The craziest thing to me about WB Games doubling down on liver service is their single most successful game of recent years was the offline, single player only Hogwarts Legacy.
I know "liver service" was a typo, but, as someone who hated the taste of liver when my parents forced me to eat it as a kid, it is kind of a good analogy.
That is what happens when you have suits in charge who doesn't understand their customers. They still look at Fortnight and think they can make the next one but they lack the creativity to be able to deliver something that could do that.
Marketing is done first and then the game is fit around it according to this ex EA guy. They also go for high concept, which means you need to be able to describe the game in one sentence, so investors can understand it I’m guessing.
@@mrmagoo-i2l Yea those are just common sense business practice. Look at what the audience wants (aka, what most people are playing), see if it's financially viable (so you probably wont make a GTA 6 competitor without a hell of a pitch), and then start cooking. Issue is that these live service games are a special medium and the old ways don't necessarily work. If you make a copycat Seinfeld people will probably still watch that and Seinfeld. If you make a copycat Fortnite, it's harder to bring people away from Fortnite, and even harder for a consumer to to play multiple fortnites.
@@RobertFromEarth are you just trying to be edgy? Did you watch the video? Did you even understand what the original commentor is stating? Or are you just another wokescold looking for any tiny thing in a game to scream DEI?
This is natural cycle of video game industry. Once great studios like Origins, Looking Glass, Sierra, Lionhead have all run their course and been replaced, im just surprised Ubi and Square and Gamefreak are still holding on for so long
@@ShadowProject01 he's not wrong though, Activists/woke/DEI is part of the problem. Even if it's not the full problem, and not the root of it, he's technically not wrong.
Part of it is probably that every few years, usually at the height of people bein sick of their shit, they put out an actual solid game or two and people go like "they're listening and doing better now!". Then it goes downhill like before. It's like a routine at this point
For real. I was bitching about Ubisoft microtransaction nonsense back around AC: Odyssey. I was confused why they didn't get shit on more for that then. Lol
All because of corporate greed. Ceos, shareholders and suits have stifled creativity and ingenuity for the sake of profit. Just like everything in our society nowadays.
I'm a gamer of a certain age. I've seen the "death" of gaming come and go multiple times. Every time, there's a brief dry period, followed by countless amazing indie games, making a mint, then getting bought up by the publishers to be beat down until the gaming sphere dies again. Its always corporate greed. Always. And it's always the passionate devs that resurrect it. Always.
Publishers (and investment groups) aren't buying companies to make money, in fact quite the opposite - they only care about pushing their agenda at the complete sacrifice of profitability.
@@waynetec13I very wish even when he does retire, that Larian won't get bought out. Sven literally said the quiet part out loud at the game awards about what's wrong with the AAA Gaming Industry. He's someone that actually cares and gives a darn about gaming and what it takes to make an enjoyable experience. Which is why I can give him the benefit of the doubt.
Problem is, trends come and go like the wind. The worst mistake AAA have made is jumping on trends. Creating a game takes so many years by the time all the money has been pumped into it and its ready for release. People have moved on. Its time to get back to basics. the tried and true.
While good games, Overwatch and Last of Us' success have been bad for the industry. (Overwatch's microtransactions (though I guess it could be attributed to other games before but OW is the one that made it a standard) and Last of Us focus on graphics and story over gameplay making 90% of Sony games after it "interactive movies")
That’s because around 2020 they all went and hired thousands of women because they didn’t like the men/women ratio, then of course when profits took a hit guess who were the first to get fired? The people who worked there before who not only made more money but also are easier to fire without lawsuits because they were mostly men
It doesn’t have to take eight years to develop a top tier game-just take a page out of Larian’s book. Start with a storied IP (Elder Scrolls, The Witcher) and work on it. Get Act 1 ready and release it in early access. Use your customer base as your beta team to iterate and improve the game-all the while making profit. How many units would, say, an early access Elder Scrolls VI sell? 5 million? 10? You could almost make up the entire production cost in early access just like Larian. This would also cut lag times between game launch because you’re not working through until the full version’s release. I truly don’t understand why more studios don’t do this.
They could stop making stuff for games journalist and the "modern audience" and start making games for normal people again. Just a thought. Also predatory micro transaction practices, buggy games, and live service busy work BS.
@@chaserseven2886 Maybe you should leave your echo chamber, because a lot of the "gaming journalists" are a part of the problem. The one inverse interview with Dragon Age Veilguard's game director titled "Corinne Busche Is the Ruler of RPGs, Conqueror of Haters", when in my mind the actual ruler of RPGs, Swen Vincke made a passionate speech about the next game of the year, which also happened to cover the issues with the gaming industry, but gets mainly ignored by the "games media". Are there individuals who grift and try to make as much money off of viewer's anger, sure, but they are in the minority, where most are fans who are frustrated with the state of gaming, and see the issues that you and others want to conveniently ignore.
The saddest thing about a AAA game studio like Rockstar missing the mark is that you know they won’t get another chance for many years to come. And that’s if they’re lucky and survive layoffs or a studio closure.
@Coconut-219 Yeah, I find it interesting ubisoft gets so much hate when they're known for some of the greatest games of all time. They still make good games, people just love the hate bandwagon.
1. Studios are hiring sub par talent. 2. They produce slop. 3. Game is revealed as dogshit. 4. They tell us “don’t like it don’t buy it, it’s not for you”. 5. We oblige happily and the game tanks 😂😂😂😂
Studios aren't hiring subpar talent, what the hell are you smoking... Requirements for positions keep going up each year because there aren't enough offers for the demand. How the hell do you connect the fact that the industry has seen more layoffs in the past 5 years than in the 20 years prior combined, with this idiotic idea that "they are hiring subpar talent" ? The video game job market has never been more over saturated with over-qualified people. (in fact I know where this idiotic idea comes from... it's an "antiwoke" misinformation bit again right ? "it's all because of dem DEI!!!!!" Am I wrong ?)
Don't forget that all you whiners don't buy games but just fill your diapers on the internet over games you know nothing about except what a grifter on TH-cam told you to think about the games. 😂
@@Aries73Lmao keep telling yourself most fans of the golden age games are interested in progressive message pushing in their games. I don’t agree that’s the main reason why most AAA games are failing, but it’s surely part of it.
@@rensten4893 Concord was DOA from the jump. Hero shooters has been on its last legs for years but these grifting clowns glommed onto this to sell clowns like you on some cheap rage-bait.
For a lot of those big studios it feel like the old guard left, and took their skills with them, while all the leftovers are more speced into ego than actual skills in game making.
Its more when the old guard left the studios hired based off race and not merit to replace them and now have a bunch of untalented devs that are putting out utter trash.
That's been the case in the software & engineering industry for more than 3 decades... it's only a fairly recent development to the videogame & film industries...
Mark my words, Rockstar is next. They made a big deal about "ending the boys club," and all the important people behind GTA and RDR are now at Absurd Ventures including Dan and Lazlow.
" all the important people behind GTA and RDR are now at Absurd Ventures" That's completely false, the people behind RDR2 are almost all working at Rockstar How is it a problem that they said they didn't want to be a "boys club" anymore ? they didn't make a big deal about it, you people made a big deal about it
@@ni9274 They made a huge deal about it. There were multiple articles celebrating it right before all of the creative minds that were the heads of the studio bailed (together, mind you). Their beef was they were friends who would, you know, hang out after work which was 'exclusionary.' Also, the veterans that remain at Rockstar are outright giving interviews speaking about how demoralized the company iss. I wish you could post links on a YT comment, because I would be happy to give you about fifty of them.
@@ni9274GTA works because it's politically incorrect. Everything is a dirty joke. The last Saints Row game tried this and that game was a massive failure.
The biggest problem in gaming is that decisions are no longer taken by developers who knows what they are doing. Decisions are taken by a bunch of MBA suits who has never touched a video game in their lives
1) I guarantee you don't know what ESG means. 2) I guarantee you have one or more "Let's Go Brandon" bumper stickers on your car, like that meme was ever actually funny. 3) I guarantee you have a list of "woke" games that failed, ignoring the laundry list of "woke" games that succeeded. TLDR: Leave the big adult thoughts to the adults.
Gaming and movies share a similar trajectory. Both are chasing the mega billions and willing to throw away hundreds of millions to do it. Hollywood in general have stopped making mid tier films in favor of huge tent pole mega franchises . Big game publishers have in general stopped making mid tier games(that could make a huge profit or even spawn the next mega franchise) in favor of chasing the billions that live service could make and end up messing up beloved franchises along the way. Just a thought.
Going to have to agree with mbeg here, the reason for the failing is corporate suits who know nothing about video games get to override the actual devs all in an attempt to squeeze out maximum profit
I don't have any hopes for triple-flop studios to go back to how they used to be and once again create the best games on the market. But I have confidence that each year will continue to deliver with great gaming titles that I'm going to enjoy playing. It's just finding them is little more difficult than it used to be, especially with media being anti customers nowadays. Pretty much telling us that flops are supposed to be good and actual good games are terrible.
These companies started making the kind of games people "needed" rather than the games they actually wanted. When faced with criticism and feedback from fans it's written off as "hate". The results speak for themselves.
Game producers chasing the "modern audience" - are now finding out everything else that entails with "modern sales numbers" and "modern company solvency"
I Love how Layoffs and Closures are viewed negatively when most of it is over bloat and over expanding. People just are stuck in Toxic positivity and can't see past things.
Nah man. I think it's good for these companies closing down or laying off people if they are not making good products. We complain about companies producing trash and now we want these companies to keep the people that made the trash games? Make it make sense people. We need to purge the gaming industry and revert back to when it was made by people with passion and not activist and dei hires.
It's also ironic because the game industry doesn't care or cry for other people who get laid off in other industries, even though a lot of those people in other industries are customers of the games industry's products.
@@refugeehugsforfree4151I think it only seems that way. I swear the older I get, the more I see "failing upwards" happens EVERYWHERE. It's so weird tbh
"Oh no, the people who made a 8+ year development multi-million dollar failure and then insulted the customer for 3 months straight lost their job!" Everyone else: "Yes, and?"
Matty you mean the fall of WESTERN AAA Games the Asian market is still doing well cause they actually know what people want. And i for one welcome our new Asian Overlords so long as they keep making good games we enjoy.
