I would agree if it wasn't for the fact that game development costs and time have also skyrocketed. Most studios can't make a sequel in a year with only a handful of people anymore. It costs more to make a videogame and takes longer than it ever has, all while also having far more people work on it than ever.
And this isn't because workplaces suddenly stopped being awful to their workers either. I'd be fine waiting longer for games to come out if it meant that the poor people making the games didn't need to work 60+ hour weeks, but unfortunately that still happens as well. Everything is just getting bigger and more complex and taking longer because the baseline for quality is going up (for the most part. There are some people who release subpar trash regularly and still stay afloat).
If the baseline of quality is going up then I'm the king of England.
Yes, game development time and costs have increased, however, the quality of the average triple a title has gone down drastically. It has gotten to the point that people are scared that GTA VI is going to be a literal bug filled mess with it's online being filled with even worse microtransactions and grinding than GTA V's had. I would also like to mention that game design seems to be getting neglected more and more. Take GT7's excuse of a singleplayer career, with it's railroading, lack of care about concepts established in previous entries (the IB, IA and S licences are useless in the game and technically aren't even licences, because they don't licence you to do anything, the final championship in this game only requires the A licence), the AI (exception for the clubman cup plus races), the entire roulette system, the legend cars dealership, probably some more I forgot.
These are only two examples, but one demostrates how triple a games are getting low in quality, as demostrated by consumer reaction to a series that has been praised for it's quality games and the other demostrates my point about game design. It is safe to say the quality argument is moot.
What else takes up time, money and requires additional staff when making a triple a game? Graphics. Not art style, but graphics. Triple a games have not evolved visibly in terms of gameplay and have actually devolved in terms of game design. Story doesn't apply to all triple a games, so I will leave it out here to simplify the process. That really only leaves graphics and audio, and while we clown on goofs like "Uncompressed Audio", audio generally doesn't take up nearly as much resources or prioity as graphics do.
While I could argue about the technical details about graphics nowadays and how they've gotten visibly worse, that has more things to do with the tools devs use nowadays and isn't as relevant for responding to this.
My point is that graphics are being overprioritized for less and less positive returns, comparing older 10 year old triple a titles to triple a titles from this year and last year, it honestly seems like barely any improvements were made. Despite that, they require much more powerful hardware and in extreme cases even things such as texture streaming.
Games are also becoming not really becoming much bigger or more complex. Perhaps complex as in computations that require the aforementioned powerful hardware, but not more complex as in terms of gameplay, at least not to an extent that a player can actually feel the difference. A lot of this added size in newer games is also simple bloat. Empty areas, vast oceans of pure nothing, these maps are spread very thin.
I'm not gonna comment very much on crunch culture here but, suffice it to say, that only devalues a game further.
Looking at it objectively, triple a games have gotten worse in quality, worse in game design, worse in graphics and only stayed on the same level in audio, yet the system requirements are getting higher and higher, alongside prices.
Subjectively, you can still have fun with these new triple a titles, no question about it. My point isn't to take away anyone's fun, my point is that these games are not worth the money they are charging. They do not deserve these price tags, no amount of arguing about costs or time will change that.
), it tends to lack alot of the urgency and well, emotion of the older games, calvard is by far the most boring area in the series and a good deal of the areas feel lifeless, while i'd say the cast of daybreak is probably the weakest in the entire series sans a couple of characters like Elaine.
