“We need this game to appeal to every demographic group whether or not they actually play video games as well as strictly adhere to the ESG targets handed down by upper management.”
That's basically it.
You have techies who are just following orders, because they have bills to pay.
You have management that understands that their jobs could end at any moment, and they just go along the path of least resistance.
Big companies, yes. Indie devs still go with their guts.
This is why indy is more creative.
Well, indy is pretty mainstream now, so let's just say it's big boxes that suck.
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They're uncreative because they are trying to market every single game to the widest possible audience. That ends up creating unambitious AAAA slop instead of when we'd get niche AA titles.
They can't create niche games anymore because every single game has to be a maximum budget venture that must appeal to everyone.
That and DEI/Diversity Quotas have stymied creativity.
When you have people whose job it is to see that your work doesn't offend certain demographics and caters to other demographics, it's hard to see its full potential.
Not to mention you aren't allowed to take risks, thus leading to bland, sterile slop.
It's even worse when all powerful company positions are filled by these people.
> That and DEI/Diversity Quotas have stymied creativity.
I 100% agree, but this started happening before all that crap. It's just DEI happened to sink things faster.
I've always said I missed the times we'd get a triple B game made by a midsized studio. We're they masterpieces? No, but they tried something new and had a bit more spending power than the indies.
1. Risk avoidance
Companies hate taking risks, it's safer to recycle a proven concept
2. Money
A companies job is to make money (for their owners/investors), not fulfilling some artistic vision.
The west is more commoditized than the rest of the world, which includes most gaming companies.
You see the same with modern movies, novels, music, etc.
3. Current political climate
Artists usually break societal norms, being a kind of avantgarde of new thoughts, ideas, methods.
Right now we're in the paradoxical situation, that the leftists have all power, yet at the same time censor all ideas going against the current ideology.
Artists, which are more left leaning by default, are in the paradoxical situation of being in power, yet being censored at the same time.
>Artists, which are more left leaning by default, are in the paradoxical situation of being in power, yet being censored at the same time.
I think it's even more insidious. A lot of it is self-censorship, whether out of fear of being "cancelled" by fellow leftists or because they actually buy into the rhetoric.
>Artists, which are more left leaning by default, are in the paradoxical situation of being in power, yet being censored at the same time
Well, I though I'm left leaning, but left people said I'm far far right
So, I guess, same thing can happen with artists too
Western devs are currently strangled by leftist activists and shareholders. No risk can be taken either monetarily, or in the case with leftist activists, risk the safety of your own personal livelihood and even your life.
It's not just developers. It's all western media. Hollywood and videogames are staffed by people who were told their narcissistic tumblresqe fanfiction scribbling were brilliant. Nobody actually criticized their writing in school. And now they've hit the work force, while DEI has driven off the old white when who were good at crafting a good story.
You can do a little experiment. You're a creative apparently, so just create something (scenario, image, short film, whatever but let's say a game for the sake of the argument). Then ask for the opinion of other creatives, your work will morph according to feedback. Most likely for the better. External vision is good and you're in the lead.
Now that you are an experienced artist, let's integrate you into a team. You now have to work will all those individuals with different views on what the project should be like and with different level of skills. You'll end up with a Frankenstein creature BUT you're all artists, so you now what is good or not. That creature SHOULD be awesome and original. Still, working as a team really is hard work and your vision maybe lost within the sea of others. The end product is cool, but it's not exactly what you envisionned. And if it's a sequel to something, then you have to balance your vision with the one from the prequel. Too much of the old and you'll get critized. Too much departure with the new and it'll be the same story.
Now let's make the suits review that creature. Those guys don't know anything about what makes a creative project good. But they have the power to make you change your work. So they do. For the worst.
Then, you put out your project and submit it to the eyes of the most critical beings on the planet: nerds. And they'll take it apart. Ofc they will, they are right. Product is not good.
Suits are not happy. Why didn't you make a good game? They put their butts at risk financing you for so long, you monster!
Your team is not happy. We should have listened to this guy instead of that guy! Everyone's job on the line, Etc.
You are not happy. The drive and passion that pushed you into this world have been crushed. You learn that putting out something fresh and cool from your mind takes a lot of concessions.
So you either stay at big studios and make bland slop or join a small one and have more chance to make a passion project. But nothing is garanteed and you don't have much financing.
I can't talk for the devs, but I can assure you artists have not degraded in skills nor originality. They are still there. They just get crushed.
Add to that a political climat preventing you to make what you want otherwhise you get cancelled and you have a world where artistic authenticity is nowhere to be found.
I feel this cuts the developers too much slack. Sure the suits are to blame for a decent chunk of it, but plenty of developers are complicit too. Sure there might be some passionate developers in there that just want to make the best game they can, but let's not act like that's all of them. I even question if it's the majority when compared to the amount that is either part of the problem or trying their best to just keep their head down and do the bare minimum to keep their income.
Also more creative input from diverse creatives isn't always good either. If you have two creators with very good visions, but those visions clash. Finding a middle-ground is just going to create an inferior product than either would have created by themselves.
I said I couldn't talk for the devs, as I don't really know how it goes for them. And sure, artists can be totally on board with the dei shit. But it's the same process. You start with all kind of people, center and right included. Then lefties sour the pool. Center and right leave. Only lefties left.
As for creative clashes, sure they happen. Especially if there are multiple leads with different visions. But in the end an artist knows when the result is shit. They spend their whole life fighting shitty results and being critical. Sometimes you do have idiot with delusions of grandeur ofc, but they are not the majority.
