It's honestly really funny reading the comments after watching the video, because something like 80% of them get addressed in said video, but they'll never know since they won't actually watch it.
it's the commenter's dilemma. you either watch the video and leave a comment that no one will see (because the sorting algorithm is horrible and heavily favors early comments), or you write a comment before watching the video that might be entirely redundant.
@@crediblesalamander8056 FIRST! I mean... what? i should know what i'm talking about before I speak? Geez, okay... MOM! point being, remember that a lot of people on here aren't social, or are kids and excited to start to be able to use youtube/the net :shrug: - remember, we all started somewhere, we all over indulged and became hard to impress - while we all end up in the same place, tons of people who are still in the early phases of that
yeah, never change. steam is great until the media points out to you that you're not the owner of what you paid for, then "suddenly" there's a sheetstorm. never change npcs.
Very interested in hearing your take on this subject, as a longtime fan. As well as a gaming industry professional of 8 years. I too was effected by the layoffs. At first it wasn't too bad - my (old) company cut 10% of the staff (not including me) and marched forward with general optimism. But when things remained stagnant for another 6 months they hacked off another limb - nearly 1/3 of the remaining staff. I lost what was my dream job the day before Thanksgiving. I'm working again now - effectively moving from working with Square Enix and Sega to Xbox and Activision (agency side) and the truth is this: 1. Controversy is controversy, and the culture war elevates it, but the ultimate effect on game sales is minimal. Black Myth Wukong didn't succeed because of the developer's "anti-woke" stance. It succeeded because it was a good game. Dustborn didn't fail because it was "too woke," it failed because it was a bad game. It isn't a non-issue, but its less of an issue than Reddit and RUclips would have you believe. 2. The industry is adjusting away from a giga-blockbuster Marvel Movie format of development and towards a leaner approach that allows for the development of more games, not necessarily fewer, larger ones. One studio that does well here is Sega - they don't go crazy overboard on budgets and timelines. You get a new Yakuza/Like A Dragon or Sonic game every couple of years and they never have budgets large enough to sink the studio if they flop. Large teams are being dissolved, yes, but consumers are spending more than ever on games - the revenue is there - the issue is formatting the teams that develop and promote them in a sustainable fashion. In the end, the decision makers on the top aren't bearing enough of the blow that these flops have generated. Its horrifically unfair that the boots-on-the-ground folks are paying for C-Suite strategic mistakes in the form of layoffs. But these layoffs aren't the result of a lack of revenue or demand. They're the result of short-medium term strategic shortfalls. Too much time and money going into too few games that chase too broad an audience. The silver lining is that bombs like Dragon Age Veilguard and Concorde failed SO hard that the C-Suite is finally paying attention and making moves in the right direction.
Woke games fail because they're bad and they're bad because they're woke, ideology makes it almost impossible to create compelling characters and narratives pretty much all the things that could elevate bland gameplay with few if any innovative ideas. If you have exceptional title you can get away with turning entire cast gay, gameplay and innovation stands on it's own but this cases are rare and far between. If new game is just okay or less you have to package it in a way that's attractive to the target demographic not "diverse" demographic of obese black women who totally want to play shooters.
God comments should be disabled unless you fully watch the video. So many of he comments are directly just stating points already addressed in the video. I guess it was foolish to ever expect a constrictive talk on a social media platform.
so, you're opposed to free speech. Well, i think you shouldn't post unless i like what you're posting about (it's the same as what you're saying) grow up and get over yourself, or keep whining about something that has no negative impact in your life
@Bjorick that is not the same as what they're saying. Your comment was so stupid that it sent me reeling. Thanks for reminding me why I avoid comment sections :)
Truthfully the entire tech industry is overdue for a correction. The unsustainable promiseses of infinite exponential growth have stretched consuners thin. Gaming is just getting hit first because its the liesure activity of the bunch. As time and money grows scarcer liesure is always the first thing to cut.
27:50 I don’t blame you for not knowing the situation, but Earthblade wasn’t cancelled due to lack of greed aka lacking financial backing. The developers got into a disagreement about Ip ownership and wouldn’t want to work together anymore. In addition, the game lacked vision and was developed during difficult personal times for the co director. Extremely OK games is financially stable due to Celeste’s success and is exploring new ideas as we speak.
Im working in gamedev. Back in good games days, games were made by enthusiasts that loved gaming, now it is made by those who has better CV. Few care about your passion, most companies search for loud project in your portfolio.
Good mainstream games are important for a healthy industry. The game's industry can't rely on just indie games or even AA games, and good mainstream games that push boundaries are important and it's something mainstream games used to do.
People who say gaming is dying don’t play games lmao. People remember past years way more fondly than they deserve (minus a few) making it seem like recent years are horrible.
Well the unsustainable blockbuster live-service AAA model is dying it's long overdue death. Just like if the major labels or film studios were crashing & thousands of jobs were being lost year-on-year people might well say music or movie industries are dying even if there are still plenty of new releases. We're seeing Microsoft failing to see financial success after years and nearly 100B of acquisitions, Sony's burned multiple internal studios over the rush for live service while the market was oversaturated and in decline. Ubisoft might well be split up and sold for scrap. Big publishers and studios that have been the industry big dogs for decades are being brought to their knees. That isn't insignificant, it's huge. Yeah we'll still see tons of game releases, but what gets released & how, including hardware, will be massively impacted by this.
I dont know what happened. One day i just didn't play anything and that was like 6 years ago. Now i just watch videos on the hobby and collect ps2 games from charity shops.
honestly, ive gotten more enjoyment from a random ps2 pickup than the formulaic releases we put up with for the last 6+ years and praise as masterpieces. theres no more wow factor or discoveries to be made, just safe familiar investments that either hit it big or flop completely.
I think wow factor still exists, but it’s very personal. You won’t get it from the safe blockbuster games that have good graphics and cinematic ambitions and get disproportionate amounts of 9/10s. Everyone will be wowed by something else, and it’s hard to predict that for someone without knowing them personallyz
Even if you don’t like modern games, the modern world is the best place to be for gaming. Lots of easy access to thousands of games new and old. If you like a handful of video game genres, you’re never gonna run out of stuff to play (and it won’t be very expensive if you know what you’re doing).
I can have basically every game ever made for the consoles I had as a child on my laptop, forever. No online connection needed......tremendous time to be alive.
I've never seen your videos but mostly listened to trying to fall asleep. Really appreciate your calm narration, I've probably went through each video 10 times already.
20:31 "until the bubble burst like it did in the 80s" - I think that's a relevant comparison. There was no bubble in the 80s... in Europe. We just carried on playing home-grown games on our 8-bit micros and it was fine. I was around and gaming at the time, and had never even heard of this so-called "crash" until RUclips came along and there were all these Americans insisting it was such a big deal. Perhaps in 30-40 years Chinese gamers will be in that same position when the firewall comes down and they have to hear all of us westerners start talking about how things crashed and burned in the 2020s without them even noticing!
To be honest, i'm not sure i can agree with the end of the video. At least partially. You and I are not to blame. The youtuber spending dozens or even hundreds of hours trying to craft a well-researched and measured analysis of the issue, nor the viewer that actually stuck around and watched all of it even when it called out their personal biases. We are most likely the exception to the problem, probably being responsible with our time and money. Sadly we are also a fraction of the wider consumerbase. I guess the sad reality is that line simply can't infinitely go up. You run out of time, money and people to spend that time and money.
Gaming is fine. Never better going by the number of people who play video games. However, AAA gaming is, if not dying, then about to undergo a long overdue correction. These budgets have become completely unsustainable. They said last year that Spider-Man 2 needed to sale 7.2 million copies, at full price, to break even. That's completely unsustainable. What's worse for them is people are starting to reject all the MTX stuff that has allowed them to keep pushing these budgets up. What we're probably going to see is a major contraction, and a move from consumers to more mobile, indie, and A or AA games. While that will probably be good for gamers, it will be disastrous for employees because it will just give C-suite executives even more of a reason to add job destroying AI tools.
Not to mention that currently the economy is going downhill for people in the middle and lower class, making it harder for consumers to purchase games in general.
This is an indie game golden age, but a terrible time to be an indie developer. The market is oversaturated. As players we’ll look back fondly on the 2020s (crazy as that feels now) but as developers, not so much.
@ this is why I think MTX isn't selling like it used to. You have less and less people who have the discretionary in come to buy that stuff. So they either get games like Madden and just do game modes where it doesn't matter, or if they can't ignore it, they just buy another game. What's sadly ironic is that, if you're really enjoying a live service game, it's probably cheaper to play one of those vs. buying a new game every month. Even if you give something like GTA5 $400 per year, that's only about the cost of five new games.
I would add one more thing to the "indies" context. What we have had effectively for the last 10 years (if not more) are thousands of indie games developed for free (as pointed out in the video). What you didn't explain however is where that money came from. It wasn't publishers that lost that money, it was the developers themselves and it came non other than from the huge boom in tech company salaries. Failed indie devs were mostly very well paid current employees of tech companies when they were developing their "dream games", or tech employees on a sabbatical, or tech employees that were so absolutely sure of their "hireability" that they simply quit and went to do what they wanted.
You nailed it dude. The point is never about the single industry. It's about the system. Capitalism is now cannibalising itself and monopolies are its natural endgame. We should start to seriously think about what to do after its demise.
maybe true capitalism - rather then the version of pseudo capitalism we have know where the gov't acts on behalf of money i mean, you can say capitalism isn't the path, but capitalism makes poor people fat - other systems lead to poor people starving to death. i don't know about you, but i'd rather eat 'tasty garbage' then... nothing, but the younger generation is bored and would rather overturn society to 'feel something' - i guess hunger pains is something :shrug:
I don't think neverknowsbest was decrying capitalism. As he said, capitalism will fail us "unless something new or unexpected disrupts the market" or we ourselves better "decide where we put our money and how we spend our time". I don't really hear him taking a stance either way; but telling us that the answer isn't as simple as 'capitalism is or is not the problem' it is that, like most things, it is more complicated and has multiple ways to navigate this state. As he says, it's either the system's problem or a consequence of our own decisions. Given the tone of the video, it seems neverknowsbest is asserting that we have more power than we realize to shape the market and introspection into where we as consumers spend our money and time. The system is as broken as we make it and the corporations who benefit only benefit as much as we allow them.
I think we should think more about “reform” than “demise”, because the former puts more control in our hands to shape a positive future, and these messages can become self-fulfilling prophecies if the majority of people believe them. We can reform capitalism either into a better version of itself or into something totally new, but it’s important that we do “reform” it into something better and not just leave it to the whims of fate which might create something even worse.
Capitalism as a process aims for continuous and endless growth and efficiency. It'll just keep consuming until there is nothing left to improve upon. Stagnation is its enemy and that's why it continuously seeks innovation to survive. imo it works as intended, but we're all paying the price for it whenever it stands still or takes more than it needs or supply provides (outsourcing to cheaper labor, greed, unethical expansion, resource scarcity, etc.).
