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Thank you kindly! And yeah I know what you mean, I'm not convinced myself that they will actually pull through. But their financial situation is worsening and their shareholders are not happy... so they are almost forced to change SOMETHING if they want to survive. I don't think they can sustain themselves by dishing out the same exact game every year for much longer. But I guess only time will tell..... In a way, I think this industry needs a shake up... I think it would be really good if one of those behemoths like Ubisoft, EA, Bethesda etc. went bust... just to signal to the rest of the industry that they need to change something...

Nice comment haha

Hey :) thanks for your comment and feedback. I actually deliberately stayed away from digging out stats, because I wanted to focus on my own perspective. If you were to go by things like revenue alone, arguably Gaming as an industry has never been in a better place - more publishers, more development studios, more games etc. I think the point I was trying to get across is that it looks like this industry is doing better than ever before - which again if you were to just look at the numbers suggests yes we are. But if you look at video games as an ART FORM rather than just a consumable, I think it becomes pretty evident that we have very few games that actually captivate large audiences and remain in peoples' memories for a long time. This is hard to back up with any statistical data as it is always very difficult to capture one's emotions towards a product. The only real indicator we have that modern gaming has severe problems is the fact that we know more and more players stick with games that came out long ago. We can see a trend whereby the newer the game, the quicker the playerbase drops the sooner the game gets forgotten about until people move on to the next game. I guess this is just a long way of saying I don't have any statistical evidence for my statements, it's more about what I have noticed over the past two decades how the attitude towards games has changed. We don't really have these "all time favorites" anymore, like every kid who grew up in the 90s like me still thinks about something like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario World. But if you ask someone from the Fortnite generation, they don't seem to have the same emotional attachment to games in large. Games have become more of a product to be consumed and less about an art form, a creative endeavor. That's not to say these games don't exist anymore (as I point out towards the beginning of my video), but in large the "function" of video games seems to have drastically changed. Not sure if I'm making sense lol

Hahahahaha yeah it's insane isn't it?

I think there is some truth to that, but it‘s not the full picture. I think the main issue remains that the bigger a studio gets, the less daring and interesting their games become

@@TiGGowich You are focused on the symptoms, not the causes... Find out what ESG is, especially the G!

@@aaronlaughter6471 Sort of. My question is: Why do you think many people are like that?

@TiGGowich because people hate the consequences of their own actions and admitting fault. The game industry got this way for a reason, and gamers are that reason. Look at Oblivion, I love that game, but most of the DLC for that game sucked, it was also one of the first games with DLC (our current DLC meaning), gamers got rightfully pissed, but forgave Bethesda because Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isle was amazing. Forgetting that sub par player housing, horse armor, and a lot of other shit dlc came with it. Dead Space 3 is where Microtransactions and P2W stuff started to appear, with the ability to buy resources, the stuff needed to upgrade weapons. Gamers got made at that but brushed it off as not needing to buy it, just like the excuse we here for other bs in the game industry. Hell, take a look at VAs, the VA for Niko from gta4, hey got mad that he only got paid (I thank) around 100k total, when the game made over 600 million, and he felt cheated. Gamers attacked him and said he was ungrateful. Why we have the same 4 fuckimg VAs in every game. The only time gamers did something good for gaming was with lootboxes, but that could also be said that was EA getting to greedy and putting it in a Star Wars game. Gamers, myself included, made the industry we have today, but unlike most other gamers, I can admit that. You can pinpoint exact games and times where the shit practices we deal today appear, and gamers doing shit about it, being for a myriad of dumb reasons.

@@aaronlaughter6471 I would argue that Share Holders are a bigger part of that reason. Look at any company that goes public, at that point they perpetually have to please the Share Holders with more revenue or, the comapany folds...

@@barryhoyte8553 That's a small part, but not the whole picture, do you thank we would have loot boxes, DLC, Battle passes, seasons, and so much more shit gamers hate if they would actually stop supporting this shit. As much as it pains people to realize, gamers are the reason why the game industry is the way it is.

