Opinion - Video gaming is on the decline!

[GLASSJAW]

1) Perhaps I should've omitted PCs and smartphones, which are the only options for indie developers today. I am saying that even in the previous console generation, there were gems in the PS Store and Xbox Arcade. Third-party titles had a chance. With systems like the PS4 and Xbox One, you can't make a decent looking game. The target demographic for the Xbox One and PS4 looks really small to me. So I revise my statement: the consoles have become too advanced and can't release enough games to pander to a wider audience. It'll die because it relies solely on AAA games.

2) Hollywood has a huge variety? I just checked your other post. You put Boyhood, Birdman and Budapest Hotel as your top movies. They are all independent films! You didn't like Guardians of the Galaxy, a.k.a. the best summer blockbuster Hollywood had to offer this year. Action junkies are picking foreign films like The Raid and Snowpiercer. This is all anecdotal, but I don't even think you like Hollywood. Think about all the crap that came out this year. Every movie is designed to be a blockbuster nowadays. Spielberg's legacy (Jaws) has slowly killed off genres like Horror and Rom-Coms. The only things left are blockbusters, dramas, thrillers, cartoons and musicals. That's all Hollywood has to offer now.

3) EA, 2K Games and Ubisoft are all guilty of this. They are three of the biggest publishers out there. They pressure the developers into rushing a product, telling them to cut corners and shove everything into the closet wherever and whenever possible. The reception is predictably bad but the money has already been made from the pre-orders. The developers take all the heat and corporate goes home with the money. You're a PC gamer. You know that Rome II is legendary for being a broken game that's still being patched a year later.

4) You are naming exceptions: Riot Games and Valve (not just DoTA but also CS:GO and Team Fortress 2). Entire game is free (CS:GO always goes on sale), and the only extra money spent is aesthetics. Honestly.... how many other games work like that...? Everything else is all about having DLCs which should've been included in the base game. Harder difficulties are now DLCs. New maps are DLCs. Graphical features (usually blood/gore) are now DLCs. And we are also seeing a pattern where DLCs that should've been in the base game are now incentives in pre-orders. When you see that crap, you know the game is going to play like garbage. Aside from the exceptions noted above, Free2Play has always been Pay2Win. You also mentioned Hearthstone, but a lot of people are still very upset with Blizzard. No, not Diablo for me. It's Starcraft II. They completely f'ed it up.

I can't deny what DoTA and League are doing to the gaming industry. They are bringing a spectator craze that I thought could only be achieved in South Korea. Meanwhile, everything else is falling behind. You mentioned sequels. I have a problem when sequels actually seem to regress from their previous iterations. Total War, Civilization, NHL, Sims, SimCity, Walking Dead, Halo, Assassin's Creed, Naruto Ninja Storm, and of course Starcraft... the list definitely goes on.

i'm not sure what your point is with #1. haven't consoles always relied on AAA games? not only that, but AAA exclusives? and why do consoles need to pander to a wider audience? loads and loads of consoles are sold. like 20 million in the last year, no?

#2 i disagree with tho. "independent" doesn't really mean anything these days. i mean, yeah, one of the production companies that helped Birdman was "independent" -- but in the film world, "independent" basically means it has a smaller budget, nothing really else. for example, the famous "indie" awards (Spirit Awards) only require a movie to have a budget less than 20million to be considered 'indie' simply. Boyhood was heavily funded by IFC, and IFC is considered "indie" despite being a billion+ dollar group. Fox Searchlight is considered "indie" despite it being just a branch of Fox, and so on. Indie just means a movie made without the consideration of profit. Birdman is a movie about American culture starring A list celebrities. It may not have been shot in the ancient Hollywood studio system, and it may have a foreign director, but the movie is totally American and funded and distributed by the Hollywood 'world'

indie = not for profit

big budget = big disturbition/marketing = for profit

all major studios work with both worlds.

#3 i do remember reading EA shoving out some broken games recently. i'm totally not denying this, i'm just saying i personally haven't experienced this first hand before

#4 i get why people don't like DLC, but at the same time i still have an SNES and all my SNES games from my childhood, and most of them don't have much more than an hour of gameplay in them. limited gameplay has always been a thing. it just so happens now that people can capitalize it more. of course you could say there's no justifying making a short game anymore, or something, but i dunno.

i don't ever encounter this stuff personally, so i can't really comment, since i mostly play games online and don't encounter this sort of thing--except with CoD's ridiculous map packs