Remember the old days of complaints people had against the industry?

Samtemdo8

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Remember Online Passes that was made to kill or tax the used games market.

Remember On-Disc DLC?

Remember Pre-Order Bonuses based on different retailer chains you go to?

Remember the complaints against continuous sequels to multiplayer games that felt like glorified map packs?

Remember.......The Dumbing Down of Hardcore games to appeal to a casual audience (We want Dragon Age 2 to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd)

Those were the days.....And I feel like this was when the general negativity against gaming as a hobby and industry began. In the 360/PS3 era to be precise, and in someways, its only gotten worse since then.

Because I don't recall this sense of negativity back in the PS2 days or N64 days.
 

BrawlMan

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Remember Online Passes that was made to kill or tax the used games market.

Remember On-Disc DLC?

Remember Pre-Order Bonuses based on different retailer chains you go to?

Remember the complaints against continuous sequels to multiplayer games that felt like glorified map packs?

Remember.......The Dumbing Down of Hardcore games to appeal to a casual audience (We want Dragon Age 2 to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd)

Those were the days.....
Your point?

I miss none of that.

Now appealing to a more casual audience isn't inherently wrong, but I did have a problem with nearly every major publisher, trying and failing, to appeal to the Call of Duty or Gears of War crowd. A crowd that only want to play those one or two games. Capcom did suffer a lot from this, but they at least managed to get out of their dork age around the mid 2010s. With their dork age being officially dead at 2019.

I'm not going to be too focused on the past. I'm looking toward the future of gaming from the smaller spaces and indie developers. I'm also looking forward to see what the Chinese and Koreans are doing with their own stylish action games. I love me some Devil May Cry, but I'm always welcome to more variety. Beat'em ups are back in full swing, so I definitely have no need to go back to the past.
 

Fallen Soldier

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Those days suck, I don’t miss em one bit! It could get even worse if they find a way to fuck us twelve ways to Sunday with NFTs.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Remember Online Passes that was made to kill or tax the used games market.

Remember On-Disc DLC?

Remember Pre-Order Bonuses based on different retailer chains you go to?

Remember the complaints against continuous sequels to multiplayer games that felt like glorified map packs?

Remember.......The Dumbing Down of Hardcore games to appeal to a casual audience (We want Dragon Age 2 to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd)

Those were the days.....And I feel like this was when the general negativity against gaming as a hobby and industry began. In the 360/PS3 era to be precise, and in someways, its only gotten worse since then.

Because I don't recall this sense of negativity back in the PS2 days or N64 days.
The "old days" are today, only in worse-if-slightly-different ways; what's your point? That our complaining only caused the industry to double down with worse monetization practices? "The Industry" has one agenda: money. We've only made it worse on ourselves by making "money" easier for The Industry to come by when we lowered our expectations and accepted that we'd buy anything they put on offer. If Halo 6 was literally a wet shit in a DVD box, it'd still probably sell millions of copies and those who paid for it would b*tch about the stench while complaining about the changes necessary for Halo 7.

The indiscretions of the PS3/360 era are nothing compared to what came in the PS4/XBone era and continue to get worse to this very day. The Industry found out what they could get away with and continue to push the envelope. At this point, I'm not even mad at The Industry anymore; I'm mad at gamers who don't demand better, and the fact that we've now a generation of gamers who don't even KNOW better, so the incentive for appreciable change is all but nonexistent.
 
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Samtemdo8

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Your point?

I miss none of that.

Now appealing to a more casual audience isn't inherently wrong, but I did have a problem with nearly every major publisher, trying and failing, to appeal to the Call of Duty or Gears of War crowd. A crowd that only want to play those one or two games. Capcom did suffer a lot from this, but they at least managed to get out of their dork age around the mid 2010s. With their dork age being officially dead at 2019.

I'm not going to be too focused on the past. I'm looking toward the future of gaming from the smaller spaces and indie developers. I'm also looking forward to see what the Chinese and Koreans are doing with their own stylish action games. I love me some Devil May Cry, but I'm always welcome to more variety. Beat'em ups are back in full swing, so I definitely have no need to go back to the past.
I added more to my OP then what is shown in your reply.
 

