I only just now started this game and was planning on buying it later today. Now I don’t think I will even continue with it.
I can’t help but feel like Black Hawk Down ost is needed by the end of July. This is sad.
I really do need a new hobby. Or maybe just to get rid of my phone. This industry can’t go five minutes without making everything feel bleak.
Honestly, this kind of stuff was happening on the low in the past. Sure, not as much, but it was also not much studios as well. So realistically, without BTS, gaming is going strong. With it, it’s depressing. My advice is to move forward.
That’s what makes it so frustrating. Analysts say the industry is growing. Companies report higher revenue and stock market valuation, but as a consumer I’m just paying more for less (or the same) while constantly watching talent disappear. Even trying to justify it, there’s just increasingly less for me to get excited about. Publishers are going more and more fornuliac with cookie cuter games or endless franchises releasing the same way every year. Games are just taking a stupid long time to release as production balloons trying to keep up with the Jones’. And what am I getting for my troubles? The opportunity to pay more for games and hardware every five seconds? As much as the industry is doing better than ever, it’s real stingy to pay that back in real value to the consumers invested in it.
The industry is doing better than ever because we, gamers, are paying for it (spending more), but all I constantly see nowadays from the industry is that it’s not enough. The poor investor didn’t see enough ROI, so say goodbye to another studio and hello to more price increases. There’s external economic forces at play (like with say AI), but a lot of it just feels like malicious vile greed that doesn’t care whom gets harmed. Even the whole AI nonsense is companies chasing the unsustainable market capitalization growth at the expense of the rest of their business or businesses that don’t even get a say in the matter.
The must have sold like crap then. This could have a moment where GamePass might have helped the studio survive
I think people are going a little OTT. I’ve been gaming since 83 & lost count of studios that have closed down, even after one game .
I do think that the Tik Tok generation is a worry, they aren’t going to spend big on games at all. & even for gamers, the price of a new console 6 year’s after it launched is just far too high compare to what it used to be like in the old days when consoles sales would exbloed with prices cuts down the line
It’s the natural logic of capital. The entire point of the gaming industry is not games. It’s not enjoyment. It’s using enjoyment to make money. Capital says ‘if you do this, you’ll get more of me’. So long as you keep the people who actually like the thing itself - gaming - involved, you can build more and more capital. Growth targets become growth floors. There is no end, the logic is insatiable.
To the point that, of course, without capital there’d be no games. They can point and say ‘look, we gave you what you wanted!’. To which the answer is, ‘up to a point. But do not pretend capital is the same as games’, and all that entails.
See also: music, books, education, healthcare, democracy, etc. Capital is none of those things. This is the main reason I cannot stand ‘gamers’ chatting shit about sales and targets and expectations and ‘shit devs’ and ‘crap games’. They’re using a bastardised, fandomised logic of the thing that will kill what they love, often with hilarious myopic fixations on supposed threats - ‘gamergate’ is the example par excellence. Turkeys, Christmas.