I saw this topic on Reddit, and realised I hadn’t written anything here in a long time. Well here goes:

IGN story  Reddit post

I actually read the article, and I think some things are missing.

The things that are missing it barely mentioned are AI and not listening to customers.

AI will be taking some of the programming and design jobs. You’ll have to hire people to supervise and check the AI, but AI is faster and cheaper.

And these studios are putting out crap we simply aren’t interested in. Oh look, it’s basically the same game I’ve played a hundred times, wearing a different hat. There’s less of a story and a bunch of micro transactions. Oh, and it costs $70. Pass. I’ll wait three years until I can get it for $10.

Oh look, it’s a stunningly beautiful game, but on top of the $100 price tag, I’ll have to upgrade to a $700 graphic card to play it. I’ll wait three years for it to cost $10 and for capable graphics card to be significantly more affordable.

Oh look! It’s a game from a franchise that I love, but it’s an MMO? So if I want to enjoy this story and this world, I’m forced into hours of pointless grinding that I must undertake alongside Bratley, the 12 year old who pelts me with rocks that he bought on daddy’s credit card while apparently fornicating with my mother. And I have to pay $75 for the pleasure of doing so? And if I want a private server to avoid Bratley, I have to pay a subscription fee? Pass. I’ll, again, wait 3 years so it only costs $10, and Bratley has moved on the the next shiny thing.

Gamers want games at give us the joy we got ages ago from gaming. Something we can justify buying that captivates our minds and is actually fun, instead of a boring, tedious, expensive time-suck. It’s plainly obvious that so many studios don’t actually give a crap about players beyond using basic dopamine boosting psychology to trick them into spending as much time as possible in game, buying more and more and more crap that we don’t need. 

New games aren’t selling well because they’re all very expensive, and we have limited money. We can buy six older games with great reviews, or one new game that may be ok or may suck. It’s rare for me to bother buying a game at release. I think Starfield was actually the only game I’ve ever bought at launch, and, in hindsight? Meh. I don’t hate it, but I personally don’t think it justified the price.

Studios promise big, charge a lot, invest a lot of manpower and tech and deliver buggy messes that are just meh, and we don’t want to pay for it. You can talk about bad investments and backroom politics and buyouts and Corona until you’re blue in the face, but when it comes down to it, they aren’t delivering a product that can finance their expenditures. They try to tell us, and their investors, that their product is what gamers want. The sales of new games are saying no.