The gaming industry is fine. It’s all the AAA publishers that are shit.
Frank Zappa ideas; paraphrased by me.
In the 1960’s the music execs like Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and had no idea what the kids wanted. They just threw money at the problem and gave contracts to anyone. The result was a vast variety, everything from Sha-Na-Na to the Mamas and the Papas to Iron Butterfly. When the next generation of bosses got hired, they looked at the one consistent moneymaker; Motown Records. Everyone at Motown had a similar look and singing style…
Oh man. Iron butterfly is just…
I have no words. They’re very special to me
I knew exactly what this was going to be. But yeah, its a fantastic song in its entirety.
Subtlety was never my strong point.
I think people don’t realize that current CEO’s are still old. Many of them in their 50s. I don’t think those are millennials.
Gaming hasn’t gone to shit.
Some of it is shit, but that’s true for literally all media and art across all of human existence.
Gaming is better than ever. This whole discussion is ridiculous, with everyone blaming this or that for something that just doesn’t align with reality.
I think the main difference is that we mostly forget about the shovelware titles of 20 years ago. Meanwhile the predatory monetization practices of the popular kids games of this current era will not be forgotten.
You can’t say that gaming is better now when Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Roblox are the most popular games for an entire gaming generation. There are still masterpieces being made today and there was plenty of shovelware back then but there will never be another year for gaming like 1998.
You get like 3 games worth playing a year now and studios that would make all timers year after year now release a game once a decade and sell micro transactions or 50,000 ports of it.
Obviously I don’t know your personal situation, but they can’t actually force you to play Roblox. You’re allowed to say no.
Joking aside, the existence of bad games doesn’t make gaming worse when there are great games still being made. ET doesn’t count against Super Mario Bros. just because they were released in the same decade. Superman 64 doesn’t count against Ocarina of Time just because they were a year apart. And Fortnite being released eight years ago definitely doesn’t count against gaming today just because people are still playing it.
Yeah 1998 had some great games. A couple of them even hold up today. But not many, and the biggest reason those games topped the charts back then was because gaming as a whole was like 1% of the size it is today.
If you can’t find more than three games worth playing in a year, then either you don’t like games that much, or you’re not looking.
Obviously I don’t know your personal situation, but they can’t actually force you to play Roblox. You’re allowed to say no.
Mainly I’m bringing up Fortnite and Roblox all these years later, not because I think they are bad games but because their monetization strategies have negatively influenced the gaming disasters that have tried to copy them. I don’t think if you strip Fortnite down to its mechanics that it is bad, I think it’s quite good just not for me.
Multiplayer games are nearly unplayable in 2025. And I just don’t have the free time I had back then. So I get frustrated that we wait more than a decade for good games from established studios and we don’t really get many new IPs.
I fundamentally disagree with your take that only a couple games of 1998 still hold up but I think we can agree to disagree there since I think that’s a matter of taste.
Multiplayer games are nearly unplayable in 2025.
Not to be contrarian, because I think you’re making some good points, but Split Fiction came out less than two months ago.
I’m also sinking hundreds of hours into Ravenswatch, which I don’t hear anyone talking about, but it’s incredible.
Other than those, I also have a hard time finding games to play multiplayer, but I think maybe that’s a problem with you and me and not with gaming. Like I see people having a ton of fun with Marvel Rivals, and I wish I could get into it, but I can’t.
Thankfully it looks like the industry is moving away from microtransactions and live service games, or at least they’re starting to learn that there’s a time and a place for those things.
I’d agree with the 3 games worth playing a year comment if you limit it to bigger budget games and anything new over $50. But indie games and games that are around $20-40 at launch. Naw, you need to raise that number significantly or expand beyond a single genre.
Right, and let’s not forget that Retro gaming is completely legal.
I mean, kind of, but not really.
It all started with Halo. Back in the late 90s and early 00s the movie industry was the big money maker of entertainment and there was actually a lot of anti-gaming rhetoric in news and politics. The weekend Halo 3 released it was so popular that it disrupted the box office numbers for a couple of movies. The movie executives decided to stop trying to kill the gaming industry and take it over instead.
So I guess you can blame millennials for playing Halo instead of going to the movies that weekend.
It’s the same in every industry. Rich shit bags move in and buy successful entities but have no idea how to run them. They slowly get shittier, so good employees move on and do their own thing.
There’s still amazing games being made, there’s just a lot more shit games you have to sift though. Follow great game devs, not who they work for.
Yeah, the industry seems to be changing again. There’s a push towards passion projects and those projects are seeing more success than the big budget games. I think we will either see a new cycle of conglomeration or, hopefully, we will see the executives take a more hands-off approach and let the games make money for them.
