Did too many games release in Q3 of 2024?

https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/10/24/did-too-many-games-release-in-q3-of-2024/

by vyrotek • 2 years ago

44 54 2 years ago

Videogames are rapidly becoming the predominant medium of artistic expression. Especially horror (even Undertale could be categorized as horror or at least with horror elements). I've seen horror games that are far more complex thematically than anything coming out of Hollywood or in literature these days.

foolfoolz• 2 years ago

it’s been this way since vice city

SketchySeaBeast• 2 years ago

While I won't necessarily agree with Vice City being the appropriate demarcation, I recently learned that GTA Vice City (2002) is closer in time to its settings (1986) than it is to the present day, and that made me feel things.

anthk• 2 years ago

- Broken Sword

- Curses!/Jigsaw

- The Longest Journey

- Trinity

- Outcast

Text/graphical adventures were like 20-30 years ahead of Hollywood, but 20 years behind paper books and fandom.

hawski• 2 years ago

Would it be true to say that technological and educational progress makes art increasingly complex as it is easier to use a specific art medium having means to do so?

I did not think of AI generation starting my comment but here I am with my last sentence.

DiscourseFan2• 2 years ago

I think that's generally the case. In Aesthetic Theory (which is fairly inaccessible to the general public, probably best to read this[0] article instead) Adorno suggests that art mediums progressively annihilate each other as technology advances and the condition of possibility for an artwork is also the destruction of all previous works of art, both solidifying them in the history of art and also restructuring it entirely around the artwork itself, which contains all previous art historical ruptures inside it.

[0]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/

GrantMoyer• 2 years ago

Some of my favorite stories are from videogames, but I don't know if the medium as a whole is outpacing films. AAA games have a lot of the same problems as Hollywood; they're usually very formulaic and safe. And while indie games are more thematically varied, they're hit or miss on execution, a lot like indie films.

That said, horror movies specifically are often very underwhelming in the themes they explore, so horror videogames don't have a high bar to beat.

Brainspackle• 2 years ago

Couldn't tell ya. I'm still playing games from 2019. With so many game releases nowadays, I have the patience to wait for a good sale to pick up anything new. The only game I've bought on release in the past few years is Baldurs Gate III

cjbgkagh2• 2 years ago

Apart from factorio the games I play are 20 years old and older. I was looking forward to Homeworld 3 but they hashed that up so bad that it’s far less fun than the original.

The point being that new stuff isn’t just competing with new stuff but also old stuff.

yreg• 2 years ago

You might also be getting older and more nostalgic…

bjelkeman-again• 2 years ago

Are we turning into old farts with our old games? I play a 25 year old game on a cloned server (EverQuest clone, 1999 MMO). And a newer first person shooter, but free to play.

I was looking forward to a new Homeworld. Shame.

tokinonagare• 2 years ago

Well with Factorio Space Age I'm hooked for a long time. New DLCs coming for AoE II too, one dropped recently for Wargame Red Dragon, they're really nice to keep "old" game even more relevant than they were. Also remasters when they are well made like the Red Alert one.

copx• 2 years ago

The point being that new stuff isn’t just competing with new stuff but also old stuff.

I think that this will become a bigger and bigger problem for the games industry.

While movies, TV shows, literature, and music are always expressions of a particular time/culture/generation, games are usually much more universal.

E.g. young people today find Friends more problematic than funny, but have no problem enjoying Mario Kart.

tombert3• 2 years ago

I would say that about 90% of my gaming in the last few months has been on the MiSTer. I am not sure that there exists any games released in the last 15 years that work on there.

That’s probably not true, but I can’t think of any.

HideousKojima• 2 years ago

Sins of a Solar Empire 2, on the other hand, lives up to how good the original was

PeterCorless• 2 years ago

I played Baldur's Gate for a while, but then I went back to Crusader Kings 3 (2020), Europa Universalis IV (2013), and Sims 4 (2014).

johnnyanmac7• 2 years ago

That is a big factor. I believe over half of the top 10 most played games on steam at any given time are 5+ years old. GTA V was played across 3 generations and its still in the top 20 most played games.

Market's being captured, and there's less to appeal to when people are stuck in a service bubble instead of moving on. That's a big part of why consoles are stagnating in Gen 9; economy and a lot of people are fine with PS4's, which still is getting new games.

autoexec• 2 years ago

Part of the problem is that new games are too often filled with bugs, ads, microtransactions, pointless timegates, etc. You can't trust reviews, so there's no telling what you're going to get. Game companies have burned players so many times that buying a game at launch, even if you like the franchise, just isn't wise.

That said, while I'm normally the type to play 10-15 years behind, I did pick up a copy of stellar blade on launch day just on a whim and it was amazing. No ads, no parts of the story paywalled off, nothing but fun and they've put out a lot of updates since making improvements, and dropping new outfits and gameplay modes. I kind of felt like I hit the lottery buying a game I knew basically nothing about on day one and not feeling like I was ripped off later, but that should be the norm. I'm tempted to get Astro Bot although it seems pricey.

johnnyanmac7• 2 years ago

I'm long used to it: But as a JRPG fan, it's always intriguing going to general gaming discourse and seeing complaints of stuff like ads/lootboxes/mtx in single player games. Just really shows how stark the western gaming sphere shifted.

