Poll of the Day > On a scale of 1-10, rate the current state of gaming.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why did you choose your rating?

i picked 10/10 because there are more games than there were before

Gaming can only go up... for a few more years, then NES carts will degrade, but that will still take like 150 years (although those with battery saves are likely dead already, but you can replace the battery)

if were talking current releases, 6/10. there is a lot of untapped potential but publishers are just dumping out uninspired poop. Im 30 now though and i feel like that has a lot to do with it. people who were 30 twenty years ago probably felt the same way about games in 2003 lol

Live service, season passes, and MTX baby

Stuck between gens apparently

There's a lot of good games but the AAA industry is almost pure trash.

4/10

The period from about 2002 to maybe had some of my favorite releases of all time, but since then titles i care about have trickled to a crawl, studios I once respected and loved have turned into absolute shit, and the industry as a whole has begun to drown under mobile game-influenced pay-to-win mechanics, loot box BS, live service models, and other predatory anti-consumer practices that make money for publishers but lead to far worse games.

Arguably there are a few worthwhile indie game gems here and there, but most of them are in genres that appeal to me, and most of them are on PC where I don't actually game, so they might as well not exist.

I wouldn't say gaming is dead, per se - but the current generation is probably the one I've been least excited about since 1982.

The AAA or otherwise big releases are mostly uninspired groupthink. They're pretty and fine, but I miss games being designed by a small group of people who, you know, liked gaming and were excited about what they were doing.

Indie games exist, of course, and I have some good hopes there...but they haven't really risen to the challenge yet outside of a couple standouts.

Soo...6/10. A good/great game pops up every once in a while, but there's a lot more repetitive blah than there needs to be.

I only really play indie and Nintendo games.

There's always some great new indie game that'll keep me hooked for a while. AAA games were never my thing since guitar hero and tony hawk disappeared.

DirtBasedSoap posted...

if were talking current releases, 6/10. there is a lot of untapped potential but publishers are just dumping out uninspired poop. Im 30 now though and i feel like that has a lot to do with it. people who were 30 twenty years ago probably felt the same way about games in 2003 lol

No, twenty years ago I felt that game creators were doing a fantastic job putting out great games on the new gen consoles.

Now it's more about squeezing every dollar out of the gamer, rather than making great games.

robbobmur posted...

Now it's more about squeezing every dollar out of the gamer, rather than making great games.

It always was always about squeezing every dollar out of the gamer, they just have more ways to do it now

Very disappointed in the current state of all of the online games that I play.

There's a lot that's very, very wrong with the industry, particularly as pertains to worker mistreatment and predatory monetization, but I neither have nor foresee any difficulties finding something I want to play at any given time, so I can't say I really have any complaints at a personal level. Gaming as a whole gets 10/10 in terms of my personal enjoyment, but the industry gets like a 1 or 2/10 for being evil. Dunno how that should average out, if I need a single number.

Zareth posted...

It always was always about squeezing every dollar out of the gamer, they just have more ways to do it now

Yep. The crash of '83 was a consequence of publishers shovelling out piles of uninspired garbage in an effort to sell as many copies for as little effort as possible. Surprise surprise, people didn't actually want to buy 47 different Pac-Man clones, so the industry crashed. An actual crash is profoundly unlikely in today's market, given how much larger and more diverse the industry is now, but the current mass extinction event facing live services is no different from that: Too many companies tried cashing in on a get-rich-quick scheme with a hard limit on how many different companies could cash in on it, so the model is crashing. The same thing happened with MMOs in WoW's heyday, or rhythm games when Guitar Hero and Rock Band were releasing three games a year.

That's not to say the particularly egregious examples of greed shouldn't be called out for what they are, and there are plenty of harms specifically associated with lootboxes that require specific attention, but as a whole the industry isn't really that different from how it's always been. If a good idea pops up, the AAA industry latches onto it and humps it until it's everywhere and everybody gets sick of it, then they move on to the next thing.

I've seen some speculation that the Next Big Thing (tm) for the AAA market will likely be "cozy" games (the Animal Crossings, Stardews, and Unpackings of the world), since a concept's success in the indie market usually closely precedes the AAA market latching on to it. That's going to be an interesting one, since so much of making a game "cozy" relies on it having enough of a soul for playing it to be a comforting experience, and that's kind of flagrantly at odds with making soulless cash grabs that try to milk money out of players at every opportunity. I'm sort of looking forward to watching the AAA industry struggle to reconcile that contradiction.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Arguably there are a few worthwhile indie game gems here and there, but most of them are in genres that appeal to me, and most of them are on PC where I don't actually game, so they might as well not exist.

