I started working in the industry same year as you (as tech artist), and I agree 100%. Started in a small team of about 5-7 people. We had a vision and a goal. Studio got acquired by a large company and with time the game grew and so did the team. Feature creep and demands from the suits hit us hard and release got pushed back several years. Lots of stress. Many people leaving just to be replaced. Lost many of the original team. I started to hate working on this game. I lost passion for my craft and I think it showed in the end. Many of my friend in the industry have similar stories. Business people want to sell things that are safe so a lot of AAA-games become too similar. 3rd person, open-world, story-driven games with light crafting, random loot, lots of uninteresting side-content, and the same general game-play -> reward loop. PBR shading (even when it's stylized) and a filmic tonemapper. Motion-capped animations for bady and face. Pre-order bonuses, DLCs and micro-transactions. That seem to be the current thing everyone is making. And that's what our game turned into. It's not all doom and gloom of-course, but I'm a bit bummed about the current state of things. I've been playing through lots of older games recently however, and that has been reinvigorating.

@jensenraylight8011

11 ай бұрын

this phenomena also happen in Movie industry as well, i think all creative fields were affected by this. creativity, Risk taking, Ambition, all of that were getting cut because they thought to be the sources of uncertainty, delays and it hurts the company bottom line i think because in the last 10 years, the funding and investment game was changed, at that time, people realized that they could get rich quick by buying stocks. and until covid hit which is 2020, we live in an Easy money years. everyone who got rich from a random way suddenly became an investors nowadays, investors are more greedy, they want profitable things, and they want it now, they can't wait. everyone can become an Investors, and those amateurs investors often lacked the Experience yet they held a great influence over the project, Pressuring everyone. Just like a ship being navigated by a Sh*tty captain. the consumer landscape also didn't help either, they want new things and they want it now. 5 Years development game only relevant for 2 weeks, after that, people will forget about it, and move on to the next shiny thing the guy with vision and ambition was ousted because they didn't know how to play politics and the company was riddled with a bloodsucking parasite

@elxero2189

11 ай бұрын

I say make your own games work for your self not a company if you can... I've started actually beomc ESO much more open to small indie games they aren't super great quality but perfect for the few minutes I have anyways... Build your own stuff

@regulareverydaynormal

11 ай бұрын

So why do you still work in the industry then ?

@WellImNuts

11 ай бұрын

@@regulareverydaynormal I don't.

@dillinrobbins

11 ай бұрын

I can smell the blood in the water. Big companies won't be able to compete if smaller teams can create games that are actually fun and not just focused on exploiting players for profit. It's tricky to dodge startup capital though. There aren't many passionate devs who make games for fun. The Binding of Isaac was created by 3 devs in 3 months. It's possible to build some cool projects without spending years. But if I had to pick a favorite studio, Playdead has really set the bar for AA studio quality while taking their time to create a stunning experience. Personally, I know the Backrooms concept is pretty overdone, but it's severely under-executed. I'm working on a real-time roguelike version of it with classic item mechanics similar to Nethack. And I mean if you took something like an Elden Ring sized, and you could figure out how to quasi-randomize every region/ dungeon, and still manage to add a similarly engaging gameplay experience and story direction. That's the dream, but I feel like so many innovations like this die because people aren't committed, or they can't fund the project. But commitment seems to be tied to competitive offers nowadays. I'm not as sure what other developers are experiencing if they are on a team. I see a lot of people on KZread going solo.

I like this style of video. Too much of KZread has become engagement-driven, jump-cut clickbait instead of people just talking to a camera. That trend parallels the game industry: less passion and more greed.

@thebestcelep6358

11 ай бұрын

Damn I just said the opposite of that. I got bored easly when its not edited. I know its bad to lose focus quick.

@thebestcelep6358

11 ай бұрын

Damn I just said the opposite of that. I got bored easly when its not edited. I know its bad to lose focus quick.

@junior3082

11 ай бұрын

This video is classic KZread.

@Simile95

11 ай бұрын

I enjoy it for passive listening while knitting. Plus the nature and animals are quite a calming element :)

@NoisieBastrdd

11 ай бұрын

that is not a bad comparison, wow

Big companies seem to fail at game development in extraordinary ways. I just can't believe the amateur mistakes they make despite all the money and resources they have at their disposal. It only gets worse the bigger these companies get.. The OGs fade away and then just business folks run it all, which isn't conducive to making good ART. There's all sorts of reasons why that might be but it's painfully apparent.