I think you overlook the problem created by games trying to provide ever-more photorealistic graphics. Games hit a plateau about a decade ago in terms of how much graphics can add to a game, yet developers still try to top previous games. This exacerbates the problems of uncanny valley, which means games must devote yet more production time, labor and budget to "fix" the graphics lest they get bad PR from meme-worthy clips (Like what happened to Mass Effect Andromeda). Games cost more and consequently publishers become more likely to meddle with the process in the hopes of protecting their investment. It's part of the reason why monetization got out of hand and publishers pushed for everything to be live service. It also means games take longer to come out and, consequently, they're more likely to feel dated by the time they are released. If the games were part of a series, the delay means that they become more likely to have lost any momentum generated by the earlier games in the series.
Horizon Forbidden West cost ~4 times as much as Horizon Zero Dawn did. Higher fidelity visuals are the only explanation I can think of for this discrepancy.
@@carlschrappen9712 It's a classic case of the law of diminishing returns. Did the graphics look 4 times better? Was there anything wrong with the visuals in the previous game? I'm guessing your answer to both questions was "no." So, why bother? I'm pretty sure most fans would rather that games instead came out faster and without higher price tags. I know I would.
ok i watched the entire video before commenting. Having the ending blame either capitalism and/or consumers honestly feels like a cop out, and was very unsatisfying after watching an hour worth of graphs and statistics. The whole section about bad games is based on the idea that gamers want every single game to be on the level of quality of a Baldur's Gate 3. Of course that's unrealistic, we just want games that at the very least TRY to be on that level of quality. It is very obvious when a game is made with passion and creativeness, and when a game is made just to meet a deadline, even if they are considered financial failures. I personally play Marvel Rivals over Overwatch 2, even when they are both "free to play", because I can see, hear, and feel the passion NetEase have over the game they are making, and its source material. The animations, sound effects, hero kits, and character interactions feel like they have all been crafted from actual Marvel fans. Overwatch 2 in comparison feels stale and boring, with their newer heroes being pretty bland for its own standards. While the anti-woke crowd is hating on AC Shadows before release due to its perceived forced inclusivity, many more are criticizing the gameplay previews over its slow and long combat, lack of facial animation, subpar voice acting, and dull stealth mechanics. It feels as if the developers just simply did not care about the game, and half-assed it until it was in a playable state. You have solid points about the market and consumers, but badly made games 100% contribute to the current downfall of the AAA game industry.
My thoughts as the video begins to play: Game development is a tug of war between art and product. Either extreme, or just bad luck, brings a developer closer to failure. Gamers have more choice than ever before. We have backlogs. We miss out on games we would have loved because the marketing and press didn't reach or resonate with us. We tire of game assembly lines, but avoid experiences too foreign. Game development as a business is starting to mirror restaurants as a business; they're everywhere, give you exactly what you're looking for and, most importantly, are extremely likely to fail. However, new and successful establishments are opening all the time. Gaming is not dying. In fact, it's thriving. Game development, on the other hand, has become highly competitive. Our stomachs can only hold so much food, and our time to play video games is finite.
I'm sure this could be described as immoral or whatever, but I don't really care that more and more indies are entering the market while the number of indies that hit it big every year stays mostly the same. I personally want games made by skilled autists with a deep passion for their projects, and frankly 80% of the indie market is people just chasing trends in the same way AAA was. "Undertale does well? Oh well it must mean that making a Pixel art RPG about depression or w/e is what the markets wants!" "Oh Stardew valley did well? must mean that the market is really craving farming sims!" Without actually realizing that the reason those games did well was because they weren't following trends. They were passion projects made by people not overly concerned with turning a profit. More indies is good for consumers, even if most crash and burn.
I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to just say that chasing trends equals bad. While I do definitely agree that the market gets over saturated with many frankly soulless copies of previous successful titles that bring nothing of value to the table and just hope to get a bite of the pie that the trend-setter has baked, you will also see several examples of games that actually do something interesting with the original premise. Trend-setters often don't have the luxury of being able to build off of something else as a foundation, so they often don't get everything right the first time. The copies can in fact be better games, or they can offer a spin or flavor to the trend that more caters to your particularly niche tastes - regardless of what they actually do that provides the value, there should still be a space for these titles in the market in my mind. What you will notice though is that the majority of players seem to be stuck in the original game. They are not interested in exploring the genre or trend further than to what they were initially introduced. For example, I can count off the top of my head four League of Legends clones that did each did some different things with the MOBA idea, that were all better than LoL in my mind for various reasons. They're all dead now and I miss them dearly - but hey, I could be playing League of Legends, which is still going very strong today. What seems to be the happening is that the only way to make a living in the game industry is to get extremely lucky and make a Valheim, otherwise you bust. I am well aware that games whose development is motivated by profit, by greed, are usually not good, but at the same time, there should be plenty of space for "fine" games that maybe don't win the GOTY this year but can still provide a good experience.
There is no reason CoD B6 needed 700 million to be made. You could have made all of the GOTY contenders and still have money leftover with the 700 million Cod spent
I started regularly playing video games last year. I haven't experienced dying, lifeless games because I have played almost zero bad live-service games. Only been playing singleplayer, great co-op, or well-designed live-service games.
"Consumers shape the market" is missing the other half of the equasion. Markets shape the consumers. How? I wonder if there are any people reading this comment who are unaware of Raid: Shadow Legends.
When you see the type of games that are releasing you can see why it's dying. Went from how do we make a great game to, How do we make the most money? Corporate greed at its finest.
As someone who is playing Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero at the same time, that is where most of my time and gaming money is going. Community and user created content is a big part for sticking with them year after year.
Granted, nostalgia is a factor that sometimes explains why people say things used to be better in "the good old days," but it is false to also argue all time periods produce art that is of exactly equal quality. The reality is that some eras produce better art than others. These golden ages happen for various reasons -- changes in technology used by artists; shifts in the market place; demographic changes in the artists in the audiences; the fading censorship regimes -- but they do happen. The golden ages are rarely recognized as such while they are happening. They only become obvious in retrospect. But who can deny that the 1960s was golden age for music? Similarly, it's obvious now that the mid-00s to the early teens were a golden age for video games.
Not everyone can make games like ER and BG3 but i'm not gonna sit here and pretend that Ubisoft or EA don't have the resources to make games like that. And it's not like people doesn't buy new games because they are busy playing GTA 5 or League. They don't buy new games because they don't provide enough value to be worth spending money on, over of playing something that they already own and enjoy. So yeah, new games bad.
Precisely. While you can always point to recent games that are good and sold well, they tend to be exceptions. The overall quality has definitely declined in the last decade.
27:47 This. This right here is what hurts the most as an artist. Most creatives love for their works to be enjoyed by different kinds of people and to be as engaging as possible. It doesn't have to be forcefully blasted into your face for it to get it's point across. If you do not have the backing in terms of funds to make those dreams a reality then you'll feel like your skills aren't worth it. You have to bend to the will of those higher up and are in charge of the final say that will make the most profit rather then going purely off passionate storytelling from and testing waters on super unique ideas. So many awesome ideas gone cause of greed first, postitive engagement second aside from most indies of course. This falls in line with both the gaming and animation industry. It sucks to need money, but it is the world we live in. Edit after watching it: This was an insanely wonderful take on how the masses view gaming, NNB! Sorry to hear your past videos didn't perform as well as you liked.
Games are DEFINITELY WORSE than they were in the 7th gen. All the flaws you listed with game graphics of the 7th gen are either still here (bloom effects, game hardware still can't hit 60fps consistently) or replaced with worse trends. AI upscalers, AI frame generation both making graphics worse and adding input latency, TAA blurring the f out of everything. Games launch in increasingly buggier states than they were in 7th gen. Game companies in this generation are also suddenly getting litigious both at the community and at each other. This is not rose-tinted nostalgia speaking. It's actually worse than 7th-gen.
At the same time, we have stardew valleys, minecrafts, balatros. The point was that each generation had great and bad games, so whichever best gen is up to your nostalgia, even if it can be justified with cherry picking.
Both of these generations are just as good, but the 7th gen had more good AAA games and the current extended 8th gen (I’m not calling it 9th until Switch 2 comes out with everything cross-gen anyway) has more good indie games. Don’t forget all the crappy. brown cover shooters that barely ran 20fps on the PS3/X360. Time filters the bad games (like many of those we’re seeing now) out.
The only reason I'd want 'wokeness' to go away, is so that the idiots who glom onto, base their whole identity around, and create content solely for the sake of controversy and stoking anger - is so that I don't have to see or listen to their garbage nonsense. Its okay to feel like 'wokeness' is poorly implemented. It often is. It can be really hamfisted, and shoved down your throat, pun intended; but whether they're gay or not shouldn't matter. Is the game good? Are the characters relatable? Do you feel for them? Is the overall story great? People need to look past their narrow world views, and unfortunately that comes with time, and maturity... and if you're in your 20's, sorry to say, you're most likely not there yet. And its far worse when you're younger than that. Stop letting people who's only job is to enrage you and get your clicks decide what you can and cannot enjoy. Expand your horizons. Liking things with gay people in it, or trans people, doesn't make you gay or trans. And if its a crappy, in-your-face, poorly written character, then fine. Get a refund lol.
Honestly, lending credence to the word "woke" by using it at this point just reaffirms the belief that it's an actual thing when it's a complete buzzword that has different meanings for many people. In this context, it's a wholly negative and shitty meaning. I'd only use it to make ironic jokes at this point. Even relatively normal people are tumbling over themselves trying to define what is and isn't woke when it should never be spoken of in the first place. So a game isn't comprised of 100% white and straight people, and maybe even women get to do things? "Woke!" or "No, it's NOT woke!" instead of just saying "Hey, this game has cool mechanics and beautiful art direction!". It's just tiring. Diversity should never have an impact on sales IMO - if any, only positive. But as a white person I'll never know what it feels like to be represented by game studios because being white is pretty much the default. I just accept the fact that it does mean something to quite a few people and move on. Veilguard was criticized by all sides. Turns out that you can have good AND bad "woke" writing, just as much as you can have good and bad "non-woke" writing. Crazy concept!
@@LLlap I 100% share this sentiment and I've been playing video games for 30 years. And you know what? How many video games I have played is irrelevant. We shouldn't listen to bigots who think people are robbing their video games from them because they're not full of white dudes and sexy white ladies.
