@Sabin_Stargem

I have to wonder whether you are truly attempting to understand me. I spoke of pride of workmanship and respect for the player's time and intelligence in terms of the quality of games. When a person comments on the falling quality of a model of automobile or cellular phone, I don't believe most people would take it as a disparagement of the hundreds or thousands of employees who contributed to its production, because they clearly are only doing their jobs. Perhaps you really didn't know this, but the ultimate quality of a product is not determined by some kind of aggregation of individual employee morale or work ethic. It is determined by the decisions of executives and upper management.

But I've already explained this--your assessment is incorrect. There is a vast amount of power available right now over and above the amount of power that current AAA titles are designed for--which is the XBox One/PS4 (Remember, gameplay cannot be designed for the extra power of the One and Pro; it can only be used for increased framerate and resolution.) Most people who don't really understand hardware would be flabbergasted at the graphical realism--but most importantly gameplay innovation--that would be seen this very day if a AAA game were conceived, designed, and coded for PC hardware instead of for 2013 (or until recently 2005) console hardware and simply toss-ported to the PC.

You are right that increases in CPU performance have slowed in the last several years, though GPU performance increases have not, and vector processing can be used for a lot more than just the processing of pixels. The point though is that there is a vast amount of PC power that has gone untapped since 2008; your assertion that technological innovation was forced to slow is simply false. It was entirely the result of the Great Consolization.

I disagree. Consoles used to serve a legitimate purpose. I still love to play old console games. And I'm not "anti-console hardware" of course. What I am against is the control of the entire AAA gaming experience by billion-dollar console overlords. There is simply no defending it. The entire modern console paradigm is defined by compromise. I support the open environment of the PC, where--just as one example--I can use a controller or a mouse for my FPS. The console player cannot use a mouse because his overlord forbids it. It's perfectly possible--it's just that Overlord forbids it.

Anyway, your argument for consoles is well and good if one is content to design games only for the "layperson". There is nothing wrong with designing games for the "layperson", but I do think there is a problem with designing games only for the "layperson". Your assertion that the modern AAA console paradigm has permitted the medium to evolve simply does not comport with reality. The degree of gameplay innovation in the last ten years is incomparable to any previous ten-year period.

I personally think that the gaming industry is doing well. Divinity:Original Sin 2 and the Witcher 3 expansions were beyond great. Kingmaker has great potential even when it is plagued by bugs. Warframe released a new update. Smaller games like Dead Cells have been awesome too. There are so many games to play that i personally don't have the time to play them all and end up playing them in parts. Cyberpunk 2077 is also on the horizon and everything i saw from the gameplay demo has me super excited.

I wouldn't call it low hanging fruit back then as a lot of stuff that came after that time period could be described as such. They could just make games to the bare minimum of what was expected.

I think it's also the sum of the whole being worse than its parts. I think, considering what happened to Enix properties after they bought Square, it was truly a tragedy. I LOVE Square games but I think Enix games generally have better gameplay, definitely innovative at times. Square has better stories in my opinion.
The ONLY good things that came out of this was Eidos properties like Deus Ex getting revitalized; however, what defined Square started to die off when Sakaguchi screwed up with "Final Fantasy: Spirits Within" and he was placed quietly in a backroom with no control over anything. Only NOW with "Octopath" are we seeing shades of the old Square
FF15 was a mainline FF with no turn based combat. From what I've heard it feels most Western than some old FF fans would like.

I would add another problem - japanese games trying to parrot western games.
Even worse with recent SONY censorship that reach amish lever of purity.
They were like fresh air compared to boring stale AAA blockbusters, now there will be less and less alternative. Even lesser studios have to eat and deal with massive costs of living and developement, so they either develop same garbage as everyone or join dark side under publisher's wings.

Indie? Don't make me laugh, there were no blossom and renaissance with a birth of indie segment, only spam of 2d platformers and pixel mess.

no it is all as normal

there is only certain amount of monies in the world, so some do well and other do not, and then it changes again. fortunes comes and goes.

the game industry is stronger and more varied than ever before.


and to all those complaining about AAA games and comparing it to older games - AAA is a new development, "back then" it was all "indie games", all games were made by small groups and individuals in the garage and the bedrooms. you can not compare them at all.