@jordan3636

11 ай бұрын

The OGS have long since been dead. The atari and commdore days long before the advent of every game being made in japan because Nintendo and cheap labor.

@DarkoP9.13

10 ай бұрын

"The Templars might have deeper pockets than us, but they've got no ambition, no passion, no competitive edge! That's why, even with all their resources, anything they can do, I can do better. Faster too." ―Rebecca from Assasins creed 2 go figure Templars=corporations/satanists/those at the "top"/globalists/builderburg/ILL-luminati whatever you may believe they are called

Early in my career I thought about going into game development (this was 1990s) - a friend of a friend was in the industry and the horror stories this dude relayed was more than enough to send me down the generic IT consultant role. Working with small to medium sized orgs I *knew* the code I wrote was going to be used by the companies I worked with. The thought of working 12-16 hour days for a game that was ultimately shelved would of killed me.

@joeyf9826

11 ай бұрын

Similar for me. I’ve haven’t taken the consultant path, but enterprise app dev. It isn’t fun, but I also don’t spend hours trying to make a tree look *just right* and then have the whole level cut, so there’s that. Less crunch time too (typically).

Indie games seem to be thriving.

@dinocadet77

11 ай бұрын

Have for 10 years

@error.418

11 ай бұрын

Yeah, because ultimately games haven't gotten worse, just capitalism (in the sense of big corporations "running things") has gotten worse. But that's just louder and more powerful, it's not the only thing that exists. So there's more shit, but there are also more gems. The hard part is tapping in to the community that fits you so you can more easily discover the games that fit you.

@natgrant1364

11 ай бұрын

@@error.418 : By the way, you spelled "ruining things" wrong. ;)

@error.418

11 ай бұрын

@@natgrant1364 heh, nice word play

@Jupa

11 ай бұрын

Thriving in public favour, sure. I’m sure they have their own fiscal issues though. Between development, marketing, accessibility, investments etc then be lucky if you have enough to put food on the table let alone live comfortably.

Awesome video! And I agree with a lot of your points. I followed a similar path and got a CS degree with a focus on Game Dev by 2019. By the time I got out tho, I pulled my ambitions in the industry back. Increasing crunch and corporate tactics seem to really be damaging developers and gamers alike and I was concerned about turning my love and passion into grueling work and losing the spark. My immediate concern is that these big studios are no longer creating games made by “passionate gamers” as usually advertised but by people that used to love games and are being burnt out from using their skills to make whatever earns the company the most money (on paper). I’m optimistically hopeful with all the new studios popping up with “Ex-[insert popular 2000’s devs from major studios]” but one thing I wanna add to your great insight is that marketing departments have really inflamed this problem you bring up. Faked gameplay, feature hype that’ll never be as awesome as it sounds, and making claims that have unseen consequences for the devs that’ll be working themselves to the bone. Those things have always existed, but I see it’s unfortunate influence growing within the space.

I've always viewed game programmers as the pinnacle of software developers - the Jedis of the software world. People like John Carmack and Michael Abrash. I got into programming shortly after Doom and Carmack was a God to me. Game development combines many scientific disciplines with creativity like no other programming task. All of the really cool tricks they used to have to come up with to allow something like Quake to run on the hardware it did - amazing!

@sealsharp

11 ай бұрын

Carmack is a good inspiration. He's so down to earth especially when it comes to tools. I remember when I discovered static code analysis and on the internet the common opinion was like "that's for losers, real good programmers don't need an IDE or Tools to tell them how to work!" and Carmack had an article about how it helped him improve his code on Q3 or D3, I don't remember. And I think if it's good enough for John Carmack, it shall be good enough for me. He has similar takes on IDEs and Debuggers and not a spark of that elite jerk behavior that makes a great programmer according to people on the internet.

@ChristopherSalisburySalz

11 ай бұрын

@@sealsharp Absolutely! He's a legend and innovator and yet still pretty darn humble. If any programmer has a reason to get a big head it would be him.

this is why I love David Cage games at Quantic Dream. When he decides on an idea and a vision, he doesn't let go of it for sake of marketing and whatnot. In a GDC talk he was inspiring CEOs to not let marketing team into game design meetings, and I think he's got a point here

@zoeherriot

11 ай бұрын

In my experience you don't see marketing teams into game design meetings. Ever. I don't know what he's talking about.

