story of KH3 but not the gameplay.
RE2 might as well be a brand new game from the ground up. It's also being used as the latest example of single player games succeeding.
stop being so negative about this thread, you are causing me stress
Yeah the game industry is so weird with timing. They just recently figured out you can releasse shit in Feb, but they hate releasing stuff in the summer. I wonder how much does trying to hit the 4th quarter contribute to crunch culture?
i'm pretty sure i've heard variations of 'trend-chasing will destroy the AAA industry' for at-least a decade now. i don't know why anybody thinks this particular flavour of the year genre is anything new. they'll be a few high-profile successes, a few high-profile failures, and when the well dries up western devs will eventually just jump on another bandwagon.
Variety of choice is a good thing when you're being offered the equivalent of little bite-size chunks of greatness that you can mow through before hopping on to the next thing. The problem with saturating a market with GAAS titles is that very few of those provide greatness out of the hop outside of the initial "let's play this new thing with my friends" rush and they're constantly demanding more of your time and more from your wallet instead of merely being content with being bought and experienced. That's the fundamental difference.
I wish he would have talked about how the GaaS model is a byproduct of how gamer culture shifted in the past decade to measure the worth and value of games by the number of hours it takes to complete or see a modest amount of content. The conditions that allowed these games that want to suck away all your time is because at some point in the last decade games started to get penalized by reviewers, consumers, etc for not being "long" enough. We've seen time and time again that people will measure a games value by the "cost per hour" ratio which completely erases any context for the gameplay itself. How many times have you seen people dismiss an indie game because it's "only" 5 hours long?
I grew up in the NES era, and during my childhood I never really cared about how long a game took to beat. I also didn't mind replaying games I had finished (especially if the gameplay was rock solid). To me, a games worth is not measured in hours of gameplay but in the gameplay itself. Today I see too many AAA games have clear and obvious padding because without it, it feels like they fear they'll get criticized for it being "too short." In that regard Jim is right that RE2 Remake is a breath of fresh air, and has quickly become one of my favorite games of this gen. It's a "6 hour game" that I've completed 5-6 times already because the gameplay is just rock solid. The progression feels good and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Looking forward to DMC5 this Friday.
I hope the AAA industry looks to Capcoms success and realizes not every game needs to be 50+ hours long and in order to reach that threshold you need to create micro content for the sake of padding it out, or gating progression behind grind.
I grew up in the NES era, and during my childhood I never really cared about how long a game took to beat. I also didn't mind replaying games I had finished (especially if the gameplay was rock solid). To me, a games worth is not measured in hours of gameplay but in the gameplay itself. Today I see too many AAA games have clear and obvious padding because without it, it feels like they fear they'll get criticized for it being "too short." In that regard Jim is right that RE2 Remake is a breath of fresh air, and has quickly become one of my favorite games of this gen. It's a "6 hour game" that I've completed 5-6 times already because the gameplay is just rock solid. The progression feels good and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Looking forward to DMC5 this Friday.
I hope the AAA industry looks to Capcoms success and realizes not every game needs to be 50+ hours long and in order to reach that threshold you need to create micro content for the sake of padding it out, or gating progression behind grind.
RE2 was a ground-up re-imagining of that game. It's basically completely new. The only thing the same is plot. Absolutely a great example of a fantastic AAA single player experience
Seems like a more apt title to the video he's presenting is "AAA Industry is choking the game industry to death".
When you thought gaming couldn't go in a worse direction, GaaS made their appearance. Can't wait for them to die once they oversaturate the market and people can't keep up with so many jobs, I mean games, at the same time.
Although I'm sure they'll replace it with something much, much worse. Their greed knows no limits.
Although I'm sure they'll replace it with something much, much worse. Their greed knows no limits.
It definitely would have an influence on it. Pushing for a good fourth quarter is a pretty wide spread thing.