Exactly. Indie games being characterized by innovation? What I see are me-too survival games, me-too Rogue-likes, me-too platformers, me-too Interactive Experiences/Stories, Anime, and miscellaneous garbage. And as far as technology is concerned, games designed to a literal 30-year-old state of the art. Are there good games poking out here and there? Yes. But the Indie arena is no more a font of innovation than the modern AAA arena.

There certainly is one innovation in the Indie arena, though: the minimization or elimination of gameplay altogether, which is an effect of artists and writers having discovered several years ago that Steam is a potentially great way to make money from their art. The problem is that I don't want a video game designed by an artist any more than I want a vehicle or building designed by an artist. The result is going to be something that is perhaps aesthetically pleasing, but sorely lacking in necessary functionality.

I mentioned the effect on Steam: If Steam were a brick-and-mortar store, one would need a three-day supply of food and water in order to make it to his first quality AAA game.

This is not correct at all. There have always been AAA video/computer games. 'AAA' is a relative and not an absolute designation: it refers to the state of the art, or some might say the highest team size and/or level of production resources. If this were not true, then we would have had to continually create new designations such as 'AAAA', 'AAAAA', 'Super AAAAA', etc. as the state of the art evolved, or production resources continued to grow.

Pong was a AAA game. Zork was a AAA game. The Legend of Zelda was a AAA game. As were King's Quest V, Ultima VI, and The Longest Journey.

Agree with most of your comments and I must say THANK you for not listing story there. I love Zelda and Mario but they have no real story to speak of. Miyamoto couldn't write a story to save his or his families life, he would be screwed.
Anyway, in terms of innovation overall and challenging things, Sega really pushed that near the end of the DC and at times before. I've always argued in a lot of ways SEGA pushed the industry forward and pioneered Arthouse games. Sega didn't do it intentionally they would just fit into that category in a lot of ways with the some of the games they made. I mean they just did it like humans breathe at times.
Sadly Sega got neutered after Sammy bought them or bailed them out, whichever way you perceive it(the last pre-bailout game I believe is "Blood Will Tell" over here). The management at Sammy proved they knew nothing about the gaming market, telling Sega to focus on arcade games at the time even the market was and HAS been dying everywhere but Japan. Sammy is known for making Pachinko machines so they should've stayed silent.
Everyone who came out after Sega arguing they were doing Arthouse games were doing it consciously and it has that kind of smug and self-awareness about it, even from the Project Ico team....keep in mind this is coming from a Foreign and Arthouse film fan so I know that attitude. These game companies either have that attitude or they try too hard to be Arthouse or both.

That's cool. Thanks.

Check this out: The developers of System Shock play the game 20yrs later, with comments..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LDiTZ89j-Q
(Warning: Might be some language)

Huh? As far as I know, the Switch, as well as Nintendo's retro mini consoles, have been selling like delicious hotcakes... ? I don't keep track of actual sales numbers, but that's the impression I got from gaming sites, youtube etc.

I agree that there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the gaming industry -- Perhaps more so than ever before, but it has also grown bigger and more mainstream than ever before, so that consequence is to be expected. However, there are still many great new Indie games which aren't affected by any of this, and even the occasional AA(A) game.

Just as an example: Last year's "Evil Within 2" is an all around high quality game ( arguably one of the best Horror games released during the last 10 years ), yet it came without any microtransactions, DLCs, multiplayer modes, or other modern trends and business tactics. As far as I know, it didn't even have any additional protection, aside from Steam. Now, here comes the sad part: As far as I know, it didn't sell very well. And with that in mind, I can't help but wonder, if perhaps the video game audience is largely to blame for many of these business developments. The publishers will obviously go for the fastest and easiest way to make more profits. And if high quality, customer friendly single-player games don't bring in any money, it's not surprising that most of them are jumping on the mobile/ free-to-play/ microtransaction train.

As cliché as it sounds, I think it's a matter of voting with our wallets. Just support devs which still deliver quality, old-fashioned video game entertainment, and don't invest any money in all the half-assed cash-grabs, and lootbox lotteries. We might not be able to change the overall direction of the industry, but at least we can support promising smaller and mid-sized game projects.