BrawlMan

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I added more to my OP then what is shown in your reply.
I noticed. While we're at it, why there's plenty I like or love from the 5th and 6th generation, there are parts I really don't need to go back to again. Those days were not perfect either. The least you had usually full games and nearly everyone was trying something new or experimenting with something different. People took risks.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

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I don't think the industry is great now, but that period in the late 00's/early 10's when just about every game was some grey and brown cover based shooter and even traditionally single player series started to have tacked on multiplayer modes that obviously took development time and budget away from the single player was by far the lowest point in the mediums history.
 

Samtemdo8

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I don't think the industry is great now, but that period in the late 00's/early 10's when just about every game was some grey and brown cover based shooter and even traditionally single player series started to have tacked on multiplayer modes that obviously took development time and budget away from the single player was by far the lowest point in the mediums history.
Halo at least was that one FPS game that had color
 

BrawlMan

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Halo at least was that one FPS game that had color
Bulletstorm has color.

All of the Crysis games have color.

Vanquish has color, even though it's predominantly white and silver. They definitely throw in some blue and green at the midway point and the last quarter of the game.

Shadows of the Damned has color.

Uncharted definitely has color.

Wolfenstein (2009) surprisingly has a decent amount of color.

Dead Space 2 and 3 definitely have more color compared to the first game.

I know some of these games are third person shooters, but I just wanted to point it out. Either way you and @PsychedelicDiamond are correct.
 
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CriticalGaming

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I noticed. While we're at it, why there's plenty I like or love from the 5th and 6th generation, there are parts I really don't need to go back to again. Those days were not perfect either. The least you had usually full games and nearly everyone was trying something new or experimenting with something different. People took risks.
I mean people still take risks today. Though i dont really know what you mean by risks anymore. The gaming medium as a whole has learned a lot about game design as a whole and it can make things feel less risky because they arent exploring concepts that may or may not work as much.

Once the medium learns the art of a craft, taking risks doesnt really happen because the solution has been solved. And because it is art, what is a "risk" can vary wildly.

Do films take risks? Do books?

Back in the day when everyone was still basically an indie or AA at best company there was more freedom in game design because we didnt quite know what worked yet.

Today we know mostly what makes a game good and what makes a game bad.
 

BrawlMan

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mean people still take risks today. Though i dont really know what you mean by risks anymore. The gaming medium as a whole has learned a lot about game design as a whole and it can make things feel less risky because they arent exploring concepts that may or may not work as much.
The AA and indie circle still takes plenty of risk. The AAA on the other hand, a majority of them don't bother with risks. The only thing they bother to risk is ways to screw over people, and it ain't much of a risk if it's working most of the time. Very few Triple-A games bother to take risks.
 
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CriticalGaming

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The AA and indie circle still takes plenty of risk. The AAA on the other hand, a majority of them don't bother with risks. The only thing they bother to risk is ways to screw over people, and it ain't much of a risk if it's working most of the time. Very few Triple-A games bother to take risks.
So what would you classify as a risk?
 

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So what would you classify as a risk?
Whatever dumb bull crap the Triple-A ain't doing. The people out there putting their livelihoods on the line whether they be in small teams, or doing the entire thing solo. Those are plenty of risk when you don't have a corporation backing you. Not everyone going for graphics first, gameplay second. A lot of the indie games and AA games either go for 2d, 2.5D, or their own aesthetic that makes them unique and different. Or certain games that are 3d, put the modern AAA title machine at certain points. Yet, without all the overbearing crunch and acting like a dick head.

