Are Strategy Games DYING? New Data Sparks Debate
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Are strategy games dying? A new survey from Quantic Foundry (linked below) has said YES - as the appeal and motivation of strategy and deep thinking in games has been in steep decline for a long time. Are strategy games dying? Is the gamer motivation survey correct?
Quantic Foundry has been analyzing gamer profiles since June 2015, and the "strategy" category of motivation for gamers has been in a deep decline since the beginning. Strategy and deep thinking, decision-making, and planning are indicated to be poor motivators by the results of this survey. This video analyzes those results and gives my commentary on the state of turn based tactical, grand strategy, and 4x games, as well as my thoughts on the overall results of the survey. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments as well!
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FULL Article: quanticfoundry...
Gamer Profile Survey (Doesn't Require An Account): apps.quanticfo...
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I'm reasonably sure that a big part of why the decline of strategy in their survey is the expansion in the market. Or in other words, because there are a lot more people taking the test, the relatively static % amount of strategy focused gamers seems smaller. Lumping console and especially Mobile markets into PC is going to ruin the validity of the metrics because those are fundamentally different markets.
Mobile rarely if ever has a reason to be very deep, if only because people need to pick up and drop the game repeatedly so that 'what was I doing?' gets magnified.
Console is the home of the casual cathartic 'gamer bro' of XBOX Live trash talk memory, who is in it for social interaction and something easy to pick up but hard to master moving at a rapid pace in general.
Those are markets worth looking at, but they need to be examined on their own, not lumped in with PC. If they broke their data down into those three markets, I would bet that there would be a super majority of strategy focused gamers on PC, and that it actually is a significant proportion of that vast market. I can't say if Mobile or Console would come in second, but that point I think is pretty self evident.
Overly broad studies actively hurt decision making because when you go to make a game, you generally aim for ONE of those three markets, because they're not the same. You don't market an orange the way you market a hammer, or carbon fiber nanotubes.
Agreed, I think the best thing they could have done would be to break down their results by platform. Strangely enough, that was the one thing that they did not seem to account for. In my opinion there are some pretty clear distinctions between these types of gamers, ESPECIALLY mobile, as you said.
Ive gotten into the habit of titling my saves with a SUPER short sentence of what i was working on for future me. Absolute BEAST of a difference.
"Build Fleet / Food Crisis" or "North-Invade_Econ-Pooping_Ghandi-Nuked"
😆 that's a good idea
That reminds me of a thing I would do in minecraft, put up signs of the things I need to do.
Stop adding 50 DLCs to strategies then maybe I get interested again in the genre
-Civilization ton of DLCs
-Europa Universalis and any Paradox strategy. Ton of DLC
-Warhammer... I don't know where to start
-The Settlers. Ubisoft added MTXs
-Company of Heroes. Microtransactions
-Anno. Season passes
These games are expensive but still demand more money to get full experience
I was heavily interested in most of those games and the DLC model they use is pretty much what put me off of them. Unfortunate
Paradox has had a large market share of the strategy genre for awhile and the way they monetize makes that a problem.
A lot of strategy games these days just go overboard. You need to master dozens of systems. I love XCOM 2, but stuff like Phoenix Point I should like, but then I get out of the combat zones and I've gotta deal with juggling factions and shit. I had a similar issue with Chimera Squad. I liked the combat parts, but really hated the other part. Even in XCOM 2, I use mods to disable the avatar project so I don't have to deal with that shit. I want to enjoy a game, not have a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
Oh, and then a lot of "strategy" games are now card games. And don't even get me started on all the Darkest Dugeon-likes.
And, like other have said, the DLCs are an issue.
That said, I'm loving Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, but I've stopped playing it to wait for more content to get finished.
Sadly, even though I bought it at launch, I'm doing the same for BG3. They keep releasing so many huge patches that I feel like I can't focus on the game because they'll just release a patch that changes everything. The next patch seems to just add modding support, though, so maybe it's time to fire it up again.
I believe the BG3 support is ending soon as far as huge updates go - I felt the same way as I was playing through and they kept adding these huge updates ( Still haven't finished).
I can understand how the little things add up in the XComs and Phoenix Points, I enjoy those games immensely but still get a little burnt out on managing every haven and faction and fighting the end of the world timer lol. It's a lot.
The card game phase is hopefully coming to an end soon as well. Cyber Knights has been on my wishlist for awhile but I'm holding off a little longer since it's early access
@@GridCommand I definitely recommend holding off on playing Cyber Knights as a whole, but if you can get it now on sale and play the first couple of missions, I would suggest doing so.