@saeedbarari2207

11 ай бұрын

@@zoeherriot in your experience, marketing team have no input in the design of the game?

@zoeherriot

11 ай бұрын

@@saeedbarari2207 nope. Generally I never saw the marketing team until the last year of development - by which time the gameplay is locked in and they can only suggest superficial changes. They will have some say about broad things at the start of a project - but they aren’t talking design, or specific features. They’ll be saying something like “third person cat simulators don’t sell very well at the moment”. They tended to give advice on what sells - but they didn’t dictate that anything. We would make the decisions as to what went into the game at a creative level - where we would have to at least make sure the design of the game (themes, age range, mechanics, features) had some chance of recouping costs. We’d have to justify that to corporate. There’s no point making a game that costs 100 million to make knowing you can only sell 100 thousand copies.

@saeedbarari2207

11 ай бұрын

@@zoeherriot we can only say that they don't have any input, when their inputs makes no changes to the final game, literally. What David Cage was saying was that the relationship should be the other-way around; instead of game design adapting to marketing, the marketing should adapt to game design. (the talk wasn't just about game design btw; it also applies to any other creative process of the development of a game)

@zoeherriot

11 ай бұрын

@@saeedbarari2207 he can say that because he was lucky and made some games that garnered a moderate following. The problem is most games fail financially. Even good ones. So if you want games to be made - you’ve got a problem - do you risk everything on every game? Or do you try and make something that will sell? Most people that follow his advice will fail - that would make the games industry untenable as a business.

I've been subscribed since way back when you were uploading pretty consistently. I'm glad that you're back again, for now (and hopefully longer, but no pressure) I've been enjoying being here for your current return. The last time I watched one of your videos was when you got your horse. I know people can change over time and, I've been waiting to see if you or I changed in a way that your content wouldn't click with me anymore. But, I ended up remembering why I subscribed all those years ago. Because, you've shown to still be the same fantastic person, and that, the changes you HAVE made are for the betterment of your life. I've also been on a similar journey of figuring out how to take care of myself and (although I've never had a job) find a personal work ethic that doesn't destroy my soul. Thank you for sharing your wonderful thoughts and experiences with us

As someone who is playing games since the mid 80's (and kinda stopped 3 years ago) I see your points although more from the player side of things, only having dabbled in hobby development. From my observation of family and friends, online and social media really have changed peoples behavior dramatically (primarily younger people but not only them). Everyone has no time anymore yet hundreds of hours are sunk into online games, no slowing down for anything and no patience because everyone else is making progress somewhere and you need to be part of it or the next big thing that might be right around the corner (even if it isn't). Maybe games are now just build to adapt to this "newish" audience, even games that are not online suffer from this when I watch people play them, there is often this haste that leaves a lot of what some games offer left in the dark, undiscovered while the players rush through them. There is often this strange view of evaluating everything from a min max time and efficiency perspective which is really off-putting to me.

I've been super disillusioned with the industry lately but games like Elden Ring, RE4 and now Baldur's Gate 3 give me hope. They make me feel like a kid again, excited to wake up early and play before school.

@NoName-ym5zj

11 ай бұрын

same

@KarmaKahn

11 ай бұрын

There are plenty of smaller companies making great games though.

@ngpb17

11 ай бұрын

zelda tears of the kingdom is really good as well.

@neonmidnight6264

11 ай бұрын

I wouldn't put BG3 next to the first two - it's just way too tasteless...

@NoName-ym5zj

11 ай бұрын

@@neonmidnight6264 can you explain why? It's really good, there is so much more freedom and depth compared to the previous installments, environment interactivity is unparalleled as well as overall freedom of how you play your character. It's mindblowing how faithfully it recreates the freedom of tabletop RPG experience in a videogame format. Def one of the most ambitious titles the past decade or two that also delivers on those ambitions.

Really interesting video. I remember sitting with my brothers or my Dad in the 80's and mapping game levels out on graph paper to try and work out where we needed to go and do, it was definitely a different time. One of my favourite games of the last couple of years was 'The Forgotten City'. Made with a core team of three people from the vision of one person. Maybe we are headed towards a renaissance of indie development?