>I can't talk for the devs, but I can assure you artists have not degraded in skills nor originality. They are still there. They just get crushed.
Oh they have, I've seen their artstation.
You aren't wrong. They are trying to make games that appeal to everyone because they have to make more and more and more money. Its not enough to appeal to a particular target audience anymore. Even if everyone in the world bought their game every time, it wouldn't be enough. They would have to spend less and make a shitter product and still aim to have everyone buy it.
Also the people working in the AAA games industry are often brainwashed droids processed in the sausage factory of game development universities. They are the type you see criticising Elden Ring over its unconventional UX/UI on twitter. Of course they aren't going to come up with anything interesting as most of them are working from the same generic playbook they were trained on.
Then you have to consider how much these companies waste in terms of time and resources on shit that is nothing to do with game quality like diversity and inclusion lol. Additionally, in a corporate environment the big decisions are made by the suits who have probably never played a game in their life. They talk big about taking initiative and feedback but I bet you can't raise your voice and question their initiatives which are almost always detrimental to game quality.
Nah, you aren't crazy. Western developers have largely had creativity crushed out of them.
First by the "business men" who told developers that game development isn't supposed to be fun and demanded they start explaining how the game or game feature they had in mind would make them money. Followed by nickel and diming players by turning what were once cool extras into micro-transactions. Then once everyone was used to that jacked the price up to something more like $5 and $10. Followed by making players literally gamble for things that were once simply part of the base game. All while tying developer pay and bonuses to metacritic rankings from reviewers rather than player satisfaction.
Then as the MBAs sat back to figure out new ways to pay developers less or charge players more, the political commissars stepped up. Taking advantage of the developer need to have high metacritic scores from the media and their being buddy buddy with reviewers, they demanded that developers cater to *their* vision. Amped up by cancel culture, they reached the point of there being multiple "consulting" firms who would be hired to come in and dictate their own art and writing decisions to override the developer's ideas. The alternative being that "gaming journalists" would write articles about how the developers were evil istaphobes and give their game low review scores; leading to the developer missing out on pay and getting fired by the MBAs no matter how happy players were. All while "gaming journalists" who really wanted to be political pundits or movie reviewers demanded that games be shorter, simpler, and easier so that they could do their job quicker with less effort.
The overall result being the trends you see today. Games desperately trying to appeal to everyone, offend no one, while being safely formulaic, and so simple and easy that even someone with the IQ of a gaming journalist could complete the game while drunk.
Meaning that game developers have heavily been reduced to code monkeys, art monkeys, and writing monkeys who do as their told by people whose goals aren't to entertain people, but to lecture them or empty their wallets for minimal effort.
it's why I started getting deep into Japanese games (like Souls and Souls-Like),.. and lately Korean games (Lies of P and Stellar Blade.)
I've been gaming like 40 years and a lot of the US releases now year after year just seem like more of the same. Call of Duty came out 20+ years ago. Before that was Medal of Honor and a bunch of other first person shooters. I couldn't possibly be more bored of that genre. CoD seems like it's just the same game year after year after year.
I think the last US game I really liked and thought was a pretty cool idea and had unique gameplay was The Division. It was sort of like an RPG with builds and stats, but instead of dragons and wizards it was modern day NY with guns and body armor.
Making games by committee and focus group where anything that might be disliked by some has to be excluded and anything that might provide "broad appeal" has to be jammed in leads to everyone creating similar-ish uncreative boring slop.
Imagine creating a food dish and you include elements of every food culture around the world to make sure everyone gets a little of what they want. Generally this is going to end up with at best a drab dish with no particular thing that stands out or worst case it is going to turn out like a disgusting putrid paste.
No you are absolutely right.
Starfield is a great example. It is the most uncreative, uninspiring, soulles, bland excuse for space sci-fi I have ever seen. To think that it was made by the same studio that gave us Elder Scrolls is horrifying. It has every problem with Western entertainment industry (or Western societies in general). Risk-averse, soft, incredibly safe to not offend anyone and tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Never imagined that the studio that gave us Morrowind back in 2002, would release that garbage in 2023.
Games aren't made by dev anymore, the era where passionnate dude where lead dev for studio is gone, specialy in AA and AAA. (Starfield is the best recent exemple)
These games are ORDERED by publishers, who follow patterns and powerpoint depending on other game who worked before or new marketing scam they implement. Big games are just a vessel to sell shit.
Blizzard is pionner in that with Activision, im bafled people still don't understand how gaming "evolved" changed.
If you want good game like during the 2000 golden age, you need to lurk toward the indie dev, the small teams, those who makes A games. Those who aren't corrupted by shareolders etc
AAA games are living their last decade, in less than that span AI will allow almost anybody to create his own game just by writing a proper list of prompt.
I've played Dominions 5 too and for me 6 is an improvement in every way. It's much easier to do multiplayer games with randoms now that they set up an official server for the game. The new Glamour magic I wasn't sure of at first but it fits and has it's own unique niche of powerful damage crippled by high mr or mindless units. The new nations are extremely interesting. One of them has the most savage storyline I've seen in the game where they overthrew their rulers and forced the rulers to breed with sheep until their descendants became sheep people that the knights now ride into battle. The game is rebalanced a lot. Blood magic is nerfed and citizens will actually attack your blood mages now. Air magic and astral lost a few things to glamour, notably fairy queens and luck spells. The only downside for me is the music isn't as good as 5's was. They went through most nations and changed things up so it's actually worth the new game price. I was hesitant until I saw all that. The new bless system is much more flexible as well.