Sounds like you should consider gaming on PC, if that's where all the games that might interest you are. Loyalty to any specific console has never made much sense compared to just going where the games are, and excluding PC is entirely included in that. Indie games don't exactly require a particularly robust PC, so it's not like hardware costs are likely to be prohibitive. You might even be best off just buying a Steam Deck over whatever console you're considering for your next purchase, since it's pretty much just a console that plays PC games.

Most of the big indies (oxymoron?) come to consoles anyway

Very satisfying to get a $15-20 game for under 5 bucks on Steam though

adjl posted...

since so much of making a game "cozy" relies on it having enough of a soul for playing it to be a comforting experience

Nintendo still manages to do this decently well, so it's possible...but no, I can't imagine SE or whoever succeeding (unless they can repurpose the DQ folks, although they're currently trying to toughen them up for an 'adult' DQ).

I'm just waiting for some of the indie developers to grow a little more capable (i.e. 20 people instead of 3): once they do I think there's a lot of room for them to compete with the big boys on content.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Most of the big indies (oxymoron?) come to consoles anyway

Yeah, absolute PC exclusives are pretty rare. The console market is big enough that neglecting it is throwing away a sizable amount of money for any indie developer, so if they have the resources to make a console port, they almsot always will.

wpot posted...

Nintendo still manages to do this decently well, so it's possible...but no, I can't imagine SE or whoever succeeding (unless they can repurpose the DQ folks, although they're currently trying to toughen them up for an 'adult' DQ).

Squenix has done DQ Builders and Harvestella recently. I'm not sure Harvestella would count, since while it's a foray into the world of farming sims it's very obviously a darker tone than most (which is perfectly fine and by most accounts it's a decently enjoyable game), but DQ Builders could certainly qualify. It's not necessarily accurate to roll every crafting or farming sim up as "cozy" games, as much as that's where a lot of people's minds go, but I think it fits the bill, given that it's mostly just a matter of messing around with the power of friendship.

But yeah, Nintendo's got a good grasp on it, mostly because they've really never made any pretense of chasing "mature" audiences. The most recent Animal Crossing in particular is often credited with kicking off the trend, where it launched at exactly the right time (within a week of most north american lockdowns beginning) and really opened people's eyes to the value of games that are just plain comforting to play because they're so relaxed and cheerful. I don't see Nintendo trying overly hard to chase the trend the way the usual AAA culprits can be expected to, if only because they tend to ignore what the market as a whole is doing (for better or worse).

Zareth posted...

It always was always about squeezing every dollar out of the gamer, they just have more ways to do it now

To be fair, that goes all the way back to the era of arcades where they'd crank difficulty up to artificially hellish levels just to keep you pumping quarters in.

The problem is, there was a long span where gaming evolved into squeezing money out of people by producing actual worthwhile games that people wanted to play. Whereas for the last decade or so there's been more and more emphasis on ignoring quality in favor of doubly down on manipulative gambling mechanics, fee-to-pay mechanics, and psychological tricks that encourage recurrent spending.

So it's very easy to say that the current climate is far worse than it was 10-30 years ago (and maybe even longer). Especially as the value of some exploitative models is encouraging publishers to double down on others.



adjl posted...

Surprise surprise, people didn't actually want to buy 47 different Pac-Man clones, so the industry crashed.

The problem wasn't even "Pac-Man clones". It was that the Pac-Man clones were BAD. Compare the arcade version of Pac-Man (that was always popular) with the Atari 2600 port and it's blatantly clear how exploitative it was. That, combined with abysmally bad games like ET that were shit out and left to die on the assumption that people would buy them due to the brand alone is what helped trigger the crash. Once the initial wave of major failures began, investors panicked and companies tried to pivot to the growing PC market (see also the Coleco ADAM and the Atari ST), and that's what killed them.

Which actually goes back to support the argument. When the games industry sacrifices quality for the quick and easy buck, it tends to backfire on them. It's not just monetization that's the issue.

The main difference between then and now is that the users have grown accustomed to greater and greater complexity and sophistication from games, so the bar for what is considered "quality" is much higher than it used to be. Which makes the threshold for failure much higher as well.



adjl posted...

