One of the biggest problems with the modern games industry is development time.
In the distant past a sequel or spinoff of a game could be made within a year by the same team, or at least part of it. These kinds of projects allowed developers to use what they learned to make a more polished game, often with elements that they left out of the first.
Now with major studios it's either that the same game comes out every single year with minor changes, not always for the better. Or it takes something like 3 to 4 years for a full sequel, which often does not take any risks because they invested so much time and money.
I would much rather have more games coming out, made by smaller teams, even if they weren't nearly as polished. Thankfully indie developers are still partially able to fill in that niche.
In the distant past a sequel or spinoff of a game could be made within a year by the same team, or at least part of it. These kinds of projects allowed developers to use what they learned to make a more polished game, often with elements that they left out of the first.
Now with major studios it's either that the same game comes out every single year with minor changes, not always for the better. Or it takes something like 3 to 4 years for a full sequel, which often does not take any risks because they invested so much time and money.
I would much rather have more games coming out, made by smaller teams, even if they weren't nearly as polished. Thankfully indie developers are still partially able to fill in that niche.
@Arkana modern sequels always look at what they're working with and think:
-this staple feature is complicated and instead of improving both the entry barrier and skill ceiling, we should just strip gameplay variety and water it down
-these features in our long-going franchise are getting repetitive? make them worse and call it different. also, do not provide anything that our consumers actually ask for, that fangames have demonstrated to work (pokemon especially)
-remove the fictional racism, sexism and homophobia (4x and strategy greatly suffers from this because being evil is fun)
-refuse to understand why people liked the old games to begin with, and think only in mass marketability of the most obvious changes. this is the key to a shallow product that pleases nobody.
-this staple feature is complicated and instead of improving both the entry barrier and skill ceiling, we should just strip gameplay variety and water it down
-these features in our long-going franchise are getting repetitive? make them worse and call it different. also, do not provide anything that our consumers actually ask for, that fangames have demonstrated to work (pokemon especially)
-remove the fictional racism, sexism and homophobia (4x and strategy greatly suffers from this because being evil is fun)
-refuse to understand why people liked the old games to begin with, and think only in mass marketability of the most obvious changes. this is the key to a shallow product that pleases nobody.
@Arkana The biggest problem is women, queers, and minorities ruining games with woke bullshit.
@Ricotta Obviously. I'm trying to bring up a point that not everybody has been thinking about as much as that
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@Arkana modern game studios involve a lot of bureaucracy and management. It used to be that to make a game you just well.. made a game.
Now you need market research, test audiences (that aren’t your friends), etc. Take a look at budgets for Fallout 1/2 and for Fallout 4. Staggering, isn’t it?
Now you need market research, test audiences (that aren’t your friends), etc. Take a look at budgets for Fallout 1/2 and for Fallout 4. Staggering, isn’t it?
@newt I was watching a video and what struck me was that Super Mario Bros 3 had a development budget of about 1 million and a marketing budget of 25 million.
So the marketing has always been pretty high, but development budgets ballooned like crazy.
So the marketing has always been pretty high, but development budgets ballooned like crazy.
@Arkana While I'm not really thrilled with expansions being replaced with paid DLC, plenty of studios add content to their games continuously for many years without having any issues. I don't think Paradox, Firaxis, or SCS have problems with development time.
Rather, I'd be pretty pissed if they were shitting out sequels every two years instead of continuing to update and add to their existing titles until technology dictates that they start over with a new engine.
Rather, I'd be pretty pissed if they were shitting out sequels every two years instead of continuing to update and add to their existing titles until technology dictates that they start over with a new engine.
@Arkana I figure that marketing in that case just might have involved distribution and printing physical copies. But maybe I'm wrong here.
On the other hand, how many games do you remember from the 90s? And how many of them would you enjoy now? We all remember only the good stuff, the trash is forgotten.
On the other hand, how many games do you remember from the 90s? And how many of them would you enjoy now? We all remember only the good stuff, the trash is forgotten.
@mactonite @Arkana The life of that decade-old game is like a decade itself. Even if you buy every EU4 DLC at full price, by the time EU5 comes out you'll still end up spending less than you would have maintaining a WoW subscription over the same period.
@mactonite @Arkana true. But also, there weren't just as many games.