@@aaronlaughter6471 I agree. What I find sad though is that we do not seem to be able to get rid of this stuff again. I just don't buy any live service games, I have never purchased a loot box or microtransaction in my life... but the sad thing is that all these practices are working

@@jamespaguip5913 I couldn‘t agree more! I just wish AAA studios would use their money and influence to create great games

@@connerblank5069 I don‘t think the problem is capitalism but rather companies becoming too greedy and delivering sub par quality but I do agree to your point 100% otherwise

@@TiGGowich No, that's basically how everything works under Capitalism. Microsoft did it with computers, McDonalds did it with fast food, there are only like four car companies, America has precisely one phone company co-owned by two corporations(which is pretty much standard, as I understand it), Walmart is the only supermarket, Amazon owns all shopping forever, and so on. Granted, some industries have enough leftover regulation or low enough scaling factors for economy of scale that it's not so transparently monopolized, but competition is bad for business so most businesses that see any success iron it out wherever possible.

@@connerblank5069 I get your point, but I would argue again that this has less to do with "capitalism" as such and more with the way our economies are run and regulated. We could have stopped these monopolies, just nobody had the balls to do it. Economists are well aware of the danger of monopolies, our governments just completely failed to address this problem and now they are totally powerless.

awww that‘s very kind of you to say haha. But I just started this whole thing, so I am more than happy with the views and positive comments I have received 😅😅 I genuinely thought this video wouldn‘t get more than 50 views haha

It‘s ironic isn‘t it that the companies best positioned to create good stuff are so bad

It is a curse I agree. Mass appeal over quantity waters content and complexity down. Which is probably 100% fine for the random casual player, but for more „hardcore“ gamers these trends are awful.

there are still very good games, but the sad irony lies in the fact that the big publishers produce crap for mass appeal that is completely void of any sort of creativity and challenge.

@@orge9711 I 100% agree and I do touch on this in the video of course. The bigger a publisher grows, the more people they try to appeal to… which is fine and makes sense. Unfortunately, this waters down the quality of the content. It has affected all the studios I used to cherish: Ubisoft, EA, Bethesda, Activision/Blizzard… SEGA even. I know to the average casual player this stuff doesn‘t matter, they just want to shut off their brain for a bit and play. But to those who are a bit more into it, it is really frustrating to see.

Also true, as soon as a studio grows big enough and becomes public, their focus naturally changes to meeting investor and shareholder goals... which again, I totally understand the economics behind these decisions, but it's sad when this stuff takes over in a creative industry like this

Oh I totally agree with you, I am very pro market economics. But there seems to be this trend that the bigger a studio grows, and the more they try and appeal to everyone, the more the quality of their games suffers. Which is fine if you are a very casual player, I'm sure most people don't care about any of those things, they just want a bit of light entertainment and happy days. I think this is mainly a problem for those slightly less "casual" players who crave high quality experiences rather than watered down mainstream

Hi, I quite literally say in my video that there are a lot of great games. I mention around 10 from 2023 alone. The point was not to say there aren't good games, I am referring to industry practices that ruin gaming.

And from your perspective as an Indie dev, what do you think is the main factor / are the main factors that prevent many AAA studios and their publishers from delivering those experiences today? It's obviously a mix of many things, but I am curious to hear your opinion from a developer perspective. And if you don't mind me asking, what kind of indie games are you working on? Would I have heard of any of them?

@@TiGGowich Developers have to proritize what create the most impact to the most players. Naturally, this means that the visual department, along with everything that gives the illusion that the world is "alive", gets the most resources. The result is static, or artificially dynamic worlds, with branching story at best. Creating a truly simulated world is extremely resource/time intensive, and that grows exponentially if the game has AAA standard of visual fidelty and stream-lined gameplay. So most AAA companies just create the "minimum viable product", which can capture most players with its visual and narrative impact, but is actually a glorified movie with dynamic elements. My gamedev approach is the opposite: in my game, DinoSystem, the ecosystem you live in is fully simulated and dynamic, as well as your character's attributes. Things happen whether you're there or not to experience or alter them. Graphics is basic and top-down (like the first GTAs) which allowed me to focus on the game mechanics.

@@TiGGowich Ok i think YT has some issues because i commented 2 times and it didn't show up, so maybe 2 similiar replies may appear 😅