Just because you own a sports team doesn’t mean you should be head coach.
Unfortunately, it still influences everything that goes into it, if not for anything but the expectation to turn a profit.
With the tools available now, a smaller team can make projects that compete with much larger studios, mostly because they don’t have a hand tied behind their backs from having to paywall or monetize things. Currently playing Motortown: Behind the wheel, it’s literally a single dev making it and it’s just an all around great experience. He implements what he and the players want without extra fluff or cash grabs and players are spreading the word around about our love for this game so he doesn’t need marketing.
I don’t think big budget AAA games will change much going forward, the businessmen always think they know best and they’ll continue to make games worse if they believe it’ll increase profit. An indie game will just never produce fortnight or GTA money, so they’ll continue to want games that can replicate that model.
A movie when I was a teenager was $3.25 for a matinee. Also, there were like barely any mass shootings. America is imploding. All these issues people bring up the outliers and they never want to talk about the root causes because it’s a contentious arena. Capitalism consumes itself until there’s nothing left and the wealth is all consolidated at the top horded and then World War. The cycle continues. Everything’s connected. Nothing in a capitalist society happens without money. If we want to understand the differences of then and now we would focus on the economy. I hate gaming of today. There are advances, but all I see is cigar chopping game execs as they pray on nostalgic millennials and children. I can’t even watch movies anymore because all I see is propaganda, mischaracterization, and the profit motive. All I see is rich people trying to mold your minds and destroy education and keep you hyper-distracted with short-term goals. It’s not that technology is evil, but anytime the Imperialist come up with some kind of new gizmo, it’s always a double-edged sword. I know people will think I’m overreacting, but I’m not. Once you realize how real life is, and all the mechanisms that go on around you, you start thinking about things differently. You change your behavior. Pearls before swine.
You’re not wrong
I’ve always found it deeply insulting.
The baby boom in the USA was a real demographic phenomenon but every “generation” after that gets fuzzier to the point where its now just rage bait nonsense or just a proxy term for complaining about changing fashions. Even within the Boomer cohort people had wildly different experiences growing up across such a large span. That said, every game studio I ever worked for was run by Gen X and Boomer aged people.
When they started in the industry it was small teams, tight budgets, a new frontier with a low bar to entry. Now it is highly corporate, capitalized, shareholder driven behemoth (like everything else). This transform happened when the millennial cohort was in our 20s, we had no influence on this, and it mirrored similar larger-scale transformations in the rest of society.
I’m fortunate in that I basically retired early, although I wouldn’t mind going back to work with a good group of people, even for cheap. Like the old days again. I still like the work I just hate the business. But it doesn’t matter, the whole industry is in ruins now.
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I get the joke but I never understood the idea that gaming nowadays is “bad”. Just as there are many games that have shitty practices or are just bad, there are just as many that are good. Indie gaming is booming for a reason.
Sometimes I wonder that if the people that keep parroting this idea are just… Getting old? Getting fed up with gaming? Or maybe it’s just a nostalgia thing? All of these combined?
Anyway, Clair Obscure just came out and it’s a great JRPG, highly recommend it
Most definitely can be refuted. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of amazing games out there made by young and old people that appeal to both young and old people. The issue Anon is struggling with is non gamer capitalists running game companies and milking games for every last penny at the cost of quality.
I know it’s a tired example, but look at the company and team responsible for BG3. A game that is widely considered one of the greatest games to be realsed in at least the last 10 years, maybe even longer. This game was made by a company owned and operated by old people and young people. The teams directing, designing, creating, and writing this game were made up of multiple generations of people, and what was made, unimpacted by corporate greed, was a masterpiece.
Good games are products of passion and creative freedom, not money or age.
There’more great games now then ever there ever was. So many choices. Plus, the older games didn’t disapear and there is no such thing as “the Golden Age of gaming” lol. It’s just that a bunch of low- losers are spending their days on the internet crying about “woke runing my videagame” because they see a woman not having huge boobs and a bikini armor.
Im currently enjoying there Blue Prince.
There’s nothing else like it, it’s challenging, and cozy.
If you like playing detective, and bring patience and like exploring and taking notes instead of hyper-focusing on one goal, it’s tens of hours of fun.
I’ve been playing this, too! It’s a great game!
Only thing I don’t really like about it is the drafting mechanic. I hit a lot of “ooh! I think I know how to solve that puzzle!” or “Ooh, I think I vaguely remember something in that one room that I didn’t screenshot at the time but I’m pretty sure was a clue for the puzzle I just discovered!” only to never see the relevant room(s) in a bunch of runs. Hell, I’m pretty sure based on a clue that there’s some kind of clock room (if it’s just the den, I have no idea how to figure it out so I’m assuming there’s another clock room) I haven’t seen yet at all dozens of days in, another related puzzle that requires I draft a whole bunch of related rooms that I never get enough of (unless I’m on a wrong line of thought about that) and a third related to the other two where AFAIK I’m waiting on a random item drop and the room to use it in to appear in the same run.
