What's been up with PC gaming lately? Lawsuit after lawsuit, bad game after bad game...

[corrado33]

Has it always been like this? I'll admit that I haven't actually payed attention to the PC gaming industry forever, but it seems to me that there has just been a huge string of "bad" games produced recently, especially AAA games. What's been going on? Hugely anticipated releases (that I can remember) have just sorta... fallen flat. HUGE gaming companies have been failing miserably despite massive successes in the past.

 

I mean... geeze, look at BioWare's recently released games...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BioWare_video_games

 

Literally the last "successful" game they actually released was ME3, and even THAT was panned when it game out for the extremely shitty ending. (And the guy saying, "This game isn't going to be one of those games with an ending where you choose a button to push and something happens, your actions have consequences, blah blah blah", then the ending just LITERALLY being pushing one of 3 buttons.) Even before that, while Star Wars: The Old Republic was apparently well received, the game before that was Dragon Age II, which was panned because it wasn't a dragon age game and it was, in reality, just a different game re-skinned to BE a dragon age game. Then DA:Inquisition came out and that freaking sucked because every cRPG fan hated it because it didn't have a true "overhead view" and the controls were atrocious, clearly optimized for consoles. Then Mass Effect Andromeda came out and THAT sucked. 

 

EA, another huge game developer, has also failed miserably to produce good games in otherwise decent game franchises. Need for speed payback was awful (5.9/10, keeping in mind that 7 is average), star wars battlefront II had it's whole loot box gambling fiasco, the sims 4 was a significant step down from the sims 3, mirrors edge catalyst was average... at best. The last very well liked game THEY produced was probably Titanfall 2 (other than their sports games of course.) 

 

The latest SimCity sucked...The last few assassin's creed games haven't been great. 

 

Like WTF is going on? 

 

When I was younger I remember buying AAA titles and being BLOWN AWAY. Most of them receiving "game of the year" awards because they WERE legitimately good. They were innovative, fun, had freaking good stories, now all we seem to be getting is repeats of old franchises, using really old game engines and having performance issues with almost every game that comes out. 

 

What's causing this.... sucky-ness? Is it the use of old game engines? What's the most modern game engine in use today? Is it just game devs. trying to cash in on old stock as quickly as possible considering the gaming industry is BOOMING right now? 

 

I've just been super disappointed recently with gaming in general. I mean, is Nintendo the only game developer we can trust? Most of their recent games have been well liked. 

[Jurrunio]

when in game purchases flood the market...

[Slottr]

I think you're strictly looking at EA, where its been known that they've only developed with the goal of profit in mind, causing backlash

 

The past few assassins creeds have actually been pretty good, and I fell of the boat when black flag came out and felt shitty about them up to origins - it had good reviews, bought it and enjoyed the hell out of it.

 

Most of the greater games have been on ps4 this year (spider-man, god of war). Plenty of good pc games though - Hellblade, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, Vampyr, Dead Cells...

 

Theres always been shitty games, theres just more games that come out now than there was ten years ago

 

 

[corrado33]

10 minutes ago, Slottr said:

I think you're strictly looking at EA, where its been known that they've only developed with the goal of profit in mind, causing backlash

 

The past few assassins creeds have actually been pretty good, and I fell of the boat when black flag came out and felt shitty about them up to origins - it had good reviews, bought it and enjoyed the hell out of it.

 

Most of the greater games have been on ps4 this year (spider-man, god of war). Plenty of good pc games though - Hellblade, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, Vampyr, Dead Cells...

 

Theres always been shitty games, theres just more games that come out now than there was ten years ago

 

 

I just don't remember this many shitty games from otherwise good developers. That's all. 

 

And sure, there have been some OK games. But even in your list... Far Cry 5 is... well... just another far cry game, nothing special, same gameplay as always. Hitman 2, again, just another hitman game, albeit done pretty well. Dead Cells is good, I will give you that one, but even that, with it's rouge like nature gets boring if you are just a casual player (and aren't good enough to progress.)