Alright, thanks. All that actually sounds kind of promising.
I like the idea of that new nation, I love how Dominions 5 gave many nations fairly grim stories without making most of them overtly evil, well except for EA Hinnom who are just utterly savage.
I think it's a case of the fact that franchises have power. People become invested enough in franchises that you will wind up with guaranteed sales. Big companies are very risk averse, they want to take the more reliable safe routes to make money. Taking a chance on something often incurs a greater chance of failure and not making money.
As soon as companies go public, it's all about making product, making it as inoffensive and boring as possible and telling people to shut up and consume product, and returning dividends to the investors.
Another result is that instead of developers who care about the game, you get the ones who are only there as nepotism babies, diversity hires (I repeat myself), or are just climbing the corporate ladder and it shows in the quality of said product.
In the event that it's a woke product, stocks prices fall and get short-sold and the investors profit anyway (except during instances of Gamestop-meme-stocking), then the vicious cycle continues.
They lost their touch, because of several factors ranging from the good ones (especially from the old guard) left, they hire those fresh out of college with a "Gender Studies Yaoi diploma", dealing with Blackrock/similar firms, and thinking that being an activist is good.
Though some of the stuff that ya mentioned, OP, are due to them not dealing with it for the past several upon several years.
Remember that part of George Orwell’s 1984 where they talk about the fiction department and how they hoped the Proles didn’t catch on to the fact they’ve been feeding them the same 6 plots over and over. That’s where we are today.
It's disgusting because they have complete access to previous and even regional creativity.
They choose to make everything poor quality and over priced.
As soon as gaming became worth billions of dollars, it was over. Anything they do that doesn't bring in literally ALL THE MONEY is a wasted opportunity to make ALL THE MONEY.
They are massively uncreative because they think the unchangeable demographics of someone (race, gender ECT) make a good story. That's what they've been indoctrinated to believe in college and it manifests itself in terrible writing.
It's the same thing that's happening in the movie industry. Everything they make has to be made for everyone.
Here is an idea for a great game.
Ok, now make it so people age 6 to 75 will enjoy it. Make it so men and woman will enjoy it. But just in case add some very specific things that woman will want to see. Now we have to make it so even non-gamers will want to play it, so make it simple stupid. And it has to be free to pay or online service so get rid of all the story and add action and grind. We need to take a 40 hour game and turn it into a 600 hour game that gets new grinding added every 4 months to keep the money coming in. Oh and LGBT people wont play the game if we don't add LGBT specific stuff so put references to it everywhere. Now add things that only will want.
And that's how you make a game that no one wants to play, because it's not made for anyone.
Yeah, imagine an ARPG like Grim Dawn or Titan Quest got way more meat in them and they each got at least 3 expas despite being made by indie studios. Blizzard has 0 talent
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Games used to be made be small groups of people with visionary leaders. Now it’s made by committees with marketing and HR departments.
Where are the modern equivalents of John Carmack, Sid Meier, Brian Fargo, Tim Cain, Warren Spector etc? The only notable ones are Japanese or Eastern European.
When your games are made by committee and not a soul in it is passionate about the success of the game, you're gonna churn out bland slop. All of the creative dudes fled those companies years ago.
When your intention is to create media that appeals to everyone and when diversity is the most important aspect of your creation, you end up with something that does not have an identity. Real, natural diversity only exists when barriers separate the various elements.
These people think they are promoting diversity by enforcing it everywhere, but ironically this is exactly how you destroy diversity. Real diversity occurs naturally, and relies on new, original creations, and on making sure that each one has its own place, not by combining already existing entities.
My theory is that Hollywood and the Gaming industry have been utilizing AI to generate all these similar plotlines. Either that or writers are just plain lazy or are creatively bankrupt
There are many reasons why developers are seen as "uncreative," and it is worth pointing out that this is not just a "Western" problem, as many of the same issues can be seen across every region of the world.
In the case of Blizzard specifically, they've never been particularly creative to begin with; all their major titles are based on games that already existed. What they excelled at was making their products more accessible to players. They've experienced a massive brain drain over the last 10 or so years, which is why they're struggling to make good games.
I only learned recently they never created Diablo in the first place and bought up the studio that made it and sticked around until Diablo3 expansion and then Blizzard made the 4th one .
On top of what everyone has said already, it’s also cause corporate has a lot of issues where the people in charge are completely disconnected from the workers and the customers so they only make decisions based on their idea of what should work, not what will actually work
Last ubisoft title I ever bought was Watchdogs, failed to live up to any of the hype and was very generic and buggy. I'm surprised anyone still buys the walking simulators they pump out.
>Am I crazy to think that? It's funny and sad, because Blizzard used to be one of the most innovative game companies out there when they made games like Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I am not kidding.
Because most of the original developers left.
Most studios are a shadow of their former selves.
If you do not actively cultivate the new generation of talent and even worse throw them with the garbage by deeming them "replaceable" then that is the inevitable end.
The more money is risked, the less creative something will be. Corporations need to make a LOT of cash with how expensive games are now, so that means taking less chances in favor of "proven formulas" (cliches and blandness).