@@nerdmassa9086 lol all good friend

I do explain this in the video, and you are of course completely right. My problem is that there the entertainment industry does not seem to follow the normal concept of economies of scale. Normally, as a company grows (let's assume it's a company that builds furniture), over time as they grow, they become naturally better at building furniture, they automate parts of the process, they reduce their per unit cost due to economies of scale, they become more efficient and profitable. This does not seem to be happening in the movies and video games space. And even though I do not have hard evidence for it, I suspect a lot of it has to do with massive amounts of internal bureaucracy, a management water head, too many management layers and administrators and not enough "doers" who just get sh*t done. This is not to say that larger productions shouldn't be more expensive - of course they are, but rather the input to output ratio should be tip in favor of the outputs. But I feel like they are putting in more and more resources without getting the additional returns. It doesn't help that the things they spend the money on also isn't ideal often times. Instead of building bigger and bigger worlds and creating 10000000000000000 loot items and quests, it strikes me that more focused games that don't try to encompass everything fare much better. I use Assassin's Creed in my video as an example. AC2 didn't make more money than Valhalla, but AC2 made way more money when compared to its development costs - the ROI was much higher. And the quality was better and it was better liked by players overall. These studios are "wasting" too much money on stuff that doesn't "matter." There is the pareto principle whereby you should focus your effort on the most critical 20% to achieve 80% of the outcome. Nowadays, it seems they are spending 80% of their time and resources on the 20% and it doesn't pay off. I don't think this is rocket science, but these organizations have grown so big, and they have created so many useless positions and so much bureaucracy... they are starting to fall apart. And we haven't even touched on things like outdated code, game engines, underpaid staff etc....

Thank you either way for watching and your valuable insights!

@@TiGGowich great video, thanks for replying!

As a person who works in the gaming industry, developers waste a lot of money during development. Which is a lot of reasoning for rising cost. They also do a lot of reboot instead of sticking to the original GDD. The industry has no structure at the moment.

@@blackrottweiler8885 I've only worked with a big publisher for a few months as a consultant. but I was shocked to see how unorganized they were and their approach to game development. so many obvious and shocking inefficiencies...

thanks for that answer, I was not aware of this - I must admit though, my understanding of all the hardware aspects are somewhat limited.

@ScoopDogg, could you please learn how to spell and punctuate sentences in your life?

Also remember skylanders? That game is not even predatory compared to modern games. 8$ you get a whole in-game character. And a figurine. Which you should theoretically have all the characters when you buy the game. But modern games have 20$ skins that don't do crap. Modern games are so predatory that an old game that was the king of stealing your money is now seen as fair.

@@regularphill I do address the very point you are making later in the video haha... it's exactly the point I am trying to make. Games are ENTERTAINMENT. They are FUN FIRST. But today for big publishers, MONEY is on top of their mind and fun is a secondary thought. Which is ironic, because by focusing so much on the monetary aspect, the fun element gets lost and people don't want to buy it... it's really paradoxical

@@TiGGowich Yeah I got there! Good video.

@@regularphill thank you

Thank you either way for watching and your valuable insights :)

Crazy isn't it. I don't personally like Tears of the Kingdom but I agree it's one of those AAA titles that suffers much less from some of the big issues that other major titles do. The last AAA title I purchased was Jedi Survivor, and I was shocked how poorly it ran on my PC despite me having a monster of a machine... and I was like "Screw that honestly" But you are right, at least we are lucky that indie games are getting better by the day. They are now a serious threat and a real competitor to large publishers - I think that's exactly what these companies needed. Who knows, maybe we'll see a bit of a change in their mindsets if they just get enough pressure? Although I suspect they will just pull a Microsoft and buy off all the smaller studios :/

well, there are those games for sure, but I don#t think they represent the vast majority of the market. Which specific titles are you thinking of when you use the term "woke" out of curiosity? Yeah I find myself going back to older games as well more and more... which retro games are you currently into? I need inspiration haha

@@TiGGowich I've gone back playing PS1 PS2 and PS3 games. The old gtas, Spyro the Dragon, Medal of honor etc..

​@@TiGGowichI sometimes dig out the Sega megadrive.

@@TiGGowich You can try GBA games for example there are a lot of unlokcables in those games, if you a PS1 fan you can try PS1 games, but if you were lucky to get a PS2 and play PS2 you can play these games in general PS1 and PS2 were the best times for japanese anime rpg's and other games, like wild arms for example a great anime jrpg about western cowboy life with a great story. My experience was with PS1 because my family at that time could not afford PS2 and PS1 wasn't even bought from shop it was bought from a familiar person and there were tons of games too, my first game on PS1 was Army men World War Final Front. As for why games are like this, well it is because human greed cannot be stopped and also American culture plays big role in all this their censorship and sensitive nature ruined most games, good thing there are indie devs. But I'am leaving steam so not a single platform will receive my money, I"am done with "modern audiences games".

