Came across this article online and was wondering what others thought of it…
It talks about the layoffs and flops and successes in the industry, giving some data over the year, and ends with a poignant address, imo, to what made games great when I was younger.
What made a game ‘great’ to you and how has that shifted as youve gotten older?
Thank you for the article, @Eternus8lux8lucis
"The oracle told me that the Game of the Year 2025 is going to be made by a studio who found the formula to make it up here on stage. It’s stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost. A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn’t been created before. They didn’t make it to increase market share. They didn’t make it to serve the brand. They didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn’t meet those targets.
“Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue and didn’t serve the game design. They didn’t treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet. They didn’t treat their players as users to exploit. And they didn’t make decisions they knew were short-sighted in function of a bonus or politics. They knew that if you put the game and the team first, the revenue will follow. They were driven by idealism, and wanted players to have fun, and they realized that if the developers don’t have fun, nobody was going to have any fun. They understood the value of respect, that if they treated their developers and players well, the same developers and players would forgive them when things didn’t go as planned. But above all they cared about their games, because they love games. It’s really that simple.”
That is right, it really is that simple and I have seen this coming for at least a decade.
Corporate fatcats have been thinking that they could make money from the gaming industry like they make money from the stock market but what they didn’t see is that a game isn’t a “product”, it’s a work of art like a cartoon or a movie.
They thought they could treat developers like low-level factory bosses and players like mushrooms and now they sweat when they look at the spreadsheets and all arrows are heading downwards.
They have been taking game players for granted for too long so they will reap what they have sown.
Excellent.
I was about to say “That sounds like what Larian Studios is currently doing!” before I clicked on the article with the embedded video.
IMO a big chunk of the situation is this:
Most of today’s big publishers have one primary objective above all else: To please shareholders.
That is not the environment where innovation can flourish, nor respect for staff or players is valued enough. Hence you see an annual repetition of the same proven concepts, wrapped in new cosmetics.
The older one gets, the more of that you have seen, and the less exciting it becomes.
My adaptation to this is increasingly to look at smaller indie games, and occasionally sprinkle in a big title when it got good press and I feel like it.
I haven’t liked a single game since November 2001 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.
I look at indie games sometimes but I have lost the taste for bying games. It isn’t like it used to be. With today’s technology we should see games that take our breath away and give old folks heart attacks. Instead we get things riddled with bugs and microtransactions. No thank you.
EVE is one that may please me. For how long, we shall see.
Many of the games I once found great I still enjoy. The old Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader games are still as fun as they used to be for me.
Other games that I once found great and magical shifted themselves. As a kid I really enjoyed RuneScape with it’s medieval fantasy world, well written quests, killing of evil goblins and demons and fighting players for their loot in the lawless Wilderness. Over the years the direction of that game shifted away from what I found fun where the focus became more and more about grinding, events were ‘temporary better xp rates for better grinding!’ instead of fun quests and the full loot PvP part was taken away.
Years later I realised it was the game that had changed, not so much my taste.
Give me immersion and PvP combat with stakes, not an MMO about grinding and achievements so I can show off to others how much time I spent more than they did.
World of Warcraft had a similar shift away from what I originally liked where I saw the transition of travelling to faraway dungeons in distant lands in a huge world with a group of people we had to get together, to getting teleported to the same dungeon with a bunch of randomly assigned others at the press of a button.
Where the old system caused me to end up with others I enjoyed playing with on my friends list because knowing people who also know how to play was valuable, these social aspects had been coded out of the game for the sake of convenience when groups were automatically formed. And the size of this big magical world stops mattering when you get teleported everywhere.
A bigger focus in MMOs on grinding and convenience is what has driven me away from those other games.
I’m glad this part isn’t present as much in EVE. Not yet, but even now I see people ask for changes in the wrong direction like ‘more achievements to grind’, or ‘more convenience against evil PvP’.
I realise different people may want different things from games, but I wouldn’t like seeing EVE take the same steps that made me leave other games.
Until now I’ve only mentioned things that changed in games, not in myself.
There also are preferences in games that have changed as I got older.
For one, I cannot see myself play matches of League of Legends like I used to. Not because I dislike the game (I really enjoyed it for years and also have been watching the Arcane series based on it), but simply because I cannot commit ‘the next 20 minutes but perhaps it’s 90 minutes’ to one continuous match often enough to still be any good at that game.
