6 ms·

Did too many games release in Q3 of 2024?

44 points by vyrotek 2y ago

DiscourseFan 2y ago
Videogames are rapidly becoming the predominant medium of artistic expression. Especially horror (even Undertale could be categorized as horror or at least with horror elements). I've seen horror games that are far more complex thematically than anything coming out of Hollywood or in literature these days.
- foolfoolz 2y ago
  it’s been this way since vice city
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    While I won't necessarily agree with Vice City being the appropriate demarcation, I recently learned that GTA Vice City (2002) is closer in time to its settings (1986) than it is to the present day, and that made me feel things.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      And yet, there's few early-2000's nostalgia, even 90's nostalgia or retro hasn't really taken off yet. Closest thing I can think of is Breaking Bad, and that came out in 2008, so at the time it wasn't even "2000's nostalgia". But the thing with BB is that cheap feature-phones are an important plot device, but 2008 was a turning point in that the iPhone and Android smartphones were taking the world by storm, as did fast always-on internet. I posit that it's not so much the year or time, but the technology and experiences of the time that determine if something is considered retro. 80's was cable TV and walkmans; 90's wasn't much different, but late 90's / early 2000's was marked by the rise of the internet. But people sitting at their computer doesn't make for good TV. Late 2000's to now is the era of smartphones, but again, I don't think anyone will feel nostalgic about people sitting alone together browsing Reddit or HN for hours on end.
  - anthk 2y ago
    - Broken Sword - Curses!/Jigsaw - The Longest Journey - Trinity - Outcast Text/graphical adventures were like 20-30 years ahead of Hollywood, but 20 years behind paper books and fandom.
- hawski 2y ago
  Would it be true to say that technological and educational progress makes art increasingly complex as it is easier to use a specific art medium having means to do so? I did not think of AI generation starting my comment but here I am with my last sentence.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    I think that's generally the case. In Aesthetic Theory (which is fairly inaccessible to the general public, probably best to read this[0] article instead) Adorno suggests that art mediums progressively annihilate each other as technology advances and the condition of possibility for an artwork is also the destruction of all previous works of art, both solidifying them in the history of art and also restructuring it entirely around the artwork itself, which contains all previous art historical ruptures inside it. [0]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- GrantMoyer 2y ago
  Some of my favorite stories are from videogames, but I don't know if the medium as a whole is outpacing films. AAA games have a lot of the same problems as Hollywood; they're usually very formulaic and safe. And while indie games are more thematically varied, they're hit or miss on execution, a lot like indie films. That said, horror movies specifically are often very underwhelming in the themes they explore, so horror videogames don't have a high bar to beat.
Brainspackle 2y ago
Couldn't tell ya. I'm still playing games from 2019. With so many game releases nowadays, I have the patience to wait for a good sale to pick up anything new. The only game I've bought on release in the past few years is Baldurs Gate III
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  Apart from factorio the games I play are 20 years old and older. I was looking forward to Homeworld 3 but they hashed that up so bad that it’s far less fun than the original. The point being that new stuff isn’t just competing with new stuff but also old stuff.
  - yreg 2y ago
    You might also be getting older and more nostalgic…
  - bjelkeman-again 2y ago
    Are we turning into old farts with our old games? I play a 25 year old game on a cloned server (EverQuest clone, 1999 MMO). And a newer first person shooter, but free to play. I was looking forward to a new Homeworld. Shame.
    - thepuppet33r 2y ago
      I think we just probably have less time to play. In college I could blow an entire weekend on a subpar game and be fine with it, because I didn't really have competing priorities. Now, if I waste $60 and four hours on an abysmal game, it's $60 that I could have used to take my kids to the movies, get takeout for my wife and I, or any number of other things. Same with the time. Five hours is time I could have spent cleaning the house, working on my side projects, etc. I love gaming, and I destress by playing games, but it's not worth the now much higher opportunity cost to play the newer (usually worse) stuff. That said, not all new games are terrible. Dredge is a game made last year that was absolutely phenomenal in my mind, and well worth the cost and time. Spent way too many late nights fishing in that game.
nitwit005 2y ago