But the current mass extinction event facing live services is no different from that

Ironically, it may be very different than that.

A number of insiders have suggested that publishers knew full well that the live service model was unsustainable, and that the more games came out using that model, the more it would divide potential income and inevitably kill those games. They were essentially built around the idea that they would only be viable for a short time, so publishers all scrambled to rush their own half-assed live service game out the door early, because the initial games would probably wind up reaping significant profits. It was only the latecomers that were destined to lose money.

In other words, it was more like a pump-and-dump scheme on the stock market than it was ever intended to be a long-term stable investment.

Basically, publishers learned from the MMO bubble, where the first few games out drew HUGE money, but eventually everyone wound up trying to be the next WoW clone and the genre as a whole withered to a fraction of its former value. So now everybody wants to be "THE NEXT BIG THING" first, so they can exploit the market before the bottom drops out.

In that sense it's very different from the Crash of 1983, which the companies really didn't see coming because they were blinded by their own hubris. They couldn't see past their own success, so they didn't know how to cope when that success dwindled.

Publishers now know they may only have a limited time to benefit from any exploitative practice or trend-chasing, so they try to maximize profit as quickly as possible before moving on. They've become predatory beasts that hunt the landscape and kill everything in their path (which used to only be EA's MO!).



adjl posted...

Sounds like you should consider gaming on PC

I really shouldn't.

My issues with PC gaming far outweigh any issue I've ever had with consoles.

My comment that "there are a few worthwhile indie game gems here and there" doesn't really mean there are a ton of games on PC that are appealing to me (because I am only just now noticing that there was a typo in my post - "but most of them are in genres that appeal to me" was supposed to be "but most of them aren't in genres that appeal to me").

It's more acknowledging that there are indie PC games that other people may enjoy/love/etc, and which potentially show the industry as a whole isn't completely devoid of talent or passion, so that some people may say "Oh, gaming isn't dying! I loved Plate Up/Wildermyth/King of the Castle/Starbound/etc". And for them, that's awesome.

But I'm not seeing a ton of games even in the indie scene that appeal to my tastes, and even the ones that do spark a little bit of interest aren't interesting enough to offset my 20-year plus bias against PC gaming. It's also not helped by the fact that after years of mainly gaming on console, my standards for games have gotten unrealistically high, so the jank and weaker graphics of most PC indie games tend to detract from the experience for me.

For me the best case scenario is for a game I do kind of like to get popular enough on PC to eventually get ported to consoles, which is where I usually get around to playing it (which is basically how I played Minecraft and Stardew Valley).



adjl posted...

You might even be best off just buying a Steam Deck over whatever console you're considering for your next purchase, since it's pretty much just a console that plays PC games.

Steam is at least part of my issues with PC gaming though, so that's not really an option.

If I was ever going to switch to PC gaming to a serious degree (which I almost certainly never will), it would almost have to be through a service like GoG or via digital five-finger discount. But even that's not all that appealing to me.

I just have a deep-seated, visceral dislike for PC gaming. I know that's not a hip or trendy attitude to have on this site (where the push towards PC gaming has been strong for the last decade or so), but it is what it is. At this point in my life I honestly don't see me ever really putting in the effort to try and overcome it. Nothing is so fantabulous that I feel like I can't live without it, and there is more media out there than any single human can ever consume, so there's always something else competing for my attention. And it's not like my OLD games are going anywhere - I've been playing Minecraft again lately, and before that I was replaying KotOR.

About the most I'm willing to budge is playing the occasional story-heavy Ren'Py game (which scratches my itch for narrative games), but even those are few and far between when it comes to ones worth playing.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I just have a deep-seated, visceral dislike for PC gaming.

So you admit that it's a you problem then, and not a problem with the industry

Zareth posted...

So you admit that it's a you problem then, and not a problem with the industry

No, because "a few worthwhile indie game gems" do not justify the failings of an entire massive multi-million dollar industry.

It's like being on a sinking cruise ship but saying you still enjoy the experience because at least the catering is really good.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

No, because "a few worthwhile indie game gems" do not justify the failings of an entire massive multi-million dollar industry.

It's like being on a sinking cruise ship but saying you still enjoy the experience because at least the catering is really good.

Or maybe the liferaft has raisers and home theatre

ParanoidObsessive posted...