Games with pause buttons are preferable these days, never know when the baby needs attention.
Talking about games with pause buttons, big solo open world RPGs is another genre I like. While it’s lacking the community and PvP aspects of MMOs for me, it can give a lot of immersion, exploration and storytelling in return.
Skyrim, Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are my favourites.
And Baldur’s Gate 3 too, which was mentioned in that article.
A big plus of these games is that you see the developers crafted wonderful worlds with many memorable characters and events.
Great games are a single contained immersive game without the distraction caused by cheap ‘fear of missing out’ tricks to increase engagement through ‘log in rewards’, ‘daily cooldowns on actions’, predatory microtransactions or monthly tracks you can feel bad about for not completing. For some reason even some single player RPGs have taken on these systems, I’ve seen them in the a couple of Assassin’s Creed games I’ve played.
The gaming industry sadly has taken on many dark patterns to artificially ‘increase engagement’ beyond simply making a good game that people want to play, and EVE disappointingly also did so.
I hope EVE won’t go further into the wrong direction, and will enjoy the occasional gem of a game that comes along that doesn’t have any of these bad aspects.
Now if only EVE would scrap these gaming dark patterns, I’d be really happy.
EVE was that occasional gem of a game. Never going to see the likes of it again.
[Insert comment with known arguments on Ansiblex Jumpgates] ^^
Thats exactly the problem why we can’t find enjoyable games anymore. We are not part of the target group.
The gaming reality is short-lived, instant-gratification stuff. As people are paying for this, the industry shifted. Compared to the revenues mobile games offer, making a pc game is not enough to make investors happy.
I did play WOW, too, until the ‘dailies’ took away reasonable choices for me to enjoy that huge world.
Same in Eve, since ‘dailies’ and events offer rewards that make you feel bad if you do not grab them. Yes, I know, it’s my fault at some extent, however, if those instant gratification things were removed I could focus on what I actually enjoy again.
I recently bought Railway Empire 1 as no-DRM version and enjoy a game without having to use a launcher filled with ads or constant notifications about special deals or whatever.
I remember when the only way you could unlock the cool stuff, was by being good at the game. Now its more about grinding a time limited event, or paying for it in a cash shop. Its a big change that happened gradually over time. Live service games are especially guilty of this. Not sure what the solution is, companies have to make money, pay the bills and keep the servers running, it makes sense they would seek a steady income to stay afloat, and even thrive. I certainly don’t like it. Its always looked at like a necessary evil at best. It makes me concerned about what new methods of profit extraction will be devised in the future.
Killed so many new games for me.
I will give this game one thing, it killed all other games for me. I take the same attitude I have in EVE to other games that are supposed to be hard, and sadly, there are not.
Thanx for the replies!
Gaming, at least for me, used to be about wonder, excitement and challenges you did with friends and now it seems to be all about the grind and the money and the next dopamine kick of your favorite drug… the “game.” With the market becoming saturated with psychological tactics to make you addicted, strung out and grinding happily away into oblivion as the fun wears off and all youre left with are the dregs of a “hangover” in the morning after it all wears off and youre left sober and broke.
I do hope there will be an industry change some day but I wont hold my breath, people gonna be people and think only of the almighty dollar. But I think if enough people walk away and vote with their money it might actually occur.
Sadly, you missed the best times for that. Thats what EVE used to be.
I miss the nut jobs in local! 
I did not MB, been here since the beginning… 
Local was a lot of fun! Our FC smacked talked one player, after stripping off his weapons and saying he could tank this guy’s fit, all our alts watched with glee while our mains were logged off at the other side the surrounding gates. He flew apx 10min back forth to Amarr again only to prove his point. Our FC’s ship could not tank his ship forever!
Didn’t help him after we logged in.
Shame you don’t find the same challenge in the game as we did. Unfair, yes in a way. The guy was an experienced player, but hubris clouded his judgement. I learned how not to suckered into a fight I could not win with that.
I still remember the first time I encountered an assault frigate… oh boy howdy my cruiser will make short work of this Mr Puny!! LOL Yeah it ended about the way you figure it shouldve… 
I tried the same stunt! “almost got him!” and lost my ship
Some targets are just to fun not to take a chance on! 