Woke got diluted as a term when it entered the mainstream vernacular. Originally meant super-progressive leftist media where the political message was hammered into the player constantly and story/character was irrelevant. How the massage was displayed was what made it woke, not the message itself. For example, a woke anti-capitalist game would have a scene were a big fat caricature of a CEO steps on a worker while saying “I get to make you, my slave minority workers, make me money because I am a white man and I wont be satisfied till I own the world! Whahaha!” Meanwhile there is plenty of media with similar messages that don’t (or shouldn’t) fall into the woke category. Just look the Cyberpunk movies. The anti-capitalism messages are obvious but they are not ALL about that and even the more cartoony depiction of a CEO by Jared Lato in 2049 is more than just profits, it’s about being post-human.
Agreed. No one ever thinks white characters in games are woke because white players see themselves as the default. I just think Never was trying to be as non-controversial as possible but I think they did a satisfying job at demonstrating why it’s a stupid argument.
I think these people would've said "gaming is dying," "modern gaming sucks," or "gaming isn't fun anymore" if they had RUclips channels in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.
I’m morbidly curious about the “modern gaming sucks” video from the NES era. Mega Man 2 has so much AAA bloat with its eight weapons, platformers peaked with the pure simplicity of Pitfall 2!
People need to start factoring in 'the technology life cycle' element with this. It might not be the only factor, but it's one that almost nobody ever accounts for. "Video Killed the Radio Star' isn't just a bad song from the late 70s but something that just seems to be true.
What do you mean bad song. It was a hit and is still getting play today. Not all hits are good, but generally if a song is a hit and it's still popular 50 years later, it did something right.
That does not seem relevant here. Video "killed" radio because video was an evolution of radio. What is the evolution of videogames? Nothing is really different, technology-wise, between 2019 (when the industry was booming) and 2025.
@zaidabraham7310 yeah agreed, the next thing may be VR/AR/XR technology coming into maturity in the gaming space, but thast gonna take a while for it to mimic how games are now
A facet of this that you don't cover is a shift in disposable income of the gaming market. As the amount of disposable income of the average player drops, the demand for free to play/live service games increases and the demand for single player games decreases. A microtransaction costs less than a full game usually, so players without much disposable income at any given time may be tempted to buy a microtransaction now rather than wait and save for a full title in the future. Not to mention that all those new players entering the market from foreign countries are on average poorer than the current market, so while the industry as a whole grows the per capita spending of players decreases.
Agree, but it just also seems like the market of high budget is kinda cap for the foreseeable. In addition, those gacha/f2p games can be very time consuming as well money a drain
@@da39vinci Time is a more disposable resource for some than money. When I got into Yugioh Duel Links I looked at grinding that way. Minimum wage was like $12/hr. So which was a better way to get cards. Grinding for 1 hour in the game. Or go to work for 1 hour and spend it on the game?
just want to say the “Baldur’s Gate III is the new standard” argument people go for has always rubbed me wrong, not just for the concerns devs have raised. but cause like. the games people pick as the standard *rarely* actually become the standard. before BG3 you had people say this about like. Witcher 3. Mass Effect. Planescape Torment. had any of these games had games follow in their footsteps where people were like ah yes. our standards were met. like Planescape *kinda* with Disco Elysium. 20 years later. and in a game that is also pretty significantly different in a lot of ways. and also has yet to yield an equal. its good to want games to be good, but also please understand that good is such a wide range. special games are special for a reason
I think it's the different definitions of the word "standard" that's the problem here. You mean it as something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example. Basic, mass production, the mid point. They mean it as a conspicuous object (such as a banner) formerly carried at the top of a pole and used to mark a rallying point especially in battle or to serve as an emblem. The high point. Something to strive for. A better wording would be an "ideal exemplar" I guess. I'm still waiting for another Disco Elysium. Sustaining on new thorough playthroughs of streamers.
Your words at 27:15 really struck a chord with me. I have been developing my game for 1 year now. It looks vastly different from what I've previously uploaded. I'm making my dream game and it may not sell well, or I may not be able to continue developing games. At the end of the day I will have developed my dream game. Your words have encouraged me, even if my dream doesn't work out, at least I will have good company, as you said. Great video by the way!
The consumers are the consumers, but seemingly also seen as a product. Which is fine, don´t get me wrong. But that will push people away. Corporations doing corporations things wasn´t a problem until many players consistently told what they don´t like and were consistently ignored. When it happens once or twice, it can be forgiven. Especially if it is directed at the consumers directly and not euphemistic. Corporations have a good amount of advantages. But i think, people generally don´t like to be treated as children or idiots. So when people get a decision, its fine for most people. If they are forced to do something, they generally dislike and will probably fight it. Coming to so called "woke" games (dont like that word tbh) : It tries to force people into something. Stuff, especially most gamers likely already know. For many it feels like being treated as idiot or child, that has to be teached. Especially, if it´s very directly implemented in the game, so you cannot not see it. And then, also people around talk and talk around it to give it again even more coverage. I had stuff like that covered in games 20 years ago. People (also outside the games) that are so entitled - tell me every outside or in the game, that i have to get it beaten in if they suggest, i not already know it. Of course they dont think of me personally. But it feels like that. Remember a joke, that you found extremly funny the first time, but after you got it told a hundred times? You begin to hate it. And after some time also the messenger. The so called Anti-woke have it easier. They tell new stories every time. Person x did y. Developer a wants to promote b. The other stuff is... Doing thing c is bad. Doing thing d is good. Just categorizing something is... well. If you want to loose people, do it and keep repeating. Adding up to the point, being a consumer no longer feels good. Thats right what i feel. It´s fair, if companies or groups do what they do. But these are the obvious consequences. More and more people are not ready to spend a certain amount of money for games. Yes, depleted emerging market spaces are a problem. But we not only see a stop in growing. We actually see less and less people willing to pay for single player games. Aside from higher expecations in quality.
Being a consumer was the problem. People have gotten so used to constant consumption of media that at this point the incentive is just to churn out slop and hope theres enough bright colors and loud noises to keep enough attention that you open your wallet before you move onto the next trough.
People don't want bad games, the whole "w0ke" is just dressing (that they were given by grifters and content creators to bash, snark and whine - without any attempt at trying to understand the problem with AAA and modern gaming) for other issues... You can make good games and characters that are not straight or white - it's just they're rare for some reason. And often comes from talented and competend devs that modern AAA studios don't want to mimick even remotely. No idea why they don't want to get better in their craft. Also - for some reasons devs under that label often blames everyone and everything, but themselves. That's another problem - "toxic positivity". You can't improve when you can't be criticized and everything you write, build, code etc, you consider the best from the get go.
Developers who are woke cannot make good games, simple as that. There is no room for creativity when you have ideological commissars are breathing down your neck, that's what "toxic positivity" is about, you cannot challenge those who are at the top of the oppression olympics.
The gaming industry doesn't matter. Budgets have been constantly inflating for decades and all it's resulted in is higher prices, more celebrity voices, and deeper pores in the skin of the main characters. Nobody needs as much money as is being poured into these games. There's a point where teams get too big and half the budget is spent on useless waffling to make sure it gets spent. Indie games and small studios have literally always been the frontrunner of making actual genre defining video games. 30 years ago it was a studio of uni fratboys in their fallen apart rented studio and today the technology (and internet skill singularity) have made it so it's one guy in his bedroom that never sleeps making a game after work. At some point more money stops making a better game.
Same thing happening in movies. Blockbusters costing hundreds of millions when in the 90s there were way more mid budget movies. If it doesn't make a billion at the box office it's considered a failure.
Seeing NeverKnowsBest pop up on my feed is like waking up christmas morning and seeing that one box wrapped up in the shape of the thing you wanted. Cant be sure what it is yet but you know its gunna be good!
The change is that gamers are poorer while at the same time budgets, particularly those going to graphics that have managed to get WORSE in the past 10 years have increased, along with the cost and predatory monetization. To be frank, if publishers cut their graphic design teams down to 1/4 and doubled their software engineers to actually optimize their games their budgets would decrease, graphical fidelity wouldn't be all that lower, and the product would be more accessible because gamers could get a decent experience out of their 10 series cards.
If the market was willing to accept less powerful hardware for longer, this would be no big deal. I think the amount of cross-gen games is telling. It’s expensive enough to make a good looking AAA PS4 game, let alone trying to unlock the full potential of the PS5. Meanwhile on the Atari 2600 a single person could use its full potential developing one game for a year. At some point this insane growth in what resources you need for AAA development has to become too much, and I think we’re seeing that now.
I use RUclips in a browser on my phone and it loves doing this thing where I reply to the wrong comment. This was meant as a reply to someone talking about photorealistic graphics.
I appreciate your willingness to do a deep dive and paint a nuanced picture rather than settle for easy answers. First part of the video is a good standalone, but I like the video a lot more for everything else after. Great work, man!
Great video, I always enjoyed your more political takes, but I understand they can be very risky. I think the most terrifying part is, that like you said, everything is working as it should. It's not "the gays", it's not lacking talent or bad management, that is simply how capitalism works.
Seeing how videogames are still being looked down on as "something for kids, nerds, and man children" I have come to refuse to believe that gaming being bigger than movies is actually true. Add to that how slowly games are being made, with some games taking over half a decade to release. Meawhile Disney spits out Marvel movies yearly. If gaming really were as big as we claim, AAA developers would have no business taking as long as they do, because if gaming is as big as we claim... make bigger studios... hire more people. A game like Breath of the Wild or God of War should be made in 3 years TOPS.
12:30 And they pay themselves disgustingly high corporate bonuses. Don't forget that part.
Час назад
"Winner takes all" markets seems like the way we are programmed, for the better and for the worse, but GaaS games really ended up becoming the next set of "consoles", or better yet, "home appliances", that everyone uses but can only afford one. Basically, most people aren't going to be juggling between two hoovers/dishwashers at home, and it's mostly the same for GaaS games due to the lack of free time... The only real industry shakeup that could see happening would be if the Internet were to somehow be banned worldwide, with devastating consequences beyond just the gaming industry and indies.
I really liked how you brought together many sources to contextualize it into what really feels like a "Current Corporate State of the Games Industry" summary. It's funny to me that Activision's very existence is based on Atari underpaying and not valuing their employees.
You could say what we're looking at now is a giant bloated bubble, bursting at the seams, slowly deflating after being blocked by filling the room space. Something we could have seen coming from the start of the bubble growing. I think the stance I prefer most is the "do it as a hobby". It reduces a lot of the risks, and while you don't have the same power, you can do it for the sake of art. Just... don't overdo it.
Amazing video, really eye-opening. I'm here for these deep videos, that you somehow (definitely by putting time and effort, lots of them) nail them. Thanks for the time and effort you put into these videos.
This is a very interesting write up. Markets cannibalising themselves and products becoming less competitive and useful to customers is a fun side effect of the free market and the world of private equity.
How to bait for quick and easy views on RUclips using simplistic negativity bias in the last 5+ years - "GAMING IS DYING""ANIME IS DYING""BOOKS ARE DYING""MOVIES ARE DYING""TABLE-TOP WARGAMING IS DYING" "INSERT ANY MEDIA OR ART FORM IS DYING"
I love your videos, the presentation is always high quality and interesting. I imagine the Matthew effect is also present on RUclips, so commenting for the algorithm
Shouldn’t have created new gen consoles and then made games that are No Better than on the old gen . It’s been years and there nothing I’ve seen I’m a 500 dollar console worthy impressed by at all.