Literally!. So many good games coming out yet people focus all their attention towards the obvious fumbles instead of putting all the good on a pedestal.
While I agree, the Pillars are the face of AAA Gaming. I don't think AAA is really in that bad of a position(besides the layoffs), but it will eventually crash if they keep pumping way too much money into games, while simultaneously bleeding talent.
I think when Todd said that Bethesda should be given more time to polish bugs given the reception of Shattered Space, folks were already tired with his excuse because deep down Todd already knew the real reason but pretending in interviews that bugs are the biggest problem with the game. Same case with his reasoning for dumbing down the enemy AI in fight because "it would be more fun".
Every developer dumbs down enemy AI, that's just a general comment about game development he made. The only games where enemy ai isn't dumbed down are retro shooters, which are often head bangingly difficult because everyone has pinpoint accuracy.
The worst thing this year imo was the complete lack of talent and professionalism from most of the devs and higher ups representing their games and the audience as a whole. On one hand you have concord which we knew would flop the moment we saw it, to the devs from firewalk to obsidian ranting on twitter is just an embarrassment to all of us who call ourselves gamers and fans of games. Sven from larian really said it all best at the game awards, hopefully next year this ship can correct course or we can just let it sink like the Titanic and move on to something better
At this point the only developers I have full faith in is Warhorse Studios with KCD2 and now Larian as well, it’s tiring seeing companies make the worse decisions to either “appeal” to a greater audience or just for the money, they are all the same to me now
That's one of the reasons I'm preferring indie games! Big companies just don't listen to us. In the last 5, 6 years, triple A games have disappointed more than they have exceeded expectations. UNLIKE indie games. In recent years I've had a lot more fun with indie games, spent a lot less money on indie games, and been a lot less disappointed with indie games. Triple A games I don't even fool myself anymore, I wait to see it on launch day
Thing is with all respect i don't even play nor rate these western style AAA titles.. they are fallen but the Japanese and eastern side of AAA and AA is in glory days tbh which is all i care about! Their games don't take 10 years to have something like starfield..
i can break this down to this simplest sales concept: base your product investment on the size of your potential customer base. Game studios ignoring reality (i.e. that the vast majority of gamers are straight men) is just pretending that your customer base is something different than it actually is. They can make a "niche" game for some small demographic, but the reality is that they're trying to take over existing IPs with an existing consumer base to get the "message" out, and don't care if it destroys the brand or IP in the process.
Do you realize that being a straight men doesn't mean you're going to have a problem playing a game where the character isn't a straight men especially when even today the vast majority of games have straight male protag. Who are "they" ? The vast majority of devs are left-leaning and progressive, it's completely normal that games made by progressive devs have left-leaning political message. Also this isn't new, devs have always been progressive and games (especially RPG or narrative heavy games) always had left-leaning political message. No IP or brand can be destroyed by having "political message"
@ni9274 Of course it can destroy it. At least half of gamers if not more absolutely won’t buy or enjoy a game if it’s full of left leaning agendas. Isn’t it strange that there are no games with conservative values everywhere? No. Our side wants normal games with no agendas or political messaging. It’s not that difficult. Also the problem is that journalists and reviewers punish games for not having leftist values in them
@@ni9274 yh honestly a majority of the most memorable games and stories are technically progressive if for some reason people really wanna put politics into everything 🤷♂ Man what the heck would a conservative RPG look like? 😭
The sad thing is a lot of these studios don't actually want to listen to feedback, we have seen time and again pushback or attempts to invalidate real criticism, even open hostility towards potential customers. Avowed went from a likely buy for me to very unlikely after dev commentary and anything Bioware is just an ignore for me going forward. The main takeaway from this is to follow the actual development talent known for quality, not the studio names as most of them left the big studios long ago, and secondly, look to the indie devs where actual innovation, art and making a good game are their priorities first, so many great experiences and also at reasonable prices.
That's because the majority of feedback is just ignorant people pretending they know what they're talking about. And most of the time those same people still whine and complain when their feedback is acted on. Just look at how well "fan" feedback worked for assassin's creed mirage. The fake fans got what they wanted and still whined after realizing what they wanted was garbage. 😂
The ecosystem is difficult. We've got a bunch of knuckleheads, as can be seen here in the comments, who will pore over a game looking for things they don't agree with and then blow it out of the water for clicks. This noise is hard to drown out, but someone has to take charge and control their studio message.
@@TheJohhnyE U are talking as if AC Mirage is a good game. The "Back to the roots" was only in marketing and things that actually mattered such as it's narrative, characters, their motivation, mechanics, newly added features and overall gameplay loop were all subpar at best.
@@TheJohhnyE fans feedback worked great for BG3, that was long in early access. You are objectively wrong here. Now it's very easy to gather data about anyone and their dog. These studios stay willfully ignorant, and they don't try to make good games, they don't want people to have fun. It's obvious.
That's mostly a safe rule of thumb yeah, although we've still seen plenty of examples in the last 4 years of (former) great creatives that have been corrupted by the brain-rot.
@@bradleybuckets8898I always go with soldier personally. I know it’s the Vanilla default class. But I just enjoy playing mass effect like it’s uncharted.
I've been way happier just playing AA & Indie games. Stalker 2, Chernoblelite, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, Stellarblade, and Hell Let Loose beat most triple A games in every way!
@@TheJohhnyE "You never bought games before anyway. All of you making this false claim don't buy games, but whine about them constantly." Can you prove that thelaughingrouge never bought any games before? Where are the false claim? The only people who whine about anything are you losers.
It is becoming very noticeable where we're at with development post-pandemic. The games industry seems to have too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to the AAA space, and proves how talented devs were in the past. Now it takes over a half a decade for a game to drop and it barely makes the standard expectation. It's a sad sight, but also shows how we really need a build our future developers when they are in-house. So when the old guard depart for other ventures, the new guard cN innovate. Look at Nintendo and the proof is in the pudding
You are actually the first person to say the reality, team sizes are bloated. Studios grew rapidly so instead of sending your work to your boss and being assigned the next task, you have to wait for your boss to send it to his boss and then their boss. It's while during Phantom Liberty CDPR completetly overhauled their workflow. For team size reference, they went from 150 > 250 during TW3 to housing 400+ devs. BGS for example (based on former devs) everything still has to go through Todd Howard which causes a bottleneck, slowly down production. They're still running their studio like they have 100 devs back in Skyrim.... and it shows in Starfield. I highly recommend listening to dev interviews or GDCs etc if you're into learning about how the industry actually works rather than grifter #43 who's a postal worker spreading his uninformed surface level opinions....
The funny thing is that there is a suit (or multiple suits) at the very top of these publishing companies that is greenlighting all these garbage MOBA/MMO live-service games, but wont greenlight another singleplayer arkham game that will ACTUALLY MAKE THEM MONEY. They seriously have no clue of what gamers want.
I know this probably won’t be the majority opinion, but this was one of my favorite years in gaming ever. Astro Bot, Balatro, Black Myth Wukong, FFVII: Rebirth, Helldiver 2, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Metaphor Refantazio, P3: Reload, Path of Exile 2 (early access), Silent Hill 2 Remake, Stellar Blade and Alan Wake 2 finally releasing physically gave me countless hours of enjoyment.
Alan Wake 2 was viciously attacked by gooners for being "woke". If they could actually disconnect from all the outrage bait content they would find the game was a solid continuation to Alan Wake 1 and only got me more hyped for Control 2 and the Max Payne 1/2 remakes.
Greed, identity politics, and constently attacking gamers has led the western AAA industry into the situation it's currently in. They have nobody to blame but themselves for thier bad behavior.
Identity politics ? Do you realize the most successful recent games had identity politics ? Nobody is attacking gamers bro. The western AAA industry is doing fine
you culture warriors need to stopping calling everything that's not white and straight identity politics. you are literally ruining gaming discourse online. its corporate greed plan and simple that's the issue with gaming. look at Baldurs gate 3 it's full of "woke identity politics" and it just won game of the year in 2023.
What did he need to say? That angry white Gamers™ are convinced that when women and non-whites make games about women and non-whites those games aren't good? What's he supposed to say King Dogwhistle? That AAA gaming deciding not every woman needs to be a jiggly porn star is why games aren't to your standard? What's he not saying? Please enlighten us.
@@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo you're wrong! Tencent have a 30% stake in Larian, which is owned by Swen Vincke and his wife, and Larian have absolute creative control on the games they make!
@shpreenten Tencent is known for review troll farms. Their 30% of work. Where did Starfield fall? Heck where did Hogwarts Legacy fall??? Too many non-white faces?
"Triple A gaming has found itself in a really bad spot" *executives lean over their shovels as they look up from the bottom of the pit they dug themselves in*
@@Lilac-and-Gooseberries Witcher 3 has racism and it serves to make the game more grim, more medieval. No one wants a happy go lucky fuddy duddy world unless it's sonic or Mario
@@hre2044 Yep I’m agreeing with you here. Veilguard still has it a bit but it’s so watered down and made out to be a Southern problem. It’s like “Guy’s did you not notice we’re in Tevinter??”
I genuinely think that the big AAA studios are too big to turn around. Cause of how much time it takes to make games, it'll take 7-10 years to integrate feedback, while they lose money all the time. It's going to be hard going, but we'll get through, eventually.
@MrMattyPlays you know you should try out more indie games and double AA games because they are doing a lot better than triple AAA games. I hope you respond back.
I'd hazard to guess that most gamers do not want woke garbage, moronic dialog, poorly written stories, unlikeable or bland characters, bad gameplay and mechanics, unfinished and buggy messes on full release, predatory mtx, etc. Just a guess...
@ni9274 I think you're both right. I think games are best when they're nuanced and the player can decide what lifestyle best fits them. But it shouldn't be forced like in Dragon Age Veilguard.
@@ni9274 I didn't mention anything about obsession with wokeness. It's obvious that some games handle political messaging much better than others. Some games shove that kind of thing straight in your face, other games are like meh, it's a part of the world but not necessarily the ONLY important thing. I am specifically talking about the former.
@@drewbrees22 Yeah I mean Cyberpunk effectively had trans stuff in there with what you could do in the character creation but it didn't feel forced at all. I considered buying Veilguard, regardless of the character creation as the gameplay looked fun, until I saw the dialogue and how forced it was.
