Is gaming dying?

[RookerSalen]

I can't wait for modern gaming to "die" so the hobby becomes niche again. What AAA developers never understood is that games are in someway art, and because of this you need some sort of passion for games to make games. Of course, money is needed but you can't make a medium that rewards innovation and creativity into a money machine. I still play some modern games, but holy **** if some studio gets a hit, they just repeat the same game over and over again because of the fear of having a flop. Hell, when I got my ps3 the must fun I had was with wacky games with weird concepts, not just "RPG open world No. 264". The faster the industry dies the faster we are going to get games made by people who actually like games.

 

[fake-kun]

I can't wait for modern gaming to "die" so the hobby becomes niche again. What AAA developers never understood is that games are in someway art, and because of this you need some sort of passion for games to make games. Of course, money is needed but you can't make a medium that rewards innovation and creativity into a money machine. I still play some modern games, but holy **** if some studio gets a hit, they just repeat the same game over and over again because of the fear of having a flop. Hell, when I got my ps3 the must fun I had was with wacky games with weird concepts, not just "RPG open world No. 264". The faster the industry dies the faster we are going to get games made by people who actually like games.

The game industry will never "die." It's too big for that.

 

[moonbits]

It's just a ridiculous expensive hobby with interstellar expectations, it can't keep up anymore. It's not dying it's just struggling to keep up with "modern standards". Even the "good games" don't make their ends meet anymore.

 

[ATenderLad]

The video made some solid points, I agree and would add that things can *always* get just a little bit worse. It's unlikely that there will come some unseen boiling point in the market, given the size and scope of video games. American companies will continue to shutter and layoff thousands, but that's happening across Big Tech and owing to plenty of other reasons. Maybe some new innovation will change things up, VR/Cloud gaming/Web 3.0 all failed but never say never.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

Gaming is dead, bludgeoned to death with a candlestick in the Study by Colonel Mustard. The feds are on their way to seize your SNES as we speak.

 

[starseeker300]

AAA gaming? Absolutely

Gaming as a whole? No It's thriving in fact

 

[LightningmanEXE]

youtube has a lot of these videos lately, people need to take a chill pill and touch grass.

a lot of it's sensationalism for the sake of a thumbnail, a lot of the points they bring up in the video are honestly in line with what a lot of us have been saying here.

well... the one's I could stomach watching anyway.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

a lot of it's sensationalism for the sake of a thumbnail, a lot of the points they bring up in the video are honestly in line with what a lot of us have been saying here.

well... the one's I could stomach watching anyway.

Well, the reality of being a professional youtuber dictates that you have to play the algorithm and talk about every topic that is trendy. Having said that, Never generally tries to keep it real and avoid discourse or rage baiting.

 

[Yousef]

Yeah I killed it. My bad guys I’ll go make the sequel gaming 2.

 

[Kid Dynamite]

I think it's far from dying, but the high prices of them don't help things.

 

[Yousef]

I can’t speak for everyone but I’m very selective with my gaming these days. I would largely prefer to catch-up movies or shows I missed out on, rather than play pieces that are derivative from them all the time (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I do sometimes prefer to just sit down and enjoy a good detective show like Psych or a hospital drama like House. Rewatching Lord of the Rings or a random Jim Carrey film is also never a bad idea.

My steam deck has been quite heavily for getting my gaming gears running again. Something about the ergonomics and massive emulation access does wonders for moi!

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

Modern gaming is dead for me. AI assets and programming killed it. There's no creativity anymore. I dont care about gameplay, I dont care if the game is so good it's virtual cocaine. Now that AI exists and is widely used there's not any artistic value left in this industry and I wont waste my time one second on a product automatically generated. It would be like watching paint dry.

It's OK. I've still got thousands of masterpieces to play on emulators and wouldn't have enough with a lifetime to play them all.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Modern gaming is dead for me. AI assets and programming killed it. There's no creativity anymore. I dont care about gameplay, I dont care if the game is so good it's virtual cocaine. Now that AI exists and is widely used there's not any artistic value left in this industry and I wont waste my time one second on a product automatically generated. It would be like watching paint dry.

It's OK. I've still got thousands of masterpieces to play on emulators and wouldn't have enough with a lifetime to play them all.

AI assets, product placement/ads, gambling mechanics/lootboxes/microtransactions, always online features/invasive drm. All of these are different existential threats to our hobby that must be eradicated.

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

AI assets, product placement/ads, gambling mechanics/lootboxes/microtransactions, always online features/invasive drm. All of these are different existential threats to our hobby that must be eradicated.

It's a lost cause. Most people love their slop. I'd even say most people deserve their slop. I've signed Stop Killing Game's EU citizen initiative, but I've made my peace with the soylent green state of things.

 

[trickybus]

Princess Crown (and Vanillaware as a whole) are hidden gems, the most irrelevant and unknown games of all time have at least one hour long video essay dedicated to them and you're STILL telling me you don't think gaming is fun anymore or there's nothing to play?!

I genuinely do not understand the mindset behind those videos. I can't imagine playing a single game for years and nothing else. Hell, I rarely replay games I enjoy! It'll never hit the same as the first time.

Does anyone have any insight or theories? I'm dying to know what drives this phenomenon.

 

[Don Patch]

Lot's of people kinda nailed it on this thread in different wordings/POV.
But no.
However, we're in another paradigm shift.

One of the biggest shifts was when the medium hit the mega-mainstream around the time of the Wii/PS3/360. Moved from the niche
Not a bad thing by any means. Just a point of reference.
This is when a group I like to call "The Money People" swooped in and made the mainstream version of a mainstream medium "theirs".
It happens/happened to every medium that hit's a mainstream appeal; music, movies, television, you name it! Waddaya gonna do?