I'll give you an example, the game Indivisible. It was made by the same developer who did Skull Girls. For years, they tried to pick up a publisher that would help them release the game, but none of them wanted any of it, because "women don't sell games" (unless there's heavy amount of fan service). Especially if it's a dark-skinned South East Asian girl on the cover. So Lab Zero, the developers for that game, had to get money out of their own pocket and a combination of Kickstarter fund. They eventually got to publisher through 505 games, but it still took them about 6 years to release the game (I remember when the game got first announced back in 2014), because of all those struggles they have to go through. They went through a lot of risks, sweat, blood, and tears to get the game they wanted. Thankfully, the game became a success because they wanted to just make a cool anime-esque action RPG. So games with women do sell without fan service, it's just that for greedy publishers, they don't make all the money in the world. I have no interest in the game, but I'm glad the game made its way out to its fans into new audiences.
 
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CriticalGaming

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@CriticalGaming, 505 games shut down Lab Zero. So LZ definitely took a lot more risks, and there are bigger risks for smaller studios or individuals, than the majority of the AAA industry.

If you want more people to go out of business for taking risks, i guess you will be continuously disappointed. Indivisible was mediocre imo, a rpg with a great cast but lackluster mechanics that just got irritating.

Risks are taken by small developers because they want to try to make a name for themselves and you never know if you might be making the next Stardew Valley or FNAF or Minecraft. But you also have to be ready for your game to fail.

I dont think AAA companies avoid risk as much as you might think. The risks they take are backed with the insurance of being associated with a brand that people already know. There are Call of Duty fans who dont love every game. Because as much as we clown on CoD for being the same shit every year, the fans can tell the differences and they know when shit sucks versus when something works.
 

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If you want more people to go out of business for taking risks, i guess you will be continuously disappointed. Indivisible was mediocre imo, a rpg with a great cast but lackluster mechanics that just got irritating.
That wasn't even close to what I was saying nor implying. I really don't know where you were getting from that. I have no opinion of the game, because I have no interest, but this game definitely sparked with an audience and has its fans. All I showed you was that smaller developers/publishers or indies are at more risk to lose something than a majority of AAA companies. I don't want all these Indies or AA to shut down. Where the hell you getting that from?
I dont think AAA companies avoid risk as much as you might think. The risks they take are backed with the insurance of being associated with a brand that people already know. There are Call of Duty fans who dont love every game. Because as much as we clown on CoD for being the same shit every year, the fans can tell the differences and they know
That's a load of shit and you know it. With all the ways they keep doing the same thing over and over, they're pretty much avoiding risk. You can try to pull out one or two of sections, but most AAA companies don't take risk. The only thing they consider a risk is if they're going to be able to screw over their consumers or not, and last I checked that's really not much of a risk. It's a safe bet where they have to do little effort. Especially if they got bitchy fanboys and consumers running up to constantly defend they're overlords, and punish those that actually have a point or call out bad practices.

You really need to start thinking. That's your problem, whenever these examples do come up, you either seem to forget right away, downplay them, or act like they almost never happen. Did you just forget about Avengers? Yes, it's failed and all that, but that's only one of the few examples that failed. There's also Anthem, and Evolve, but there are many other companies and games that got away with bad DLC practices and loot boxes. Or even when they shut down certain practices, they get another worst one in place, or they already gained so much money from it, that it doesn't matter anymore. NFTs are going to be a thing now, so trust me those aren't risk.

A daily reminder.


 
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CriticalGaming

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You really need to start thinking. That's your problem, whenever these examples do come up, you either seem to forget right away, downplay them, or act like they almost never happen
But you havent explained to me what you consider a risk. All you ever do is shit on AAA developers because they are AAA. But what are these risks you speak of, what makes Indivisible a risk when all it is is a simple turn based rpg.

What risks are being taken that doesnt exist in the AAA space?
 

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What risks are being taken that doesnt exist in the AAA space?
I already gave you the answers. Figure it out. All you've been doing is either ignoring what I just said, or give me an answer that has next to nothing to do with anything.

Indivisible took many risks, you're just willfully being too dense and oblivious to see it. If you bother to search the history of that game, you can see where all the risk came in. I gave you a straight answer, and you still don't get it. If you can't figure it out after looking up, I have nothing left to tell you. That's all on you.
 
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