> The too many games argument always seemed toxically Malthusian to me. Like who made too many games? Who should stop making games? It's exactly the same as farmers planting too much. It doesn't matter if people love what they planted. There is a limit to what people can reasonably consume. Only, unlike farming, I don't expect governments to intervene in the market. Video games aren't exactly a critical good.
- digging 2y ago
  Just as you say, it's a matter of it just being comparatively very easy to make games. These questions have easy answers: > Like who made too many games? Everybody. > Who should stop making games? Nobody. It's simply that more games get made than anyone can possibly consume. That counts as "too many [to consume]". That doesn't mean anything should change. It only feels weird because we recently came from a time where it felt like you could play every game coming out (except if you allow flash games, that actually hasn't been true for a longer time than it seems). But nobody is complaining that "we made too many t-shirt designs in 2024 and I can't wear them all."
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Amateur musicians do complain all the time about not getting enough attention… at least in every country that I’ve heard of?
    - recursive 2y ago
      Some of everyone is complaining about some of everything. Some people want more attention. I don't think there's a serious proposal to limit the amount of music made. There will always be people making music for the love of it. And since distributing it is now free, you'll need some kind of special angle if you want to get paid. My point is that not all musicians are complaining. And nor are all the game publishers.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
486sx33 2y ago
I’d say quantity is no replacement for quality. 3000 games could have been released in Q3 of 2024 but I wouldn’t have noticed because there are exactly zero I want to play online with game pass or be permanently connected to the internet for.
pier25 2y ago
The problem is not too many but games but not enough good games being released.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  how would one define "good game" in this case?
YesBox 2y ago
For juxtapositional context: This article [1] came out in 2016 and gives a great overview of why and how difficult it is to be successful (especially more than once) in the video game industry. Entertaining people is _very_ challenging work. John Carmack [2]: "The work in the aerospace industry is "simple" compared to the work he does in video games" [1] https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-markets/ https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-marke... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospa...
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Like any production, most corporate interests simply don't respect the medium. Its a tough call for studios, as training some talent is impossible due to zero workmanship ethics from prior trauma in production environment art. And No, most don't give a fsck about AI due to the copyright liability it injects. lol =3
screye 2y ago
We're in a 5 year slump for gaming. The best games are improvements on known formulas.(Elden ring, Wukong : Dark Souls, BG3 : Divinity, etc, GOW, Last of Us : Sequels). Alyx & Flight Simulators are exceptions, and neither are games in the traditional sense. Now culturally, the gaming industry has been broken for a while now. This slump was a long time coming. But, I didn't expect it to be such a grand collapse. I'm speculating, but the writing on the wall was there since the mid-2010s. A much needed reckoning during #MeToo opened the flood gates. It broke a clearly abusive, yet stable equilibrium. The subsequent instability saw a panicked pivot into faux-inclusive corporatization & an exodus of the talented few who made these miraculous games happen. Artistic endeavors can only sustain so many MBAs. Look at the top studios. Ubisoft & EA have yet to take risks on a single 'inspired' original IP since 2020. Both tried to pivot to mobile, only to realize that East-Asia & gambling studios had that market cornered. Blizzard & Bethesda crumbled below a pile of scandals. Post acquisition by Microsoft, neither have produced a single decent game. Sony's existing IPs are doing doing ok; eg: GOW, Remakes, Souls-like games. But, they haven't produced fresh IP or face planted with (non)releases like Concord. We are in an interesting Liminal space for gaming. Hyped games like GTA 6 & Elder Scrolls 6 are too far away. No recent AAA game has taken over. And the choke-hold of long running games is waning(Dota, LOL, Fortnite, CS, Pokemon Go). I see a 2 year margin for a new game to take over the scene. Black Myth showed how wide-open the arena is right now. If 2077 had managed their release well, they'd have won out....but alas. For mid-sized indie game developers (eg: Supergiant Games), this is their shot at triggering this decades Fortnite/LOL moment........Or, it'll be a roblox game. It's going to be a roblox game isn't it ? __________ P.S: I'm confused why costs for AAA games have ballooned. Machines, engines & tooling have improved many fold. At the same time, consumer expectations haven't changed since Crysis released 15 years ago. It should be a lot cheaper to make polished games. That's ignoring all the benefits of gen AI too.