Buying into that "indoctrination" narrative, eh? That'll get you far. Such a shame Gamers™felt "gaming escapism" was the solution to their lives, because they were too cowardly to deal with their own hatred of others.
What's a DEI studio ? Nope there isn't any removal of the "old guard", they're firing anyone they can. Also for the entire history of the game industry the vast majority of devs have been fresh out of college newbies, the game industry is atrociously bad at keeping talents long term so they always had to rely on younger devs.
@ni9274 Your fighting this so hard but it’s well known that western studios decided there weren’t enough women in gaming around 2020 and went and hired tons of them. Yes they fire their talents because new employees have lower salaries. Don’t act like we don’t have to hear constant complaints about straight white men in gaming both as employees and characters even though they have become less and less common over the years. It’s obvious that the problem is gamers and western developers are not on the same page. I honestly don’t care that the games are political life is strange is an awesome game for example. Not every game needs to be life is strange though. Western devs and western gamers don’t like the same stuff. Simple as that.
@@caseyblankenship987 If western studio hired tons of women since 2020 why are western studio still 90% male ? Some studios do it some studios don’t do it, it’s absolutely not a constant practice in western studio to fire talents. I remember one example of a dev tweeting about the industry having too much old white male, this was clearly self satire. I have not seen any complaints from a dev about white characters. You cannot say there are constant complaints about white male in the industry if you only have two or three example of that happening. White characters still constitute the vast majority of characters in western games. You need to understand that you and people like you do not represent gamers, you’re just a noisy minority. The proof of that is the success of games like Baldur’s gate 3, Helldivers 2, Phantom Liberty, Space Marine 2, Alan Wake 2… If western devs and western gamers do not like the same thing why are there so many example of very successful western games ? And all western games they fails do not fails cause of a lack of white protagonist or DEI, they fail cause they’re not enjoyable games from a gameplay standpoint.
@ One studio that doesn’t exist anymore and one studio that hasn’t made a great game for over a decade ? These are not representative of the western AAA industry
I'm honestly just so tired of "5 years away" "10 years away". AAA gaming industry is perpetually in a state of "don't worry only 5 more years" or "10 more years"
Seeing ex employees of "X" famous studio making their own studio and trying to make a game doesn't really give much hope, A prime example, is everyone was hyping out Frost Giant Studio ex-developers of Blizzard, "they gonna make Starcraft 3 for real" and look at their game Stormgate. Monetized online only game, that has 64 player peak.
100% There's been many studios by former devs that fail, it's kind of like Star Wars, George Lucas was the main guy but behind him was a bunch of people giving input and ideas, it wasn't just one or two people... When those people were gone, we got the prequels. So those devs could easily be losing the people who had their backs during development etc, Callistco, Evolve, Back for Blood, Lawbreakers, Concord (senior bungie devs) are games I remember, Casey Hudson just had his studio close too. It's hard to make magic, it's not impossible as there are a couple games from former devs like The Finals.
I have my own thoughts. * Some Devs and publishers are starting to get really into the idea that games are "Art" to express themselves, and not as a product meant for a particular consumer base. * People have a desire (or addiction) to gaming, and the games industry knows it so they get away with putting out garbage games or include predatory mechanics (micros). * The gamers of today or the focus groups that Devs draw from and make games for are not like us. We aren't the ones they care about.
Somebody smarter than me once said that “an artisan makes a product that you asked for. An artist gives you something that you didn’t know you wanted.” Great games truly are art, but great art is not simply expression. Between artless expression and attempting to appeal to what they imagine Gen Z will like, you’re correct that they’re aiming in all the wrong directions.
“Starfield was never going to reach the heights of Baldur's Gate 3, but to act like a game at the scale of Starfield which is rich with choice and consequence is a "stumbling step back" for RPGs is wild to me.” -Matty twitter quote. This you? Love how you play into the Starfield hate once the hype has died down.
When the CEO’s and corpos on top get $20 million bonuses, but the devs and talented workers get laid off by the thousands every other year, then yeah it becomes unsustainable due to their greed. Gameplay > Art Direction > OST > Graphics > that’s the order games should be prioritized. Instead it’s just big graphics and ways to have a live service or microtransactions.
Western triple A culture has been so insufferable, I finally beat my first Mario Game(Odyssey) since the one on SNES(Mario World). Forget the weirdos gatekeeping our hobby. I'm just going to go play nintendo games and indie games.
You need to stop anyone no matter on what side they are that say they are gatekeeping because they are y serious people it’s almost virtually impossible to gatekeeping anything unless you gonna start a secret society then maybe you might have a chance
Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, Stalker 2, Alan Wake 2, Dead space remake, Ghost of tsushima... Western triple A culture is fine
Maybe some companies forgot we love games cause they are ... Fun ? When it comes to budgets, graphics, sound, story, and fun factor there's always the golden rule and should never be any other way. Fun is First, remember that !
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan laugh all you want, it’s the truth lol. Catering to a small minority of people and cramming a message most don’t subscribe to is an easy way to turn consumers off of your product. It’s happened in literally every product market, not just video games.
i'm actually happy that triple A studios are falling apart. The best games I played this year were Satisfactory, Planet Crafter, Desynced and Astro Colony. The last two are still in early access and all of them are from indie or AA studios. AAA industry has nothing interesting for me and I am tired of the propaganda that is now mandatory in all AAA games. I am more happy to spend less on an interesting game from a smaller studio than overpay for a boring crap vomited by a triple AAA publisher.
It's very simple, DEI happened. Anytime you don't hire based on merit and instead hire to check boxes, i'ts going to be a disaster. And it's not going to get better until these studios go completely broke and start hiring based on merit again. It could get much worse, before it gets better. So for me, that just means relaying on games from Asian studios more than I already do.
Do you have any evidence of AAA games studios not hiring based on merit but instead hiring to check DEI criteria ? Also if the problem is DEI why are games like Baldur's Gate 3 so successful ? "Games from asians studios" Do you realize the vast majority of games coming out from asians studios are live service MMORPG full of predatory MTX ?
@@ni9274 Yes, studios have openly hired based on their own DEI initiatives, they're not hiding it, just do basic research. And when you have a studio filled with 90% blue haired nose ring wearing activists that posts their batshit crazy extremist views on Twitter non-stop, it's not hard to figure out they were hired because they're part of the same cult.
@ni9274 Yall always bring up Baldurs gate 3😂 Baldurs gate 3 is the opposite of woke. I have so much freedom in BG3 that I don’t have to deal with anything I don’t want to. These trash woke games force a message down your throat with no angle out and no end in sight.
All the experienced devs who made all the great studios legendary have left. What they left behind was a massive experience hole. That hole has partly been filled with activists, people who have no idea how to make good games. My focus has already moved away from AAA and I’m looking at AA and the new studios started by the old school devs. I’ve found way more satisfaction from small teams and AA developers.
2024 was a great year for gaming. Tons of great indie games, and some surprises like Stellar Blade and Space Marine 2. What more could you ask for? Also, developers of worthless AAA games got fired. Good riddance.
Every game wants to be your main game. Every game these days has grindy battle passes and daily/weekly/monthly log in rewards that promote FOMO because they want you to log in every day and NEVER LOG OFF. They drip feed mediocre content and put all the best stuff in the shops or at the end of the battle pass which takes a massive amount of time and dedication to complete. Oh you want to go play a different game? Well ok then but you won’t finish your battle pass and get the ULTIMATE SUPER OMEGA REWARD that you paid for. Now games are offering the MEGA SUPERSTAR ULTRA version of their battle passes that cost around half the price of the full damn game. I’m over it. Even single player games are trying to force in battle passes and shops. The best version of a shop and battle pass system I’ve seen recently is Helldivers 2. It’s the only version of this system that feels like it respects my time.
As a Verified Creator for Starfield and someone who’s spent a lot of time looking through the CK and the Starfield components, I was v dissatisfied with Shattered Space precisely for the lack of attention to detail. I suspect that a lot of the internal developers at Bethesda don’t properly understand how Starfield places POIs and that’s why exploration is so underwhelming. They don’t know how the new World Space module works. The Starfield CK introduced the concept of World Spaces where you can associate a group of POIs in a single planet surface, yet it seems this feature is used at the bare minimum functionality.
Activist instead of talented dev being recruted, DEI, a new generation of people with no passion, culture and so no influence, knowedge to be creative.
You just made that up, there are no "activists" working for game studios just devs with political opinions (cause you're allowed to be a dev with a political opinion, there is nothing that say games and art in general should be politically neutral), DEI is literally good for studio, the new generations of devs have tons of passions, culture, knowledge and creativity
@ni9274 bruh you under every comment spouting the same copium. It’s a proven fact that these studios are full of woke activists/feminist and have destroyed every game they have touched. If any game has even a resemblance of something woke from here on out it will fail. People are done they’re tired of this bs. This activist devs will get the boot and the industry will shine again otherwise Japan and China will just completely takeover.
@ni9274 Sweet Baby inc. and Hit Detection. They have fully admitted their goal is to shove DEI and identity politics into games. People notice. Stay mad.
@@Salem94-x7m None of those tiny consultant firms have the ability to 'shove' anything into any games. Nothing they do is binding. Sweet baby worked on God of War, are they the reason that game's story is so good? Aren't you weird ass activists currently having a meltdown over a bald chick in a space game anyway?
The biggest problem is that devs hate gamers and that has to stop immediately...because if someone sows hate then they will reap hate themselves and no customer will buy these products😜
Consultancy companies, bad writing, bad gameplay, buggy releases, insulting possible customers before a games release, and the message it's easy to see how the industry is failing apart and until it gets back on track it deserves it.
AAA games did not fall, only western ones. And bad western ones. You know, the ones that have always been bad but popular (Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision, EA).
I want developers to not take negative feedback so seriously. Listen to players and change your game. Games aren't made to satisfy developers, they are built to satisfy their customers. Negative feedback is more valuable than positive feedback, since negative feedback is typically far more detailed. Someone saying "This game is amazing! GOTY!" doesn't give any substance in how to improve your games in the future. Whereas negative feedback is usually going to have something there you can identify, and improve upon. So, yeah... Do not take negative feedback so seriously, then later attack gamers. That's not how things work.
Paradoxically... developers are taking negative feedback (from a loud minority that don't even buy videogames) too seriously, while completely ignoring overwhelming majority feedback from actual customers - and then wondering why they have cataclysmically bad sales figures.