23:35 But the economic Framework changed from the post war consensus to neoliberalism in the 80’s. And now we are really starting to feel the consequences. So, strictly speaking, the system and politicians are to blame. But cooperations lobbied for this policies, at least most of them. So I think they are at least partly to blame. Love these “meta” videos about Emil, bad games, crybaby and this one.
This might sound weird but I'm glad someone else remembers the time when people were saying the craziest things to justify games being locked at 30fps!
Your neutrality when discussing "wokeness" is concerning. You casually mentioned how wokeness could "alienate" players but didn't mention *why* they might alienate players. This in turn implies that you would agree with the people who are alienated, or at least can see their side, but coming out and saying that would make you look "anti-woke", thus taking a side, so you don't. I enjoy your videos because you seem like a very well-educated and informed person, so I would hate to assume you have ignorant or bigoted views when it comes to socio-political topics, especially considering the state of the world at the moment.
It's a natural symptom of the right's demonization of the arts. Can't call everyone not in a stem field a loser and then be surprised when you don't run the show.
It really feels like what the far-right wanted all along: for people’s existences and identities to be treated as an option, something that the developers put in maliciously as a marketing tactic, something to please a market. That’s what is really disappointing in the video for me, talking about the inclusion of non-white, non-cis, or non-straight characters in the same way as the inclusion of microtransactions. That and talking about jobs and people’s identities as much more disposable than, for example, the absurd ballooning marketing costs for most of these failing games.
I didn't care for it either. I assume he did it to keep the anti-woke brigade from immediately disregarding the rest of the segment/video. (still, tho.)
I feel very bad for developers working in both indie spaces and other spaces. But at the same time it's pretty sweet to be a gamer right now. While it is really hard for individual indie devs to get their games noticed, this oversaturation also means that it is easy to find loads of great new indie games, so there's always something to look forward to. We're simply spoiled for choice. But my Steam wishlist and PSN wishlist is miles long, and every game I buy is 100 that I don't.
52:40 I like the fact when scrolling through the Steam page as stock footage has a game released within the last 7 days. One that has a dev time of over a decade. I wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for DQ2... which had been in development so long people didn't even know it was still being developed.
This essay style of "Here is a premise and here is what you think about it" "Lol jk you're actually wrong" "Lol jk you're actually right" "Next premise, rinse and repeat" is getting kind of annoying and I'm only 25 minutes in so far.
i will always believe the fault lies with both sides, on one hand the gaming industry has gotten so big that the huge corporate suits have figured out how much they can make and therefore have slowly pushed for simply getting quick money no matter how bad the game is in the long run, whereas in the past gaming was more underground if you will and so devs actually had to make something good to get enough people to buy it, but its also gamers who have gotten so used to fantastic products and games getting bigger and bigger, that every time our expectations rise no matter what the companies do, so it also becomes harder to please them, plus the lack of great games obviously also makes us more critical every time which certainly makes it harder,
I feel like Ubisoft is an example of how certain investment strategies work in certain environments. And the environment is always changing. So the Open World game dominated the 2010's, but the market changed and people might not want that as much now, but Ubisoft just keeps trying the same thing.
All bad things always trace back to something else. It gamers fault>it developers fault>it's the industry>the economy>the CEOs>the government>society>human nature>life>physics>... It's everyone's fault and no one's fault. Freewill exists in a maelstrom of chaos.
Great video, not sure if I agree with a couple of points raised. For one, the amount of disposable income and time available during the pandemic meant unsustainable growth for the games industry and over investment that would eventually have to be scaled back. Ditto on the interest rates which further encouraged investments. Secondly, high inflation is going to cripple the luxury/entertainment markets so it’s no surprise that the stock market for games is down, and no, newspapers aren’t the only other thing that’s struggling, that was a very unfair comparison. People have less disposable income to spend on non-essentials and a lot of countries are struggling with growth, episodically when the GDP is adjusted for inflation. Also, you touched on the fact that there are a lot more losers now but I would like to see how much that correlates with the amount of games that are being released: without commenting on the other parts of the market I have a feeling that the indie market oversaturated itself.
I think what annoys me is the same people who say "games are dying" tend to be the ones that never play any form of single player games and only play live service games that are designed to psychologically mind bend you into spending more money and exploiting you in every way possible. These people never actually play GOOD games. Instead of making new games, half of ya'll need to go back to playing the classics from the old consoles. In the same sentence of people complaining about new games coming out being bad.. they’ll drop £600 on skins and DLC in a live service. Also comparison is another thing that destroys the minds of gamers, games can't even come out today without gamers comparing it to a similar game. It's an aspect of the gaming community that I utterly despise that no one talks about.
People aren't saying 'Games are dying', they're saying 'Gaming is dying', which is an observation of the struggles and quality drops of the AAA industry. It's not suggesting that good games aren't made anymore, it's an observation that mainstream gaming is going down the toilet.
@@AL-lh2ht What do you want to hear? Because they were. Games were made to a higher standard because you couldn't patch them after the fact, and you had to make your money with the initial purchase and not milk the consumer over the course of 10 years. The AAA industry is suffering because they have pushed consumers too far and their business model is failing them. People are looking elsewhere for the satisfaction they aren't getting with the F2P/Live Service model anymore, and it's costing big players like Sony and Ubisoft dearly because they aren't adapting to this fast enough.
@@DaussPlays There was the 90's gaming crash. Later Sega had to dip out of the console market for failing so spectacularly. But the indie scene has never been better. And as someone who grew up enjoying indies and AA's. Gaming as an industry has never been better. I can't keep up with all the interesting releases now. When in years past I can count the amount of interesting games released on one hand.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047the exact video you’re commenting on addresses why this comment is mostly avoiding the point of this discussion. You quite literally parroted the point of view outlined in the video about indie games being the savior of gaming, and how, no matter what the issue is, indie is saving us!
Commenting before watching: No it's not. I played video games yesterday and I had fun, therefore it's not dying, simple as. I hope you will agree with me when I watch the video
No, gaming isn't "dying". Those people saying that just refuse to play anything except overhyped AAA games. The indy scene alone shows how gaming is better than ever.
I've almost exclusively played indie games for the last couple of years. BG3 is the only big budget game I can remember really enjoying, and I think that one is pretty damn unique in how Larian managed to wield such a budget with a indie-spirit. It blows my mind how the big studios consistently fail to produce games that I find even remotely interesting, with budgets on which the budgets of the indie games I love are literally a rounding error.
Great video. Honestly made me rethink a lot of thing I took for granted about the industry, feels really depressing but I can't really argue with the evidence.
38:53 People really forget there was a lot of bad stuff during the 7th Console Generation. Don’t get Angry Joe started on the Kinect and movie license games.
Gaming isnt dying. There is more choice than ever. However, this is as good as it is bad. The ceiling for being able to put out a game is non-existant. Anyone and everyone can now put out a video game and publish it to nearly any platform. This has over loaded the gaming catalogs everywhere. You now have to shuffle through hundreds, maybe even thousands of games just to find more than a few games that "may" interest you. Maybe. Then you go online and ask for suggestions and its always the same short list with little variation. Gaming is not dying. It is simply over-saturated with shovel ware and babies first project that should never have been published.
Damn I love the music you use to start the last section. The songs made for that game were all incredible. I won't spoil it for anyone if they like they can find it themselves ;)
I think that we are moving towards a realm of user-generated content. We've seen this with the internet and social media. We can note how young people are watching more tiktok and less TV. The growing indie games scene suggests something like this is slowly happening with gaming. In some ways, games like Minecraft or Roblox are almost games constructed from user-generated content. As tools improve, I think we'll see much less interest in AAA, and more situations where players are creating and sharing their own games and interactive experiences. AI would also play a role, where a game or experience could be created almost entirely from a prompt.
34:30 To a point, a massive reason as to its popularity was because of the mass of high quality R34 content for the characters. If i remember a few games came out at the same time with similar gameplay but fell to the wayside simply because they didn't have any gooner-able (new word) characters.
59:06 uh oh, the commoners are discovering the fundamental problem of capitalism. May I introduce you to an old man named Karl Marx and his hit book the Communist Manifesto?
When a mediocre game is the same price as one of those amazing games, you can't blame people for not buying the mediocre game.
"I like to post comments based on a title, who has time to watch a long essay and THEN comment?"
Priority number 1 is getting those youtube thumbs up
@@Apethantos hey, I watched the entire thing, ok?
Half the comments are people saying things that get deconstructed in the video. It’s incredible.
Lots of "experts" in the comments who haven't even watched the video yet, lol.
Never change, Gamers.
It's honestly really funny reading the comments after watching the video, because something like 80% of them get addressed in said video, but they'll never know since they won't actually watch it.
it's the commenter's dilemma. you either watch the video and leave a comment that no one will see (because the sorting algorithm is horrible and heavily favors early comments), or you write a comment before watching the video that might be entirely redundant.
@@crediblesalamander8056 FIRST!
I mean... what? i should know what i'm talking about before I speak? Geez, okay... MOM!
point being, remember that a lot of people on here aren't social, or are kids and excited to start to be able to use youtube/the net :shrug: - remember, we all started somewhere, we all over indulged and became hard to impress - while we all end up in the same place, tons of people who are still in the early phases of that
yeah, never change.
steam is great until the media points out to you that you're not the owner of what you paid for, then "suddenly" there's a sheetstorm. never change npcs.
@@Tornado5786so who's / what's actually dying? Gaming? Or sane people?
It's a trick question
Ah an hour of a morose british voice talking about videogames is just what I needed
Morose?
You say morose, I say erotic.
@@lucaswallo8127 and lugubrious
Like warm soup for the soul 🍲
@@lucaswallo8127dictionary?
cost of living > discretionary spending. This is a canary.
Very interested in hearing your take on this subject, as a longtime fan. As well as a gaming industry professional of 8 years.
I too was effected by the layoffs. At first it wasn't too bad - my (old) company cut 10% of the staff (not including me) and marched forward with general optimism. But when things remained stagnant for another 6 months they hacked off another limb - nearly 1/3 of the remaining staff. I lost what was my dream job the day before Thanksgiving. I'm working again now - effectively moving from working with Square Enix and Sega to Xbox and Activision (agency side) and the truth is this:
1. Controversy is controversy, and the culture war elevates it, but the ultimate effect on game sales is minimal. Black Myth Wukong didn't succeed because of the developer's "anti-woke" stance. It succeeded because it was a good game. Dustborn didn't fail because it was "too woke," it failed because it was a bad game. It isn't a non-issue, but its less of an issue than Reddit and RUclips would have you believe.