Thank you for posting today and expressing so much about your experiences and vision! I love the organic quality of your video. Planes going overhead, great! We could hear you fine and it felt like we were just chillin in the backyard, having a conversation. I wish you the best on your journey called life! And Ranger is a beautiful dog and you take such good care of him!

Thank you for sharing this! Hearing you talk about your ideal team/studio kind of reminded me of Astroneer by System Era Softworks. NoClip has a really good documentary about how it was created, and while the studio has grown and I haven't kept up to date with it, it did seem to genuinely foster a good culture.

You explained perfectly the why and the how Ubisoft (Montreal), Bungie and DICE are not what they were in term of originality and quality standard anymore. This video shine with his honesty.

Wow it's really cool to see you posting again! You were one of the first channels I discovered about game dev -- and now I'm getting a degree in games production & mgmt. Thanks for putting out your educational vids long ago, your videos were one of the inspirations I had to learn more about the gamedev process.

@breathlessblizzard

11 ай бұрын

Your comment about needing small teams and a strong vision really struck home - despite only interning for a small studio so far I've already seen how bad the churn can get when you have "too many cooks" and a fear of conflict among designers. Makes sense that it's still a problem in AAA, even with so much money on the line (almost tragic really)

I couldn't agree more. I used to be a test engineer for one of the two cert labs for one of the previous companies you worked for. I would see so many titles come in that were so broken but were expected to release within the next month. It really put a bad taste in my mouth with the AAA industry. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of amazing people who work in the industry, but they're being pushed in a direction that is not conducive to how they thought their job would be. I also worked on one of the back compat teams (Same company) and that was pure insanity. I was managing almost 100 other engineers but not even making enough to live on. The demand was so high on how many titles we could verify would work on the upcoming console. We had one year to go through not just the previous generation of titles, but the one before that as well. Ultimately, I was let go after a few months because the demand vs expectation wasn't being met. I still like the industry, but only specific sections of it. I can imagine what working at one of the studios would be like. It just feels like the big players in the industry lost focus on what made gaming so great and just focused on reiterating a formula that works with lots of micro transactions. I do miss the days when games would be feature complete upon arrival to the cert lab.

So very much appreciate that you shared all these! Feel bad that you had to experience those chaos, while maybe those are something that one will inevitably encounter when staying in the industry for "long enough". I hope you get to achieve something that you really love somewhere sometime in the future. Hurrah!

I'm happy to hear someone else talk about how these 1000+ person teams don't actually lead to well thought out or well designed games in most cases and also how a lot of these development studios just sort of exist on their name alone because so much of the original talent is no longer there (ie: Bioware and Blizzard). Something I have also noticed now is how common it has become to treat the consumer like they're a QA tester. A studio releases a game in a less than ideal state, the community flips out and player numbers tank, then the studio starts to release patches every few weeks/months. Eventually the game gets to a reasonable state, but not until entire systems have been reworked/removed. On one hand, people might look at that as a good thing because the game they bought will eventually be good but when I see this sort of thing happen I just have to wonder what even was the leadership's vision in the first place if A) nobody with decision making power saw these issues during development and B) the studio is so willing to backpedal and redo so many aspects of the game after it has released. Regarding Elden Ring, I would have loved to hear what people in the AAA industry thought about that game's design, especially after some people in the industry were publicly salty about some of the decisions FromSoft made. I think if someone asked me what it is about that game that makes it so remarkable, I would ask them to just think about how certain dungeons are designed and placed. FromSoft put entire areas and dungeons behind illusory walls with no hints about their existence fully knowing that some players would never experience them, but they were okay with that. They aren't behind DLC paywalls, they aren't some side quest that you have to talk to someone to find out about. They're just there waiting for a player to find them. Or not. Now compare that to your average open world action RPG from western AAA studio #48 where you know what 95% of the stuff in the game is just by opening the map and seeing a million icons. The other 5% is coming in the season pass. The most unsettling part of this is that FromSoft has been doing this going all the way back to Demon's Souls and people seemingly still can't catch on. Instead, their idea is to make some body snatched version of a Souls game that has a bonfire and difficult boss fights but lacks any of the spirit.

@Myvoetisseer

11 ай бұрын

We know what the industry thinks of Elden Ring. They consider it 'over delivering'

@zoeherriot

11 ай бұрын

It is not intentional that they "use consumers like they are QA". Games are just really, really, goddam complicated now. It's hard to see what the solution is for that.