"Veilguard is massively successful, see!" Normal person translation: Veilguard still didn't make a profit, but it lost the LEAST amount of money out of the ESG slop titles.
@chaserseven2886 were you sent on some kind of damage control mission to this comment section? You're like the "consume product, get excited for the next product" guy here under every comment, deluded by copium. AAA gaming is lame simple as.
People who don't know what they are doing and injecting their personal ideas where they dont belong. That's what happened, and im tired of channels like this sugar coating it.
That's because those people actually played the game. Instead of parroting what youtube grifters said after they didn't get a free copy, like the guy in this video. 😂
I want to speak it into existence: when BioWare inevitably goes under (over/under is five years given their three fails in a row), Larian buys theDragon Age IP.
This video made me cry not because of the state of the industry but how far Matty has come on his outlook on life. I have certainly grown alongside you and will take your words about change to heart, we’re all creatures of mistakes but what really matters is how you bounce back. Thanks Matty
Most of the big name AAA studios, the talent that built them is long gone. "Remember, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him." - Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
AAA studios consistently forget that the overwhelming majority of gamers are straight men. You can make a game that appeals to a niche market, but then your game's scope and budget should reflect the potential sales; small. If you make a massive game with the absurdly large budgets of modern AAA games, where you need *as many people as physically possible* to purchase your game to break even... you can't actively alienate the 90% of gamers, preach to them about how evil they are, and then berate them for being a "problematic bigot" when they refuse to buy your slop. People say "They focus on profit and not art and that's the issue!" which I disagree with. They don't care about profit; they're willing to throw away millions, billions of dollars even, actively chase away and berate customers, and call half of the planet "vile evil bigots" for the sake of their "art". They see games as an ideology delivery mechanism first, product never. Games should be seen as products, because then they'll need to make something that actually sells, aka something *good.*
I don't understand how company shareholders allow this to happen. Look at the new naughty dog trailer. Just make the main character a dude and don't have him doing anything "quirky" in the trailer. That alone would have had people curious and excited instead of turned off.
AAA Gaming is causing its own fall with shit quality, horrible monetization methods, pushing shit ideology and flat out insulting customers and gamers. They deserve their own downfall and there is no shame in supporting their downfall, as these AAA developers and publishers have long turned their backs on customers and gamers. Luckily we do have AA and Indie to overtake for AAA stupidity. Then to add to that, toss in Game Journos like IGN, Kotaku, PCGamer and others as they deserve to fail just as badly if not more so than AAA gaming as well.
What is the one main change in game development other than time to develop? DEI... DEI happened, which is ruining the quality of games. DEI means diversity over qualifications and diversity over quality. The gaming industry is flooded with identity politics activists instead of qualified devs who love making games and want the consumer to also love their work.
Even the most successful example you listed, Veilguard, lost around $100 million. The most generous estimate of copies sold is 2.32 million. Assuming every single person bought the game for $80 (the max price), that means they brought in a MAX of $185 million, but had a budget of $250 million...
And a game's reported budget doesn't always include marketing costs or other logistical costs of keeping the studio running during development. And they need to not only make their money back, but need to make more to fund the next project. So yeah... by just about every metric Veilguard was a flop.
@@hihihi1q23 Got fed up running around in circles during the dog attack in Witcher 3 (have to go back to that sometime) so guess I didn't get to the lecture 🙂 Haven't played Inquisition. I'd definitely run away from any game that got to that "Pull a Barv" annoyance, though 😖🏃♂
I feel great about the future of gaming. I think these massive budget games are part of the issue we've seen so much stagnation. The budgets are so large that the executives feel they can't take risks, and making art requires taking risks. I'm hoping we see more diversified smaller budget games in the future. That is the way we should have gone. Games made for everyone will always suck. We need games made to do specific things well targeting specific people. The era of the exclusive first party games and the massive budget AAAs I think is dead, and I'm not mourning it. It killed so many franchises and studios that I loved.
The thing is though, have those studios that get made by devs who leave these storied AAA companies actually done anything yet? Because from what I know, it's mostly been big promises, hype, and studio closures and not a whole lot of actual games.
It’s like this in so many industries. My car is designed to fail at X number of starts to light up new starter required… Reminds me of Soviet Products and Company Tactics
I do think there’s a few things happening in gaming. 1. Over saturated market 2. Game directors and heads of studios unable to adapt to changing game engines and consumers 3. Too many chasing the online market /fortnite players I think it’s going in the right direction, just taking time. Feels like last 1-2 years we have seen more single player games in awhile despite studio heads saying nobody wanted to play them, but we have a few online games that dominate and players don’t really want to change that
I guess skull and bones dodges this criticism as it was AAAA
🤣🤣🤣
Yves Guillemot, the gift that keeps on giving. 🤣🤣
Every A makes it worse 😂
lol that's a good one. Ubisoft has created a new level of bad games.
😂💀
The craziest thing to me about WB Games doubling down on liver service is their single most successful game of recent years was the offline, single player only Hogwarts Legacy.
And it did that while clearly have a ton of stuff left on the cutting room floor in order to make corporate-mandated deadlines.
still a painfully mediocre game regardless of its success
@@colby3110 I disagree but you do you.
I know "liver service" was a typo, but, as someone who hated the taste of liver when my parents forced me to eat it as a kid, it is kind of a good analogy.
That is what happens when you have suits in charge who doesn't understand their customers. They still look at Fortnight and think they can make the next one but they lack the creativity to be able to deliver something that could do that.
This what happens when the every board of directors are the same people from silicon valley. That never played video games.
Marketing is done first and then the game is fit around it according to this ex EA guy.
They also go for high concept, which means you need to be able to describe the game in one sentence, so investors can understand it I’m guessing.
More like this is what happens when a company is infiltrated by woke women who oust talent in favor of ideology and skin color.
@@mrmagoo-i2l Yea those are just common sense business practice. Look at what the audience wants (aka, what most people are playing), see if it's financially viable (so you probably wont make a GTA 6 competitor without a hell of a pitch), and then start cooking.
Issue is that these live service games are a special medium and the old ways don't necessarily work. If you make a copycat Seinfeld people will probably still watch that and Seinfeld. If you make a copycat Fortnite, it's harder to bring people away from Fortnite, and even harder for a consumer to to play multiple fortnites.
You mean the fall of AAA Western Studios. Eastern studios have been carrying AAA gaming.
Nothing but the truth here
😂😂😂 maybe if the characters didn’t look almost the same
Fscts
@@chaserseven2886Japanese ≠ Anime.
Shoutout RGG Studio doing their shit!
seems like triple AAA isn't dying but the studios we once loved are about to get replaced with better ones (rightfully so)
Activists making games? Nope, doesn't work.
@@RobertFromEarth are you just trying to be edgy? Did you watch the video? Did you even understand what the original commentor is stating? Or are you just another wokescold looking for any tiny thing in a game to scream DEI?
This is natural cycle of video game industry. Once great studios like Origins, Looking Glass, Sierra, Lionhead have all run their course and been replaced, im just surprised Ubi and Square and Gamefreak are still holding on for so long
@@ShadowProject01 he's not wrong though, Activists/woke/DEI is part of the problem. Even if it's not the full problem, and not the root of it, he's technically not wrong.
by better ones lol... by h1b ones.
Actually more impressed by how long people have allowed EA and Ubisoft abuse them lol
Part of it is probably that every few years, usually at the height of people bein sick of their shit, they put out an actual solid game or two and people go like "they're listening and doing better now!". Then it goes downhill like before.
It's like a routine at this point
People don't usually speak up about being bent over, until a preferable alternative shows up.
EA still has the best selling game this year with College Football 25
For real. I was bitching about Ubisoft microtransaction nonsense back around AC: Odyssey. I was confused why they didn't get shit on more for that then. Lol
I made the mistake of buying ac 4 on steam during the sale for like 5 bucks. They make me login to i play every time I open it up.
Laurian said it perfectly at the game award. A game is art, and you can’t rush it. Also greed kills the creativity of the art ofmthe gane
Someone needs to rush it
I kinda agree and kinda disagree. Some of the best art is from limitations. (Majora's Mask being made in less than 2 years)
Yes that's the minority. Look at all these games he gave you in this video alone of rushed trash.@@GoldenLeafsMovies
All because of corporate greed. Ceos, shareholders and suits have stifled creativity and ingenuity for the sake of profit. Just like everything in our society nowadays.
Welcome back Johnny Silverhand!
@@StiggyPlays is he wrong though?
100%
Corporations only care about maximizing profit by minimizing risks…and creativity means risk
This isn't mainly corporate greed, it's down to ideology mostly.
Put your money where your mouth is and donate your life savings to fund these creative risks.
I'm a gamer of a certain age. I've seen the "death" of gaming come and go multiple times. Every time, there's a brief dry period, followed by countless amazing indie games, making a mint, then getting bought up by the publishers to be beat down until the gaming sphere dies again.
Its always corporate greed. Always.
And it's always the passionate devs that resurrect it. Always.
Its gonna be so sad when larian gets bought out, and it will, and all the fans will say "maybe this time itll be different".
@MBEG89 indeed. It might take until Swen retires, but eventually, it will happen.
It happened to Blizzard.
Publishers (and investment groups) aren't buying companies to make money, in fact quite the opposite - they only care about pushing their agenda at the complete sacrifice of profitability.
@@waynetec13I very wish even when he does retire, that Larian won't get bought out. Sven literally said the quiet part out loud at the game awards about what's wrong with the AAA Gaming Industry. He's someone that actually cares and gives a darn about gaming and what it takes to make an enjoyable experience. Which is why I can give him the benefit of the doubt.
@sacredpower7530 Swen is a world treasure that must be protected.
That said, everyone has a price.
Problem is, trends come and go like the wind. The worst mistake AAA have made is jumping on trends. Creating a game takes so many years by the time all the money has been pumped into it and its ready for release. People have moved on.
Its time to get back to basics. the tried and true.
While good games, Overwatch and Last of Us' success have been bad for the industry. (Overwatch's microtransactions (though I guess it could be attributed to other games before but OW is the one that made it a standard) and Last of Us focus on graphics and story over gameplay making 90% of Sony games after it "interactive movies")
Big publishers need fund more experimental AA games and incorporate lessons learned and discoveries into their bigger budget games.