2. The industry is adjusting away from a giga-blockbuster Marvel Movie format of development and towards a leaner approach that allows for the development of more games, not necessarily fewer, larger ones. One studio that does well here is Sega - they don't go crazy overboard on budgets and timelines. You get a new Yakuza/Like A Dragon or Sonic game every couple of years and they never have budgets large enough to sink the studio if they flop. Large teams are being dissolved, yes, but consumers are spending more than ever on games - the revenue is there - the issue is formatting the teams that develop and promote them in a sustainable fashion.
In the end, the decision makers on the top aren't bearing enough of the blow that these flops have generated. Its horrifically unfair that the boots-on-the-ground folks are paying for C-Suite strategic mistakes in the form of layoffs. But these layoffs aren't the result of a lack of revenue or demand. They're the result of short-medium term strategic shortfalls. Too much time and money going into too few games that chase too broad an audience. The silver lining is that bombs like Dragon Age Veilguard and Concorde failed SO hard that the C-Suite is finally paying attention and making moves in the right direction.
I think I likey you
If you hire woke activists to make your game you will fail.
Wukong succeeded because it was the first Chinese AAA (and not completely terrible)
Out of curiosity how much is your takehome wage compared to how many hours you work a week?
Woke games fail because they're bad and they're bad because they're woke, ideology makes it almost impossible to create compelling characters and narratives pretty much all the things that could elevate bland gameplay with few if any innovative ideas. If you have exceptional title you can get away with turning entire cast gay, gameplay and innovation stands on it's own but this cases are rare and far between. If new game is just okay or less you have to package it in a way that's attractive to the target demographic not "diverse" demographic of obese black women who totally want to play shooters.
God comments should be disabled unless you fully watch the video. So many of he comments are directly just stating points already addressed in the video. I guess it was foolish to ever expect a constrictive talk on a social media platform.
so, you're opposed to free speech. Well, i think you shouldn't post unless i like what you're posting about (it's the same as what you're saying)
grow up and get over yourself, or keep whining about something that has no negative impact in your life
@@BjorickIt’s not the same at all actually.
@Bjorick that is not the same as what they're saying. Your comment was so stupid that it sent me reeling. Thanks for reminding me why I avoid comment sections :)
Boy the replies on this are gonna be something…
@@Bjorick Criticizing comments is "opposing free speech"??
NeverKnowsBest being my best source of bias-checking again
"source of bias checking" that is clearly biased is hardly a "source" for anything.
Truthfully the entire tech industry is overdue for a correction. The unsustainable promiseses of infinite exponential growth have stretched consuners thin. Gaming is just getting hit first because its the liesure activity of the bunch. As time and money grows scarcer liesure is always the first thing to cut.
27:50 I don’t blame you for not knowing the situation, but Earthblade wasn’t cancelled due to lack of greed aka lacking financial backing. The developers got into a disagreement about Ip ownership and wouldn’t want to work together anymore. In addition, the game lacked vision and was developed during difficult personal times for the co director. Extremely OK games is financially stable due to Celeste’s success and is exploring new ideas as we speak.
Im working in gamedev. Back in good games days, games were made by enthusiasts that loved gaming, now it is made by those who has better CV. Few care about your passion, most companies search for loud project in your portfolio.
People who say gaming is dying only play mainstream games.
Good mainstream games are important for a healthy industry. The game's industry can't rely on just indie games or even AA games, and good mainstream games that push boundaries are important and it's something mainstream games used to do.
All they know is Cod and Sports game lmao why do we even bother with them.
Check out Starsector, I like it a moderate amount.
People who say gaming is dying don’t play games lmao. People remember past years way more fondly than they deserve (minus a few) making it seem like recent years are horrible.
Well the unsustainable blockbuster live-service AAA model is dying it's long overdue death.
Just like if the major labels or film studios were crashing & thousands of jobs were being lost year-on-year people might well say music or movie industries are dying even if there are still plenty of new releases.
We're seeing Microsoft failing to see financial success after years and nearly 100B of acquisitions, Sony's burned multiple internal studios over the rush for live service while the market was oversaturated and in decline. Ubisoft might well be split up and sold for scrap. Big publishers and studios that have been the industry big dogs for decades are being brought to their knees.
That isn't insignificant, it's huge. Yeah we'll still see tons of game releases, but what gets released & how, including hardware, will be massively impacted by this.
I dont know what happened. One day i just didn't play anything and that was like 6 years ago. Now i just watch videos on the hobby and collect ps2 games from charity shops.
honestly, ive gotten more enjoyment from a random ps2 pickup than the formulaic releases we put up with for the last 6+ years and praise as masterpieces. theres no more wow factor or discoveries to be made, just safe familiar investments that either hit it big or flop completely.
is that fulfilling
What kinds of games did u used to play?
I think wow factor still exists, but it’s very personal. You won’t get it from the safe blockbuster games that have good graphics and cinematic ambitions and get disproportionate amounts of 9/10s. Everyone will be wowed by something else, and it’s hard to predict that for someone without knowing them personallyz
Even if you don’t like modern games, the modern world is the best place to be for gaming. Lots of easy access to thousands of games new and old. If you like a handful of video game genres, you’re never gonna run out of stuff to play (and it won’t be very expensive if you know what you’re doing).
I can have basically every game ever made for the consoles I had as a child on my laptop, forever. No online connection needed......tremendous time to be alive.
This. The gaming catalog keeps growing, same for music and cinema.
My takeaway from the video is that while it might be a frightening era for a game developer, it’s never been a better time to be a player.
I've never seen your videos but mostly listened to trying to fall asleep. Really appreciate your calm narration, I've probably went through each video 10 times already.
20:31 "until the bubble burst like it did in the 80s" - I think that's a relevant comparison. There was no bubble in the 80s... in Europe. We just carried on playing home-grown games on our 8-bit micros and it was fine.
I was around and gaming at the time, and had never even heard of this so-called "crash" until RUclips came along and there were all these Americans insisting it was such a big deal. Perhaps in 30-40 years Chinese gamers will be in that same position when the firewall comes down and they have to hear all of us westerners start talking about how things crashed and burned in the 2020s without them even noticing!
To be honest, i'm not sure i can agree with the end of the video. At least partially. You and I are not to blame. The youtuber spending dozens or even hundreds of hours trying to craft a well-researched and measured analysis of the issue, nor the viewer that actually stuck around and watched all of it even when it called out their personal biases. We are most likely the exception to the problem, probably being responsible with our time and money. Sadly we are also a fraction of the wider consumerbase.
I guess the sad reality is that line simply can't infinitely go up. You run out of time, money and people to spend that time and money.
Gaming is fine. Never better going by the number of people who play video games. However, AAA gaming is, if not dying, then about to undergo a long overdue correction. These budgets have become completely unsustainable. They said last year that Spider-Man 2 needed to sale 7.2 million copies, at full price, to break even. That's completely unsustainable. What's worse for them is people are starting to reject all the MTX stuff that has allowed them to keep pushing these budgets up. What we're probably going to see is a major contraction, and a move from consumers to more mobile, indie, and A or AA games. While that will probably be good for gamers, it will be disastrous for employees because it will just give C-suite executives even more of a reason to add job destroying AI tools.
You could say the correct term would be "gaming is stirring"
Not to mention that currently the economy is going downhill for people in the middle and lower class, making it harder for consumers to purchase games in general.
This is an indie game golden age, but a terrible time to be an indie developer. The market is oversaturated. As players we’ll look back fondly on the 2020s (crazy as that feels now) but as developers, not so much.
@ this is why I think MTX isn't selling like it used to. You have less and less people who have the discretionary in come to buy that stuff. So they either get games like Madden and just do game modes where it doesn't matter, or if they can't ignore it, they just buy another game. What's sadly ironic is that, if you're really enjoying a live service game, it's probably cheaper to play one of those vs. buying a new game every month. Even if you give something like GTA5 $400 per year, that's only about the cost of five new games.
I would add one more thing to the "indies" context. What we have had effectively for the last 10 years (if not more) are thousands of indie games developed for free (as pointed out in the video). What you didn't explain however is where that money came from. It wasn't publishers that lost that money, it was the developers themselves and it came non other than from the huge boom in tech company salaries. Failed indie devs were mostly very well paid current employees of tech companies when they were developing their "dream games", or tech employees on a sabbatical, or tech employees that were so absolutely sure of their "hireability" that they simply quit and went to do what they wanted.
You nailed it dude. The point is never about the single industry. It's about the system. Capitalism is now cannibalising itself and monopolies are its natural endgame. We should start to seriously think about what to do after its demise.
maybe true capitalism - rather then the version of pseudo capitalism we have know where the gov't acts on behalf of money
i mean, you can say capitalism isn't the path, but capitalism makes poor people fat - other systems lead to poor people starving to death. i don't know about you, but i'd rather eat 'tasty garbage' then... nothing, but the younger generation is bored and would rather overturn society to 'feel something' - i guess hunger pains is something :shrug:
I don't think neverknowsbest was decrying capitalism. As he said, capitalism will fail us "unless something new or unexpected disrupts the market" or we ourselves better "decide where we put our money and how we spend our time". I don't really hear him taking a stance either way; but telling us that the answer isn't as simple as 'capitalism is or is not the problem' it is that, like most things, it is more complicated and has multiple ways to navigate this state. As he says, it's either the system's problem or a consequence of our own decisions. Given the tone of the video, it seems neverknowsbest is asserting that we have more power than we realize to shape the market and introspection into where we as consumers spend our money and time. The system is as broken as we make it and the corporations who benefit only benefit as much as we allow them.
I think we should think more about “reform” than “demise”, because the former puts more control in our hands to shape a positive future, and these messages can become self-fulfilling prophecies if the majority of people believe them.
We can reform capitalism either into a better version of itself or into something totally new, but it’s important that we do “reform” it into something better and not just leave it to the whims of fate which might create something even worse.
Capitalism as a process aims for continuous and endless growth and efficiency. It'll just keep consuming until there is nothing left to improve upon. Stagnation is its enemy and that's why it continuously seeks innovation to survive.
imo it works as intended, but we're all paying the price for it whenever it stands still or takes more than it needs or supply provides (outsourcing to cheaper labor, greed, unethical expansion, resource scarcity, etc.).
I think you overlook the problem created by games trying to provide ever-more photorealistic graphics. Games hit a plateau about a decade ago in terms of how much graphics can add to a game, yet developers still try to top previous games. This exacerbates the problems of uncanny valley, which means games must devote yet more production time, labor and budget to "fix" the graphics lest they get bad PR from meme-worthy clips (Like what happened to Mass Effect Andromeda). Games cost more and consequently publishers become more likely to meddle with the process in the hopes of protecting their investment. It's part of the reason why monetization got out of hand and publishers pushed for everything to be live service. It also means games take longer to come out and, consequently, they're more likely to feel dated by the time they are released. If the games were part of a series, the delay means that they become more likely to have lost any momentum generated by the earlier games in the series.