@teac117

11 ай бұрын

Elden Ring has excellent landmarking like BoTW. It also reminds me of Shadow of the Colossus. While that game is linear (and so is ER TBH), there's a lot of nook and crannies that are off 'the path' that are very Boss Ross. Just a Happy Little Bit of Content. A Happy Little Boss. That to me, just shows me that you had fun making that game.

You're 100% right, I think my favourite game this year was the System Shock remake and the difference with how game design was back in 1994 is huge, so many little design things, small systems connecting together, from opening up a hatch to drop a mine, to following audiolog directions to find the item you want to replace in Maintenance, all of that is just missing from modern games. I wish there was a way to do exactly what you say get 10 people together have them design and develop the game, and subcontract asset creation. But doing that and having the studio survive and stick together for game 2 just doesnt seem viable now, would love to be part of it but there is so so few studios like that working at the moment.

@hanniffydinn6019

11 ай бұрын

Gaming peaked in the 360/ps3 era! It’s only Japanese studios that do cool new stuff, the west now just remakes old games! 🤯🤯🤯

Really interesting to hear your thoughts on this, cheers for coming back!

Thanks for sharing! I’m around the same age and share much of the same sentiments for that crazy era of gaming (Skyrim, mass effect, Dark Souls, WoW, etc.). It’s always fantastic to find gems like Elden Ring and Hades that end up being a cut above most modern releases. It definitely feels like it’s harder to find those gems nowadays but I feel they’re still there just more rare. Dave the Diver is another one that comes to mind. I really want to try Baldur’s Gate 3 too since that's being talked about as one of those once-in-a-decade games. It was really interesting to hear your thoughts and observations on the industry. Look forward to whatever else you decide to share. Dark Souls Horse Simulator might give Elden Ring a run for its money.

Very interesting, insightful and thanks for sharing. This helps me tremendously to get over my PTSD from a very recent launched of a big RPG loved by many in early August but I am mixed about it. A lesson to be learned is that all growth comes at a cost (if it were just financial it wouldn't be so bad.) I am hopeful that I will recover in a year and we shall see about starting a new game. I recently played Jagged Alliance 3 and it is such a breath of fresh air to clear my head. Looking forward to Armored Core VI. The whole 10 people in a room working on 1 vision sounds like a worker's cooperative. Anyway thanks again and I hope you can rediscover the love for game development in maybe a different time period. Who knows what the future holds? Nobody.

I miss buying games out of the discount bin at stores like Wal-Mart. Found some great games (as i remember them at the time). I did love Elden Ring and Bloodborne recently, they gave me that sense of adventure i used to get from Ocarina of Time, and Shadow of the Colossus. I'm also a '94 baby and vividly remember getting Banjo Tooie for the N64 from a game store in Manitoba Canada.

@GrandmasCamera

11 ай бұрын

Recently (atleast in this last gen) had a "discount bin game" find at Family Dollar, picked up Titan Fall 2 for 5 or 10 dollars. Not to say it was an obscure game by any means, but I had a damn good time with it.

I'm ngl, I wanted to skip through the intro of the video to the reasons so many times, but just couldn't bring myself to do it because of how real you were being. I sat through it all and really listened. You have a heart of gold.

I totally get ur point expressing ur thoughts and feelings and then feeling vulnerable is a natural thing to happen I think everyone who does this kind of thing feels it to some extent but just putting it out there and not caring about it is the way to go or u can take ur time on when ur comfortable to talk about it at the end of the day it's your choice hope u figure it out and really enjoying these uploads keep it up🙂

What's even worse than the 10 superstar people out of 1000 is when there are 990 people who have better ideas but 10 people who have the least clue are given all the decision power. I've had that experience in tech and it really sucks.

SOOOO I havent seen your vids in 5 years and holy moly this has taken me back

You made a good point on how modern gaming is “bumpy” when it comes to quality, what made games special back in the ps2 era was that we got amazing line of games on a yearly basis there was not a single year that felt underwhelming and that’s completely ignoring pc gaming which had its unique line up of games and we didn’t have to wait 5-10 years for sequels.

Nice vid, liked the style and you're doing a great job with Ranger, lovely dog!