Greedy companies keep firing all their talent and it takes 8 years+ to make a game now.
That’s because around 2020 they all went and hired thousands of women because they didn’t like the men/women ratio, then of course when profits took a hit guess who were the first to get fired? The people who worked there before who not only made more money but also are easier to fire without lawsuits because they were mostly men
@@caseyblankenship987 And your source Mr Senator?
It doesn’t have to take eight years to develop a top tier game-just take a page out of Larian’s book. Start with a storied IP (Elder Scrolls, The Witcher) and work on it. Get Act 1 ready and release it in early access. Use your customer base as your beta team to iterate and improve the game-all the while making profit. How many units would, say, an early access Elder Scrolls VI sell? 5 million? 10? You could almost make up the entire production cost in early access just like Larian. This would also cut lag times between game launch because you’re not working through until the full version’s release. I truly don’t understand why more studios don’t do this.
@@caseyblankenship987 Except the issue clearly isn't talent because - on a technical level - video games are the most impressive they've ever been.
nothing to do with greed but the damaging DEI practices that are considered the right thing to do
The slop has to stop
Quadruple A games will save us
They could stop making stuff for games journalist and the "modern audience" and start making games for normal people again. Just a thought. Also predatory micro transaction practices, buggy games, and live service busy work BS.
I like how you started off sounding insane by spewing a bunch of nonsense and then ending with the actual reasons as to why AAA is “dying”
@@chaserseven2886he was right on all points.
you people are not normal, it's not normal to be obsessed by "woke"
nah the first half of his comment was just thinly veiled bigotry. second half he was hitting straight facts. @allforhim2009
@@chaserseven2886 Maybe you should leave your echo chamber, because a lot of the "gaming journalists" are a part of the problem. The one inverse interview with Dragon Age Veilguard's game director titled "Corinne Busche Is the Ruler of RPGs, Conqueror of Haters", when in my mind the actual ruler of RPGs, Swen Vincke made a passionate speech about the next game of the year, which also happened to cover the issues with the gaming industry, but gets mainly ignored by the "games media". Are there individuals who grift and try to make as much money off of viewer's anger, sure, but they are in the minority, where most are fans who are frustrated with the state of gaming, and see the issues that you and others want to conveniently ignore.
The saddest thing about a AAA game studio like Rockstar missing the mark is that you know they won’t get another chance for many years to come. And that’s if they’re lucky and survive layoffs or a studio closure.
Do you mean Rocksteady?
Yea bro means rocksteady, rockstar still has everyone's respect
Lol RIP Rockstar
Rocksteady hasn't been worth paying attention to for a long time now.
What are you on about
"We covered the collapse of Ubisoft"
Weren't you praising half of these games this year?
@Coconut-219 Yeah, I find it interesting ubisoft gets so much hate when they're known for some of the greatest games of all time. They still make good games, people just love the hate bandwagon.
1. Studios are hiring sub par talent.
2. They produce slop.
3. Game is revealed as dogshit.
4. They tell us “don’t like it don’t buy it, it’s not for you”.
5. We oblige happily and the game tanks 😂😂😂😂
Then they blame us for it failing while talking down to us…. Yelling at and call your customers names is a new tactic lol, doesn’t work, but…😂
@@Matt-bg5wg rinse and repeat
6. Blame "racist chuds" for their slop failing
7. Learn nothing, double down
8. Eventually lose so much money they close
Studios aren't hiring subpar talent, what the hell are you smoking... Requirements for positions keep going up each year because there aren't enough offers for the demand.
How the hell do you connect the fact that the industry has seen more layoffs in the past 5 years than in the 20 years prior combined, with this idiotic idea that "they are hiring subpar talent" ? The video game job market has never been more over saturated with over-qualified people.
(in fact I know where this idiotic idea comes from... it's an "antiwoke" misinformation bit again right ? "it's all because of dem DEI!!!!!" Am I wrong ?)
Don't forget that all you whiners don't buy games but just fill your diapers on the internet over games you know nothing about except what a grifter on TH-cam told you to think about the games. 😂
They started cartering to the loudest voices in the room instead of their fans. They also cared too much about their social credit score.
Their fans, or the neckbeards calling themselves "fans"?
Probably the Latter XD
@@Aries73 That's the exact attitude that developers like Concord had before their failure
@@Aries73Lmao keep telling yourself most fans of the golden age games are interested in progressive message pushing in their games. I don’t agree that’s the main reason why most AAA games are failing, but it’s surely part of it.
@@rensten4893 Concord was DOA from the jump. Hero shooters has been on its last legs for years but these grifting clowns glommed onto this to sell clowns like you on some cheap rage-bait.
For a lot of those big studios it feel like the old guard left, and took their skills with them, while all the leftovers are more speced into ego than actual skills in game making.
Its more when the old guard left the studios hired based off race and not merit to replace them and now have a bunch of untalented devs that are putting out utter trash.
Keep an eye on studios like 100 Star Games and Absurd Ventures, where the real Rocksteady & Rockstar are.
That's been the case in the software & engineering industry for more than 3 decades... it's only a fairly recent development to the videogame & film industries...
Mark my words, Rockstar is next. They made a big deal about "ending the boys club," and all the important people behind GTA and RDR are now at Absurd Ventures including Dan and Lazlow.
" all the important people behind GTA and RDR are now at Absurd Ventures" That's completely false, the people behind RDR2 are almost all working at Rockstar
How is it a problem that they said they didn't want to be a "boys club" anymore ? they didn't make a big deal about it, you people made a big deal about it
@@ni9274 They made a huge deal about it. There were multiple articles celebrating it right before all of the creative minds that were the heads of the studio bailed (together, mind you). Their beef was they were friends who would, you know, hang out after work which was 'exclusionary.'
Also, the veterans that remain at Rockstar are outright giving interviews speaking about how demoralized the company iss.
I wish you could post links on a YT comment, because I would be happy to give you about fifty of them.
@@ni9274GTA works because it's politically incorrect. Everything is a dirty joke. The last Saints Row game tried this and that game was a massive failure.
Who is the main audience of video games? @@ni9274
Yep, GTA6 is gonna be woke garbage 😆
The biggest problem in gaming is that decisions are no longer taken by developers who knows what they are doing. Decisions are taken by a bunch of MBA suits who has never touched a video game in their lives
ESG happend
1) I guarantee you don't know what ESG means. 2) I guarantee you have one or more "Let's Go Brandon" bumper stickers on your car, like that meme was ever actually funny. 3) I guarantee you have a list of "woke" games that failed, ignoring the laundry list of "woke" games that succeeded.
TLDR: Leave the big adult thoughts to the adults.
@@RedShadowOfSaturn imagine being this bhurt by a trruth nuke comment lmao you lefties are losing the culture war once again
@@RedShadowOfSaturnNo american has legitimate opinions
@@Jeneric81 Oof. Thread just getting even more ignorant now. Yikes. Drop your own place of origin in the chat, let's compare our citizenries.
@@RedShadowOfSaturn Someone's quite triggered, lol.
Gaming and movies share a similar trajectory. Both are chasing the mega billions and willing to throw away hundreds of millions to do it. Hollywood in general have stopped making mid tier films in favor of huge tent pole mega franchises . Big game publishers have in general stopped making mid tier games(that could make a huge profit or even spawn the next mega franchise) in favor of chasing the billions that live service could make and end up messing up beloved franchises along the way. Just a thought.
I feel like the issue is known, but a lot of people don't want to accept it as the reason.
promoting messaging over everything?
@LamelKendrick pretty much
This isnt what ruins games, its a symptom of the problem which is suits making creative decisions.
Going to have to agree with mbeg here, the reason for the failing is corporate suits who know nothing about video games get to override the actual devs all in an attempt to squeeze out maximum profit
Everyone else has -except for the executives at the company & activist hires.
I don't have any hopes for triple-flop studios to go back to how they used to be and once again create the best games on the market.
But I have confidence that each year will continue to deliver with great gaming titles that I'm going to enjoy playing. It's just finding them is little more difficult than it used to be, especially with media being anti customers nowadays. Pretty much telling us that flops are supposed to be good and actual good games are terrible.
One day we will see the mystical “modern” audience.
These companies started making the kind of games people "needed" rather than the games they actually wanted. When faced with criticism and feedback from fans it's written off as "hate". The results speak for themselves.
Game producers chasing the "modern audience" - are now finding out everything else that entails with "modern sales numbers" and "modern company solvency"
I Love how Layoffs and Closures are viewed negatively when most of it is over bloat and over expanding.
People just are stuck in Toxic positivity and can't see past things.
Nah man. I think it's good for these companies closing down or laying off people if they are not making good products. We complain about companies producing trash and now we want these companies to keep the people that made the trash games? Make it make sense people. We need to purge the gaming industry and revert back to when it was made by people with passion and not activist and dei hires.
@@JAIMEGARCIA-gw9re Exactly. I swear culturally Gaming Industry is the only industry you Fail upwards at besides Politics.
It's also ironic because the game industry doesn't care or cry for other people who get laid off in other industries, even though a lot of those people in other industries are customers of the games industry's products.
@@refugeehugsforfree4151I think it only seems that way. I swear the older I get, the more I see "failing upwards" happens EVERYWHERE. It's so weird tbh
"Oh no, the people who made a 8+ year development multi-million dollar failure and then insulted the customer for 3 months straight lost their job!"
Everyone else: "Yes, and?"
Matty you mean the fall of WESTERN AAA Games the Asian market is still doing well cause they actually know what people want. And i for one welcome our new Asian Overlords so long as they keep making good games we enjoy.
Found the gooner incel.
Oh Matty, why are you still defending Veilguard?
Bro there isn’t a fall off of triple A, it studios that were once pillars of the industry falling off.
Really good point.
Literally!.
So many good games coming out yet people focus all their attention towards the obvious fumbles instead of putting all the good on a pedestal.
While I agree, the Pillars are the face of AAA Gaming.
I don't think AAA is really in that bad of a position(besides the layoffs), but it will eventually crash if they keep pumping way too much money into games, while simultaneously bleeding talent.
We get 4-5 really bad game fumbles a year that will take up 50% of the conversation despite the other dozens of great games we got.
Hit the nail on the head
I think when Todd said that Bethesda should be given more time to polish bugs given the reception of Shattered Space, folks were already tired with his excuse because deep down Todd already knew the real reason but pretending in interviews that bugs are the biggest problem with the game.
