Yeah, oh no a bunch of people got into an industry that they loved so much they got underpaid and lowered the value of their labour to be treated worse.
But then a bunch of them realized they could just use their passion to make something themself and get paid for it and now we are having a hard time justifying why the big industry’s “shovels” are special.It is a shame this happening to lots of industries right now for lots of other reasons too. With the big industry now trying to justify it as being cheaper to make because they automated all the people that make the product especially better.
The gaming industry is fine. It’s all the AAA publishers that are shit.
Games are amazing right now, what is this talking about? EA/WB/Ubisoft dreck?
The golden age of games, also happened to have publishers who were just that, publishers, not slave drivers commanding the market and shutting down studios every time they sneezed.
Golden age of gaming is now, though. We get so many bangers basically for free it’s insane
The ruin of modern games is the perfect shit storm of:
- The quest for the other side of the uncanny valley, making releases closer to decades
- The death of the in-house game engine.
- The half-baked attempt to cross-platform consoles with PCs
- The half-baked attempt to cross-platform mobile devices with consoles
- The merger of Live Service Games and Free to Play
- Game prices not following inflation.
- Everyone and their brother trying to take a major cut.
Shit is more complex and resource intensive than it has ever been, we’re hardly even looking to optimize these days if it works.
You get to choose from a couple of engines, who want a serious cut, or a free engine who has serious problems on consoles.
You need the game not only to pay for itself in sales, but in in-game sales without making it to gambley or making it too pay to win.
Adjusted for inflation, Mario Odyssey is $20 less at launch than E.T. was at launch for the atari.
The baby boom in the USA was a real demographic phenomenon but every “generation” after that gets fuzzier to the point where its now just rage bait nonsense or just a proxy term for complaining about changing fashions. Even within the Boomer cohort people had wildly different experiences growing up across such a large span. That said, every game studio I ever worked for was run by Gen X and Boomer aged people.
When they started in the industry it was small teams, tight budgets, a new frontier with a low bar to entry. Now it is highly corporate, capitalized, shareholder driven behemoth (like everything else). This transform happened when the millennial cohort was in our 20s, we had no influence on this, and it mirrored similar larger-scale transformations in the rest of society.
I’m fortunate in that I basically retired early, although I wouldn’t mind going back to work with a good group of people, even for cheap. Like the old days again. I still like the work I just hate the business. But it doesn’t matter, the whole industry is in ruins now.
Perfect summary.
I worked in games for only a handful of years starting around 2010, but after many holiday weekends of crunch into the 3am period, and multiple studio closures, I decided to double my pay and end crunch altogether by shifting to the regular software dev industry.
Only company I would go back for is something like Valve. Privately owned, incredibly stable cash flow, and run by someone with both passion and respect for their people… but even then, I doubt they’d pay as much as I make now.
There’s plenty of great games these days. The “golden age” wasn’t because of the quality of games. It was because I was able to delve into them deeply and enjoy them without all the concerns of my adult life running on the back of my mind pulling me out of it.
Most definitely can be refuted. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of amazing games out there made by young and old people that appeal to both young and old people. The issue Anon is struggling with is non gamer capitalists running game companies and milking games for every last penny at the cost of quality.
I know it’s a tired example, but look at the company and team responsible for BG3. A game that is widely considered one of the greatest games to be realsed in at least the last 10 years, maybe even longer. This game was made by a company owned and operated by old people and young people. The teams directing, designing, creating, and writing this game were made up of multiple generations of people, and what was made, unimpacted by corporate greed, was a masterpiece.
Good games are products of passion and creative freedom, not money or age.
Im currently enjoying there Blue Prince.
There’s nothing else like it, it’s challenging, and cozy.
If you like playing detective, and bring patience and like exploring and taking notes instead of hyper-focusing on one goal, it’s tens of hours of fun.
Only thing I don’t really like about it is the drafting mechanic. I hit a lot of “ooh! I think I know how to solve that puzzle!” or “Ooh, I think I vaguely remember something in that one room that I didn’t screenshot at the time but I’m pretty sure was a clue for the puzzle I just discovered!” only to never see the relevant room(s) in a bunch of runs. Hell, I’m pretty sure based on a clue that there’s some kind of clock room (if it’s just the den, I have no idea how to figure it out so I’m assuming there’s another clock room) I haven’t seen yet at all dozens of days in, another related puzzle that requires I draft a whole bunch of related rooms that I never get enough of (unless I’m on a wrong line of thought about that) and a third related to the other two where AFAIK I’m waiting on a random item drop and the room to use it in to appear in the same run.
Even something like being able to curate the deck more than the conservatory allows would be tremendous.
Yeah, that’s what I meant with having notes and pivoting: don’t focus on one puzzle like that. Follow all the threads and when you get the chance to make this one happen, do it.
For things related to items, you have an option to make things easier, e.g. I stored the power hammer in the coat check until I got both the coat check and a room I knew I could use the power hammer in. In the like 5 runs in between I just did other stuff, there’s always plenty to do.
I’ve been playing this, too! It’s a great game!
There’more great games now then ever there ever was. So many choices. Plus, the older games didn’t disapear and there is no such thing as “the Golden Age of gaming” lol. It’s just that a bunch of low- losers are spending their days on the internet crying about “woke runing my videagame” because they see a woman not having huge boobs and a bikini armor.
- Hollow Knight (Silksong soonTM)
- Stardew Valley
- Factorio
- Outer Wilds
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Clair Obscur
Gaming is fucking phenomenal right now, OP is looking in the wrong direction.
Games made by gamers vs corporations are two different worlds indeed
STOP blaming age groups! It’s a divide and conquer tactic. It’s not your parent’s fault. It’s not your grandparent’s fault. It is the fault of the rising Oligarchy Super Wealthy. Their system works when we work against each other. We’re even suspicious and blame our parents and grandparents these days. WTF??
Ironically they blame their own children too
Nah, not really, it’s only shit if you only play AAA suit-driven slop. There’s a ton of awesome games being released and the older ones are still there to (re) play.
Obligatory:
No war but class war.
It’s the system slowly and successfully corroding your class conscience, they’re taking away your awareness of it so you fight sideways instead of fighting the people above you
It went to shit because big corpos realized there was money in the games industry. It went to shit because capitalism took the reins.
Bu-but Asmongold and Kirsche Verstahl told me the problem was woke gamedevs! /s
I’m aware this was sarcasm, but want to point out Asmongold is a Nazi sympathizer. No idea who the other person is.
The other is a Nazi VTuber, with her name allegedly being a dogwhistle (positive christianity if I recall correctly).
Asmongold is a priest of Nurgle.
No one I know can afford to buy a house because our generations been so royally fucked in every which way, yet somehow we are responsible for steering the entire game industry in our twenties. Right… lol.
Like they didn’t realize in the 90s
Institutional money didn’t take it seriously until the mid to late 2000s.
Big video game companies were already doing the same as today though.
That’s why most of the money hungry games were in the arcades back then. PC gaming wasn’t nearly as big.
You have a very different memory of that time
Probably because we grew up in completely different countries. Australia was very behind back in the day. We had a 2 year lag.