[Slottr]

6 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

I just don't remember this many shitty games from otherwise good developers. That's all. 

 

And sure, there have been some OK games. But even in your list... Far Cry 5 is... well... just another far cry game, nothing special, same gameplay as always. Hitman 2, again, just another hitman game, albeit done pretty well. Dead Cells is good, I will give you that one, but even that, with it's rouge like nature gets boring if you are just a casual player (and aren't good enough to progress.)

Did you play Far Cry 5? It was much better than 4 and had a great setting, fine story and some awesome mechanics that werent in other previous games

 

What about Forza Horizon, Two Point Hospital, Subnautica, Vermintide 2, etc ?.... Theres been a bunch of really good released this year

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, Slottr said:

Did you play Far Cry 5? It was much better than 4 and had a great setting, fine story and some awesome mechanics that werent in other previous games

 

What about Forza Horizon, Two Point Hospital, Subnautica, Vermintide 2, etc ?.... Theres been a bunch of really good released this year

Haven't played Forza, more of an F1 fan, I played subnautica to death in it's alpha state, I don't really want to play through it again. Not to mention that game had a lot of performance issues as well. Vermintide 2 looks good, but I tend to leave mainly multiplayer games alone. Not a huge fan of playing online. Maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough. 

[Slottr]

2 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Haven't played Forza, more of an F1 fan, I played subnautica to death in it's alpha state, I don't really want to play through it again. Not to mention that game had a lot of performance issues as well. Vermintide 2 looks good, but I tend to leave mainly multiplayer games alone. Not a huge fan of playing online. Maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough. 

Even if you prefer F1, you should try FH, its an absolutely gorgeous world with a really great racing game. (You can try it for free with xbox gamepass)

 

What kinda games are you looking for?

[corrado33]

8 minutes ago, Slottr said:

Even if you prefer F1, you should try FH, its an absolutely gorgeous world with a really great racing game. (You can try it for free with xbox gamepass)

 

What kinda games are you looking for?

I'll give it a try, thanks. I'll have to break my wheel out of the closet. 

 

I'm really just looking for games that hold my attention and don't suck. I've been playing heavily modded skyrim and fallout 4 recently. I just want to find a game I can get really immersed in, you know, forget about life for a while. 

 

EDIT: Also I did skip far cry 5. I played the HELL out of far cry 4 and wasn't ready to go back into that world. 

[Slottr]

6 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

I'll give it a try, thanks. I'll have to break my wheel out of the closet. 

 

I'm really just looking for games that hold my attention and don't suck. I've been playing heavily modded skyrim and fallout 4 recently. I just want to find a game I can get really immersed in, you know, forget about life for a while. 

Not from 2018, but have you played The Witcher 3?

 

I agree its intimidating to start, but that was a very good game once I got into it.

[xAcid9]

All these AAA publisher/dev is all about making money to impress/satisfy investors nowadays. Also they probably butt hurt at mobile game dev raking millions/billions while spent significantly lower production cost so they want some of that too.

[JZStudios]

Meh. I've tried to play DAO twice and both times quit at the tower because I couldn't stand the game anymore. I thought the Mass Effect games were mediocre at best. Bioware seems really good at characters, but not so great at actual world building or game design. I really liked the DAO cast of characters and their interactions with each other and the player, and I fully appreciated Miranda's back story in ME2, but both of the worlds otherwise felt extremely bland and generic.

 

They got Bethesda beat though, they've always been shit at everything.

 

EA has just become a huge conglomerate of greed, sucking up smaller companies only to dissolve them when they don't turn out profitable enough. Is Respawn still a thing? Criterion only exists to help out on other game franchises, even canceling the project they had in the works. EA basically sabotaged Visceral by making them implement crafting mechanics, multiplayer, and microtransactions (It was the start) in Dead Space 3, which got bad reviews so EA killed the franchise. They then just sort of did side jobs for a while I guess until Battlefield Hardline, which they DID fix and make pretty damn decent, but it was too late and EA dissolved them.

https://heavy.com/games/2017/10/studios-ea-has-killed-visceral-games/

That's only up to the closure of Visceral. I don't know if there's been any since. But even companies that aren't closed are only support roles like Criterion. The only thing EA regularly produces are it's EA sports lineup and Battlefield.