Same case with his reasoning for dumbing down the enemy AI in fight because "it would be more fun".
The biggest problem is Todd. People think he's the Einstein of the gaming industry, when he's as smart as Rob Schneider.
Every developer dumbs down enemy AI, that's just a general comment about game development he made. The only games where enemy ai isn't dumbed down are retro shooters, which are often head bangingly difficult because everyone has pinpoint accuracy.
The worst thing this year imo was the complete lack of talent and professionalism from most of the devs and higher ups representing their games and the audience as a whole. On one hand you have concord which we knew would flop the moment we saw it, to the devs from firewalk to obsidian ranting on twitter is just an embarrassment to all of us who call ourselves gamers and fans of games. Sven from larian really said it all best at the game awards, hopefully next year this ship can correct course or we can just let it sink like the Titanic and move on to something better
At this point the only developers I have full faith in is Warhorse Studios with KCD2 and now Larian as well, it’s tiring seeing companies make the worse decisions to either “appeal” to a greater audience or just for the money, they are all the same to me now
Yeah Baldur's Gate 3 is good overall, it has slight hints of 'the rot' in places but it's absolutely no Dragon Age Veilguard.
That's one of the reasons I'm preferring indie games! Big companies just don't listen to us. In the last 5, 6 years, triple A games have disappointed more than they have exceeded expectations. UNLIKE indie games. In recent years I've had a lot more fun with indie games, spent a lot less money on indie games, and been a lot less disappointed with indie games. Triple A games I don't even fool myself anymore, I wait to see it on launch day
Thing is with all respect i don't even play nor rate these western style AAA titles.. they are fallen but the Japanese and eastern side of AAA and AA is in glory days tbh which is all i care about! Their games don't take 10 years to have something like starfield..
i can break this down to this simplest sales concept: base your product investment on the size of your potential customer base. Game studios ignoring reality (i.e. that the vast majority of gamers are straight men) is just pretending that your customer base is something different than it actually is. They can make a "niche" game for some small demographic, but the reality is that they're trying to take over existing IPs with an existing consumer base to get the "message" out, and don't care if it destroys the brand or IP in the process.
Do you realize that being a straight men doesn't mean you're going to have a problem playing a game where the character isn't a straight men especially when even today the vast majority of games have straight male protag.
Who are "they" ? The vast majority of devs are left-leaning and progressive, it's completely normal that games made by progressive devs have left-leaning political message.
Also this isn't new, devs have always been progressive and games (especially RPG or narrative heavy games) always had left-leaning political message.
No IP or brand can be destroyed by having "political message"
@ni9274 Of course it can destroy it. At least half of gamers if not more absolutely won’t buy or enjoy a game if it’s full of left leaning agendas. Isn’t it strange that there are no games with conservative values everywhere? No. Our side wants normal games with no agendas or political messaging. It’s not that difficult. Also the problem is that journalists and reviewers punish games for not having leftist values in them
@@ni9274 yh honestly a majority of the most memorable games and stories are technically progressive if for some reason people really wanna put politics into everything 🤷♂
Man what the heck would a conservative RPG look like? 😭
There we go. Found one. You’re honestly pathetic dude. It’s sad.
@@dr_diddyan rpg where you don’t make choices, only conform.
The sad thing is a lot of these studios don't actually want to listen to feedback, we have seen time and again pushback or attempts to invalidate real criticism, even open hostility towards potential customers. Avowed went from a likely buy for me to very unlikely after dev commentary and anything Bioware is just an ignore for me going forward.
The main takeaway from this is to follow the actual development talent known for quality, not the studio names as most of them left the big studios long ago, and secondly, look to the indie devs where actual innovation, art and making a good game are their priorities first, so many great experiences and also at reasonable prices.
That's because the majority of feedback is just ignorant people pretending they know what they're talking about. And most of the time those same people still whine and complain when their feedback is acted on. Just look at how well "fan" feedback worked for assassin's creed mirage. The fake fans got what they wanted and still whined after realizing what they wanted was garbage. 😂
The ecosystem is difficult. We've got a bunch of knuckleheads, as can be seen here in the comments, who will pore over a game looking for things they don't agree with and then blow it out of the water for clicks. This noise is hard to drown out, but someone has to take charge and control their studio message.
@@TheJohhnyE U are talking as if AC Mirage is a good game. The "Back to the roots" was only in marketing and things that actually mattered such as it's narrative, characters, their motivation, mechanics, newly added features and overall gameplay loop were all subpar at best.
@@TheJohhnyE fans feedback worked great for BG3, that was long in early access. You are objectively wrong here.
Now it's very easy to gather data about anyone and their dog. These studios stay willfully ignorant, and they don't try to make good games, they don't want people to have fun. It's obvious.
That's mostly a safe rule of thumb yeah, although we've still seen plenty of examples in the last 4 years of (former) great creatives that have been corrupted by the brain-rot.
Im replaying the mass effect trilogy and man it's crazy how well made games used to be. I'm having more fun than I've had in a decade
Same bruh, hope you’re playing sentinel if you’re on Insanity. Best class across the whole trilogy imo
@@bradleybuckets8898I always go with soldier personally. I know it’s the Vanilla default class. But I just enjoy playing mass effect like it’s uncharted.
I've been way happier just playing AA & Indie games. Stalker 2, Chernoblelite, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, Stellarblade, and Hell Let Loose beat most triple A games in every way!
Pretty much every major western dev told me "we didn't make this FOR You!" , so I didn't buy them. Guess I wasn't alone.
You never bought games before anyway. All of you making this false claim don't buy games, but whine about them constantly. 😂
What developers have said that?
@@TheJohhnyE "You never bought games before anyway. All of you making this false claim don't buy games, but whine about them constantly." Can you prove that thelaughingrouge never bought any games before? Where are the false claim? The only people who whine about anything are you losers.
@@hihihi1q23 "What developers have said that?" All of them who speak of modern audience.
You never bought games to begin with so no significant loss. Bye
I hope AAA Gaming fully crumbles. The best games I've played in the last five years have ALL been Indies anyway.
It is becoming very noticeable where we're at with development post-pandemic.
The games industry seems to have too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to the AAA space, and proves how talented devs were in the past.
Now it takes over a half a decade for a game to drop and it barely makes the standard expectation.
It's a sad sight, but also shows how we really need a build our future developers when they are in-house. So when the old guard depart for other ventures, the new guard cN innovate. Look at Nintendo and the proof is in the pudding
You are actually the first person to say the reality, team sizes are bloated. Studios grew rapidly so instead of sending your work to your boss and being assigned the next task, you have to wait for your boss to send it to his boss and then their boss. It's while during Phantom Liberty CDPR completetly overhauled their workflow.
For team size reference, they went from 150 > 250 during TW3 to housing 400+ devs.
BGS for example (based on former devs) everything still has to go through Todd Howard which causes a bottleneck, slowly down production. They're still running their studio like they have 100 devs back in Skyrim.... and it shows in Starfield.
I highly recommend listening to dev interviews or GDCs etc if you're into learning about how the industry actually works rather than grifter #43 who's a postal worker spreading his uninformed surface level opinions....
The funny thing is that there is a suit (or multiple suits) at the very top of these publishing companies that is greenlighting all these garbage MOBA/MMO live-service games, but wont greenlight another singleplayer arkham game that will ACTUALLY MAKE THEM MONEY. They seriously have no clue of what gamers want.
I know this probably won’t be the majority opinion, but this was one of my favorite years in gaming ever.
Astro Bot, Balatro, Black Myth Wukong, FFVII: Rebirth, Helldiver 2, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Metaphor Refantazio, P3: Reload, Path of Exile 2 (early access), Silent Hill 2 Remake, Stellar Blade and Alan Wake 2 finally releasing physically gave me countless hours of enjoyment.
I diagnose you with going outside and not watching outrage channels
Alan Wake 2 was viciously attacked by gooners for being "woke".
If they could actually disconnect from all the outrage bait content they would find the game was a solid continuation to Alan Wake 1 and only got me more hyped for Control 2 and the Max Payne 1/2 remakes.
@@chaserseven2886this isn’t an outrage channel you just don’t like ppl having different opinions then you, go find an echo chamber channel
@@chaserseven2886What are “outrage” channels and how are they different than shill channels?
2023 was amazing too, I mean we had the first real competitive goty in years. Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom, BG3. It was a badass year.
Greed, identity politics, and constently attacking gamers has led the western AAA industry into the situation it's currently in. They have nobody to blame but themselves for thier bad behavior.
😂😂😂 wasn’t the outrage against assassins greed shadows idpol? Which included the people upset about it?
Lmao "identity politics" okay bro. People different than you existing isn't "political".
Identity politics ? Do you realize the most successful recent games had identity politics ?
Nobody is attacking gamers bro.
The western AAA industry is doing fine
You are 100% correct.
you culture warriors need to stopping calling everything that's not white and straight identity politics. you are literally ruining gaming discourse online. its corporate greed plan and simple that's the issue with gaming. look at Baldurs gate 3 it's full of "woke identity politics" and it just won game of the year in 2023.
Late stage capitalism with zero restraint. Short term profit growth incentives above everything else.
Honestly it's not just in the gaming industry. I feel like since quarantined the quality in products, food, and other systems have dwindled.
Matty says a whole lot here without addressing the elephant in the room as to why AAA Western games are failing. Smh...
Review farm trolls: Tencent 🇨🇳 & ponies 🇯🇵
Yes, Larian is owned by China.
What did he need to say? That angry white Gamers™ are convinced that when women and non-whites make games about women and non-whites those games aren't good? What's he supposed to say King Dogwhistle? That AAA gaming deciding not every woman needs to be a jiggly porn star is why games aren't to your standard? What's he not saying? Please enlighten us.
@@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo you're wrong! Tencent have a 30% stake in Larian, which is owned by Swen Vincke and his wife, and Larian have absolute creative control on the games they make!
@shpreenten Tencent is known for review troll farms. Their 30% of work.
Where did Starfield fall? Heck where did Hogwarts Legacy fall??? Too many non-white faces?
Maybe the AAA games were the modern audience who doesn't really exist
"Triple A gaming has found itself in a really bad spot" *executives lean over their shovels as they look up from the bottom of the pit they dug themselves in*
SuicideSquad and Starfield are far worse than Veilguard but Veilguard still wasn’t on the level it should have been, primarily because of the writing.