Horizon Forbidden West cost ~4 times as much as Horizon Zero Dawn did. Higher fidelity visuals are the only explanation I can think of for this discrepancy.
@@carlschrappen9712 It's a classic case of the law of diminishing returns. Did the graphics look 4 times better? Was there anything wrong with the visuals in the previous game? I'm guessing your answer to both questions was "no." So, why bother? I'm pretty sure most fans would rather that games instead came out faster and without higher price tags. I know I would.
i was starting to think you stopped making videos again. glad to see your quality content
Videos like take time to make. That why I am surprise he beat me to Emil video.
ok i watched the entire video before commenting. Having the ending blame either capitalism and/or consumers honestly feels like a cop out, and was very unsatisfying after watching an hour worth of graphs and statistics. The whole section about bad games is based on the idea that gamers want every single game to be on the level of quality of a Baldur's Gate 3. Of course that's unrealistic, we just want games that at the very least TRY to be on that level of quality. It is very obvious when a game is made with passion and creativeness, and when a game is made just to meet a deadline, even if they are considered financial failures. I personally play Marvel Rivals over Overwatch 2, even when they are both "free to play", because I can see, hear, and feel the passion NetEase have over the game they are making, and its source material. The animations, sound effects, hero kits, and character interactions feel like they have all been crafted from actual Marvel fans. Overwatch 2 in comparison feels stale and boring, with their newer heroes being pretty bland for its own standards. While the anti-woke crowd is hating on AC Shadows before release due to its perceived forced inclusivity, many more are criticizing the gameplay previews over its slow and long combat, lack of facial animation, subpar voice acting, and dull stealth mechanics. It feels as if the developers just simply did not care about the game, and half-assed it until it was in a playable state. You have solid points about the market and consumers, but badly made games 100% contribute to the current downfall of the AAA game industry.
My thoughts as the video begins to play:
Game development is a tug of war between art and product. Either extreme, or just bad luck, brings a developer closer to failure.
Gamers have more choice than ever before. We have backlogs. We miss out on games we would have loved because the marketing and press didn't reach or resonate with us. We tire of game assembly lines, but avoid experiences too foreign.
Game development as a business is starting to mirror restaurants as a business; they're everywhere, give you exactly what you're looking for and, most importantly, are extremely likely to fail. However, new and successful establishments are opening all the time.
Gaming is not dying. In fact, it's thriving. Game development, on the other hand, has become highly competitive. Our stomachs can only hold so much food, and our time to play video games is finite.
Let gaming die for a while I say. Gives me some time to tackle this backlog.
I'm sure this could be described as immoral or whatever, but I don't really care that more and more indies are entering the market while the number of indies that hit it big every year stays mostly the same. I personally want games made by skilled autists with a deep passion for their projects, and frankly 80% of the indie market is people just chasing trends in the same way AAA was.
"Undertale does well? Oh well it must mean that making a Pixel art RPG about depression or w/e is what the markets wants!"
"Oh Stardew valley did well? must mean that the market is really craving farming sims!"
Without actually realizing that the reason those games did well was because they weren't following trends. They were passion projects made by people not overly concerned with turning a profit.
More indies is good for consumers, even if most crash and burn.
I love how your comment still works even with the “skilled autists” typo.
@@thatdanjamesguy.330 I did not take it for a typo.
I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to just say that chasing trends equals bad. While I do definitely agree that the market gets over saturated with many frankly soulless copies of previous successful titles that bring nothing of value to the table and just hope to get a bite of the pie that the trend-setter has baked, you will also see several examples of games that actually do something interesting with the original premise. Trend-setters often don't have the luxury of being able to build off of something else as a foundation, so they often don't get everything right the first time. The copies can in fact be better games, or they can offer a spin or flavor to the trend that more caters to your particularly niche tastes - regardless of what they actually do that provides the value, there should still be a space for these titles in the market in my mind.
What you will notice though is that the majority of players seem to be stuck in the original game. They are not interested in exploring the genre or trend further than to what they were initially introduced. For example, I can count off the top of my head four League of Legends clones that did each did some different things with the MOBA idea, that were all better than LoL in my mind for various reasons. They're all dead now and I miss them dearly - but hey, I could be playing League of Legends, which is still going very strong today.
What seems to be the happening is that the only way to make a living in the game industry is to get extremely lucky and make a Valheim, otherwise you bust. I am well aware that games whose development is motivated by profit, by greed, are usually not good, but at the same time, there should be plenty of space for "fine" games that maybe don't win the GOTY this year but can still provide a good experience.
There is no reason CoD B6 needed 700 million to be made. You could have made all of the GOTY contenders and still have money leftover with the 700 million Cod spent
They just threw money at the problem. It’s mismanagement. You can’t brute force quality, not a massive 0 to 100 increase in quality anyway.
I started regularly playing video games last year. I haven't experienced dying, lifeless games because I have played almost zero bad live-service games. Only been playing singleplayer, great co-op, or well-designed live-service games.
"Consumers shape the market" is missing the other half of the equasion.
Markets shape the consumers. How? I wonder if there are any people reading this comment who are unaware of Raid: Shadow Legends.
When you see the type of games that are releasing you can see why it's dying. Went from how do we make a great game to, How do we make the most money? Corporate greed at its finest.
As someone who is playing Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero at the same time, that is where most of my time and gaming money is going. Community and user created content is a big part for sticking with them year after year.
New neverknowsbest video? 🗣️🔥 LET'S FUCKING GO!
Granted, nostalgia is a factor that sometimes explains why people say things used to be better in "the good old days," but it is false to also argue all time periods produce art that is of exactly equal quality. The reality is that some eras produce better art than others. These golden ages happen for various reasons -- changes in technology used by artists; shifts in the market place; demographic changes in the artists in the audiences; the fading censorship regimes -- but they do happen. The golden ages are rarely recognized as such while they are happening. They only become obvious in retrospect. But who can deny that the 1960s was golden age for music? Similarly, it's obvious now that the mid-00s to the early teens were a golden age for video games.
Gamers are starting to identify as non-buynary.
Not everyone can make games like ER and BG3 but i'm not gonna sit here and pretend that Ubisoft or EA don't have the resources to make games like that.
And it's not like people doesn't buy new games because they are busy playing GTA 5 or League. They don't buy new games because they don't provide enough value to be worth spending money on, over of playing something that they already own and enjoy. So yeah, new games bad.
Precisely. While you can always point to recent games that are good and sold well, they tend to be exceptions. The overall quality has definitely declined in the last decade.
27:47 This. This right here is what hurts the most as an artist.
Most creatives love for their works to be enjoyed by different kinds of people and to be as engaging as possible. It doesn't have to be forcefully blasted into your face for it to get it's point across.
If you do not have the backing in terms of funds to make those dreams a reality then you'll feel like your skills aren't worth it. You have to bend to the will of those higher up and are in charge of the final say that will make the most profit rather then going purely off passionate storytelling from and testing waters on super unique ideas. So many awesome ideas gone cause of greed first, postitive engagement second aside from most indies of course.
This falls in line with both the gaming and animation industry. It sucks to need money, but it is the world we live in.
Edit after watching it: This was an insanely wonderful take on how the masses view gaming, NNB! Sorry to hear your past videos didn't perform as well as you liked.
Him talking about how the games that came out when people were teenagers and then talked about the PS3
Made me feel really old
It’ll be the PS4 generation soon, just you wait.
Games are DEFINITELY WORSE than they were in the 7th gen. All the flaws you listed with game graphics of the 7th gen are either still here (bloom effects, game hardware still can't hit 60fps consistently) or replaced with worse trends. AI upscalers, AI frame generation both making graphics worse and adding input latency, TAA blurring the f out of everything. Games launch in increasingly buggier states than they were in 7th gen. Game companies in this generation are also suddenly getting litigious both at the community and at each other.
This is not rose-tinted nostalgia speaking. It's actually worse than 7th-gen.
At the same time, we have stardew valleys, minecrafts, balatros. The point was that each generation had great and bad games, so whichever best gen is up to your nostalgia, even if it can be justified with cherry picking.
@@TheOrian34 Minecraft is a game from 7th-gen.
Both of these generations are just as good, but the 7th gen had more good AAA games and the current extended 8th gen (I’m not calling it 9th until Switch 2 comes out with everything cross-gen anyway) has more good indie games. Don’t forget all the crappy. brown cover shooters that barely ran 20fps on the PS3/X360. Time filters the bad games (like many of those we’re seeing now) out.
The only reason I'd want 'wokeness' to go away, is so that the idiots who glom onto, base their whole identity around, and create content solely for the sake of controversy and stoking anger - is so that I don't have to see or listen to their garbage nonsense. Its okay to feel like 'wokeness' is poorly implemented. It often is. It can be really hamfisted, and shoved down your throat, pun intended; but whether they're gay or not shouldn't matter. Is the game good? Are the characters relatable? Do you feel for them? Is the overall story great? People need to look past their narrow world views, and unfortunately that comes with time, and maturity... and if you're in your 20's, sorry to say, you're most likely not there yet. And its far worse when you're younger than that. Stop letting people who's only job is to enrage you and get your clicks decide what you can and cannot enjoy. Expand your horizons. Liking things with gay people in it, or trans people, doesn't make you gay or trans. And if its a crappy, in-your-face, poorly written character, then fine. Get a refund lol.
Honestly, lending credence to the word "woke" by using it at this point just reaffirms the belief that it's an actual thing when it's a complete buzzword that has different meanings for many people. In this context, it's a wholly negative and shitty meaning. I'd only use it to make ironic jokes at this point. Even relatively normal people are tumbling over themselves trying to define what is and isn't woke when it should never be spoken of in the first place.
So a game isn't comprised of 100% white and straight people, and maybe even women get to do things? "Woke!" or "No, it's NOT woke!" instead of just saying "Hey, this game has cool mechanics and beautiful art direction!". It's just tiring. Diversity should never have an impact on sales IMO - if any, only positive. But as a white person I'll never know what it feels like to be represented by game studios because being white is pretty much the default. I just accept the fact that it does mean something to quite a few people and move on.
Veilguard was criticized by all sides. Turns out that you can have good AND bad "woke" writing, just as much as you can have good and bad "non-woke" writing. Crazy concept!
how many games have you played?
@@LLlap I 100% share this sentiment and I've been playing video games for 30 years. And you know what? How many video games I have played is irrelevant. We shouldn't listen to bigots who think people are robbing their video games from them because they're not full of white dudes and sexy white ladies.
Woke got diluted as a term when it entered the mainstream vernacular. Originally meant super-progressive leftist media where the political message was hammered into the player constantly and story/character was irrelevant.
