this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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It's pretty sad that I can't tell if this list was made yesterday or four years ago. If people are able to have fun despite a stagnant industry, all power to them, but I haven't seen a good game out of AAA in a long while.
I really hope one day business schools will start teaching people that trying to blindly follow trends in art has literally never worked. Hasn't worked for all the film studios trying to make their own cinematic universes, hasn't worked for game studios trying to chase the new live service dragon, but still we get braindead suits getting senior level positions approving derivative drivel.
Alright, new theory:
You guys don't play too many games, right?
For the record, the best selling games of this year had fewer live service games than last year and the year before. The top of the charts was consistently single player games without microtransactions and this is one of the main GOTY candidates of 2023 following trends from "business schools" straight into... eh... a climactic absurdist musical number.
I'd tag that as spoilers if I could because, as I said, it's increasingly clear you guys haven't been playing this stuff.
You're right, the best selling games have been single-player focused. So why has Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix, ActivisionBlizzard, Warner Bros, and Sony Interactive been pushing to jump on the recent extraction shooter trend? Hell, find me a triple A publisher that does not have a live-service game being maintained, I'll wait.
If you're argument is that AAA is not wasting millions of dollars on chasing trends, you'll have to find more evidence than all their projects being failures.
Larian
That just proves other strategies have success. AAA bullshit and good games can both be successful.
Uhhh… k? BG3 is not a AAA game?
It's AAA in a sense, but it isn't bullshit. In fact, indie games can be bullshit in the form of asset flips, knock offs, and uninspired crap. Budget doesn't directly determine bullshit, it's just that AAA bullshit is a more noticeable issue.
Regardless, great media makes money alongside trash media. That's how it's always been, we just don't remember the trash as much.
Because they're not all failures, they're also making single player games and you're assuming that the one example of publishers wanting to tick a box in their lineup is somehow all they (let alone the entire industry) are producing.
The fact that people are making extraction shooters doesn't mean they're not making anything else. Warner's biggest game this year is a narrative RPG. EA's biggest game is (as always) a sports game, and their highest reviewed games are a Star Wars single player action game and a single player horror game. Sony's biggest game is an open world superhero action game. I don't know about Ubi's sales off the top of my head, but what they've shipped recently is a 2D metroidvania and a throwback to classic Assassin's Creed.
I don't understand why you want publishers to be judged by what they don't make, as opposed to what they make. Major publishers are billion dollar companies that put out many games. I have zero problems with EA running Apex Legends if I get to play Dead Space. I have zero problems with Sony trying to get a live service game going if they keep making insanely refined narrative action games. I don't enjoy every game people make, but I don't hate that people make games that are not for me if there are also games for me happening at the same time.
Baldur's gate 3 wasn't the top earning video game this year, just the top selling one. The business school cronies only care about the profit, not the quality.
Different metrics, though.
I do have to disagree that this chart proves what you say it proves, though. Arguing that Rockstar in particular does not care about quality is... a sizzling hot take.
Look, there are plenty of grifters in gaming, particularly those coming from the tech side of things (not "business school" so much, honestly). And yeah, there's a lot of money to be made and the majors are going to want a piece of that pie. Which is fine, because I want them to have money to also go after the big flashy triple-A single player stuff.
But it's obviously not true that all you get from the games industry is cookie cutter GaaS stuff. It's less true by the minute. Which is not to say I want online games to go away, either. I will actively play some of the games on that list. On purpose. I don't want them to be the only thing there is to play... but fortunately they're not, so... cool?
I just had someone telling me if I can't tell the new street fighter installment from the old one then i must not have eyes. It looks practically identical to the previous three installments. I think I'm done trying to interact with gamers for literally anything.
You have to take a very cursory glance to not find differences between Street Fighter 5 and 6. The gameplay systems are very different, 6 has an actually good single player mode, the net code is vastly improved. If you're just looking at the graphics, you're doing the same thing this post is criticizing but for the opposite goal. Street Fighter 6 is one of the AAA home runs, especially when you consider the disasterous launch of SF5.
it's a niche game that i know little about, have no interest in, and definitely am not going to shell out money for; he's bitter that I don't care and I'm not impressed that a franchise older than I am shat out another entry.
Do you even like video games? Judging by your comments in this thread, they make you angry and bitter, so I don't know why you bother to post about them.
I don't play a niche game franchise enough to see the difference between last year's iteration and this one, therefore I must not like games at all. It's FIFA with anime characters to me, doesn't mean I don't like other things.
"A niche game franchise" lmao Street Fighter is one of the most popular and well known game series in the world. I won't say it's the best fighting game franchise, but it is very much a household name just as much as Mario or Pokémon are.
...it's a niche genre bro. That's not the same as being obscure.
fine, whatever. i still don't know or care what the difference is and neither do the majority of people, pedantry notwithstanding. because it's niche.
I know literally one person who plays fighting games seriously and keeps up with the market, to everyone else they're once-on-a-while party games, if that. It's not a bad thing, it just is. Calm down, Capcom won't go on a date with you for defending their honor against the word "niche".
next you'll be insisting dance dance revolution isn't niche because everyone knows what it is and some people actually play it.
The irony...
Street Fighter 1 was from 1987. Street Fighter 5 is from 2016. This is hardly a yearly franchise. Each release is a cornerstone of the fighting game genre. If you don't like them or are uninterested, that's obviously fine. But you're using your ignorance to justify hating Street Fighter. That just doesn't make sense and makes you come across as bitter. I would urge you to play the games you like, and ignore the games you don't like. You'll be generally happier.
of course it isn't annual, who said that? I never said I hated it either, I'm just not interested. it's like nobody in here understands things like hyperbole, or figures of speech, or not caring about a niche genre. weirdos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Street_Fighter_video_games also i went and checked just to see because i was curious, and it has seen near-annual releases since 1990. So like when I said anime fifa i meant like more my attitude towards it, but apparenty it's also (nearly) true the way you took it.