It's a shame about suicidesquad because it's such a great concept for a game
Woke writing is horrible. Racism and sexisn makes games better unironically.
@@hre2044 The latter is certainly more immersive, especially if you’re playing as an Elf.
@@Lilac-and-Gooseberries Witcher 3 has racism and it serves to make the game more grim, more medieval. No one wants a happy go lucky fuddy duddy world unless it's sonic or Mario
@@hre2044 Yep I’m agreeing with you here. Veilguard still has it a bit but it’s so watered down and made out to be a Southern problem. It’s like “Guy’s did you not notice we’re in Tevinter??”
Gee it took you this long to address this, well better late than never
I genuinely think that the big AAA studios are too big to turn around. Cause of how much time it takes to make games, it'll take 7-10 years to integrate feedback, while they lose money all the time. It's going to be hard going, but we'll get through, eventually.
@MrMattyPlays you know you should try out more indie games and double AA games because they are doing a lot better than triple AAA games. I hope you respond back.
he does! He has the Retro Rebound channel where he talks about the very games you mentioned!
I'd hazard to guess that most gamers do not want woke garbage, moronic dialog, poorly written stories, unlikeable or bland characters, bad gameplay and mechanics, unfinished and buggy messes on full release, predatory mtx, etc. Just a guess...
Gamers do not want "woke" yet Baldur's Gate 3 is the most successful RPG of the decade ? Most "gamers" are not obsessed by "woke".
@ni9274 I think you're both right. I think games are best when they're nuanced and the player can decide what lifestyle best fits them. But it shouldn't be forced like in Dragon Age Veilguard.
@@drewbrees22 This is exactly what I meant. I suppose I could have been clearer, but I felt my comment was dragging a bit. Thanks.
@@ni9274 I didn't mention anything about obsession with wokeness. It's obvious that some games handle political messaging much better than others. Some games shove that kind of thing straight in your face, other games are like meh, it's a part of the world but not necessarily the ONLY important thing. I am specifically talking about the former.
@@drewbrees22 Yeah I mean Cyberpunk effectively had trans stuff in there with what you could do in the character creation but it didn't feel forced at all. I considered buying Veilguard, regardless of the character creation as the gameplay looked fun, until I saw the dialogue and how forced it was.
Game Dev is too focus on telling gamer what to think that they forgot to make a fun game
Buying into that "indoctrination" narrative, eh? That'll get you far. Such a shame Gamers™felt "gaming escapism" was the solution to their lives, because they were too cowardly to deal with their own hatred of others.
It's only going to get worse with DEI studios are removing the old guard and they are being replaced with fresh out of college newbies.
What's a DEI studio ? Nope there isn't any removal of the "old guard", they're firing anyone they can.
Also for the entire history of the game industry the vast majority of devs have been fresh out of college newbies, the game industry is atrociously bad at keeping talents long term so they always had to rely on younger devs.
@ni9274 Your fighting this so hard but it’s well known that western studios decided there weren’t enough women in gaming around 2020 and went and hired tons of them. Yes they fire their talents because new employees have lower salaries. Don’t act like we don’t have to hear constant complaints about straight white men in gaming both as employees and characters even though they have become less and less common over the years. It’s obvious that the problem is gamers and western developers are not on the same page. I honestly don’t care that the games are political life is strange is an awesome game for example. Not every game needs to be life is strange though. Western devs and western gamers don’t like the same stuff. Simple as that.
@@ni9274BioWare and Concord dev are perfect examples
@@caseyblankenship987 If western studio hired tons of women since 2020 why are western studio still 90% male ?
Some studios do it some studios don’t do it, it’s absolutely not a constant practice in western studio to fire talents.
I remember one example of a dev tweeting about the industry having too much old white male, this was clearly self satire.
I have not seen any complaints from a dev about white characters.
You cannot say there are constant complaints about white male in the industry if you only have two or three example of that happening.
White characters still constitute the vast majority of characters in western games.
You need to understand that you and people like you do not represent gamers, you’re just a noisy minority. The proof of that is the success of games like Baldur’s gate 3, Helldivers 2, Phantom Liberty, Space Marine 2, Alan Wake 2…
If western devs and western gamers do not like the same thing why are there so many example of very successful western games ? And all western games they fails do not fails cause of a lack of white protagonist or DEI, they fail cause they’re not enjoyable games from a gameplay standpoint.
@ One studio that doesn’t exist anymore and one studio that hasn’t made a great game for over a decade ? These are not representative of the western AAA industry
I'm honestly just so tired of "5 years away" "10 years away". AAA gaming industry is perpetually in a state of "don't worry only 5 more years" or "10 more years"
Seeing ex employees of "X" famous studio making their own studio and trying to make a game doesn't really give much hope, A prime example, is everyone was hyping out Frost Giant Studio ex-developers of Blizzard, "they gonna make Starcraft 3 for real" and look at their game Stormgate. Monetized online only game, that has 64 player peak.
100% There's been many studios by former devs that fail, it's kind of like Star Wars, George Lucas was the main guy but behind him was a bunch of people giving input and ideas, it wasn't just one or two people... When those people were gone, we got the prequels.
So those devs could easily be losing the people who had their backs during development etc, Callistco, Evolve, Back for Blood, Lawbreakers, Concord (senior bungie devs) are games I remember, Casey Hudson just had his studio close too. It's hard to make magic, it's not impossible as there are a couple games from former devs like The Finals.
That, or they don’t even get to make a single game before getting shut down because they still exist at the funding whims of some investment firm.
Fr sometimes it's genuine lightning in a bottle of good and bad within a teams development that captures magic.
The fall of ASA western studios is really sad but the worst part it’s self inflicted.
I have my own thoughts.
* Some Devs and publishers are starting to get really into the idea that games are "Art" to express themselves, and not as a product meant for a particular consumer base.
* People have a desire (or addiction) to gaming, and the games industry knows it so they get away with putting out garbage games or include predatory mechanics (micros).
* The gamers of today or the focus groups that Devs draw from and make games for are not like us. We aren't the ones they care about.
Somebody smarter than me once said that “an artisan makes a product that you asked for. An artist gives you something that you didn’t know you wanted.” Great games truly are art, but great art is not simply expression. Between artless expression and attempting to appeal to what they imagine Gen Z will like, you’re correct that they’re aiming in all the wrong directions.
“Starfield was never going to reach the heights of Baldur's Gate 3, but to act like a game at the scale of Starfield which is rich with choice and consequence is a "stumbling step back" for RPGs is wild to me.” -Matty twitter quote. This you? Love how you play into the Starfield hate once the hype has died down.
When the CEO’s and corpos on top get $20 million bonuses, but the devs and talented workers get laid off by the thousands every other year, then yeah it becomes unsustainable due to their greed. Gameplay > Art Direction > OST > Graphics > that’s the order games should be prioritized. Instead it’s just big graphics and ways to have a live service or microtransactions.
Western triple A culture has been so insufferable, I finally beat my first Mario Game(Odyssey) since the one on SNES(Mario World). Forget the weirdos gatekeeping our hobby. I'm just going to go play nintendo games and indie games.
There are plenty of Eastern studios aside from Nintendo.
You need to stop anyone no matter on what side they are that say they are gatekeeping because they are y serious people it’s almost virtually impossible to gatekeeping anything unless you gonna start a secret society then maybe you might have a chance
Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, Stalker 2, Alan Wake 2, Dead space remake, Ghost of tsushima...
Western triple A culture is fine
@@ni9274
Baldurs Gate 3 is European. Does that count as Western?
@@bigzachfulread a book
Maybe some companies forgot we love games cause they are ... Fun ? When it comes to budgets, graphics, sound, story, and fun factor there's always the golden rule and should never be any other way. Fun is First, remember that !
Microtransactions, woke writing, and incomplete games at launch… who would have thought it was a bad idea?
Everyone but them it would seem.
lol "woke"
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan yes, woke, commie
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan laugh all you want, it’s the truth lol. Catering to a small minority of people and cramming a message most don’t subscribe to is an easy way to turn consumers off of your product. It’s happened in literally every product market, not just video games.
i'm actually happy that triple A studios are falling apart.
The best games I played this year were Satisfactory, Planet Crafter, Desynced and Astro Colony. The last two are still in early access and all of them are from indie or AA studios.
AAA industry has nothing interesting for me and I am tired of the propaganda that is now mandatory in all AAA games.
I am more happy to spend less on an interesting game from a smaller studio than overpay for a boring crap vomited by a triple AAA publisher.
It's very simple, DEI happened. Anytime you don't hire based on merit and instead hire to check boxes, i'ts going to be a disaster. And it's not going to get better until these studios go completely broke and start hiring based on merit again. It could get much worse, before it gets better. So for me, that just means relaying on games from Asian studios more than I already do.
Do you have any evidence of AAA games studios not hiring based on merit but instead hiring to check DEI criteria ? Also if the problem is DEI why are games like Baldur's Gate 3 so successful ?
"Games from asians studios" Do you realize the vast majority of games coming out from asians studios are live service MMORPG full of predatory MTX ?
@@ni9274 Yes, studios have openly hired based on their own DEI initiatives, they're not hiding it, just do basic research. And when you have a studio filled with 90% blue haired nose ring wearing activists that posts their batshit crazy extremist views on Twitter non-stop, it's not hard to figure out they were hired because they're part of the same cult.
@@ni9274 Dude you're under every comment. You're treating replying to youtube comments like your job or something.
@ni9274 Yall always bring up Baldurs gate 3😂 Baldurs gate 3 is the opposite of woke. I have so much freedom in BG3 that I don’t have to deal with anything I don’t want to. These trash woke games force a message down your throat with no angle out and no end in sight.
@ have you ever worked to say that ?
All the experienced devs who made all the great studios legendary have left.
What they left behind was a massive experience hole.
That hole has partly been filled with activists, people who have no idea how to make good games.
My focus has already moved away from AAA and I’m looking at AA and the new studios started by the old school devs.
I’ve found way more satisfaction from small teams and AA developers.
All the games I’m looking forward too most are either indie developed or KCD2.
2024 was a great year for gaming. Tons of great indie games, and some surprises like Stellar Blade and Space Marine 2. What more could you ask for? Also, developers of worthless AAA games got fired. Good riddance.