 

Ubisoft I've paid less attention to, but they're going the same way and REALLY getting stuck in their gameplay design. Far Cry 1, 2, and 3 were all pretty drastically different, and at the time Far Cry 3 was pretty damn impressive. Since then though... the Blood Dragon Spin off, Far Cry 4, Far Cry Primal, Watch Dogs, Assassins Creed... all of them (Technically AC1 was earlier, but I think FC3 popularized it) and many I can't remember including games from other companies all have the same exact open world structure. It's very boring and repetitive at this point.

I don't understand how people are still so enamored by Assassins Creed. It's been getting less and less innovative as time has gone on, and now it's a weird rpg style thing with health bars and level systems?

The Tom Clancy... series? has been doing... mediocre. Ghost Recon is actual trash and people only like it to play with friends, but even me trying to play with my brother... it's still broken and buggy. It's nothing like the rest of the series that the dedicated fan base were fans of.

Rainbow 6 Siege is doing well as a paid service thing, but again, it's not really a Rainbow 6 compared to other titles in the series. It could've been called just Tom Clancy's Siege or something. Of note, it's Rainbow 6, but I'm pretty sure the game modes are 5v5.

The Division had a universally lukewarm reception with a rapidly dwindling player base despite updates. Again, it wasn't really what people were wanting from a Clancy game.

Splinter Cell has been on record as "not dead," even with Ironside coming back out and saying he'd like to reprise his role. He was apparently absent from Blacklist for health reasons. Blacklist was released in 2013, and despite an appearance of Sam Fisher in Wildlands, no other kind of announcement was made, even at E3, which was after his "reveal."

They've now got the Crew, which is pretty average as far as arcade racers go. The open world in the newer title is larger and more empty, and people are complaining about... things. I just find the physics to be pretty poor, along with a large percentage of other people. Some argue that people want more "sim" physics now, which I call BS, we just haven't had a good arcade racer in... well probably about a decade.

They do some Rayman games, I don't know anything about them other than I got 1 for free and didn't like it. But I'm also averse to platformers.

 

EA is very afraid of things that aren't huge blockbusters, and Ubisoft seems willing to try new things like bringing back good and evil for some reason, but the either the devs or the company hit gold like AC or FC and just paint by the numbers from their comfort zone.

[JoostinOnline]

5 hours ago, corrado33 said:

EA, another huge game developer, 

EA is a publisher, not a developer. They own development teams such as Bioware.

 

People who preorder are the biggest problem. They whine endlessly about how the game isn't ready or it's not what the expected, but all they're doing is encouraging that behavior.

[Koeshi]

I think it is getting to the point where you will have better luck with lesser know studios than the old AAA crowd that are just cruising off of past momentum as this point.  I am thinking here of games like Shadow Warrior, The Witcher, Hellblade: Sensua's Sacrifice.  I think there is an element of these younger/smaller studios being more in touch with their audience and having more passion as opposed to greed when compared to the major studios/publishers.

[Paul Rudd]

15 hours ago, corrado33 said:

When I was younger I remember buying AAA titles and being BLOWN AWAY.

Games today are made up of a lot more bits.

Developers today focus more on what a game looks like. Back in the day, they had no choice but to focus on how the game played.

 

Turn to indie titles. You'll be utterly surprised.

[Adrian Codreanu]

I agree that big publishers/developers have dropped in quality for a while now I really think it's because game industry became very money oriented, all those microtransactions, pre-orders, seasonal passes etc...It's more about marketing than gameplay. Just look at Fallout series, it shifted from one of the most complex RPGs with a wonderful story into a sandbox with nearly no story and dialogs at all. IMHO it's because it just sells. 