How the massage was displayed was what made it woke, not the message itself. For example, a woke anti-capitalist game would have a scene were a big fat caricature of a CEO steps on a worker while saying “I get to make you, my slave minority workers, make me money because I am a white man and I wont be satisfied till I own the world! Whahaha!”
Meanwhile there is plenty of media with similar messages that don’t (or shouldn’t) fall into the woke category. Just look the Cyberpunk movies. The anti-capitalism messages are obvious but they are not ALL about that and even the more cartoony depiction of a CEO by Jared Lato in 2049 is more than just profits, it’s about being post-human.
Agreed. No one ever thinks white characters in games are woke because white players see themselves as the default.
I just think Never was trying to be as non-controversial as possible but I think they did a satisfying job at demonstrating why it’s a stupid argument.
White women protagonists are decryed as woke constantly. Or gay white men. Only gruff straight white dad with a buried heart of gold is reliably safe.
imagine a world where line didn't HAVE to go up, always, all the time... what a world that might be...
I think these people would've said "gaming is dying," "modern gaming sucks," or "gaming isn't fun anymore" if they had RUclips channels in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.
Yup
I’m morbidly curious about the “modern gaming sucks” video from the NES era. Mega Man 2 has so much AAA bloat with its eight weapons, platformers peaked with the pure simplicity of Pitfall 2!
People need to start factoring in 'the technology life cycle' element with this. It might not be the only factor, but it's one that almost nobody ever accounts for.
"Video Killed the Radio Star' isn't just a bad song from the late 70s but something that just seems to be true.
What do you mean bad song. It was a hit and is still getting play today. Not all hits are good, but generally if a song is a hit and it's still popular 50 years later, it did something right.
And how does this technology factor play into this discussion
That does not seem relevant here. Video "killed" radio because video was an evolution of radio. What is the evolution of videogames? Nothing is really different, technology-wise, between 2019 (when the industry was booming) and 2025.
@zaidabraham7310 yeah agreed, the next thing may be VR/AR/XR technology coming into maturity in the gaming space, but thast gonna take a while for it to mimic how games are now
Shit, I had to drop everything I was doing after seeing the new video notification.
SAME
A facet of this that you don't cover is a shift in disposable income of the gaming market. As the amount of disposable income of the average player drops, the demand for free to play/live service games increases and the demand for single player games decreases. A microtransaction costs less than a full game usually, so players without much disposable income at any given time may be tempted to buy a microtransaction now rather than wait and save for a full title in the future. Not to mention that all those new players entering the market from foreign countries are on average poorer than the current market, so while the industry as a whole grows the per capita spending of players decreases.
Agree, but it just also seems like the market of high budget is kinda cap for the foreseeable. In addition, those gacha/f2p games can be very time consuming as well money a drain
@@da39vinci Time is a more disposable resource for some than money.
When I got into Yugioh Duel Links I looked at grinding that way. Minimum wage was like $12/hr. So which was a better way to get cards.
Grinding for 1 hour in the game. Or go to work for 1 hour and spend it on the game?
just want to say the “Baldur’s Gate III is the new standard” argument people go for has always rubbed me wrong, not just for the concerns devs have raised. but cause like. the games people pick as the standard *rarely* actually become the standard. before BG3 you had people say this about like. Witcher 3. Mass Effect. Planescape Torment. had any of these games had games follow in their footsteps where people were like ah yes. our standards were met. like Planescape *kinda* with Disco Elysium. 20 years later. and in a game that is also pretty significantly different in a lot of ways. and also has yet to yield an equal. its good to want games to be good, but also please understand that good is such a wide range. special games are special for a reason
I think it's the different definitions of the word "standard" that's the problem here.
You mean it as something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example. Basic, mass production, the mid point.
They mean it as a conspicuous object (such as a banner) formerly carried at the top of a pole and used to mark a rallying point especially in battle or to serve as an emblem. The high point. Something to strive for.
A better wording would be an "ideal exemplar" I guess.
I'm still waiting for another Disco Elysium. Sustaining on new thorough playthroughs of streamers.
Please don't use AI-altered B-roll footage that removes Bobby Kotick's horns.
Your words at 27:15 really struck a chord with me. I have been developing my game for 1 year now. It looks vastly different from what I've previously uploaded. I'm making my dream game and it may not sell well, or I may not be able to continue developing games. At the end of the day I will have developed my dream game. Your words have encouraged me, even if my dream doesn't work out, at least I will have good company, as you said. Great video by the way!
Neverknows and Noah in the same week?!?!?
Holy shit you're right. That's insane.
irl gasped
theres a new Noah video?!
🚗💨
Being a consumer no longer feels good. I think people have had their fill
because we're not consumers, we're customers. but many have forgotten that. don't let them tell you otherwise.
"People" isn't a thing. The world is way bigger than you can imagine, and you can only view it through your own limited lense.
The consumers are the consumers, but seemingly also seen as a product.
Which is fine, don´t get me wrong. But that will push people away. Corporations doing corporations things wasn´t a problem until many players consistently told what they don´t like and were consistently ignored. When it happens once or twice, it can be forgiven. Especially if it is directed at the consumers directly and not euphemistic. Corporations have a good amount of advantages. But i think, people generally don´t like to be treated as children or idiots.
So when people get a decision, its fine for most people. If they are forced to do something, they generally dislike and will probably fight it.
Coming to so called "woke" games (dont like that word tbh) : It tries to force people into something. Stuff, especially most gamers likely already know. For many it feels like being treated as idiot or child, that has to be teached. Especially, if it´s very directly implemented in the game, so you cannot not see it. And then, also people around talk and talk around it to give it again even more coverage. I had stuff like that covered in games 20 years ago. People (also outside the games) that are so entitled - tell me every outside or in the game, that i have to get it beaten in if they suggest, i not already know it. Of course they dont think of me personally. But it feels like that. Remember a joke, that you found extremly funny the first time, but after you got it told a hundred times? You begin to hate it. And after some time also the messenger.
The so called Anti-woke have it easier. They tell new stories every time. Person x did y. Developer a wants to promote b.
The other stuff is... Doing thing c is bad. Doing thing d is good. Just categorizing something is... well. If you want to loose people, do it and keep repeating.
Adding up to the point, being a consumer no longer feels good. Thats right what i feel. It´s fair, if companies or groups do what they do. But these are the obvious consequences.
More and more people are not ready to spend a certain amount of money for games. Yes, depleted emerging market spaces are a problem. But we not only see a stop in growing. We actually see less and less people willing to pay for single player games. Aside from higher expecations in quality.
Being a consumer was the problem. People have gotten so used to constant consumption of media that at this point the incentive is just to churn out slop and hope theres enough bright colors and loud noises to keep enough attention that you open your wallet before you move onto the next trough.
Yeah you just realize after a while "Spending 60$ on a game won't make me happy."
People don't want bad games, the whole "w0ke" is just dressing (that they were given by grifters and content creators to bash, snark and whine - without any attempt at trying to understand the problem with AAA and modern gaming) for other issues...
You can make good games and characters that are not straight or white - it's just they're rare for some reason. And often comes from talented and competend devs that modern AAA studios don't want to mimick even remotely. No idea why they don't want to get better in their craft.
Also - for some reasons devs under that label often blames everyone and everything, but themselves. That's another problem - "toxic positivity". You can't improve when you can't be criticized and everything you write, build, code etc, you consider the best from the get go.
Developers who are woke cannot make good games, simple as that.
There is no room for creativity when you have ideological commissars are breathing down your neck, that's what "toxic positivity" is about, you cannot challenge those who are at the top of the oppression olympics.
We're back police, I'd like to file a report
Is it about the dinosaurs?
The gaming industry doesn't matter. Budgets have been constantly inflating for decades and all it's resulted in is higher prices, more celebrity voices, and deeper pores in the skin of the main characters. Nobody needs as much money as is being poured into these games. There's a point where teams get too big and half the budget is spent on useless waffling to make sure it gets spent.
Indie games and small studios have literally always been the frontrunner of making actual genre defining video games. 30 years ago it was a studio of uni fratboys in their fallen apart rented studio and today the technology (and internet skill singularity) have made it so it's one guy in his bedroom that never sleeps making a game after work.
At some point more money stops making a better game.
Same thing happening in movies. Blockbusters costing hundreds of millions when in the 90s there were way more mid budget movies. If it doesn't make a billion at the box office it's considered a failure.
Seeing NeverKnowsBest pop up on my feed is like waking up christmas morning and seeing that one box wrapped up in the shape of the thing you wanted. Cant be sure what it is yet but you know its gunna be good!
The change is that gamers are poorer while at the same time budgets, particularly those going to graphics that have managed to get WORSE in the past 10 years have increased, along with the cost and predatory monetization. To be frank, if publishers cut their graphic design teams down to 1/4 and doubled their software engineers to actually optimize their games their budgets would decrease, graphical fidelity wouldn't be all that lower, and the product would be more accessible because gamers could get a decent experience out of their 10 series cards.
"Videogames never died, they just respawned"
If the market was willing to accept less powerful hardware for longer, this would be no big deal. I think the amount of cross-gen games is telling. It’s expensive enough to make a good looking AAA PS4 game, let alone trying to unlock the full potential of the PS5. Meanwhile on the Atari 2600 a single person could use its full potential developing one game for a year. At some point this insane growth in what resources you need for AAA development has to become too much, and I think we’re seeing that now.
I use RUclips in a browser on my phone and it loves doing this thing where I reply to the wrong comment. This was meant as a reply to someone talking about photorealistic graphics.
More home runs have come out in the last 5 years than ever.
They just haven't been made by Blizzard, Ubisoft, Bioware or Bethesda.
I appreciate your willingness to do a deep dive and paint a nuanced picture rather than settle for easy answers. First part of the video is a good standalone, but I like the video a lot more for everything else after. Great work, man!
Great video, I always enjoyed your more political takes, but I understand they can be very risky. I think the most terrifying part is, that like you said, everything is working as it should. It's not "the gays", it's not lacking talent or bad management, that is simply how capitalism works.
Seeing how videogames are still being looked down on as "something for kids, nerds, and man children" I have come to refuse to believe that gaming being bigger than movies is actually true. Add to that how slowly games are being made, with some games taking over half a decade to release. Meawhile Disney spits out Marvel movies yearly. If gaming really were as big as we claim, AAA developers would have no business taking as long as they do, because if gaming is as big as we claim... make bigger studios... hire more people. A game like Breath of the Wild or God of War should be made in 3 years TOPS.
12:30 And they pay themselves disgustingly high corporate bonuses. Don't forget that part.
"Winner takes all" markets seems like the way we are programmed, for the better and for the worse, but GaaS games really ended up becoming the next set of "consoles", or better yet, "home appliances", that everyone uses but can only afford one.
Basically, most people aren't going to be juggling between two hoovers/dishwashers at home, and it's mostly the same for GaaS games due to the lack of free time... The only real industry shakeup that could see happening would be if the Internet were to somehow be banned worldwide, with devastating consequences beyond just the gaming industry and indies.