Every game wants to be your main game. Every game these days has grindy battle passes and daily/weekly/monthly log in rewards that promote FOMO because they want you to log in every day and NEVER LOG OFF. They drip feed mediocre content and put all the best stuff in the shops or at the end of the battle pass which takes a massive amount of time and dedication to complete. Oh you want to go play a different game? Well ok then but you won’t finish your battle pass and get the ULTIMATE SUPER OMEGA REWARD that you paid for. Now games are offering the MEGA SUPERSTAR ULTRA version of their battle passes that cost around half the price of the full damn game. I’m over it. Even single player games are trying to force in battle passes and shops. The best version of a shop and battle pass system I’ve seen recently is Helldivers 2. It’s the only version of this system that feels like it respects my time.
As a Verified Creator for Starfield and someone who’s spent a lot of time looking through the CK and the Starfield components, I was v dissatisfied with Shattered Space precisely for the lack of attention to detail. I suspect that a lot of the internal developers at Bethesda don’t properly understand how Starfield places POIs and that’s why exploration is so underwhelming. They don’t know how the new World Space module works. The Starfield CK introduced the concept of World Spaces where you can associate a group of POIs in a single planet surface, yet it seems this feature is used at the bare minimum functionality.
Activist instead of talented dev being recruted, DEI, a new generation of people with no passion, culture and so no influence, knowedge to be creative.
??? You got proof “activists” are being hired? And even if that’s true you do know it’s possible to be both they aren’t mutually exclusive
You just made that up, there are no "activists" working for game studios just devs with political opinions (cause you're allowed to be a dev with a political opinion, there is nothing that say games and art in general should be politically neutral), DEI is literally good for studio, the new generations of devs have tons of passions, culture, knowledge and creativity
@ni9274 bruh you under every comment spouting the same copium. It’s a proven fact that these studios are full of woke activists/feminist and have destroyed every game they have touched. If any game has even a resemblance of something woke from here on out it will fail. People are done they’re tired of this bs. This activist devs will get the boot and the industry will shine again otherwise Japan and China will just completely takeover.
@ni9274 Sweet Baby inc. and Hit Detection. They have fully admitted their goal is to shove DEI and identity politics into games. People notice. Stay mad.
@@Salem94-x7m None of those tiny consultant firms have the ability to 'shove' anything into any games. Nothing they do is binding. Sweet baby worked on God of War, are they the reason that game's story is so good? Aren't you weird ass activists currently having a meltdown over a bald chick in a space game anyway?
These are all western studios, wake up Matty.
Love your videos !! looking foward to watching you in 2025!
The biggest problem is that devs hate gamers and that has to stop immediately...because if someone sows hate then they will reap hate themselves and no customer will buy these products😜
I’m glad you recognize the problems gaming is having. But I think you are very much missing the mark on the reasons why.
Consultancy companies, bad writing, bad gameplay, buggy releases, insulting possible customers before a games release, and the message it's easy to see how the industry is failing apart and until it gets back on track it deserves it.
AAA games did not fall, only western ones. And bad western ones. You know, the ones that have always been bad but popular (Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision, EA).
Doom for BETHESDA. is not bad...
But you do have a major point ‼️
I want developers to not take negative feedback so seriously. Listen to players and change your game. Games aren't made to satisfy developers, they are built to satisfy their customers. Negative feedback is more valuable than positive feedback, since negative feedback is typically far more detailed. Someone saying "This game is amazing! GOTY!" doesn't give any substance in how to improve your games in the future. Whereas negative feedback is usually going to have something there you can identify, and improve upon. So, yeah... Do not take negative feedback so seriously, then later attack gamers. That's not how things work.
Paradoxically... developers are taking negative feedback (from a loud minority that don't even buy videogames) too seriously, while completely ignoring overwhelming majority feedback from actual customers - and then wondering why they have cataclysmically bad sales figures.
I thought Indiana jones circle was plain dull but the reviews say otherwise !
15 minutes of dancing in a circle regurgitating the same NPC talking points over and over again like that’s really gonna change anything.
Just started the video and wondering how Matty is going to avoid saying "woke"
Imagine being so dumb you think a game can be bad because of "woke"
@@ni9274keep coping
I think there are more intelligent ways to get his point across.
"Veilguard is massively successful, see!"
Normal person translation: Veilguard still didn't make a profit, but it lost the LEAST amount of money out of the ESG slop titles.
To say selling games for $5 is sad when there's an entire library of "free" games in the same genre is maybe a little off base.
I wish people would admit the reason why.
It’s the aliens isn’t it ?
@chaserseven2886 shhhhh
Greedy corporations and incompetent greedy executives.
@@Pårchmēntôsnot quite
@chaserseven2886 were you sent on some kind of damage control mission to this comment section? You're like the "consume product, get excited for the next product" guy here under every comment, deluded by copium. AAA gaming is lame simple as.
People who don't know what they are doing and injecting their personal ideas where they dont belong.
That's what happened, and im tired of channels like this sugar coating it.
I refuse to believe that the Veilguard has 'mostly positive' on Steam without meddling.
You live in an echo chamber. As someone with over 60 hours in it I can safely say that veilguard is a good game.
So, people can't like a game that doesn't kowtow to your mindless cult beliefs?
That's because those people actually played the game. Instead of parroting what youtube grifters said after they didn't get a free copy, like the guy in this video. 😂
@@TheJohhnyE Matty played the game and didn't like it.
I want to speak it into existence: when BioWare inevitably goes under (over/under is five years given their three fails in a row), Larian buys theDragon Age IP.
This video made me cry not because of the state of the industry but how far Matty has come on his outlook on life. I have certainly grown alongside you and will take your words about change to heart, we’re all creatures of mistakes but what really matters is how you bounce back. Thanks Matty
It’s basically the corporatization of gaming that is killing it. With that comes DEI, HR departments and ultimately collapse.
Most of the big name AAA studios, the talent that built them is long gone.
"Remember, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him." - Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
ESG, DEI and activism happened. Unqualified new devs and reject of the main customer, gamers.
AAA studios consistently forget that the overwhelming majority of gamers are straight men. You can make a game that appeals to a niche market, but then your game's scope and budget should reflect the potential sales; small. If you make a massive game with the absurdly large budgets of modern AAA games, where you need *as many people as physically possible* to purchase your game to break even... you can't actively alienate the 90% of gamers, preach to them about how evil they are, and then berate them for being a "problematic bigot" when they refuse to buy your slop.
People say "They focus on profit and not art and that's the issue!" which I disagree with. They don't care about profit; they're willing to throw away millions, billions of dollars even, actively chase away and berate customers, and call half of the planet "vile evil bigots" for the sake of their "art". They see games as an ideology delivery mechanism first, product never.
Games should be seen as products, because then they'll need to make something that actually sells, aka something *good.*
"White, conservative executives make decisions based on profit that hurt games." Modern "Gamers": "THIS IS BECAUSE THEY HIRED NON-ARYANS!!!!"
I don't understand how company shareholders allow this to happen. Look at the new naughty dog trailer. Just make the main character a dude and don't have him doing anything "quirky" in the trailer. That alone would have had people curious and excited instead of turned off.
@@Edmures_rampant_manhood Yep, entertainment is the only sector, where they think they can handle their customers as crap...
AAA Gaming is causing its own fall with shit quality, horrible monetization methods, pushing shit ideology and flat out insulting customers and gamers. They deserve their own downfall and there is no shame in supporting their downfall, as these AAA developers and publishers have long turned their backs on customers and gamers. Luckily we do have AA and Indie to overtake for AAA stupidity.
Then to add to that, toss in Game Journos like IGN, Kotaku, PCGamer and others as they deserve to fail just as badly if not more so than AAA gaming as well.
What is the one main change in game development other than time to develop? DEI... DEI happened, which is ruining the quality of games. DEI means diversity over qualifications and diversity over quality. The gaming industry is flooded with identity politics activists instead of qualified devs who love making games and want the consumer to also love their work.
Even the most successful example you listed, Veilguard, lost around $100 million. The most generous estimate of copies sold is 2.32 million. Assuming every single person bought the game for $80 (the max price), that means they brought in a MAX of $185 million, but had a budget of $250 million...
And a game's reported budget doesn't always include marketing costs or other logistical costs of keeping the studio running during development. And they need to not only make their money back, but need to make more to fund the next project. So yeah... by just about every metric Veilguard was a flop.
Who wouldn't want a game that lectures 😼😄
@@DougguoD Witcher 3 and Inquisition both had 'lectures' and were hugely successful.
@@hihihi1q23 Got fed up running around in circles during the dog attack in Witcher 3 (have to go back to that sometime) so guess I didn't get to the lecture 🙂 Haven't played Inquisition. I'd definitely run away from any game that got to that "Pull a Barv" annoyance, though 😖🏃♂
You realize the game is only 2 months old right?
I feel great about the future of gaming. I think these massive budget games are part of the issue we've seen so much stagnation. The budgets are so large that the executives feel they can't take risks, and making art requires taking risks. I'm hoping we see more diversified smaller budget games in the future. That is the way we should have gone. Games made for everyone will always suck. We need games made to do specific things well targeting specific people. The era of the exclusive first party games and the massive budget AAAs I think is dead, and I'm not mourning it. It killed so many franchises and studios that I loved.
Lies of P, Stellar Blade, Black Myth. See the pattern.
Most others just fucked up bad.
plus Space Marine 2... IN SPITE OF being shackled to the current PR trashfire that is Games Workshop right now
The thing is though, have those studios that get made by devs who leave these storied AAA companies actually done anything yet? Because from what I know, it's mostly been big promises, hype, and studio closures and not a whole lot of actual games.
It’s like this in so many industries. My car is designed to fail at X number of starts to light up new starter required…
Reminds me of Soviet Products and Company Tactics
Weird.... but but but, capitalism is bettuh....
@danbauer3669 It's definitely not perfect but finding an alternative is not trivial.
I do think there’s a few things happening in gaming.
1. Over saturated market
2. Game directors and heads of studios unable to adapt to changing game engines and consumers
3. Too many chasing the online market /fortnite players
I think it’s going in the right direction, just taking time. Feels like last 1-2 years we have seen more single player games in awhile despite studio heads saying nobody wanted to play them, but we have a few online games that dominate and players don’t really want to change that