 

It's been quality time for smaller publishers though. Shadowrun series is a huge success in modern RPGs, Pillars of eternity, Tyranny, Wasteland 2...in the other opera Stardew valley is an excellent game, much more than just a farm builder. Darkest Dungeon has a great atmosphere and rewarding gameplay, UnderRail I haven't tried, but it looks very well developed and received high marks. Things change, and surely there are lots of disappointments.

[maartendc]

The main reason is: EA and their counterparts are Publicly traded companies that want to make their investors happy. Once they find a franchise that sells well, they just milk it until it is dead, then move on to the next thing.

 

It is much safer to make a sequel to a popular franchise, rather than try something new. You could invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a game, and if it flops, you are taking a huge financial hit. If you make yet another Fifa, Sims, or Battlefield game, you know how many copies it will sell, give or take a couple million.

 

The same thing can be seen in the movie industry, sequel after sequel.

 

This has become much more of a problem as game development has gotten more expensive. GTA V cost something like $500 million to make. "Back in the day", a game could be made for a fraction of that. With today's production values in graphics (4K assets!), art, music, voice acting, etc. etc. it is just a huge expense to develop a game. It is therefore better to take the "safe" sequel route rather than do something creative / innovative.

 

EA is even worse of course, putting a shitload of microtransactions and season passes in there, but that is not the main reason the games are so bland. It is wanting to do the "safe" thing.

 

Luckily nowadays there are plenty of indie developers you can go to for innovation and good gameplay. This is where you can still find those "good old style of games".

[JZStudios]

1 hour ago, A Random Dude said:

Games today are made up of a lot more bits.

Developers today focus more on what a game looks like. Back in the day, they had no choice but to focus on how the game played.

 

Turn to indie titles. You'll be utterly surprised.

That's not true. Maybe not explicitly back to the 8 color days, but pixel artists were a huge deal and is still around today because of it. Old games spent as much on visuals as they could.

 

17 minutes ago, maartendc said:

The main reason is: EA and their counterparts are Publicly traded companies that want to make their investors happy. Once they find a franchise that sells well, they just milk it until it is dead, then move on to the next thing.

 

It is much safer to make a sequel to a popular franchise, rather than try something new. You could invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a game, and if it flops, you are taking a huge financial hit. If you make yet another Fifa, Sims, or Battlefield game, you know how many copies it will sell, give or take a couple million.

 

The same thing can be seen in the movie industry, sequel after sequel.

 

This has become much more of a problem as game development has gotten more expensive. GTA V cost something like $500 million to make. "Back in the day", a game could be made for a fraction of that. With today's production values in graphics (4K assets!), art, music, voice acting, etc. etc. it is just a huge expense to develop a game. It is therefore better to take the "safe" sequel route rather than do something creative / innovative.

 

EA is even worse of course, putting a shitload of microtransactions and season passes in there, but that is not the main reason the games are so bland. It is wanting to do the "safe" thing.

 

Luckily nowadays there are plenty of indie developers you can go to for innovation and good gameplay. This is where you can still find those "good old style of games".

Well, if a game costs $400 million it's still a fraction of $500 million.

 

I'm also pretty convinced that 4k assets are both cheaper to obtain and cheaper to make now. There's shitloads of resources online and consumer grade cameras have massive pixel counts, (Of which textures I'm pretty sure are still ~2k) and photogrammetry actually makes the process even more streamlined since it gets textures and model at the same time. There's still some shader work to do, but there's a bunch of programs that make that really quick now.

[Paul Rudd]

4 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Old games spent as much on visuals as they could.

This is true but imo, they focused more on how the game played than how it looks. Otherwise NES games would not be fun at all today. They're fun as hell because the developers focused more on the game play. 

[maartendc]

17 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

That's not true. Maybe not explicitly back to the 8 color days, but pixel artists were a huge deal and is still around today because of it. Old games spent as much on visuals as they could.