My issues with PC gaming far outweigh any issue I've ever had with consoles.

Me, I'd say that "there are no games I want to play" is a big enough issue to outweigh pretty much any problems PC gaming has, but maybe I'm just weird.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also not helped by the fact that after years of mainly gaming on console, my standards for games have gotten unrealistically high, so the jank and weaker graphics of most PC indie games tend to detract from the experience for me.

Most PC indie games are substantially less janky and look a lot better than Minecraft, which you obviously like, so this sounds like you're just making up excuses to avoid changing your mind.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If I was ever going to switch to PC gaming to a serious degree (which I almost certainly never will), it would almost have to be through a service like GoG or via digital five-finger discount. But even that's not all that appealing to me.

You can run GoG or Yoho games on a Steam Deck easily enough (though it's not like Steam's DRM properties are any worse than what restricts every single console, and that's the primary benefit GoG offers over Steam). The latter takes some more hoops, as it always does, but GoG ones aren't too crazy to set up and require pretty much no further work once you get them there. Plug it into a TV and connect your controller of choice, and you've got a console with a PC library.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I just have a deep-seated, visceral dislike for PC gaming.

That's really a terribly silly way to approach any platform.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

No, because "a few worthwhile indie game gems" do not justify the failings of an entire massive multi-million dollar industry.

When everyone else can find something fun to play and you can't, that does suggest that the problem is with you, especially when you've got a "deep-seated, visceral dislike" preventing you from accessing games that might appeal to you. That's not to say the industry doesn't have its failings, because hoo boy does it have its failings, but being unable to produce enjoyable games is not one of them and likely never will be. You just have to be a little flexible and recognize that the publishers and platforms you've historically enjoyed might not stay that way indefinitely.

Sitting at a 6 or 7/10

COVID slowed down a lot of stuff, and theres not as many exciting games coming out as often.

For reference I think 2017 and 18 were 10/10.

We got like 5 years worth and amazing games in the span of 20 months

adjl posted...

Me, I'd say that "there are no games I want to play" is a big enough issue to outweigh pretty much any problems PC gaming has, but maybe I'm just weird.

When everyone else can find something fun to play and you can't, that does suggest that the problem is with you

Except I never said either of these things, and it kind of negates the entirety of the rest of your argument.

Saying gaming as a whole is worse than it was is not the same as saying there is literally nothing of value on consoles.

Saying that there are a few rare gems on PC is not the same as saying PC is an overflowing bounty of games that gives it a huge worthwhile library compared to consoles.

You're basically creating a false dichotomy to argue a strawman.

And most of the rest of your post pretty much borders on "Your opinions are wrong", which kind of makes it meaningless.

8/10 perfect

Zareth posted...

It always was always about squeezing every dollar out of the gamer, they just have more ways to do it now

Nah. I didn't pay 70 or 80 dollars for a controller 15 years ago. They literally charge you for everything.

3/10

I mean, just look at the series x and ps5. It's a joke. They've been out for how long now and still have jack shit motivating anyone to get one. The move to nearly every big budget game being open world is pretty annoying too. The 3 points are basically just because games nowadays look and play amazingly compared to when I was a kid. What they can do is fantastic and would be mindblowing for 10 year old me. But most big budget games now are overly ambitious and take way too long in production and come out still unfinished

Hell, they have to routinely come out with remakes/remasters now to even keep people interested

I honestly was pro-console for the longest time until there was no reason to own one over a PC if you were capable of building one or know someone who could.

The 360 was one of my absolute favorite prized possessions before the Kinect update and the fact that it and the PS3 were their own self-contained entertainment devices was awesome.

But with everything moving towards a live service subscription model and game's getting bigger than ever(most major published titles are ~70GB at minimum!), It just made sense to go where storage was cheaper and towards a product that'll last you multiple generations of games. Exclusives aren't really what they used to be anymore either.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Except I never said either of these things

ParanoidObsessive posted...

but since then titles i care about have trickled to a crawl,

That certainly sounds like "I'm having trouble finding games that I like," followed shortly by "anything I might like that's on PC doesn't count because I don't like PC." You also spent a substantial amount of time blaming the industry for failing to provide you with anything interesting, which is at odds with the fact that plenty of people are having no trouble finding interesting stuff and suggests that the problem lies with you, especially where you're avoiding the platform that you believe might offer some exceptions (though, as others have pointed out, it's no longer 2010 and most noteworthy indie titles now also make it to consoles). All of which leads to the conclusion that looking inward may be wise.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And most of the rest of your post pretty much borders on "Your opinions are wrong", which kind of makes it meaningless.

