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I just uncovered why AAA games are declining: developers aren't as good as they used to be
- Thread starter GigaBowser
- Start date
- Opinion Poll Analysis
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Any examples of interesting and engaging gameplay?
Just so i can gauge what you consider interesting and engaging.
Neolombax
Member
What I think is happening is gaming has become very costly with skyrocketing expectations from gamers, that devs/publishers are more likely to stick to what works to make a profitable product. The end result is less innovation, but I think its a disservice to say devs arent as good anymore. Looking at the graphical quality, the art design, the animations, the quality of life changes in gaming, I dont think thats the case.
T0kenAussie
Neo Member
In my opinion gaming went to shit with the hate critiquers. Some were good like total biscuit but other were complete chodes like angry joe.
Gen7 was a simpler time too, games weren’t requiring hundreds of millions in investment to crack that AAA bubble, we didn’t have sites like digital foundry creating content pouring over every pixel to give people faux intellectual “well this game is garbage because of the hitches in frame rates here and here” takes and we weren’t looking for gotcha after gotcha shitty takes to justify our interests by trying to make every other platform seem like dead end.
I also blame the “games are art” crowd with their insecurities and looking for acceptance from their peers in traditional media like tv and movies (and the subsequent buckets of cum they spewed in think pieces post the release of the last of us because finally the video games had reached a zenith of story telling to match a hbo series)
But mainly I blame twitter and the engagement algorithms that fed all this negativity in the 8th generation forcing out a whole bunch of talented devs because it’s pretty easy to leave games programming for regular software when your inbox decreases 1000% and you get treated like a normal human being coding web apps instead of games where every media outlet / “fan” / reactionary is looking to trawl every single thing about you for a gotcha or a scoop
Gen7 was a simpler time too, games weren’t requiring hundreds of millions in investment to crack that AAA bubble, we didn’t have sites like digital foundry creating content pouring over every pixel to give people faux intellectual “well this game is garbage because of the hitches in frame rates here and here” takes and we weren’t looking for gotcha after gotcha shitty takes to justify our interests by trying to make every other platform seem like dead end.
I also blame the “games are art” crowd with their insecurities and looking for acceptance from their peers in traditional media like tv and movies (and the subsequent buckets of cum they spewed in think pieces post the release of the last of us because finally the video games had reached a zenith of story telling to match a hbo series)
But mainly I blame twitter and the engagement algorithms that fed all this negativity in the 8th generation forcing out a whole bunch of talented devs because it’s pretty easy to leave games programming for regular software when your inbox decreases 1000% and you get treated like a normal human being coding web apps instead of games where every media outlet / “fan” / reactionary is looking to trawl every single thing about you for a gotcha or a scoop
GigaBowser
The bear of bad news
It's not about worshipping. It's about being an informed consumer.
Like I'll always be on the lookout for Kamiya or Kojima's next game because they nearly always deliver.
Cyberpunkd
Member
Robochobo
Member
dDoc
Member
Not taking any sides here but had to reply to this - Returnal!
Few games of this caliber nowadays tbh.
No one has an issue with legitimate criticism, that you call people ‘blue haired freaks’ shows that your criticism isn’t gonna be legit, though.
Spaceman292
Banned
Sure there are still some great studio's out there, but I just read a post where someone said game development talent have moved on to other industries or retired and aren't what they used to be,
and it struck me,
they were right
Think about the industry and all the most notable game developers...
Kojima, Itegaki, Miyamoto, Carmack, Mikami, Gabe...
They're all past their primes or outright retired.
What we're left with are a bloated teams of wannabe movie graphic designers who don't know the first thing about making fun games. Add to that cancel culture and wokeness pushing away all of the real talent and replacing them with blue haired smurfs because of equal opportunity, and what we're left with is watered down talent that are giving us crap like Batman: Gotham Knights and Saints Row between remastering and reselling us games from an era where developers actually knew what they were doing.
You know it's a harbinger of doom when Rockstar goes from "toxic frat boy culture" and the Houser brothers,
to this
GTA 6 development slowed partly due to Rockstar reform — report
GTA 6 development is apparently slow-moving due to Rockstar Games' culture reform, which is working towards becoming a "kinder, more progressive company," a recent Bloomberg report has uncovered.www.trueachievements.com
Oh wow I wonder if this OP will boil down to 'I don't like women'
Hawking Radiation
Member
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IlGialloMondadori
Member
Returnal is a total banger.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
Graphical quality isn’t at the service of gameplay, or fun. It’s brought a whole load of issues all in itself, such as bugs, an impossible gap between the devs with the high budgets and the uncountable workforce and the devs who don’t have those, and the neverending bitching about pixel-level differences between hardwares.
The art design is just more realistic. A lot of western game art and design is still very derivative, and going for realism at all costs means you’ll rarely see creative designs as you can still see from Japan.
Animations make a lot of gameplay clumsier and stiffer than it needs to be, just for the sake of… wait for it… realism.