Even something like being able to curate the deck more than the conservatory allows would be tremendous.
Yeah, that’s what I meant with having notes and pivoting: don’t focus on one puzzle like that. Follow all the threads and when you get the chance to make this one happen, do it.
For things related to items, you have an option to make things easier, e.g. I stored the power hammer in the coat check until I got both the coat check and a room I knew I could use the power hammer in. In the like 5 runs in between I just did other stuff, there’s always plenty to do.
Again, I think I understand what I need to do for one puzzle, but if I’m right I need to draft 8 specific rooms all in the same run (I’m hoping I’m wrong and can come up with some other answer). That’s…easier said than done barring a lot of luck. It’s very much that I’m pretty sure I know what the puzzle is and what the solution is but the game is unwilling to let me draft what I need to solve it.
I’m pretty sure one of my missing rooms from the directory is some kind of elevated clock room (“High up among all the clocks”, the only “high up” room I’ve really got is the Attic and the only room with a lot of clocks is the Den so it feels like I need a new room), but I’m a few dozen days in and haven’t seen one.
If you’re post room 46 you probably know what puzzle I’m talking about, and I’ve got 5/8 of the keys and the puzzle behind one door solved. The third one I’m missing is almost certainly in one of the lockboxes in the Vault, but that’s a matter of time and luck to get vault, the right deposit box key and enough steps to get from one to the other in the same day. It’s another case where it’s not an interesting puzzle or mystery, it’s waiting on RNG to allow me to do the thing. Getting those keys, figuring out the puzzles behind the doors, and finding the rest of the red envelopes are my current big goals.
And boy do I wish that I’d got the coat check the only run to date where I got all the parts for the power hammer. Currently got the emerald bracelet in mine, which is nice but…
I know of a trophy you only get if you draft 9 copies of a specific room in a single run, but I don’t think trophies are necessary to progress with other parts of the game.
About missing rooms: get the drafting studio, it allows you to add 8 additional rooms to your collection one by one. I don’t know anymore if the one you’re missing is among them, but I think so.
I may be wrong, but I was thinking the Machinarium with 8 gear rooms was the solution to something, and was being vague about it. So Workshop, Security, Utility Closet, Laboratory, Pump Room, Boiler Room, Hall of Mirrors to duplicate one of the above then Machinarium.
As for the drafting studio, that might be a solution. I’ve had bad luck getting it to pull too, only having seen it twice. Been holding off on picking an outer room in recent runs so that if I see the drafting studio again I can burn rerolls to force a shrine to get maximum use out of it.
As for a trophy for drafting 9 of one room, I hope that room is either aquarium or tunnel. I can’t think of another room it might be reasonable to draft that many of in one run.
You might be right about the machinarium, that seems to be unusually hard to get for a sanctum key. I haven’t thought about it yet.
9 of one room is easier than that, it’s a very specific room.
It went to shit because big corpos realized there was money in the games industry. It went to shit because capitalism took the reins.
Bu-but Asmongold and Kirsche Verstahl told me the problem was woke gamedevs! /s
I’m aware this was sarcasm, but want to point out Asmongold is a Nazi sympathizer. No idea who the other person is.
Asmongold is a priest of Nurgle.
The other is a Nazi VTuber, with her name allegedly being a dogwhistle (positive christianity if I recall correctly).
No one I know can afford to buy a house because our generations been so royally fucked in every which way, yet somehow we are responsible for steering the entire game industry in our twenties. Right… lol.
Like they didn’t realize in the 90s
Institutional money didn’t take it seriously until the mid to late 2000s.
Big video game companies were already doing the same as today though.
That’s why most of the money hungry games were in the arcades back then. PC gaming wasn’t nearly as big.
You have a very different memory of that time
Probably because we grew up in completely different countries. Australia was very behind back in the day. We had a 2 year lag.
There’s plenty of great games these days. The “golden age” wasn’t because of the quality of games. It was because I was able to delve into them deeply and enjoy them without all the concerns of my adult life running on the back of my mind pulling me out of it.
That has to do with shareholders realizing they can make money out of the gaming industry. They basically ruined it like they ruined healthcare and housing.
It’s mobile games. It has always been mobile games.
A large part of the population is simply unwilling to treat games as a medium that requires quick reactions, precision and thinking. To them, gaming more like spinning slots in a casino. Until about 2012, these people didn’t realize such games existed on consoles or the PC, so we were safe. Eventually mobile app stores tapped into this massive market, got enormous returns and made everyone else realize how many people were willing to engage with a glorified skinner box.