If you and I spend the same amount of time finding a game, the same amount of money purchasing it, and the same amount of time playing it, and when it's all said and done I've had fun and you haven't, can you really claim that your opinion isn't the wrong one to hold and that you wouldn't be objectively better off if you shared mine?

it's a bit silly to be prejudiced against PC gaming considering how few exclusives you miss out on (barring Nintendo consoles), how much better you can make games run, how much better you can make them look, how modding can fix games by themselves (cough Skyrim), and how accomplishing all this doesn't even cost much time, effort, or money anymore. you get the console experience if you want it, but it's just better, especially if you yarrharr. fun fact: switch games run way better when not on the switch

sure, i can get behind most indie games looking like unappealing piles of ass because I half share the sentiment (half, because holy shit pizza tower rocks), but you can also just play anything else. it's probably cheaper over here, and if you have any minor beefs, there's probably mods for that if it's pissed off enough people. you can get any controller you want to work with any game, region locking generally isn't a thing (and fan patches are bigger here). it's all upsides and the downsides of the past are virtually nonexistent now

6

most of the triple A games are toilet but indie games are some of the funnest games ever pooped out

Indie and mid-level games, and Nintendo 1st party are all pretty strong, arguably about as great as they've ever been in any prior generation.
AAA and Sony/MS 1st party is an unmitigated dumpster fire of the same boring open worlds and littered with all kinds of abusive MTX, loot boxes, "live service" scams, etc....

Hard to give one overall rating. Former group I'd give a 9/10.
Latter a 1/10.
do I just like...average it?

Sports games are trash now, Pokmon has gone downhill, and I'm still waiting on TESVI/Starfield so no, it's a pretty bad time for video games imo

8/10. Plenty of games to play so I'm still enjoying it.

7, new games haven't really excited me quite a few years. Not a fan of how developers are so quick to latch on to trends. Good thing there's plenty of good older games.

In general its pretty good, but some of the more common problems are significant enough to hold it back. Even more so because most of these problems are easily resolved, yet developers do not resolve them. Regardless of who's fault that situation is, its still harmful.

Things like releasing a game while its a buggy mess instead of taking more time to fix it. Leaving out / removing features that should be there, putting microtransactions and the like into full priced games, and gameplay elements that are fine on mobile games being brought to non-mobile platforms where they don't work as well.. Stuff like that.

Muscles posted...

Sports games are trash now, Pokmon has gone downhill, and I'm still waiting on TESVI/Starfield so no, it's a pretty bad time for video games imo

Pokemon is getting better. At least they're taking chances, even if they don't always work out, unlike the majority of the earlier games. And that alone is worth something.

Trying to go 3D while remaining on the same release schedule (while jamming Arceus in there, somehow) and not upsizing their team was a massive mistake. They really do not know how to do 3D and they need a longer development time to acclimate to it. S/M/US/UM weren't the best but they weren't trash fires of performance and cut content.

Transitioning to 3D itself isn't necessarily a positive thing, 2D games aren't inherently inferior. Open worlds are an over-explored concept at this point (and S/V don't even do open worlds properly since there's very little freedom to the order you do things in). SV's overworld looks like total ass compared to even just SwSh, which already had some problems in the wild areas.

Don't get me wrong, Pokemon has a huge problem with stagnation, but nothing they've done has been remotely in the right direction. They need multiple teams working on different games for longer development periods if they want to try to keep up this release schedule and try to be creative at the same time.

State of modern gaming? Can't afford them. \o/

I'm either living in the past, enjoying the classics for the first time or I'm playing some indie PC game.

it says a lot that the best VR title is a mod for a non VR title

i give it a baffling/10

Mostly good - I'm not excited about new games as much as I was when I was younger, but I still find titles to enjoy.

And because I wait for Steam sales, I'm paying less for games now than I ever had in the past.

I don't think I've ever been less interested in modern games, particularly on the triple-A front. Basically the only big-name titles I still buy are, like, maybe two games from Nintendo a year.

Indie gaming and retro gaming are still fun, but the medium just feels remarkably stale right now.