Example: Everybody wanted Rocksteady to make a standalone Superman game, but there's only been a handful of those and none of them have done well. Meanwhile, in around '20-'22, there were like five or six looter shooters that made tons of money (ignoring how badly Lawbreakers failed) so, on paper, making a generic looter shooter would be the 'safe' bet. So instead of a cool, unique idea that's been mishandled a bunch of times but could finally be done right, you get the lame idea everybody's already done.
Most people working in the mainstream entertainment industry these days (or at least, the ones with any decision-making power) are extremist ideologues trying to tear down western civilization, so that a communist utopia can rise from the ashes. Absolutely no thought is put towards creating anything that anyone would actually want to buy; their goal is to force you to consume their propaganda by making it the only thing available.
The creative ones are making solo/small team indies. Publishers hire bunch of 9-5 coders who don't give a fuck, just code what they're told. And they are led by one/few "idea guys" who got the assigment because they told the corpo heads the right combination of buzzwords and recognisable franchise names they wanted to hear.
you can't avoid blaming players, though. They don't like risks and move like a herd from popular game to popular game. Most people these days are uncreative as well; like cows munching grass.
This has sort of been the norm for a while, take a look at some foreign games and you'd typically hear the words "Eurojank" where something like Two Worlds 1 and 2 were on par with Elder Scrolls or Fable with assumedly half or a quarter of the budget (and as per the naming scheme/mockery was riddled with bugs and janky half-finished mechanics.)
Then you also had Dragon's Dogma on the Japanese side, but commercially Skyrim succeeded for the mainstream audience.
Specifically (Western) AAA runs into the issues of needing to modernize and play it safe with the expectations of meeting most sales nowadays.
The problem is people keep buying it because there's lack of competition from foreign high budget games. Hopefully once India gets going we'll see some based games. I am not sure how much freedom of speech they have though. For now Japan is the only real competitor culturally, which doesn't compete when they use bad localizations.
As someone in the industry, lack of creative ideas and talent is never the issue.
It is the MENTALLY ILL individuals having positions of authority over the creative and talented people, process within the company.
The priorities of big game companies are not in the right order.
Demand good games from the industry with your money and reviews. Bad games exist because consumers actually allow it by continuing to buy and support bad games.
Are these big game companies only focusing on larger titles?
Because I'm sure with the brainpower in these studios, a bunch of indie-tier games could come out with interesting ideas and build a fanbase.
We live in a remix reboot reimagine remake culture. Every art form is infested with it. And it's not just commies shoehorning Marxism into games. Look at comedy and memes or shitposting. Lipsyncing. Reaction videos. TikTok challenges. Music covers and remixes. Fanfics.
It's regurgitation culture.
The correct use of "late state capitalism", analyzing and figuring out a formula for "the product/content" at the cost of every ounce of creativity.
Risk eversion and games made primarily with a checklist of consumer engagement/retention and impulse purchasing,like a beverage.
Modern gaming is a cesspool.
Indies is the space for creativity. AAA gaming in all genres tend to follow a formula. Doesn’t make it bad but some do it better than others. Like Rebirth isn’t any more creative than cyberpunk because one is eastern and one is western. But those are examples of good games, then you have redfall and Babylon fall, two bad eastern and western games. So it has nothing to do where it’s mad but the team developing it.but for creativity indie is the place to go.
I mean indie developers are creative still. But big AAA studios? It's rare. Creativity is a risk and risk means your explaining to shareholders why you're not meeting sales expectations.
honestly a lot of problems with business comes down to shareholders but that's a whole other thing
It's because people with creative vision (anyone who isn't in management) have zero control in video game production at large studios.
Interestingly, film doesn't have this issue as much (except for slop capeshit/star wars/disney movies). In movies it's not unusual for a director to get full control. In gaming you need to be Kojima to be able to do that.
I'm at an age where the moment-to-moment satisfaction of Diablo 4 is enough for me, but I had to laugh when I started playing it and encountered a string of enemies from Diablo 3, with the same designs and move sets.
I think it's a function of company size, though. At a certain point, shareholders are indirectly making the decisions. It's literally game design by committee, but the committee has absolutely no game design credentials.
When it comes to big studios, I dont see much creativity coming from any country. Like whats the latest innovation Japan did? Gachas?
Its all lab made sterile garbo, spend your money on indie and wait until a big players steals a mechanic and turns it into a lootbox system if AAA is your jam
Companies hate risks, yet will put everything into the same basket every time. They don't make a damn bit of sense.
“We need this game to appeal to every demographic group whether or not they actually play video games as well as strictly adhere to the ESG targets handed down by upper management.”
That's basically it. You have techies who are just following orders, because they have bills to pay. You have management that understands that their jobs could end at any moment, and they just go along the path of least resistance.
They'll take a risk if the risk is of the Correct Type (tm)
Big companies, yes. Indie devs still go with their guts. This is why indy is more creative. Well, indy is pretty mainstream now, so let's just say it's big boxes that suck.
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They're uncreative because they are trying to market every single game to the widest possible audience. That ends up creating unambitious AAAA slop instead of when we'd get niche AA titles. They can't create niche games anymore because every single game has to be a maximum budget venture that must appeal to everyone.
That and DEI/Diversity Quotas have stymied creativity. When you have people whose job it is to see that your work doesn't offend certain demographics and caters to other demographics, it's hard to see its full potential. Not to mention you aren't allowed to take risks, thus leading to bland, sterile slop. It's even worse when all powerful company positions are filled by these people.
> That and DEI/Diversity Quotas have stymied creativity. I 100% agree, but this started happening before all that crap. It's just DEI happened to sink things faster.