 

Well, if a game costs $400 million it's still a fraction of $500 million.

 

I'm also pretty convinced that 4k assets are both cheaper to obtain and cheaper to make now. There's shitloads of resources online and consumer grade cameras have massive pixel counts, (Of which textures I'm pretty sure are still ~2k) and photogrammetry actually makes the process even more streamlined since it gets textures and model at the same time. There's still some shader work to do, but there's a bunch of programs that make that really quick now.

Dude, you just don't get it.

 

Games like Doom (1993) used to be made by a team of literally 9 people and development times were measured in months, not years. Atari games were made by 1 single person in many cases, in a matter of weeks. Development budgets were under $1 million. Even accounting for inflation, that is WAAAAAY less than today.

 

Games like GTA V are made by a team of hundreds, not counting music composers, voice actors, marketers, support staff, etc. etc. Development was $256 million (I stand corrected, I believe the game MADE $500 million at some point, more since then).

 

https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/28/gta-5-sales-hit-1-billion.aspx

[maartendc]

17 hours ago, corrado33 said:

I've just been super disappointed recently with gaming in general. I mean, is Nintendo the only game developer we can trust? Most of their recent games have been well liked. 

While I agree with you to a certain extent... that some AAA have been crappy both in terms of commercial practices and just bad games...

 

I am 32 years old, I've been a gamer for over 20 years now....You know what? I'm going to go out and say it here: There has NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES than right now.

 

- There is more choice than ever, be it Indie titles, or AAA games, whatever you are into. Both PC and consoles.

- There are dozens of games coming out every week, in every genre (strategy, puzzle, racers, shooters, RPG, Adventure, etc. etc) way more than there used to be

- The production values of games are AMAZING, games like Battlefield V, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, etc. just look BREATHTAKING.

- Stories in games are rivaling movies in terms of story, acting, character development, music, etc.

- There are still plenty of AAA games that are really good (just naming a few that come to mind for me personally from the past few years): Hitman, Battlefield 1, Zelda BOTW, Witcher 3, Fallout 4, God of War, Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn, ...

- There are gaming technologies now that we could only dream of back in the day: VR, motion controls, remote play, etc.

- There are console quality graphics on the go now: Nintendo Switch, PS Vita, or solutions like the Nvidia Shield. Compare that to my old Game Boy (1st gen): HAH

- There are game "platform" improvements now better than ever: cloud saves, resume features, playing online with friends, sharing gameplay with friends, achievements, social features, buying digital games without ever leaving your home, etc. etc.

 

So yeah... for sure there are things that could be better. But nobody is forcing you to play THOSE particular games. There ARE plenty of good games, you just have to be careful what you buy, as always was the case.

 

[Taja]

Just look for the good games. Like everything EVER, there are good and bad stuff at any point in history (ofc trends do exist and "golden ages").

 

Just to list a few amazing (IMO) games that are not old:

 

The Witcher 3 (classic)

Divinity Original Sin 2 (insanely good)

Fallout 4 (some ppl dont like it for valid reasons, but overall i like it a lot)

Dark Souls 3 (not for everyone, but still very mainstream)

Nioh (soulslike but japanese with cool stuff but also grind)

Life is Strange (really short but beautiful)

Bioshock Infinite (playing it now, really enjoying the experience)

 

Thats just a few examples, people with different tastes will add other games or maybe disagree with me too, but thats alright. Its a big industry and as such, there is a lot of good and a lot of bad.

 

Some ppl say the same about books. Or music. Or films. Just pick some art form/enterteinment category and this discussion will go on forever.

 

[corrado33]

45 minutes ago, Taja said:

Just look for the good games. Like everything EVER, there are good and bad stuff at any point in history (ofc trends do exist and "golden ages").