I know what you mean and your methodology makes a lot of sense and I've been something to that sentient as games are less about having fun and more about how can we increase our quarterly financials with Diablo IV seasons being a prime example lining up with quarterly seasons. That's personally why i've just given up on AAA games and have decided to move over to indie games. Games like Amid Evil, Dusk, Elden Ring, Pizza Tower, Farthest Frontier, Patapon and so many more. These games have given me fun to have in a game. Lately Patapon was seeing a resurgence and I played thousands of hours of the game. It's a rhythm game with little eyeballs and you are their god guiding them with your drums and beats. The series ended back in 2010 and hasn't seen much action on it. However the developers decided to take up arms and created a kickstarter project under Ratatan as a spiritual successor. I have decided to put forward some money towards the kickstarter so I am definitely biased, but I don't think that's necessarily unfair considering the game.

@gogudelagaze1585

11 ай бұрын

Depending on how you see BG3/Larian, it might just be the first AAA game I've played in years precisely because of the monetization that has completely changed game design. Then there's the whole bypass-the-suits, and you see so many indies working almost agile-like - taking feedback and adjusting the game as it develops.

@ChaseMMD

11 ай бұрын

@@gogudelagaze1585 Deep rock galactic is another game that plays to those strengths. The game is fun and the combat is engaging but not boring. As many of the maps challenge you just enough to enjoy the game. But not enough to outright force you to bail. There team has been very receptive to feedback and even had some feedback on a skin that looked bad and was considered DLC. But they ended up designing some new skins and pushing the old ones to the progression system in the game.

"enshittyfication", I learned a new word today, thank you. 😆(the word did not translate well into Chinese through Google translate, yet when translating it back into English, it kinda of made sense.)

I'm 15 yrs your senior and ex-TA. We used to have the skeleton screw as you described and the game loop and tech was set by the time the bulk of the employees reached us. We also had the luxury of having hard set hardware limits and a bygone era of 'this is what we're making, lets' do it'. I noticed creep as hardware/time flexibility came in and company culture shifted to many 'chefs' (i.e. personal projects) adding features later in dev - even past vertical slice, and not related to issues with the VS itself. That 'everyone has a say' culture while great for HR was horrible for dev.

This is a great video. It's so rare to see nuance online. You can get so much attention just by saying "New bad. Corporation greedy." It's great you acknowledge nostalgia's effect and don't want to be too negative. The "it doesn't take 9 women 1 month to make a baby" thing is a great analogy. I think there are lots of things in life where we assume if X = Y then surely Y = X, only to completely misunderstand how things work. So much of life is just luck. Your studio idea reminds me of something Red Letter Media has talked about. Why do studios put 500 million dollars into a movie, knowing it HAS to be a mega hit to make a profit? Why not make 100, five-million dollar movies? Surely many would fail, but if one or two become the next Star Wars, it'd be well worth it. Plus you don't have to spend a bunch of time managing the project, making sure they aren't taking any risks. Minecraft was just one guy fooling around and it became worth billions. The guy who created Fruit Ninja has started making videos. What was the budget for Undertale? Goat Simulator? Counterstrike? So many games besides Dota just started as mods. Yet many developers restrict modding out of some fear I don't understand. I bought a dozen Sims 2 expansions even though I used mods. Couldn't figure out modding in Sims 3 and dropped the franchise. You want Animal Crossing style games. I want a dang The Sims competitor. At least Bethesda let's their fans fix their buggy games. The only conclusion I can figure out is maybe most people aren't looking at indie games on Steam. They aren't looking for the off-brand version of a popular game. They aren't figuring out mods. They just want a yearly shooter like Call of Duty. They just want to play what their friends and the rest of the world is already playing. So, it'd really take making thousands of games to get the next Minecraft. Or worse you canabilize yourself, saturate the market and nothing blows up. So, you just stick with safely making the yearly shooter, and seeing if other franchises can become their own version of a yearly shooter. Getting a new Minecraft is too unpredictable. I think 2020 hurt, but I think the real big year was 2007. That was the best year ever for gaming. Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, Portal, TF2, Mass Effect, CoD4, Bioshock, WoW BC, Pokemon Diamond, Rock Band, Uncharted. Then we got a financial crisis and smart phones. I think a lot of things got shifted around after that. I have hope though. Minecraft, Goat Simulator, Undertale, etc. prove that gaming doesn't have to be just the big tentpole console games. No new TV show can get viewership Seinfeld got. No new album can get numbers Michael Jackson got. It's because people got more access to more choices. The viewers and listeners are more split up. The tools to make shows and music got cheaper. The distribution got easier. I think we're seeing that happen with gaming and the business models will have to change. Also as time goes on more of those investors will have grown up with games.