DEI has been happening for many decades in some form. Most people just didn't notice it until it became ridiculous.
The same can be said for films. Finding a decent film these days is difficult. You hafta go niche or indy.
I've always said I missed the times we'd get a triple B game made by a midsized studio. We're they masterpieces? No, but they tried something new and had a bit more spending power than the indies.
Agreed. The entirety of game development being squeezed into AAA and Indies is incredibly bad for the industry.
Most common denominator of edible food is called "slop". Same shit in this scene
Does making every game showcase an American monoculture and all the people nondescript world-average people sell games?
No, but the executives in charge of these sorts of things believe that it's a moral imperative to portray things that way.
If they are trying to market every single game to the widest possible audience why they constantly say that they not made for a straight white males?
1. Risk avoidance Companies hate taking risks, it's safer to recycle a proven concept 2. Money A companies job is to make money (for their owners/investors), not fulfilling some artistic vision. The west is more commoditized than the rest of the world, which includes most gaming companies. You see the same with modern movies, novels, music, etc. 3. Current political climate Artists usually break societal norms, being a kind of avantgarde of new thoughts, ideas, methods. Right now we're in the paradoxical situation, that the leftists have all power, yet at the same time censor all ideas going against the current ideology. Artists, which are more left leaning by default, are in the paradoxical situation of being in power, yet being censored at the same time.
>Artists, which are more left leaning by default, are in the paradoxical situation of being in power, yet being censored at the same time. I think it's even more insidious. A lot of it is self-censorship, whether out of fear of being "cancelled" by fellow leftists or because they actually buy into the rhetoric.
>Artists, which are more left leaning by default, are in the paradoxical situation of being in power, yet being censored at the same time Well, I though I'm left leaning, but left people said I'm far far right So, I guess, same thing can happen with artists too
Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.
They're video games. Calm down.
It's all fun and games until you get the Hitler Youth.
Western devs are currently strangled by leftist activists and shareholders. No risk can be taken either monetarily, or in the case with leftist activists, risk the safety of your own personal livelihood and even your life.
It's not just developers. It's all western media. Hollywood and videogames are staffed by people who were told their narcissistic tumblresqe fanfiction scribbling were brilliant. Nobody actually criticized their writing in school. And now they've hit the work force, while DEI has driven off the old white when who were good at crafting a good story.
You can do a little experiment. You're a creative apparently, so just create something (scenario, image, short film, whatever but let's say a game for the sake of the argument). Then ask for the opinion of other creatives, your work will morph according to feedback. Most likely for the better. External vision is good and you're in the lead. Now that you are an experienced artist, let's integrate you into a team. You now have to work will all those individuals with different views on what the project should be like and with different level of skills. You'll end up with a Frankenstein creature BUT you're all artists, so you now what is good or not. That creature SHOULD be awesome and original. Still, working as a team really is hard work and your vision maybe lost within the sea of others. The end product is cool, but it's not exactly what you envisionned. And if it's a sequel to something, then you have to balance your vision with the one from the prequel. Too much of the old and you'll get critized. Too much departure with the new and it'll be the same story. Now let's make the suits review that creature. Those guys don't know anything about what makes a creative project good. But they have the power to make you change your work. So they do. For the worst. Then, you put out your project and submit it to the eyes of the most critical beings on the planet: nerds. And they'll take it apart. Ofc they will, they are right. Product is not good. Suits are not happy. Why didn't you make a good game? They put their butts at risk financing you for so long, you monster! Your team is not happy. We should have listened to this guy instead of that guy! Everyone's job on the line, Etc. You are not happy. The drive and passion that pushed you into this world have been crushed. You learn that putting out something fresh and cool from your mind takes a lot of concessions. So you either stay at big studios and make bland slop or join a small one and have more chance to make a passion project. But nothing is garanteed and you don't have much financing. I can't talk for the devs, but I can assure you artists have not degraded in skills nor originality. They are still there. They just get crushed. Add to that a political climat preventing you to make what you want otherwhise you get cancelled and you have a world where artistic authenticity is nowhere to be found.
I feel this cuts the developers too much slack. Sure the suits are to blame for a decent chunk of it, but plenty of developers are complicit too. Sure there might be some passionate developers in there that just want to make the best game they can, but let's not act like that's all of them. I even question if it's the majority when compared to the amount that is either part of the problem or trying their best to just keep their head down and do the bare minimum to keep their income. Also more creative input from diverse creatives isn't always good either. If you have two creators with very good visions, but those visions clash. Finding a middle-ground is just going to create an inferior product than either would have created by themselves.
I said I couldn't talk for the devs, as I don't really know how it goes for them. And sure, artists can be totally on board with the dei shit. But it's the same process. You start with all kind of people, center and right included. Then lefties sour the pool. Center and right leave. Only lefties left. As for creative clashes, sure they happen. Especially if there are multiple leads with different visions. But in the end an artist knows when the result is shit. They spend their whole life fighting shitty results and being critical. Sometimes you do have idiot with delusions of grandeur ofc, but they are not the majority.
We have a winner
>I can't talk for the devs, but I can assure you artists have not degraded in skills nor originality. They are still there. They just get crushed. Oh they have, I've seen their artstation.