 

Just to list a few amazing (IMO) games that are not old:

 

The Witcher 3 (classic)

Divinity Original Sin 2 (insanely good)

Fallout 4 (some ppl dont like it for valid reasons, but overall i like it a lot)

Dark Souls 3 (not for everyone, but still very mainstream)

Nioh (soulslike but japanese with cool stuff but also grind)

Life is Strange (really short but beautiful)

Bioshock Infinite (playing it now, really enjoying the experience)

 

Thats just a few examples, people with different tastes will add other games or maybe disagree with me too, but thats alright. Its a big industry and as such, there is a lot of good and a lot of bad.

 

Some ppl say the same about books. Or music. Or films. Just pick some art form/enterteinment category and this discussion will go on forever.

 

Yeah I mean those are good games, but most of them are over a year (or two) old! I'm talking about really recent games. 

[Taja]

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

Yeah I mean those are good games, but most of them are over a year (or two) old! I'm talking about really recent games. 

well, your examples were not that recent. but still, Vampyr is pretty recent and its pretty good. Thronebreaker is also VERY recent and good, people say AC odyssey is good and also red dead redemption 2, god of war... there are plenty of examples

[JZStudios]

7 hours ago, A Random Dude said:

This is true but imo, they focused more on how the game played than how it looks. Otherwise NES games would not be fun at all today. They're fun as hell because the developers focused more on the game play. 

I'm still going to say false. A lot of NES games weren't very difficult to make and companies that wanted to brand things had to make distinctive characters and styles.

A lot of NES games also suck ass today, and most weren't much better back then.

7 hours ago, maartendc said:

Dude, you just don't get it.

 

Games like Doom (1993) used to be made by a team of literally 9 people and development times were measured in months, not years. Atari games were made by 1 single person in many cases, in a matter of weeks. Development budgets were under $1 million. Even accounting for inflation, that is WAAAAAY less than today.

 

Games like GTA V are made by a team of hundreds, not counting music composers, voice actors, marketers, support staff, etc. etc. Development was $256 million (I stand corrected, I believe the game MADE $500 million at some point, more since then).

 

https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/28/gta-5-sales-hit-1-billion.aspx

Dude, what's your point?

 

Games like Doom (1993) have less assets than a plant pot in a modern game. You made a stupid argument, I pointed it out.

Rockstar spent $256 mil on GTA? Well $255 mil is still a fraction of $256. Like 99% is a fraction of 100%.

 

Also, those Atari games that were made in weeks were fucking turds. They were always BS cash grab games because they cost almost nothing to make. It's like asset flip games now.

6 hours ago, Taja said:

Just look for the good games. Like everything EVER, there are good and bad stuff at any point in history (ofc trends do exist and "golden ages").

 

Just to list a few amazing (IMO) games that are not old:

 

The Witcher 3 (classic)

Divinity Original Sin 2 (insanely good)

Fallout 4 (some ppl dont like it for valid reasons, but overall i like it a lot)

Dark Souls 3 (not for everyone, but still very mainstream)

Nioh (soulslike but japanese with cool stuff but also grind)

Life is Strange (really short but beautiful)

Bioshock Infinite (playing it now, really enjoying the experience)

 

Thats just a few examples, people with different tastes will add other games or maybe disagree with me too, but thats alright. Its a big industry and as such, there is a lot of good and a lot of bad.

 

Some ppl say the same about books. Or music. Or films. Just pick some art form/enterteinment category and this discussion will go on forever.

 

The Witcher 3 is basically made by an indie dev.

Divinity IS made by an indie dev.

Fallout 4 was universally mediocre at best.

DS3 is older and made by a smaller Japanese studio known for that series and Armored Core, which is very small.

Nioh is made by the Dead or Alive devs. They don't do much else.

Life is Strange is an indie dev. It's also garbage.

Bioshock Infinite was a bit of a scandal due to essentially false advertising and a terrible ending.

 

I think his primary point was the larger well known devs, not indie studios.

[Paul Rudd]

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

A lot of NES games also suck ass today

To you, sure. To others, they're still addictive.