@@whiskeygamer9402 That's cool, they are really good games. I've recently been grinding Grandia 1 and 2 haha

Yet, these companies are somehow still around and kicking, and it doesn't look like they will be going bust or getting replaced anytime soon... that is my main frustration. Despite so many people being fed up with these things, in the end too many people still keep buying this stuff...

@@TiGGowich *I think by 2027, we'll see a collapse of most AAA developers. its been a 10 year crash burn but were finally getting there. Rockstar will survive. SEGA will survive. 2K and EA might survive but I wouldn't be surprised to see them get baught out and absorbed. if Ubisoft continues down its road of stupid, they'll be absorbed. you're really only looking at like 3 or 4 major developers going into 2030.....and honestly, its for the best* 👍

I mean it is clear we want the same thing - good games. I don't agree that this is an inherently "capitalist" problem. The reason why I say this is because there are a lot of other ways people could spend their money. I think this is mainly a "consumer awareness" problem. What do I mean by that? Many of us don't seem to realize just how much power we have. If enough people stopped buying bad products, these same companies would need to start making good games again, or else they'd go bust. The problem of course is that too many players are very casual gamers and might not even understand that what they are getting is not good quality... they might simply assume this is what it is, because they haven't seen or tried any alternatives. I don't think this has too much to do with capitalism, but rather a lot with consumers needing to make more conscious purchase decisions. I for example have completely avoided buying any games published by EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard... and I found plenty of good alternatives in the Indie space. Now do I regret missing out on some major titles? Sure, but I am unwilling to pay money for this continuous stream of mediocrity. I just wish more people would do the same... Everyone I speak to agrees that the FIFA series is a complete rip off, since they have pretty much been releasing the same game for 10 years now. Yet every time I ask them if they are going to buy this year's update, they say they will... and I just go "yeah but why? You have clearly already realized you are being taken advantage of?" ... They just don't have the willpower. I don't blame these companies for trying... it's inherent to any business to try and maximize revenue and minimze costs. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. What too many people do not seem to understand though is that quality suffers as a consequence... normally a worse product should lead to less sales... but it rarely does. That's not the fault of capitalism, that's just consumers not using their power to just say "no" to a bad product. Anyway, this was a very long way of saying: If we all consumed games a bit more consciously, this problem would quickly be a thing of the past.

@@TiGGowich I think we do have a lot to agree on. But why not blame the companies? Why let the publishers off the hook? The companies leverage sport for profit. They use FOMO tactics and loot boxes to exploit human foibles. These companies are in it for the money and not the games. Stop blaming exploited gamers, blame the exploiters. The CEO's of publishing companies talk about whales, not gameplay. Live services over narrative. The programmers get peanuts and no job security, the CEO's get bonuses for firing the people that make and love games. Yes consumers could say no. But as a population we could say no to a small grossly over paid few that capitalise their wealth to exploit the vast majority, but we don't. These companies spend a lot of money to exploit the psychology of people. They spend it because it makes money. Blame the exploiters, call them out.

I hear you friend... I have become super picky in what I choose to play and what not. If I see a game come out that already has line up of DLCs announced before the base game even hit the shelves, I am usually out. Same if I see that the entire model is just based around trying to make me spend more money in game. It's especially annoying because although the technical quality in terms of graphics and sounds etc. has improved, the quality of games in my opinion hasn't. yet they want more money for everything... so yeah I feel your frustration. there are many good games still but the vast majority is just an insult to anyone with a brain.

interesting, I never really thought about it that way but I see what you mean. You are right in a way... I remember when I started playing League of Legends back in its closed Beta which was like... idk 12 years ago now probably? There were no guides, no twitch, no youtube videos... you just kind of figured things out as you went along. That whole element is missing now. Although, obviously one could just ignore the streams, youtube videos etc. and actively refrain from watching them I suppose? It would be extremely hard, but possible. I always did that in Hearthstone... when everyone just copied the streamers' decks, first thing I did was build my own deck because I just didn't want to play what everyone else was playing. Made me an excellent deck builder in the process and allowed me to quickly counter and adapt to the new "meta" every time so I played on legend rank the whole time pretty much. Anyway, good consideration. I might actually tackle that in the next video!

Oh yeah I know they turned it around, which is really good to see. And I know they built a lot of trust and goodwill with their community now. But you remember in what a poor state it was when it was first released and how little it had to do with how it was advertised. Anyway, luckily there are many studios who are actively trying to make things right. I just find it sad how often games come out that aren't fixed.