@zunuf

11 ай бұрын

I also like to say the 10th slice of pizza isn't as good as the first. Usually everyone's favorite Pokemon game is the first one they played. Same with WoW expansions. Same with a lot of games. Lots of things in life are best the first time. We're kind of wired that way. But video games have an even stronger effect. Going into a whole new world is incredible. Having so much to explore. Figuring out clever mechanics and how to use them. It's amazing. But that feeling can't last 100s of hours for a dozen sequels. I thought I'd never get that feeling again, until I got Persona 5. I never played the franchise before. It was a whole new world to me, with new rules, new people, and new surprises. But because it's one of many sequels, I can easily find people online saying it's actually the worst one. That it doesn't have the same "soul" as previous games. Of course Persona is a JRPG just like Pokemon. But I got that same feeling again. So, this to me just says we need more new IPs, but we need to teach humans to be less afraid of trying something new. People put thousands of hours into games they hate, because at one point they loved it. It's like a heroin addict chasing that first high. And if you feel burnt out playing Call of Duty after the 20th game, I can only imagine how burnt out you'd be if you were a developer on every game.

@Redhotsmasher

11 ай бұрын

2007, the best ever? Nope, try 1997 and 1998.

@AshleyKampta2

11 ай бұрын

Everyone will have their own best year for gaming and their own reasons for calling it the "best", but a lot of people consider 2001 to be one of the best, followed by 2004. Wikipedia says, "The year [2001] has been retrospectively considered one of the best and most important in video game history due to the release of numerous critically acclaimed, commercially successful and influential titles across all platforms and genres at the time. It was the peak year for the sixth generation of video game consoles, with the launch of the GameCube and Xbox, the latter focusing on online games (following SegaNet the previous year), and the Dreamcast's last year of production with Sega's exit from console manufacturing. Storytelling and mature themes also became a more mainstream trend. The year's best-selling video game worldwide was Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal, the fourth year in a row for the Pokémon series (since 1998). The year's most critically acclaimed titles were Gran Turismo 3 and Final Fantasy X in Japan, and Halo and Grand Theft Auto III in the West."

@fluxdr1ve143

11 ай бұрын

People kind of exxagerate the buggy nature of Bethesda games. I would disagree about that with the exception of Fallout 76. Most bethesda games' bugs are way smaller in magnitude compared to some modern gaming launches. Cyberpunk had way more. Jedi Survivor PC port had way more and was borderline unplayable. And people have such a negative impression of the bugs in those games. I would argue those bugs make those games have that signature "Bethesda" charm. They say Starfield will have the least amount of bugs in any game but it will still have bugs. Those games just tend to do a lot in the world more than most games and bugs are bound to be galore. U can't squash all of them with how much QA you hire. Ur comparing at most 200-300 ppl playtesting vs the 3 million at launch.

1:19 "Oops! A branch just fell." It's the universe tell you to...branch out. :D Seriously, though. Welcome back! We missed you.

I'm a concept artist in the industry and while i disagree with the general idea in the title that games have gotten worse, I do agree with your takes on these elements in the industry and have my own experiences to match. Especially in relation to team size and investor dynamics. Thanks for the video. I enjoyed listening to it. I myself am now finding myself in production of a small team indie game also for a lot of the reasons you describe. also if you really like fromsoft you should try armored core 6. its hard as balls but you'll probably enjoy it a lot.

Glad to soo you're back with all these 'war stories'. I like this style of video. It is relaxing and down to earth with lots of useful information and fluffy animals. I hope doing this gives you energy and positive vibes. Seeing the comments over here is so wholesome, you truly have a wonderful community

100% agree with what you say, been working as a gamedev for 4 years now at a couple of indie companies, mixed feelings about the direction its all heading in (especially that games as a service business model) salted with that nostalgia you talked about, born 94 as well. I was close to quitting as a professional game programmer a couple of times to get another form of income with jobs that only require a little time investment but still pay the bills and give the freedom to just start working on a passion project, slowing down completely and taking the time it takes to craft something meaningful, the good stuff - without the urge to deliver to gain profitability, but now started another full time job at another company..again 😅🙈 but hearing you today made me think in that direction again, thanks for your words!

We need more single player campaign style games. Bring back the old fun.