Every fiscally responsible company now has to assess the degree of implementing these dogshit gameplay loops, instead of just not doing that like they used to.
The only AAA games safe from this are the ones that are extremely hard (complex) as a baseline. Stuff like Path Of Exile and Elden Ring.
I don’t think that is true at all.
Strategy games existed, adventure and point and click existed, puzzles, turn based rpg, even forgiving platformers existed since before PC gaming, and flourished with PC gaming. Many of the hits needed nothing of that.
Many of the hits today still need all of that and are competitive.
The market grew, and with it came more audience and genres.
If we all liked yellow, what would happen to blue?
The company I work for recently tried to make a mobile game, being a fairly informal studio with many gamers on staff we made something more like a mini linear rpg than a typical mobile game. Testers loved it but the publisher said it was too complicated for mobile and cancelled on us.
When it was released in 1993, Doom — which was developed for under $1M USD — was earning id software $100k/day immediately upon release, in shareware registrations alone.
It’s no wonder capitalist leeches saw those returns and wanted to insert themselves in the process. Of course the more who latch on, the more value they need to extract by screwing over both the devs and the players.
Obviously the devs and players are actually the only two groups who are necessary in this relationship, and they’re the ones getting soaked.
PS by “devs” I mean anyone who works on the game to make it better.
Those shareholders? Dentists. No love lost between them and the gamers.
The ruin of modern games is the perfect shit storm of:
- The quest for the other side of the uncanny valley, making releases closer to decades
- The death of the in-house game engine.
- The half-baked attempt to cross-platform consoles with PCs
- The half-baked attempt to cross-platform mobile devices with consoles
- The merger of Live Service Games and Free to Play
- Game prices not following inflation.
- Everyone and their brother trying to take a major cut.
Shit is more complex and resource intensive than it has ever been, we’re hardly even looking to optimize these days if it works.
You get to choose from a couple of engines, who want a serious cut, or a free engine who has serious problems on consoles.
You need the game not only to pay for itself in sales, but in in-game sales without making it to gambley or making it too pay to win.
Adjusted for inflation, Mario Odyssey is $20 less at launch than E.T. was at launch for the atari.
Excuse me, but a lot of passion han be found on the indie market.
The executives, investors and accountants making the decisions that are ruining games are not millenials.
I am sure many are. Millenials are in their forties these days
The old ones, yes
The average age of a manager in gaming is 45 and the oldest millennial is 44 lol get mathed idiot
Dude chill the fuck out.
I’m not the guy you’re responding to, but seriously you’re the idiot here.
The average age of a manager is 45 that means there are several that are younger and several that are older. Some may indeed be millennials. Maybe not.
Get “logiced” idiot! But foreal just chill out. What did that other guy ever do you other than suggest some managers might be millennials?
You’re tone policing a shitposting sub but I’m the one who needs to chill okay sure
If the average age is above any millennial, they couldn’t be the majority group. It makes no sense to pin blame on a younger generation when the reins of power are being clung to by the elder generation across all imaginable contexts, not just game development.
That guy said “many are”. Not most or majority or anything like that. I suppose it’s possible they edited their comment.
Sure man I’ll give up on the tone policing. You’re still an idiot going around calling other people idiots for no reason. Check your ego bro. That’s all I was saying
To be fair, “generations” are bullshit anyway
How quickly the goalposts move, very convenient
But yeah, I generally agree, I’m not the one that framed the discussion that way.
The only meaningful lines of division are along class groups, as the upper class continually consolidates wealth and decision-making power. It’s just that most rich people are also old.
So almost half are millennials then?
There’s actually a single gaming CEO that hasn’t been born yet, bringing the average down.
Mean and median can be calculated for uneven distributions.
They’re Elder Millennials at best (born in the 80’s, maybe late 70’s). Or do they qualify as another generation ?
Late 70s would fall in Gen X.
Millennials start at around '85 depending on who you ask.
Generations seem to be more vibes-based than anything.
Edit:typo
Late 70s and the first few 80s years is a stretch, that’s Xennials. Elder Millenials and Xennials have an uneasy truce but we know the difference
I was about to say the same, most management is still gen x, even boomers (fucking retire please). Some low level managers are millennials, but these are not the people calling the shots. As usual, money hoarders make decisions, and you can accuse us millennials of a lot of things but having any money on us.
You might want to look, as usual, to indie millennial game devs. There you will see how we call the shots. We are nowhere that good as gen x indies, but we have our thing.
The golden age of games, also happened to have publishers who were just that, publishers, not slave drivers commanding the market and shutting down studios every time they sneezed.