Quality of life changes are welcome. Unfortunately, they don’t always just solve the problems we had in the past, but create new ones. Quality of life features often stray into handholding territory. Some QoL features are just a patch for unfocused, clumsy game design - eg, you need “detective vision” because interactive elements look exactly like background elements… in the name of, you know… realism.
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
No Lies detected.
P.S Isabel Maciel was one of the lead modelers on that project too.
Emilia worked on the DLC:
Veera worked on environments pretty early in development too:
But obviously women in gamedev are completely destroying the industry.
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mitchman
Gold Member
A crunch culture is not something senior developers can be bothered with when other non-gaming jobs has very little of that and pay better. I know plenty of senior devs that used to work for gaming companies and left that industry completely. Hopefully, at some point, gaming companies will understand that what they're doing is not sustainable if they want to hold on to the talent.
TLZ
Banned
Do you have to be in the film industry to tell if a movie or actor is bad or good?
TheBROgamer
Banned
For the unaware, these two studs are responsible for creating the FPS genre.
You might have heard of this before...
Modern Game Developer transition point starting in the PS360 era (2007), to 2014 - present.
AAA games are no longer developed by NERDS, and have become soulless corporate PRODUCTS rather than GAMES.
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funking giblet
Member
This is the dumbest thread ever made on Neogaf. That is quite a feat!
German Hops
GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
I got some things going on right now with RPGMaker..
Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
Alrighty then edgelord
Go play some loop hero, slay the spire or riftbreakers.
You got a serious case of tunnel vision.
If anything the amount of amazing games only got better.
Don’t be that movie guy that cries how shit modern movies are.. and only mentions marvel
Go play some loop hero, slay the spire or riftbreakers.
You got a serious case of tunnel vision.
If anything the amount of amazing games only got better.
Don’t be that movie guy that cries how shit modern movies are.. and only mentions marvel
Shut0wen
Member
Im sorry to burst a bubble here but i actually know people who work for ubisoft anf there all gamers, maybe casuals that like pokemon but there still gamers, problem though with ubisoft is that they employ script kiddies, make individuals work on 1 asset a month E.G a house in a game or a tree, infact most developers are turning this way like cdpr and capcom
Punished Miku
Gold Member
How to Report a Discovery
Made an astronomical discovery? Report it to the International Astronomical Union here!
www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu
Frank Horrigan
Banned
@OP
People will shit on you for this opinion and tell you why you are wrong, you're not wrong. Games used to be made for nerds by nerds. Wether they are still made by nerds is a topic up for discussion. However, they are not made for nerds/gamers anymore and havent been for over 10 years.
The hardcore crowd was pushed aside for the casual crowd in around 2008.
What we are seeing now is the casual crowd pushed aside for the smartphone crowd.
However, the casuals are only just noticing this shift in gaming direction and are now on the same sidelines that hardcore gamers have stood on for over a decade.
We told you so (even on this very forum if you go back far enough).
People will shit on you for this opinion and tell you why you are wrong, you're not wrong. Games used to be made for nerds by nerds. Wether they are still made by nerds is a topic up for discussion. However, they are not made for nerds/gamers anymore and havent been for over 10 years.
The hardcore crowd was pushed aside for the casual crowd in around 2008.
What we are seeing now is the casual crowd pushed aside for the smartphone crowd.
However, the casuals are only just noticing this shift in gaming direction and are now on the same sidelines that hardcore gamers have stood on for over a decade.
We told you so (even on this very forum if you go back far enough).
Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
Imagine being a gamer and working for ubisoft.
That’s like being a highly talented woodworker, and ending up working at ikea at the cash register.
EDMIX
Member
Used to be? How the fuck do any of you know all the people in those images are nerds or not? So this sounds like a slow generalization that simply doesn't make much sense.
Not sure how some pictures would tell you about millions of fucking developers or if they are um "nerds" or not.
Meicyn
Gold Member
lmao
are you for real
like
i dont think jocks make a habit of getting into game dev
lmao
TheBROgamer
Banned
Thank you, any gamer that has gaming for quite some time should be aware of this.
My first consoles was the SNES, and I have owned every console since that point and have noticed a gradual change, in the games that release and games that are designed as the industry began to truly hit the mainstream during the PS360Wii era.
Being a gamer used to be FROWNED upon by the mainstream, it wasn't until the last 15 years or so where it became cool to call yourself a "gamer" or to really be interested in tech either.
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EDMIX
Member
Aware of what? Your baseless assumption of something?
ahhhh I see, they classic Gatekeep. So this MUST mean you know millions of developers and just by the picture you can tell they are not "nerds", fascinating stuff /s
Frank Horrigan
Banned
I'm not going off of OPs pictures, i think he picked a silly example. What i would say is that the definition of what a 'nerd' is has changed and it would hard to argue in the other direction. Remember, nerds used to be social outcasts. Those people in the pictures that OP posted, while a silly example, show a generalised group of people that are NOT socially outcast. If we go off of social media and IRL events, those kind of people are the forefront of modern day society, and thus cannot be classified as nerds in the traditional sense.