I really liked how you brought together many sources to contextualize it into what really feels like a "Current Corporate State of the Games Industry" summary.
It's funny to me that Activision's very existence is based on Atari underpaying and not valuing their employees.
You could say what we're looking at now is a giant bloated bubble, bursting at the seams, slowly deflating after being blocked by filling the room space. Something we could have seen coming from the start of the bubble growing.
I think the stance I prefer most is the "do it as a hobby". It reduces a lot of the risks, and while you don't have the same power, you can do it for the sake of art. Just... don't overdo it.
Amazing video, really eye-opening. I'm here for these deep videos, that you somehow (definitely by putting time and effort, lots of them) nail them. Thanks for the time and effort you put into these videos.
This is a very interesting write up. Markets cannibalising themselves and products becoming less competitive and useful to customers is a fun side effect of the free market and the world of private equity.
How to bait for quick and easy views on RUclips using simplistic negativity bias in the last 5+ years -
"GAMING IS DYING""ANIME IS DYING""BOOKS ARE DYING""MOVIES ARE DYING""TABLE-TOP WARGAMING IS DYING"
"INSERT ANY MEDIA OR ART FORM IS DYING"
VR has been dying every year since 2014 apparently.
@@GiggaGMikeE "VRCHAT IS DYING"
Don’t forget the meta “RUclips IS DYING” where they rant about how no one watches them anymore
I love your videos, the presentation is always high quality and interesting.
I imagine the Matthew effect is also present on RUclips, so commenting for the algorithm
I especially liked your points about market saturation.
Once a market has been satisfied, then continued growth in that market just isn't feasible.
Shouldn’t have created new gen consoles and then made games that are No Better than on the old gen . It’s been years and there nothing I’ve seen I’m a 500 dollar console worthy impressed by at all.
23:35 But the economic Framework changed from the post war consensus to neoliberalism in the 80’s. And now we are really starting to feel the consequences. So, strictly speaking, the system and politicians are to blame. But cooperations lobbied for this policies, at least most of them. So I think they are at least partly to blame. Love these “meta” videos about Emil, bad games, crybaby and this one.
What an excellent, comprehensive overview of this topic. Thanks for all the research!
This might sound weird but I'm glad someone else remembers the time when people were saying the craziest things to justify games being locked at 30fps!
Your neutrality when discussing "wokeness" is concerning. You casually mentioned how wokeness could "alienate" players but didn't mention *why* they might alienate players. This in turn implies that you would agree with the people who are alienated, or at least can see their side, but coming out and saying that would make you look "anti-woke", thus taking a side, so you don't.
I enjoy your videos because you seem like a very well-educated and informed person, so I would hate to assume you have ignorant or bigoted views when it comes to socio-political topics, especially considering the state of the world at the moment.
It's a natural symptom of the right's demonization of the arts. Can't call everyone not in a stem field a loser and then be surprised when you don't run the show.
It really feels like what the far-right wanted all along: for people’s existences and identities to be treated as an option, something that the developers put in maliciously as a marketing tactic, something to please a market. That’s what is really disappointing in the video for me, talking about the inclusion of non-white, non-cis, or non-straight characters in the same way as the inclusion of microtransactions. That and talking about jobs and people’s identities as much more disposable than, for example, the absurd ballooning marketing costs for most of these failing games.
Why its always "implies"?
You even said it yourself, you would hate to assume, yet you already did.
Stop puting words in peoples mouths.
Using the hijacked definition of woke is already off-putting.
I didn't care for it either. I assume he did it to keep the anti-woke brigade from immediately disregarding the rest of the segment/video. (still, tho.)
I feel very bad for developers working in both indie spaces and other spaces. But at the same time it's pretty sweet to be a gamer right now. While it is really hard for individual indie devs to get their games noticed, this oversaturation also means that it is easy to find loads of great new indie games, so there's always something to look forward to. We're simply spoiled for choice. But my Steam wishlist and PSN wishlist is miles long, and every game I buy is 100 that I don't.
52:40 I like the fact when scrolling through the Steam page as stock footage has a game released within the last 7 days. One that has a dev time of over a decade. I wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for DQ2... which had been in development so long people didn't even know it was still being developed.
This essay style of
"Here is a premise and here is what you think about it"
"Lol jk you're actually wrong"
"Lol jk you're actually right"
"Next premise, rinse and repeat"
is getting kind of annoying and I'm only 25 minutes in so far.
i will always believe the fault lies with both sides,
on one hand the gaming industry has gotten so big that the huge corporate suits have figured out how much they can make and therefore have slowly pushed for simply getting quick money no matter how bad the game is in the long run, whereas in the past gaming was more underground if you will and so devs actually had to make something good to get enough people to buy it,
but its also gamers who have gotten so used to fantastic products and games getting bigger and bigger, that every time our expectations rise no matter what the companies do, so it also becomes harder to please them, plus the lack of great games obviously also makes us more critical every time which certainly makes it harder,
I feel like Ubisoft is an example of how certain investment strategies work in certain environments. And the environment is always changing. So the Open World game dominated the 2010's, but the market changed and people might not want that as much now, but Ubisoft just keeps trying the same thing.
All bad things always trace back to something else. It gamers fault>it developers fault>it's the industry>the economy>the CEOs>the government>society>human nature>life>physics>...
It's everyone's fault and no one's fault. Freewill exists in a maelstrom of chaos.
Great video, not sure if I agree with a couple of points raised.
For one, the amount of disposable income and time available during the pandemic meant unsustainable growth for the games industry and over investment that would eventually have to be scaled back. Ditto on the interest rates which further encouraged investments.
Secondly, high inflation is going to cripple the luxury/entertainment markets so it’s no surprise that the stock market for games is down, and no, newspapers aren’t the only other thing that’s struggling, that was a very unfair comparison. People have less disposable income to spend on non-essentials and a lot of countries are struggling with growth, episodically when the GDP is adjusted for inflation.
Also, you touched on the fact that there are a lot more losers now but I would like to see how much that correlates with the amount of games that are being released: without commenting on the other parts of the market I have a feeling that the indie market oversaturated itself.
I think what annoys me is the same people who say "games are dying" tend to be the ones that never play any form of single player games and only play live service games that are designed to psychologically mind bend you into spending more money and exploiting you in every way possible. These people never actually play GOOD games. Instead of making new games, half of ya'll need to go back to playing the classics from the old consoles. In the same sentence of people complaining about new games coming out being bad.. they’ll drop £600 on skins and DLC in a live service.
Also comparison is another thing that destroys the minds of gamers, games can't even come out today without gamers comparing it to a similar game. It's an aspect of the gaming community that I utterly despise that no one talks about.
People aren't saying 'Games are dying', they're saying 'Gaming is dying', which is an observation of the struggles and quality drops of the AAA industry.
It's not suggesting that good games aren't made anymore, it's an observation that mainstream gaming is going down the toilet.
@@DaussPlays"Things were better when I was a kid"
@@AL-lh2ht What do you want to hear? Because they were. Games were made to a higher standard because you couldn't patch them after the fact, and you had to make your money with the initial purchase and not milk the consumer over the course of 10 years.
The AAA industry is suffering because they have pushed consumers too far and their business model is failing them. People are looking elsewhere for the satisfaction they aren't getting with the F2P/Live Service model anymore, and it's costing big players like Sony and Ubisoft dearly because they aren't adapting to this fast enough.
@@DaussPlays There was the 90's gaming crash. Later Sega had to dip out of the console market for failing so spectacularly.
But the indie scene has never been better. And as someone who grew up enjoying indies and AA's. Gaming as an industry has never been better. I can't keep up with all the interesting releases now. When in years past I can count the amount of interesting games released on one hand.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047the exact video you’re commenting on addresses why this comment is mostly avoiding the point of this discussion. You quite literally parroted the point of view outlined in the video about indie games being the savior of gaming, and how, no matter what the issue is, indie is saving us!
Commenting before watching: No it's not. I played video games yesterday and I had fun, therefore it's not dying, simple as. I hope you will agree with me when I watch the video
No, gaming isn't "dying". Those people saying that just refuse to play anything except overhyped AAA games. The indy scene alone shows how gaming is better than ever.
Great video, man! It made me reconsider some of my biases and provided needed context for the current situation with the video game market
I’m going to comment before I finish watching the video
I've almost exclusively played indie games for the last couple of years. BG3 is the only big budget game I can remember really enjoying, and I think that one is pretty damn unique in how Larian managed to wield such a budget with a indie-spirit. It blows my mind how the big studios consistently fail to produce games that I find even remotely interesting, with budgets on which the budgets of the indie games I love are literally a rounding error.
The numbers on labor hours and costs was shocking!
“Babe wake up, NeverKnowsBest just dropped another banger”
Would be very curious to hear your thoughts on Veilguard btw
Congrats - excellent video. Well written analysis. I'm impressed time and time again with the quality of your videos. You really deserve more subs.
People who say that gaming is dead probably only play AAA games
Great video. Honestly made me rethink a lot of thing I took for granted about the industry, feels really depressing but I can't really argue with the evidence.
Them: "Gaming is dying!"
Me just playing Space Marine 2 having a fucking blast
38:53 People really forget there was a lot of bad stuff during the 7th Console Generation. Don’t get Angry Joe started on the Kinect and movie license games.
Gaming isnt dying. There is more choice than ever. However, this is as good as it is bad.
The ceiling for being able to put out a game is non-existant. Anyone and everyone can now put out a video game and publish it to nearly any platform. This has over loaded the gaming catalogs everywhere. You now have to shuffle through hundreds, maybe even thousands of games just to find more than a few games that "may" interest you. Maybe.
Then you go online and ask for suggestions and its always the same short list with little variation.
Gaming is not dying. It is simply over-saturated with shovel ware and babies first project that should never have been published.
Damn I love the music you use to start the last section. The songs made for that game were all incredible. I won't spoil it for anyone if they like they can find it themselves ;)
you really turned into shaun there in the last few minutes xD. Great video!
I think that we are moving towards a realm of user-generated content. We've seen this with the internet and social media. We can note how young people are watching more tiktok and less TV. The growing indie games scene suggests something like this is slowly happening with gaming.
In some ways, games like Minecraft or Roblox are almost games constructed from user-generated content. As tools improve, I think we'll see much less interest in AAA, and more situations where players are creating and sharing their own games and interactive experiences. AI would also play a role, where a game or experience could be created almost entirely from a prompt.
34:30 To a point, a massive reason as to its popularity was because of the mass of high quality R34 content for the characters.
If i remember a few games came out at the same time with similar gameplay but fell to the wayside simply because they didn't have any gooner-able (new word) characters.
59:06 uh oh, the commoners are discovering the fundamental problem of capitalism. May I introduce you to an old man named Karl Marx and his hit book the Communist Manifesto?