Japanese games feel just like the 2010's but slightly better graphics. They leave all that stuff to the mobile scene, but console games have about the same expectations when you hear "single player game". Unless you are addicted to buying skin DLC, there's not much add-ons to buy once a game is out. If these current western sentiments are a detractor, I'd start looking more into where a game is made in addition to all other research.

Korea (which is where Stellar Blade was made) and China (Black Myth Wukong) are entirely different stories, but similar outcomes. Let's just say they are rediscovering console/PC gaming and they are starting off from the 2000's model, not the 2020's western model.

nitwit0052• 2 years ago

The too many games argument always seemed toxically Malthusian to me. Like who made too many games? Who should stop making games?

It's exactly the same as farmers planting too much. It doesn't matter if people love what they planted. There is a limit to what people can reasonably consume.

Only, unlike farming, I don't expect governments to intervene in the market. Video games aren't exactly a critical good.

digging• 2 years ago

Just as you say, it's a matter of it just being comparatively very easy to make games. These questions have easy answers:

Like who made too many games?

Everybody.

Who should stop making games?

Nobody.

It's simply that more games get made than anyone can possibly consume. That counts as "too many [to consume]". That doesn't mean anything should change.

It only feels weird because we recently came from a time where it felt like you could play every game coming out (except if you allow flash games, that actually hasn't been true for a longer time than it seems).

But nobody is complaining that "we made too many t-shirt designs in 2024 and I can't wear them all."

MichaelZuo• 2 years ago

Amateur musicians do complain all the time about not getting enough attention… at least in every country that I’ve heard of?

AngryData• 2 years ago

Farm subsidies exist as an alternative to the granary system. Countries without decent crop subsidies have historically and still to this day suffer with famine. Countries with decent crop subsidies never feel crop failures bad enough for people to even consider the idea that food could run short.

nitwit0052• 2 years ago

No one has indicated any confusion to that reference.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

Farm subsidies exist as an alternative to the granary system.

Except that the granary system is counter-cyclical and actually provides food when there is a crisis. Subsides are pro-cyclical and can't do anything in less than 6 months on the quicker case, 1 year in general.

486sx33• 2 years ago

I’d say quantity is no replacement for quality. 3000 games could have been released in Q3 of 2024 but I wouldn’t have noticed because there are exactly zero I want to play online with game pass or be permanently connected to the internet for.

pier25• 2 years ago

The problem is not too many but games but not enough good games being released.

johnnyanmac7• 2 years ago

how would one define "good game" in this case?

YesBox• 2 years ago

For juxtapositional context: This article [1] came out in 2016 and gives a great overview of why and how difficult it is to be successful (especially more than once) in the video game industry.

Entertaining people is _very_ challenging work.

John Carmack [2]: "The work in the aerospace industry is "simple" compared to the work he does in video games"

[1] https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-marke...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospa...

Joel_Mckay• 2 years ago

Like any production, most corporate interests simply don't respect the medium.

Its a tough call for studios, as training some talent is impossible due to zero workmanship ethics from prior trauma in production environment art. And No, most don't give a fsck about AI due to the copyright liability it injects. lol =3

screye• 2 years ago

We're in a 5 year slump for gaming. The best games are improvements on known formulas.(Elden ring, Wukong : Dark Souls, BG3 : Divinity, etc, GOW, Last of Us : Sequels). Alyx & Flight Simulators are exceptions, and neither are games in the traditional sense. Now culturally, the gaming industry has been broken for a while now. This slump was a long time coming. But, I didn't expect it to be such a grand collapse.

I'm speculating, but the writing on the wall was there since the mid-2010s. A much needed reckoning during #MeToo opened the flood gates. It broke a clearly abusive, yet stable equilibrium. The subsequent instability saw a panicked pivot into faux-inclusive corporatization & an exodus of the talented few who made these miraculous games happen. Artistic endeavors can only sustain so many MBAs.

Look at the top studios. Ubisoft & EA have yet to take risks on a single 'inspired' original IP since 2020. Both tried to pivot to mobile, only to realize that East-Asia & gambling studios had that market cornered. Blizzard & Bethesda crumbled below a pile of scandals. Post acquisition by Microsoft, neither have produced a single decent game. Sony's existing IPs are doing doing ok; eg: GOW, Remakes, Souls-like games. But, they haven't produced fresh IP or face planted with (non)releases like Concord.

We are in an interesting Liminal space for gaming. Hyped games like GTA 6 & Elder Scrolls 6 are too far away. No recent AAA game has taken over. And the choke-hold of long running games is waning(Dota, LOL, Fortnite, CS, Pokemon Go). I see a 2 year margin for a new game to take over the scene. Black Myth showed how wide-open the arena is right now. If 2077 had managed their release well, they'd have won out....but alas. For mid-sized indie game developers (eg: Supergiant Games), this is their shot at triggering this decades Fortnite/LOL moment........Or, it'll be a roblox game. It's going to be a roblox game isn't it ?

__________

P.S: I'm confused why costs for AAA games have ballooned. Machines, engines & tooling have improved many fold. At the same time, consumer expectations haven't changed since Crysis released 15 years ago. It should be a lot cheaper to make polished games. That's ignoring all the benefits of gen AI too.

Did too many games release in Q3 of 2024?

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