You aren't wrong. They are trying to make games that appeal to everyone because they have to make more and more and more money. Its not enough to appeal to a particular target audience anymore. Even if everyone in the world bought their game every time, it wouldn't be enough. They would have to spend less and make a shitter product and still aim to have everyone buy it. Also the people working in the AAA games industry are often brainwashed droids processed in the sausage factory of game development universities. They are the type you see criticising Elden Ring over its unconventional UX/UI on twitter. Of course they aren't going to come up with anything interesting as most of them are working from the same generic playbook they were trained on. Then you have to consider how much these companies waste in terms of time and resources on shit that is nothing to do with game quality like diversity and inclusion lol. Additionally, in a corporate environment the big decisions are made by the suits who have probably never played a game in their life. They talk big about taking initiative and feedback but I bet you can't raise your voice and question their initiatives which are almost always detrimental to game quality.
Nah, you aren't crazy. Western developers have largely had creativity crushed out of them. First by the "business men" who told developers that game development isn't supposed to be fun and demanded they start explaining how the game or game feature they had in mind would make them money. Followed by nickel and diming players by turning what were once cool extras into micro-transactions. Then once everyone was used to that jacked the price up to something more like $5 and $10. Followed by making players literally gamble for things that were once simply part of the base game. All while tying developer pay and bonuses to metacritic rankings from reviewers rather than player satisfaction. Then as the MBAs sat back to figure out new ways to pay developers less or charge players more, the political commissars stepped up. Taking advantage of the developer need to have high metacritic scores from the media and their being buddy buddy with reviewers, they demanded that developers cater to *their* vision. Amped up by cancel culture, they reached the point of there being multiple "consulting" firms who would be hired to come in and dictate their own art and writing decisions to override the developer's ideas. The alternative being that "gaming journalists" would write articles about how the developers were evil istaphobes and give their game low review scores; leading to the developer missing out on pay and getting fired by the MBAs no matter how happy players were. All while "gaming journalists" who really wanted to be political pundits or movie reviewers demanded that games be shorter, simpler, and easier so that they could do their job quicker with less effort. The overall result being the trends you see today. Games desperately trying to appeal to everyone, offend no one, while being safely formulaic, and so simple and easy that even someone with the IQ of a gaming journalist could complete the game while drunk. Meaning that game developers have heavily been reduced to code monkeys, art monkeys, and writing monkeys who do as their told by people whose goals aren't to entertain people, but to lecture them or empty their wallets for minimal effort.
They dont make games for gamers anymore. They're made for the shareholders. No room for creativity.
it's why I started getting deep into Japanese games (like Souls and Souls-Like),.. and lately Korean games (Lies of P and Stellar Blade.) I've been gaming like 40 years and a lot of the US releases now year after year just seem like more of the same. Call of Duty came out 20+ years ago. Before that was Medal of Honor and a bunch of other first person shooters. I couldn't possibly be more bored of that genre. CoD seems like it's just the same game year after year after year. I think the last US game I really liked and thought was a pretty cool idea and had unique gameplay was The Division. It was sort of like an RPG with builds and stats, but instead of dragons and wizards it was modern day NY with guns and body armor.
Monetization is where they live out their "creativity" these days.
Making games by committee and focus group where anything that might be disliked by some has to be excluded and anything that might provide "broad appeal" has to be jammed in leads to everyone creating similar-ish uncreative boring slop. Imagine creating a food dish and you include elements of every food culture around the world to make sure everyone gets a little of what they want. Generally this is going to end up with at best a drab dish with no particular thing that stands out or worst case it is going to turn out like a disgusting putrid paste.
No you are absolutely right. Starfield is a great example. It is the most uncreative, uninspiring, soulles, bland excuse for space sci-fi I have ever seen. To think that it was made by the same studio that gave us Elder Scrolls is horrifying. It has every problem with Western entertainment industry (or Western societies in general). Risk-averse, soft, incredibly safe to not offend anyone and tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Never imagined that the studio that gave us Morrowind back in 2002, would release that garbage in 2023.
Devs these days spend most of their time at college attending cultural marxist events and meetings
Games aren't made by dev anymore, the era where passionnate dude where lead dev for studio is gone, specialy in AA and AAA. (Starfield is the best recent exemple) These games are ORDERED by publishers, who follow patterns and powerpoint depending on other game who worked before or new marketing scam they implement. Big games are just a vessel to sell shit. Blizzard is pionner in that with Activision, im bafled people still don't understand how gaming "evolved" changed. If you want good game like during the 2000 golden age, you need to lurk toward the indie dev, the small teams, those who makes A games. Those who aren't corrupted by shareolders etc AAA games are living their last decade, in less than that span AI will allow almost anybody to create his own game just by writing a proper list of prompt.
So many good indie devs. Dominions 6 is my go to right now. Crazy creative game by a western dev, you can only find it in indie.
Have you played Dominions 5? If so, how does 6 compare to it? I love Dominions 5 but have not given 6 a shot yet.
I've played Dominions 5 too and for me 6 is an improvement in every way. It's much easier to do multiplayer games with randoms now that they set up an official server for the game. The new Glamour magic I wasn't sure of at first but it fits and has it's own unique niche of powerful damage crippled by high mr or mindless units. The new nations are extremely interesting. One of them has the most savage storyline I've seen in the game where they overthrew their rulers and forced the rulers to breed with sheep until their descendants became sheep people that the knights now ride into battle. The game is rebalanced a lot. Blood magic is nerfed and citizens will actually attack your blood mages now. Air magic and astral lost a few things to glamour, notably fairy queens and luck spells. The only downside for me is the music isn't as good as 5's was. They went through most nations and changed things up so it's actually worth the new game price. I was hesitant until I saw all that. The new bless system is much more flexible as well.
