What is wrong with games today

Off Topic
#1

To be honest I’ve been thinking a lot since release, about how and why entertaining games are slated so I put on my raspberry pi in search of answers. I quite quickly concluded the reasons to be as follows.

  1. Release dates are no longer a thing. People watch gamers on twitch days and weeks prior to release playing a game. Damaging, unnecessary and the death of the release date as we once knew it.
  2. All games are broken. In 1982 how many times did a ZX SPECTRUM crash/fail to load/bug out.
    Oh I know… lots.
    Why? Is it acceptable? Yes
    It was then and it is now. Developers are pushing consoles to the edge of capability and can’t win. Release something poor that is flawless or something ambitious that takes a while to iron out.
  3. DLC. This has not added life to games. It’s added greed and expectation.

As a community gears is the greediest, brattiest and worst. In reality we have a series of AMAZING games but all people do is complain, moan and act spoilt.
If you genuinely don’t like gears, just play something else instead of falling false victim and complaining on these forums.

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#2

We’re getting older.

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#3

I see some of your points there, and I agree there’s too much hate on Gears lately.

That said, I only play the campaign anymore in games, so I kinda have to take a back seat on mp/co-op comments, and let others have at it.

Yes, to a large degree games, especially on PC, have always needed patching. There’s typically no such thing as a perfect game at release.

I do feel however game production anymore is more monetized and poorly tested than it should be. More and more the goal is profit over quality throughout the industry in general.

Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 for me campaign wise are every bit as enjoyable as Gears of War 1 was, and those are the only I’ve played since I suck with gamepads, and have never bought a console because of it.

I’m not sure players obsessing over trailers has anything to do with release dates though. About the only thing with trailers that is quite frequently damaging, is they often don’t reflect the actual game accurately. Trailers are often made to look better than the game in certain ways, and I have to think they are doing that just to get more preorders.

Blatant, deceitful preorder baiting is every bit as damaging to gaming than anything the fans do, more so. At the end of the day though, whether we agree with the complaints leveled at the devs post release by fans, they have a right to their opinion. If we don’t accept that, we may as well put gags on ourselves.

#4

  1. Agree to an extent. Games and and consoles have shown that you can vastly improve your product after years of your customer already playing it. But haven’t you heard the expression “the first impression is the lasting impression”? Release dates are incredibly important to gauge a game. I also hate this “games as a service” as an excuse for drip fed content. I don’t think every dev has this mindset but enough do to where it gives it a bad name.
    Halo 5: failure of “games as a service”
    Battlefront 2: great example of a game soaring even after release date

  2. No. Not all games are broken. Is it acceptable, Absolutely not. Period. Consumers deserve more than that. I can get behind the idea that some people are just acting like nothing a dev is doing is good. I’ve praised TC from good decisions and I have criticized them when I think they did something wrong.
    But this is literally the lowest point for a game. Just because “it happens all the time” does not mean it should be acceptable. People who defend this let a dev and pub walk all over you.
    And the “pushing the boundaries” is not really the best reason. The best selling console wasn’t even the most powerful of its own generation. If companies really wanted to maximize their profit they would release a good product. It doesn’t need to be perfect, no product is, but it should be serviceable.

  3. Agreed. DLC went from excellence like GTA IV:tBoGT or Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon to content locked on disc to maximize profit.

#5

Oh yeah, at age 61 I’m rather retro when it comes to QC and first impressions. Sadly though, games more and more are a business, vs a creative impression on the fanbase. Having grown to the most profitable entertainment industry, video gaming has suffered pressure from investors, whom only think in terms of dollars and deadlines. They’re more worried about quarterly stock value than launch quality.

So yeah, while I agree that we deserve better than that, I also know that things like players having an uncontrollable urge to preorder, also fuels that fire. Gaming is not unlike narcotics, whenever you have a commodity that involves wide spread addiction, there will be problems caused by both customers and distributors. At some point you have to let those investors know you are not unconditionally addicted to games, regardless of their release condition.

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#6

Well said. We really do hold all the power over these investors. And definitely agree on that preordering point. Day 1 purchases and preorders before weren’t bad but we grew so accustomed to it some people feel they ‘have’ to do it.
Idk if I’d go as far to call it addiction, but most of these people don’t really question the ‘why’ of the preorder. Which does worry me.

#7

I feel calling it an addiction of sorts is justifiable. Reason being, I’ve seen FAR too many times players vowing to stop preordering, or buying period from certain teams, yet when that withdrawal syndrome kicks in, they go ahead and do one or the other anyway.

It’s more the exception than the rule that players hold true to their resolve, which shows gaming for most is more habit than mere hobby. I wouldn’t dare say it’s true of ALL gamers, just most mainstream gamers, and they are the ones counted on for sales.

#8

That’s fair. To be honest I went through something eerily similar. But then I realized “this game will never get better if I just keep buying it” so I stopped. And now I wait damn near a year for all my games. People try to rationalize it in many ways. But it’s all the same.

#9

Yeah that trend is getting more popular. I’ve chatted on a lot of forums where you look at a member’s spec they list in their profile or sig, and you assume they buy games at or near full price, but a lot of them will wait until they’re ultra cheap, like $10 - $20 or less.

I also think once you unburden yourself of the feeling like you gotta have everything now, it adds to your awareness that there’s always something else to do, or something else to play. This mindset of being under the influence of game hype is not healthy really.