Well, this is all self-inflicted trouble to be completely honest. Those are almost all examples of companies trying to sell things that a significant portion of their customers are not going to be interested in buying. I have no more interest in the switch than I do other handheld games or even mobile gaming. That's where blizzard has made a huge miscalculation. Imagine doing that sort of thing in another industry, for example consider if you have a high-end car convention and a high-end car company does a big presentation for people who buy high end sports cars and similar, 'We've got something really exciting for you! I'm sure you like driving, so here we are to unveil our budget family minivan!' You would have the exact same reaction from the audience. They would get booed off the stage and asked if it was a joke. And then imagine the high end car company saying 'We're putting all of our best engineers towards budget minivans!'

Square is a good example of the problem of game companies trying to appeal to everyone to increase your market. There are less and less good niche games because more casual players won't be interested. Many, many of the best old games were created with a fair amount of complexity and that is what made them interesting. Most modern games actively try to avoid complexity, which makes them less interesting and more mindless. That sort of backwards evolution has been around for quite awhile though, if you look at the progression of games like mass effect to its sequels, dragon age to its sequels, deus ex to its sequels, heroes of might and magic to its modern sequels, etc.

In addition to these problems, we also have people trying to destroy gaming in general by harping on about politics and trying to push their racism and sexism onto gamers and gaming(ie. articles like gaming has a white male problem), with an intent to destroy what others enjoy instead of creating new games that they enjoy. It's a destructive ideology that tries to destroy entertainment, we've been able to mostly avoid the problems that comics had, but there's no guarantee that will continue.

I don't see these as problems that will completely destroy gaming, but they are certainly hurting it. DLC, lootboxes, games as a service, allowing activists to undermine gaming, increasing casualization of gaming, simplified control schemes/ less impressive games due to wanting games to be cross platform and work on consoles(which are significantly underpowered compared to a PC), and resources being diverted towards mobile gaming are all hurting gaming to varying degrees. All of those things just create a market for actual good games made by someone else to come in and fill, though, so I believe the problem should sort itself out.

Eh.... for me I had no interest in Evil Within 2 because of what a mess and disappointment the first one was; I didn't even finish the game. That's why I didn't buy the second one. (and I own literally thousands of games)

Almost unrelated to OP's question, but since this is about a potential video game crash...

... I'd love for the 'Gaming Community' to crash and revert back to just people playing games and MAYBE coincidentally finding people who like the same games that you do, rather than jacking into the hivemind and regurgitating the same opinions that everyone else has. Sorry for sounding so snooty about it, but I hope some of you understand where I am coming from.

Everybody always talks about the greedy corporations trying to get us, but I think the whole 'digital influencer' culture and this terrible, garbage idea of there being a 'Gaming Community' is much more harmful than any microtransaction can be. That's because it's actually harder to escape from it imo. I can just ignore the big AAA games and not buy them, but digital influencers are everywhere and online algorithms keep trying to shove you into the mosh pit of regurgitated opinions and 'drama of the week' discussions. Cool thing is, a gaming crash would be the one stone that could hit both those birds and end this pathetic, cringe-inducing, fake and purposefully manufactured drama play that is ... Freaking video games.

But no, the examples OP mentioned of companies having some trouble is no problem at all. They're making more than enough money to balance out all these relatively small setbacks, and companies like TellTale won't be missed by most 'HARDCORE GAMEEEEEEEERS' and is only relevant because digital influencers needed to make a quick buck off the news story. Everything you hear about companies experiencing financial difficulties is another result of 'gaming news' and 'video game discussion' videos blowing every little news story out of proportion for the clicks.

... I deserve the down-votes, I know.

Maybe that was part of the problem? I know the first one has a mixed reputation. Personally I enjoyed the first game, but I can also agree that it had its flaws. Unless you completely hated the first one, you might still want to give the sequel a look, at least at a discount. They made many changes, and overall it feels more consistent and polished. Also has more of a classic Survival Horror feel, while the first one had a stronger focus on intense action.