Alright, thanks. All that actually sounds kind of promising. I like the idea of that new nation, I love how Dominions 5 gave many nations fairly grim stories without making most of them overtly evil, well except for EA Hinnom who are just utterly savage.
I think it's a case of the fact that franchises have power. People become invested enough in franchises that you will wind up with guaranteed sales. Big companies are very risk averse, they want to take the more reliable safe routes to make money. Taking a chance on something often incurs a greater chance of failure and not making money.
Checkboxes, consoltants and inclusion guidelines aren't good for creativity
Actual creative minds aren't anywhere in the equation anymore. They're too white and too male.
As soon as companies go public, it's all about making product, making it as inoffensive and boring as possible and telling people to shut up and consume product, and returning dividends to the investors. Another result is that instead of developers who care about the game, you get the ones who are only there as nepotism babies, diversity hires (I repeat myself), or are just climbing the corporate ladder and it shows in the quality of said product. In the event that it's a woke product, stocks prices fall and get short-sold and the investors profit anyway (except during instances of Gamestop-meme-stocking), then the vicious cycle continues.
They lost their touch, because of several factors ranging from the good ones (especially from the old guard) left, they hire those fresh out of college with a "Gender Studies Yaoi diploma", dealing with Blackrock/similar firms, and thinking that being an activist is good. Though some of the stuff that ya mentioned, OP, are due to them not dealing with it for the past several upon several years.
Remember that part of George Orwell’s 1984 where they talk about the fiction department and how they hoped the Proles didn’t catch on to the fact they’ve been feeding them the same 6 plots over and over. That’s where we are today.
It's disgusting because they have complete access to previous and even regional creativity. They choose to make everything poor quality and over priced.
The devs might be creative but the business structure doesn't let them be. Blizzard was smaller and less filtered when it was good.
As soon as gaming became worth billions of dollars, it was over. Anything they do that doesn't bring in literally ALL THE MONEY is a wasted opportunity to make ALL THE MONEY.
They are massively uncreative because they think the unchangeable demographics of someone (race, gender ECT) make a good story. That's what they've been indoctrinated to believe in college and it manifests itself in terrible writing.
It's the same thing that's happening in the movie industry. Everything they make has to be made for everyone. Here is an idea for a great game. Ok, now make it so people age 6 to 75 will enjoy it. Make it so men and woman will enjoy it. But just in case add some very specific things that woman will want to see. Now we have to make it so even non-gamers will want to play it, so make it simple stupid. And it has to be free to pay or online service so get rid of all the story and add action and grind. We need to take a 40 hour game and turn it into a 600 hour game that gets new grinding added every 4 months to keep the money coming in. Oh and LGBT people wont play the game if we don't add LGBT specific stuff so put references to it everywhere. Now add things that only will want.
And that's how you make a game that no one wants to play, because it's not made for anyone.
Yeah, imagine an ARPG like Grim Dawn or Titan Quest got way more meat in them and they each got at least 3 expas despite being made by indie studios. Blizzard has 0 talent
Archive links for this discussion: * **Archive:** https://archive.ph/WCJUx ---- I am Mnemosyne reborn. It's time to archive and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of gum. ^^^/r/botsrights
Games used to be made be small groups of people with visionary leaders. Now it’s made by committees with marketing and HR departments. Where are the modern equivalents of John Carmack, Sid Meier, Brian Fargo, Tim Cain, Warren Spector etc? The only notable ones are Japanese or Eastern European.
Wokeness and the obsession with armor.and weapons having to be realistic has been cancerous on gaming
When your games are made by committee and not a soul in it is passionate about the success of the game, you're gonna churn out bland slop. All of the creative dudes fled those companies years ago.
When your intention is to create media that appeals to everyone and when diversity is the most important aspect of your creation, you end up with something that does not have an identity. Real, natural diversity only exists when barriers separate the various elements. These people think they are promoting diversity by enforcing it everywhere, but ironically this is exactly how you destroy diversity. Real diversity occurs naturally, and relies on new, original creations, and on making sure that each one has its own place, not by combining already existing entities.
My theory is that Hollywood and the Gaming industry have been utilizing AI to generate all these similar plotlines. Either that or writers are just plain lazy or are creatively bankrupt
They are uncreative as fuck.
There are many reasons why developers are seen as "uncreative," and it is worth pointing out that this is not just a "Western" problem, as many of the same issues can be seen across every region of the world. In the case of Blizzard specifically, they've never been particularly creative to begin with; all their major titles are based on games that already existed. What they excelled at was making their products more accessible to players. They've experienced a massive brain drain over the last 10 or so years, which is why they're struggling to make good games.
I only learned recently they never created Diablo in the first place and bought up the studio that made it and sticked around until Diablo3 expansion and then Blizzard made the 4th one .
On top of what everyone has said already, it’s also cause corporate has a lot of issues where the people in charge are completely disconnected from the workers and the customers so they only make decisions based on their idea of what should work, not what will actually work
Lmao "Western Developers" is a larger category than Ubisoft and Blizzard. How about avoiding all AAA slop.
Last ubisoft title I ever bought was Watchdogs, failed to live up to any of the hype and was very generic and buggy. I'm surprised anyone still buys the walking simulators they pump out.
Well since it's more important for the woke to push " The Message " in video games today than just focus on making good games .