44 points by vyrotek 2y ago

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

foolfoolz 2y ago
it’s been this way since vice city
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  While I won't necessarily agree with Vice City being the appropriate demarcation, I recently learned that GTA Vice City (2002) is closer in time to its settings (1986) than it is to the present day, and that made me feel things.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    And yet, there's few early-2000's nostalgia, even 90's nostalgia or retro hasn't really taken off yet. Closest thing I can think of is Breaking Bad, and that came out in 2008, so at the time it wasn't even "2000's nostalgia". But the thing with BB is that cheap feature-phones are an important plot device, but 2008 was a turning point in that the iPhone and Android smartphones were taking the world by storm, as did fast always-on internet. I posit that it's not so much the year or time, but the technology and experiences of the time that determine if something is considered retro. 80's was cable TV and walkmans; 90's wasn't much different, but late 90's / early 2000's was marked by the rise of the internet. But people sitting at their computer doesn't make for good TV. Late 2000's to now is the era of smartphones, but again, I don't think anyone will feel nostalgic about people sitting alone together browsing Reddit or HN for hours on end.
- anthk 2y ago
  - Broken Sword - Curses!/Jigsaw - The Longest Journey - Trinity - Outcast Text/graphical adventures were like 20-30 years ahead of Hollywood, but 20 years behind paper books and fandom.
hawski 2y ago
Would it be true to say that technological and educational progress makes art increasingly complex as it is easier to use a specific art medium having means to do so? I did not think of AI generation starting my comment but here I am with my last sentence.
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  I think that's generally the case. In Aesthetic Theory (which is fairly inaccessible to the general public, probably best to read this[0] article instead) Adorno suggests that art mediums progressively annihilate each other as technology advances and the condition of possibility for an artwork is also the destruction of all previous works of art, both solidifying them in the history of art and also restructuring it entirely around the artwork itself, which contains all previous art historical ruptures inside it. [0]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
GrantMoyer 2y ago
Some of my favorite stories are from videogames, but I don't know if the medium as a whole is outpacing films. AAA games have a lot of the same problems as Hollywood; they're usually very formulaic and safe. And while indie games are more thematically varied, they're hit or miss on execution, a lot like indie films. That said, horror movies specifically are often very underwhelming in the themes they explore, so horror videogames don't have a high bar to beat.

Brainspackle 2y ago

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

cjbgkagh 2y ago
Apart from factorio the games I play are 20 years old and older. I was looking forward to Homeworld 3 but they hashed that up so bad that it’s far less fun than the original. The point being that new stuff isn’t just competing with new stuff but also old stuff.
- yreg 2y ago
  You might also be getting older and more nostalgic…
- bjelkeman-again 2y ago
  Are we turning into old farts with our old games? I play a 25 year old game on a cloned server (EverQuest clone, 1999 MMO). And a newer first person shooter, but free to play. I was looking forward to a new Homeworld. Shame.
  - thepuppet33r 2y ago
    I think we just probably have less time to play. In college I could blow an entire weekend on a subpar game and be fine with it, because I didn't really have competing priorities. Now, if I waste $60 and four hours on an abysmal game, it's $60 that I could have used to take my kids to the movies, get takeout for my wife and I, or any number of other things. Same with the time. Five hours is time I could have spent cleaning the house, working on my side projects, etc. I love gaming, and I destress by playing games, but it's not worth the now much higher opportunity cost to play the newer (usually worse) stuff. That said, not all new games are terrible. Dredge is a game made last year that was absolutely phenomenal in my mind, and well worth the cost and time. Spent way too many late nights fishing in that game.