What we're seeing, IMO, is a sort of drawing of lines as tech changes and the idea(s) of what are the most focused and efficient avenues for profit in the medium. The shift being spearheaded by the most desperate and cynical of corporate-types, this doesn't quite resemble what you and I have come to expect or recognize as "video games".

Media, as a generality, is going through changes akin as we speak. Have been for some time.

It's interesting to see where it goes. More than likely, we're headed to a "mainstream" of gaming that's not at all consumer/end-user friendly... but will try really hard to convince one otherwise.
And that "line" I mentioned being drawn will separate the schools of maintaining and progressing the medium-as-we-know-it-now in creative and positive ways (for the player and the rest of the medium) and the other is so going to see a desperate gasp to try and engineer/re-engineer the medium in a way that's meant to extract maximum and recurrent profit from users for less-and-less product and effort.

Wrote a paper on this about 8 years ago about the kinds of changes and tactics we'd see. And whadda-ya-know, we're seeing some of the things in an oddly and eerily specific form take place.

I'm not too worried.
I dipped out of the medium once before when it didn't suit me.
And the way I look at it, if it all comes crashing down (and, in a way, it should) there's enough material on the PS2 I haven't played yet to last me another few decades.

 

[Ikagura]

"Gaming will die" or "Nintendo will die" were said before.

 

[Octopus]

I genuinely do not understand the mindset behind those videos. I can't imagine playing a single game for years and nothing else. Hell, I rarely replay games I enjoy! It'll never hit the same as the first time.

Does anyone have any insight or theories? I'm dying to know what drives this phenomenon.

It's either wholesome where the person just actually wants to talk about the games at length (I'm guilty of this, just look at any of my articles I'm always having to trim them down) or it's just trend chasing for the purpose of content engagement, since long YouTube essays like that are popular. I feel there's probably not much in-between with it, as someone who's not into making content and also not that passionate about Jet Force Gemini or whatever isn't going to script hours of video for it.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

What we're seeing, IMO, is a sort of drawing of lines as tech changes and the idea(s) of what are the most focused and efficient avenues for profit in the medium. The shift being spearheaded by the most desperate and cynical of corporate-types, this doesn't quite resemble what you and I have come to expect or recognize as "video games".

To speak in biblical metaphors, we have allowed the merchants into the temple of gaming. The mentality used to be let's make the best game and figure how to monetize it, now its how can we leech the most money out of every consumer under the guise of video games.

 

[Don Patch]

To speak in biblical metaphors, we have allowed the merchants into the temple of gaming. The mentality used to be let's make the best game and figure how to monetize it, now its how can we leech the most money out of every consumer under the guise of video games.

That's an interesting way to put it.
I wouldn't' get to disheartened, tho. In the grand scheme, games are still a relatively new medium. And these types of changes hit everything.
It's all a matter of sorting through the slop at this point.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

That's an interesting way to put it.
I wouldn't' get to disheartened, tho. In the grand scheme, games are still a relatively new medium. And these types of changes hit everything.
It's all a matter of sorting through the slop at this point.

I'm not so sure, AAA gaming has reached critical mass of corporate dystopia. As much as I dislike Hollywood at times, I have to respect that every once in a while they'll throw their weight behind an adult drama or a Dune movie that isn't exactly for the modern Marvel/Disney masses. AAA gaming meanwhile has abandoned significant genres and and refuses to make games with more serious themes and immersion. The medium is seen as a fad by the people fronting the money, much like pogs or baseball cards, not as an artform. That's the only way I can rationalize people doing these cynical movies.

 

[Yousef]

I'm not so sure, AAA gaming has reached critical mass of corporate dystopia. As much as I dislike Hollywood at times, I have to respect that every once in a while they'll throw their weight behind an adult drama or a Dune movie that isn't exactly for the modern Marvel/Disney masses. AAA gaming meanwhile has abandoned significant genres and and refuses to make games with more serious themes and immersion. The medium is seen as a fad by the people fronting the money, much like pogs or baseball cards, not as an artform. That's the only way I can rationalize people doing these cynical movies.

To revisit a comment I posted, I was essentially alluding to some stuff here. I stepped back from gaming a bit because the stories have become quite derivative, which I’m absolutely ok with on paper, but there’s no legitimate effort on their part to make the stories their own. Even in movies, you cant rely on just being a “homage”, but it seems that’s what games do these days as a way to receive affirmation. Hell, some games are even just cheaper, lesser quality versions of older, more charismatic games!
Just my two pennies, ofc.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

To revisit a comment I posted, I was essentially alluding to some stuff here. I stepped back from gaming a bit because the stories have become quite derivative, which I’m absolutely ok with on paper, but there’s no legitimate effort on their part to make the stories their own. Even in movies, you cant rely on just being a “homage”, but it seems that’s what games do these days as a way to receive affirmation. Hell, some games are even just cheaper, lesser quality versions of older, more charismatic games!
Just my two pennies, ofc.

Agreed. Even games that are derivate of other media (for example Dragon Age, which is derivative of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones) aren't allowed to be their own thing. They are slowly being morphed into this all consuming blob of Disney/Shrek/Marvelish slop that is undistinguishable from each other. It is hideous and I'm honestly glad it is failing.

 

[DaxterDotEXE]

No. Only Western AAA Games are dying, thankfully.
And if you stop buying them they will die even faster by the way.

Inshallah ^w^

 

[Yousef]

No. Only Western AAA Games are dying, thankfully.
And if you stop buying them they will die even faster by the way.

Inshallah ^w^

Inshallah