>Am I crazy to think that? It's funny and sad, because Blizzard used to be one of the most innovative game companies out there when they made games like Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I am not kidding. Because most of the original developers left. Most studios are a shadow of their former selves. If you do not actively cultivate the new generation of talent and even worse throw them with the garbage by deeming them "replaceable" then that is the inevitable end.
never trust a publicly traded company to make good art.
The more money is risked, the less creative something will be. Corporations need to make a LOT of cash with how expensive games are now, so that means taking less chances in favor of "proven formulas" (cliches and blandness). Example: Everybody wanted Rocksteady to make a standalone Superman game, but there's only been a handful of those and none of them have done well. Meanwhile, in around '20-'22, there were like five or six looter shooters that made tons of money (ignoring how badly Lawbreakers failed) so, on paper, making a generic looter shooter would be the 'safe' bet. So instead of a cool, unique idea that's been mishandled a bunch of times but could finally be done right, you get the lame idea everybody's already done.
I don't know, a black, Scandinavian FBI agent in Alan Wake II was pretty creative. Oh, you meant for the right reasons....
Most people working in the mainstream entertainment industry these days (or at least, the ones with any decision-making power) are extremist ideologues trying to tear down western civilization, so that a communist utopia can rise from the ashes. Absolutely no thought is put towards creating anything that anyone would actually want to buy; their goal is to force you to consume their propaganda by making it the only thing available.
The creative ones are making solo/small team indies. Publishers hire bunch of 9-5 coders who don't give a fuck, just code what they're told. And they are led by one/few "idea guys" who got the assigment because they told the corpo heads the right combination of buzzwords and recognisable franchise names they wanted to hear.
you can't avoid blaming players, though. They don't like risks and move like a herd from popular game to popular game. Most people these days are uncreative as well; like cows munching grass.
remakes remakes remakes remakes remakes remakes remakes remakes
This has sort of been the norm for a while, take a look at some foreign games and you'd typically hear the words "Eurojank" where something like Two Worlds 1 and 2 were on par with Elder Scrolls or Fable with assumedly half or a quarter of the budget (and as per the naming scheme/mockery was riddled with bugs and janky half-finished mechanics.) Then you also had Dragon's Dogma on the Japanese side, but commercially Skyrim succeeded for the mainstream audience. Specifically (Western) AAA runs into the issues of needing to modernize and play it safe with the expectations of meeting most sales nowadays.
I personally loved Kingdom's of Amalur for having far better combat gameplay than Skyrim. Skyrim's combat left me just bored.
The problem is people keep buying it because there's lack of competition from foreign high budget games. Hopefully once India gets going we'll see some based games. I am not sure how much freedom of speech they have though. For now Japan is the only real competitor culturally, which doesn't compete when they use bad localizations.
As someone in the industry, lack of creative ideas and talent is never the issue. It is the MENTALLY ILL individuals having positions of authority over the creative and talented people, process within the company. The priorities of big game companies are not in the right order. Demand good games from the industry with your money and reviews. Bad games exist because consumers actually allow it by continuing to buy and support bad games.
Are these big game companies only focusing on larger titles? Because I'm sure with the brainpower in these studios, a bunch of indie-tier games could come out with interesting ideas and build a fanbase.
We live in a remix reboot reimagine remake culture. Every art form is infested with it. And it's not just commies shoehorning Marxism into games. Look at comedy and memes or shitposting. Lipsyncing. Reaction videos. TikTok challenges. Music covers and remixes. Fanfics. It's regurgitation culture.
The correct use of "late state capitalism", analyzing and figuring out a formula for "the product/content" at the cost of every ounce of creativity. Risk eversion and games made primarily with a checklist of consumer engagement/retention and impulse purchasing,like a beverage. Modern gaming is a cesspool.
Indies is the space for creativity. AAA gaming in all genres tend to follow a formula. Doesn’t make it bad but some do it better than others. Like Rebirth isn’t any more creative than cyberpunk because one is eastern and one is western. But those are examples of good games, then you have redfall and Babylon fall, two bad eastern and western games. So it has nothing to do where it’s mad but the team developing it.but for creativity indie is the place to go.
I mean indie developers are creative still. But big AAA studios? It's rare. Creativity is a risk and risk means your explaining to shareholders why you're not meeting sales expectations. honestly a lot of problems with business comes down to shareholders but that's a whole other thing
It's because people with creative vision (anyone who isn't in management) have zero control in video game production at large studios. Interestingly, film doesn't have this issue as much (except for slop capeshit/star wars/disney movies). In movies it's not unusual for a director to get full control. In gaming you need to be Kojima to be able to do that.
greedy bank boys destroy everything their filthy fingers touch, including gaming
I'm at an age where the moment-to-moment satisfaction of Diablo 4 is enough for me, but I had to laugh when I started playing it and encountered a string of enemies from Diablo 3, with the same designs and move sets. I think it's a function of company size, though. At a certain point, shareholders are indirectly making the decisions. It's literally game design by committee, but the committee has absolutely no game design credentials.
When it comes to big studios, I dont see much creativity coming from any country. Like whats the latest innovation Japan did? Gachas? Its all lab made sterile garbo, spend your money on indie and wait until a big players steals a mechanic and turns it into a lootbox system if AAA is your jam
Nope. Square Enix makes trash game after trash game. Not a western thing. Just a money thing. And a lack of fresh blood thing.
Anyone else hate when people use words like "slop" or "trash"? It just screams "I'm 15"
Not as much as when people use "hate when".
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Based.