nitwit005 2y ago

> The too many games argument always seemed toxically Malthusian to me. Like who made too many games? Who should stop making games? It's exactly the same as farmers planting too much. It doesn't matter if people love what they planted. There is a limit to what people can reasonably consume. Only, unlike farming, I don't expect governments to intervene in the market. Video games aren't exactly a critical good.

digging 2y ago
Just as you say, it's a matter of it just being comparatively very easy to make games. These questions have easy answers: > Like who made too many games? Everybody. > Who should stop making games? Nobody. It's simply that more games get made than anyone can possibly consume. That counts as "too many [to consume]". That doesn't mean anything should change. It only feels weird because we recently came from a time where it felt like you could play every game coming out (except if you allow flash games, that actually hasn't been true for a longer time than it seems). But nobody is complaining that "we made too many t-shirt designs in 2024 and I can't wear them all."
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Amateur musicians do complain all the time about not getting enough attention… at least in every country that I’ve heard of?
  - recursive 2y ago
    Some of everyone is complaining about some of everything. Some people want more attention. I don't think there's a serious proposal to limit the amount of music made. There will always be people making music for the love of it. And since distributing it is now free, you'll need some kind of special angle if you want to get paid. My point is that not all musicians are complaining. And nor are all the game publishers.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago

486sx33 2y ago

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

pier25 2y ago

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

johnnyanmac 2y ago
how would one define "good game" in this case?

YesBox 2y ago

For juxtapositional context: This article [1] came out in 2016 and gives a great overview of why and how difficult it is to be successful (especially more than once) in the video game industry. Entertaining people is _very_ challenging work. John Carmack [2]: "The work in the aerospace industry is "simple" compared to the work he does in video games" [1] https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-markets/ https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-marke... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospa...

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

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

screye 2y ago

We're in a 5 year slump for gaming. The best games are improvements on known formulas.(Elden ring, Wukong : Dark Souls, BG3 : Divinity, etc, GOW, Last of Us : Sequels). Alyx & Flight Simulators are exceptions, and neither are games in the traditional sense. Now culturally, the gaming industry has been broken for a while now. This slump was a long time coming. But, I didn't expect it to be such a grand collapse. I'm speculating, but the writing on the wall was there since the mid-2010s. A much needed reckoning during #MeToo opened the flood gates. It broke a clearly abusive, yet stable equilibrium. The subsequent instability saw a panicked pivot into faux-inclusive corporatization & an exodus of the talented few who made these miraculous games happen. Artistic endeavors can only sustain so many MBAs. Look at the top studios. Ubisoft & EA have yet to take risks on a single 'inspired' original IP since 2020. Both tried to pivot to mobile, only to realize that East-Asia & gambling studios had that market cornered. Blizzard & Bethesda crumbled below a pile of scandals. Post acquisition by Microsoft, neither have produced a single decent game. Sony's existing IPs are doing doing ok; eg: GOW, Remakes, Souls-like games. But, they haven't produced fresh IP or face planted with (non)releases like Concord. We are in an interesting Liminal space for gaming. Hyped games like GTA 6 & Elder Scrolls 6 are too far away. No recent AAA game has taken over. And the choke-hold of long running games is waning(Dota, LOL, Fortnite, CS, Pokemon Go). I see a 2 year margin for a new game to take over the scene. Black Myth showed how wide-open the arena is right now. If 2077 had managed their release well, they'd have won out....but alas. For mid-sized indie game developers (eg: Supergiant Games), this is their shot at triggering this decades Fortnite/LOL moment........Or, it'll be a roblox game. It's going to be a roblox game isn't it ? __________ P.S: I'm confused why costs for AAA games have ballooned. Machines, engines & tooling have improved many fold. At the same time, consumer expectations haven't changed since Crysis released 15 years ago. It should be a lot cheaper to make polished games. That's ignoring all the benefits of gen AI too.