I get you, but I love that synergy between the combat and the management. Those are precisely the games I gravitate towards. The original XCOM in the 90's is perhaps my favourite. I still play OpenXCOM almost daily. I love the fact that the decisions I make in the macro game impact the strategy game and vice versa. But I get that isn't for everyone.
In the early 2000 when CRPG and RTS became insanely popular, they have the same in common, very rich story. Diablo, WC3 made Blizzard get pearless status.
Even Age of empires had "history" to back it up, so there's an appeal.
I think it was age of wonders 2 that I've played, dropped after the first act... Main reason was the dreadful stupid "story/plot", like 20 IQ level. Then overwhelming amount of flaws...
Which by the way, IDK how the guys who made Age of wonders and planet fall manages, they have the coolests ideas and concepts, planet fall manged to deliver one of the best AI...
And still they manage to screw up royally on very basic stuff, like no story, too grindy, no difference between factions, awfull map, terrible UI, non existant economy/mass production of T4/T5 units which leads to non strategy, etc. Just to name a few problems which makes Age of Wonders a pile of trash game.
Planetfall really had so much potential! I tried to love it but the standard Paradox issues bogged it down. I was an avid Blizzard RTS player and still play StarCraft to this day.
Those games will always have a place in my heart but unfortunately somewhere the art was lost and nobody has been able to remake an experience on that level. I assume it's a hard and time consuming genre to create and balance.
This study is the old "lies, damn lies and statistics" The number of gamers has gone up massively. The amount of them playing strategy games has also gone up - but at a slower rate.
So there are more people playing strategy games now than 15 years ago but they make a smaller percentage of the huge game market.
As far as viability. There is more money to be made from strategy games now than there was 15 years ago. Someone will always fill that market.
going back to 2015, gaming has definitely BOOMED
I mean I think it's got something to do with the fact we haven't really got anything like XCOM 2 new recently. That game was a real gateway drug for a lot of people because of how accessable yet challenging it was, and we just haven't seen anything of the same calibre in recent years. Also yeah 4x sucks in terms of replayability and basically you play 2-3 games of stellaris and you've seen it all.
100%
Sooo i play LWOTC and yeh i leave myself notes on what i did and whats next otherwise i forget
Makes sense, I honestly don't know why I never started doing that 😆
For me, i like Strategic and Tactical games but i hate how you got to get to Midgame to "start being tested."
Like in Xcom 1 and 2 it fine to have stuff slowly come out but it gets annoying as you got to rank up people or also know "Darkest Dungeon 1 simulator"
I remember going to get Darkest Dungeon intill reading the "oh your first time got to the final level, welp they are scared now! Raise a new A rank team OWO" and that like 20 hours of facegrind.
That's the exact reason I haven't beat Darkest Dungeon to this day 😭 I am at the end levels but I've played painfully slow to level everyone and I know if I start losing them it's a wrap 😆
Honestly, It took me a long time to start XCOM 2 because this game is really demanding on the cognitive side. Being working 8~9 hours a day in software engineering and going straight to another activity that asks a lot of your brain is not easy.
Hey, I really love XCOM-2 and the fact it's fucking difficult (at least for me) but is not a relaxing gaming that you can easily jump off after a long work day.
I can definitely understand that, its a big part of the reason I would hesitate starting new games in Civilization and X-Com or why I would not come back to them for weeks at a time.
My all time favorite genre. But I’m still waiting for something better than XCOM 2. Which I feel managed to get a few casuals involved with its production value. So maybe just a lack of really-really good titles (outside of BG3 maybe)
But social medias erosion, and mobile gaming plays its part. I don’t partake of either.
XCom 2 hit a lot of sweet spots I think, and the modding community has kept it a strong case for the best overall experience right now. My concern is that a lot of titles cant hit the same production value. There is a distinct lack of high quality games in the same space at the moment (BG3 is amazing, but the outlier IMO)
@@GridCommand Yes, very much so. I played through Crown Wars, and the production and quality scream early access, many bugs and balance issues. At this point I wouldn't mind someone if a dev was to outright copy the XCOM Formula and production. Many try to spin it a certain way, and fail.
Also...great channel, would love it if you have a Discord. Many would join and chat about this genre.
I was pretty hopefully about crown wars - The reviews pointed out what you said and that was mostly why I avoided it. There was actually an article about a lot of ex-Firaxis devs that are working on a Star Wars large scale X-Com type of game, maybe that will be the next big thing.
Thank you for the compliment on the channel! I've considered a discord, something I may need to look a little more into. I'm glad you enjoy the content!