Here’s an idea, maybe instead of chasing trends and guessing what customers want…maybe…just maybe…
Let your artists express themselves freely?
That’s hard to do when games need 15 bazillion people to make them because I said they should
Haha yeah looks at Undertale
I got so much more lasting enjoyment, fond memories, and even some shifts of perspective from Undertale/Deltarune than from games that were far more expensive to make, such as Call of Brothers of Duty Black Ops Modern Zombie Battlefield: Ghost Shadow Grey Tacticool Warfare 1 (called “1” but replacing the previous “1”).
Could you maybe not say they should?
Perhaps you could even make more games with less people each. A crazy concept I know.
Instead of 15 bazillion people working on one game that now needs to make all of the money to be profitable, make like 15 games only requiring one bazillion people, and now each of those games only needs to make some of the money.
Which is wild because the games don’t come out on time, the workers are miserable, and the games become irrelevant in a fraction of the time it took to make those games.
Let your artists express themselves freely
What are you some kind of communist?! Think of the shareholders!
Art is for profit, not for art’s sake!
Omg I haven’t seen that pointing porky before. It’s too good.
Problem is that executives and capitalists are the dumbest, least creative people alive and chasing trends is all their underdeveloped brains are capable of. Just look at the bizarre AI mania.
Just look at the bizarre AI mania.
LLMs are definitively chasing trends. THATS HOW THEY WORK. No wonder the treat printers print such uninspired slop… and no wonder the treat printer apologists have such poor taste to begin with, wanting infinite waifu printouts with bland cyberpunkerino dressings.
What gets me is that there are games that, if made, would obviously print money and people would love. It requires minimal creativity or thought.
Make the pokemon MMO.
Make the chao garden.
Half Life 3
Right off the top of my head. There are so many games that people beg for that get avoided like we’re asking for healthcare. I’m not even asking for something cool like a 3D platform fighter that makes them have to shit their pants because it’s not formulaic.
I’ll never forgive profit extraction and investment returns sticking their nose into every last facet of society
Given that gamefreak couldn’t get Scarlet/Violet to run at a steady frame rate despite the simple, outdated graphics, I can’t imagine that them attempting that but with hundreds of players per server would result in anything other that an absolutely broken game.
I’m generally a defender of modern Pokemon games but to call the online features of Scarlet and Violet “outdated” would be an understatement. The tera raid battle lobbies are inexcusably awful. We figured online lobby systems out in the 90s for god’s sake.
I genuinely doubt there are more than a handful of creatives in the industry who even know anything other than the trends. It’s not like the vast majority of indie devs produce anything other than cheap uncreative attempts at copying some other big indie hit. The gaming industry is simply creatively bankrupt to the core, gamers are too stupid to make art.
What about another extraction shooter? That’ll be a hit for sure
Hunt: Showdown perfected the formula with demonic monster huntin’ cowboys we don’t need any more
Chasing trends never really worked because the initial game that set the trend has already eaten up the potential user base and there’s little room for another. Like look at cod, has there ever been a successful competitor? I think the only trend chasing that worked was battle royales but that was because pubg was a half baked mess that never really saw any major changes.
Like look at cod, has there ever been a successful competitor?
Battlefield?
They pretend to be, but at the core they’re very different games.
Battlefield is a military sandbox with a focus on immersion and atmosphere. Lots of vehicles. An actual projectile based bullet system. Large team based gameplay.
COD is an arcade shooter with ‘hitscan’ weapons, focused on fast paced gameplay on small maps. Actual vehicles weren’t even a thing until warzone.
I mean last time I played either series was around the time of battlefield 3, but back then the series were very direct competitors and I played both and they were very similar.
There was always a rivalry between the fans, but it was just because they were the two biggest franchise shooters. I think they fight for new fans and children, but if you’ve played either properly you know which you prefer. To compare BF3 and MW3 and think they’re ‘very’ similar I think is misled.
To compare BF3 and MW3 and think they’re ‘very’ similar I think is misled.
I disagree, and I played quite a bit of both. They’re both fast-paced round-based arcadey competitive shooters with a wide variety of different weapons with which to approach situations in slightly different ways. MW3 is slightly faster paced and more arcadey but I think it’s disingenuous to imply that they aren’t filling the exact same niche.
BF3 had 64 players on big open maps with vehicles. MW3 had tiny little maps with less than half of BF3s players. They really weren’t the same game/niche
I just disagree. I don’t like modern COD. I liked old COD but I wasn’t very good at it. I have loved and been pretty good every battlefield game apart from the newest one.
There’s a milsim community on battlefield. There isn’t on COD because it’s impossible to bring such an arcadey game to a realistic level by tweaking the settings. (Of course, battlefield milsim isn’t actually realistic but it gets a lot closer… Otherwise no one would bother)
Battlefields flagship conquest mode rounds can last at least half an hour. COD’s rounds last 1-7 minutes. COD’s maps are for the most part classic 3 lane gameplay. Battlefield maps are much more open and the sky is literally the limit. The vehicles alone separate the franchises hard. Battlefield has recoil models, bullet velocity, and suppression mechanics, whereas COD is much more ‘quake’ style. Even in terms of classes, battlefield is oriented towards team fighting with resupplies, revives, and so on. COD is very solo-skill focused.
Their only real gameplay comparison are their campaign missions, which neither franchises really bother with anymore. If you look at recent game releases, people are hailing DELTA FORCE as the new Battlefield ‘killer’. No one’s comparing it to COD. They’re just different. You could only not spot the differences if you’d only played TDM on Noshahr Canals.
I’m looking at Veilguard and hoping that they didn’t derail the game too hard after BG3’s success. I just want Dragon Age to be its own thing and moving away from big pillars of worldbuilding like blood magic reeks of trying to be more mainstream fantasy
Speaking as somebody who used to live within visual range of BioWare’s headquarters: don’t get your hopes up. The “studio” has been swirling the toilet ever since the back half of Dragon Age 2 (and most of its ALREADY MADE DLC!) got “scrapped”, then turned into Inquisition.
It’s just EA now.
The “studio” has been swirling the toilet ever since the back half of Dragon Age 2 (and most of its ALREADY MADE DLC!) got “scrapped”, then turned into Inquisition.
It’s just EA now.
But but Bioware Magic!
Bioware Tragic
Ooof. I thought that was the case around the time of Anthem and the uptick of Dragon Age content after that time.
I guess it’s on me to hold out hope like that.
Sadly they didn’t chase the BG3 success, they actually chase the TW3 success and made the game action RPG.
Just one more battle royal bro…
Battle Royales are such a great example of this, because it’s a genre that inherently can’t have more than a couple big games in it or they’ll eat each other’s audience.
If you so desperately want to make another battle royale start development in a couple years and release it in 2030 when maybe some people have stopped playing Fortnite and Apex.
Good. Make unique games like the industry used to do way back when.
This is why the market got flooded with a bajillion “cozy life simulator” games the last couple years. Developers saw Animal Crossing New Horizons sell like mad in 2020 and went “copy that.” Never mind that they couldn’t replicate the established franchise or releasing right at the start of lockdown elements.
I want to make a game. It will involve lots of maths
I can’t wait to see a bunch of bland CRPG’s in a few years chasing BG3’s success
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