15 years ago i would agree, but what would do define as a modern day 'jock'? Because according to social media and modern day society, jocks are as socially outcast as the nerds used to be
Frank Horrigan
Banned
Thank you. I'm glad someone can see the change without becoming too emotional about labels
TheBROgamer
Banned
It's not jocks, its people who have no real talent or vision on how to push the medium forward that have saturated the market.
Where are the Miyamoto's, the Kojima's, the Carmack's, etc?
They are all getting scooped up by tech giants (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) leaving the LEFTOVERS, for game development companies.
There are less programming rockstars today at game companies, than years priors.
Most are there just for a check, nothing more.
= Current stagnant state of gaming progression today.
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Shut0wen
Member
Yeah ubi suck massively but its probs one of the best stepping stone companys to work for most people i know who have worked for ubi have ended up moving to to rockstar north and naughtydog for have experience to exclusive game engines, but ive heard the best developer to work for is sumo digital just because of the variety of games they make
EDMIX
Member
Ok, but that term doesn't exclusively mean that, a nerd CAN be a outcast, not all nerds are outcast sir....
yet the example given of "nerds" is on the fucking cover of a magazine man...you can't cherry pick this fucking shit as if the people on that magazine have zero twitter or Instagram and speak to no one or something.
omg he is suuuuuch a social "outcast"
Nankatsu
Gold Member
2014 photo explains why I'm near ending boss and I'm still receiving tutorials to hold my hand.
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Shut0wen
Member
Plus ubi is the only games company to employ literally anyone who can code
TheBROgamer
Banned
Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
Aye a job is a job but oof
Frank Horrigan
Banned
If we're talking about the traditional meaning of a nerd, then yes, they were socially outcast. You can't take a modern-day definition of a label that has changed, and then say the original etymology of the term is wrong.
All of popular society in the 90s were queuing up to buy gaming magazines?
A speech given by a veteran in 2021, where gaming is more popular than ever, sees a massive turn out from people who follow gaming - a hobby which is no longer seen by society as socially unpopular, means he was never a social outcast?
I'm not sure why you're so emotionally attached to this subject. How old are you in a span of a decade? for example 20-30 or 10-20
TheBROgamer
Banned
Carmack spent an estimated 10,000 HOURS learning how to write code.
Pics are from the early 90s, and would routinely work 60-80 hour weeks, foregoing friendship/relationships to practice what he loved.
People called them "geeks', "nerds", etc back during the time these pics were taken.
This was not considered a glamorous position (coding or game development).
Games developed by people who LOVED GAMES.
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SF Kosmo
Al Jazeera Special Reporter
No, it's not about the best talent aging out, we're just past the Auteur age of AAA games. The scope of AAA production is such that no one person can assume the kind of total creative control that they once did. Marketing might wish us to believe that, say, Cory Barlog is the prime auteur behind God of War, but he himself will tell you he had to trust his many collaborators to make big creative decisions, because it's just not possible to micromanage a production of that size.
To some extent the idea of auteurship has always been something played up for the sake of marketing. Miyamoto, for example has long been more of an executive giving feedback and nudging developers in the right direction than a hands-on director in an auteur role. And Carmack always stuck to tech and left design to others.
You saw this in the 90s with the independent movie boom as well. Suddenly marketing directors became an effective way to sell these independent movies like Clerks and Reservoir Dogs that didn't necessarily have big name stars in them. It's not like directors being a creative force in movies was anything new, but the reason you were hearing about THESE directors was marketing.
Same for games, making a "celebrity" out of someone can be a useful way to sell a game, but increasingly it doesn't reflect the way games are actually made outside of the indie space.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Sure there are still some great studio's out there, but I just read a post where someone said game development talent have moved on to other industries or retired and aren't what they used to be,
and it struck me,
they were right
Think about the industry and all the most notable game developers...
Kojima, Itegaki, Miyamoto, Carmack, Mikami, Gabe...
They're all past their primes or outright retired.
What we're left with are a bloated teams of wannabe movie graphic designers who don't know the first thing about making fun games. Add to that cancel culture and wokeness pushing away all of the real talent and replacing them with blue haired smurfs because of equal opportunity, and what we're left with is watered down talent that are giving us crap like Batman: Gotham Knights and Saints Row between remastering and reselling us games from an era where developers actually knew what they were doing.
You know it's a harbinger of doom when Rockstar goes from "toxic frat boy culture" and the Houser brothers,
to this
GTA 6 development slowed partly due to Rockstar reform — report
GTA 6 development is apparently slow-moving due to Rockstar Games' culture reform, which is working towards becoming a "kinder, more progressive company," a recent Bloomberg report has uncovered.
Rockstar has over 3,000 employees. Blaming delay on 100 women is idiotic.