@mytube001

11 ай бұрын

Exactly! Multiplayer is killing good games! I'm really hoping Starfield will be a welcome return of the good, story-driven single-player game. For me, the 90s was the best decade for games. I love military flight sims. Almost all good military flight sims came out in the 90s. Sure, modern ones have better graphics, but rely completely on multiplayer for "content". F-19 Stealth Fighter from Microprose, the Longbow 2, F-15 and F/A-18 sims from EA/Jane's, EF2000 from DID and a few others were absolutely brilliant. Nothing like them has been made since in that genre. And I understand why. Multiplayer is lazy, cheap and quick. You don't need writers and designers who create complex missions and stories. You just create a basic world and let players do your work for you.

@aftab277

11 ай бұрын

@@mytube001 Well said also not to mention mobile gamers who play pubg etc and think that's real gaming. Most of them haven't really experienced actual story driven campaign games.

The future is bright for small creators that can withstand the tides created by big corporations

It is fun to watch a video like this when you are on vacation. 10 minutes of information in 43 minutes. I wish you make a smaller version without interuptions.

Thanks for sharing! I'm just "consumer" of games and i think many big titles became worse and more focused about gaining money than create a nice gaming experience. Also there's still good games coming out, we just have to find them. But i'm also turning 34 so my views probably changed over time and younger people maybe see the industry in a different way. And i want you to have a camera with autofocus, because you're beautiful!

I'm almost a decade older, and I've had more time to be both in the industry and out of it. And...in a holistic perspective, it can be done in the way you describe, as an indie developer, but it's contingent on all sorts of things about making a consumer product that can reach audiences of potentially multiple millions of people. The industry changes in business model are coincidental with the industry being bigger, hiring more people, and needing to finance those hires. Like, if you made a game in 1995, it wouldn't just be patches. You could ship with no online features, no achievements, no character customization, no modding support, no internationalization, etc. And a magazine could still give it a Game of the Year award. These were things dictated by both the state of the technology, and everyone's expectations at the time. The scope of games was growing then, and pretty quickly - the 90's were the end of solo development cycles, for the most part - but it was also at a level where you were still staffing a team of 10-20. But if you launched a game on Steam like that in the 2010's, you got refunds and negative reviews, because the market ensured that someone will come in with completely different expectations, asking "why doesn't this game do the thing this other game does". And in a lot of cases, the answer to that is just scope - you don't have 30 programmers or 100 animators on staff, because you don't want that team structure, and even if you did, you wouldn't have the financing to do it. Indie developers, in a lot of cases, have had to unwind the expectations built up by AAA through sheer persistence. And the high expectations make for a market where small studios exist by exploiting workers to pump up the scope, large studios exist by exploiting consumers to pay for scope, and a few countries are blessed with low cost of labor or government arts funding, so they can compete on scope without as much difficulty. However. Part of what supported this dynamic is not "the industry", it's the infinite supply of credit that the macroeconomy offered up until recently. Borrowing was cheap, and that turns every industry into a gambler's market: if you can borrow $10 million and make a game on that budget, why would you settle for the $500,000 game? Of course you should leverage up, hire big, cram everything into every game you make, acquire as many assets as possible. If you are running a business, that is. This is the dynamic that brought about Embracer Group, which has stumbled recently because now the economy is different, funds are drying up, so they have to make some harsh cutbacks to survive. The lesson of the original game industry crash of 1984, one which got forgotten because, for the most part, the industry has since experienced unending growth and access to capital, is that in a "survivor's market", small niche productions that are more cautious about scoping start to shine. At that time, it was the 8-bit home computers that kept things going, and what they thrived with were mostly complex role-playing games, flight simulations, adventure games, etc. And it feels like we're experiencing that again now; several high-profile and relatively old RPG franchises(Baldur's Gate, Jagged Alliance) have had big, exceeds-expectations releases lately. As a Jagged Alliance 3 player I've been observing that most of the negative-review bait is stuff that players ultimately accept as "okay, I'll just wait for a mod to fix that". And that seems to be the trend now - modding is growing increasingly powerful, because modders are totally okay with using generative AI to fill in gaps in the experience, so they can conjure up huge amounts of assets that would have been impossible even three years ago. So to the extent that we need professionalized game making, it's on a trend towards being either a technology platform - being Minecraft, Roblox, Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster, etc. - or being a carefully curated niche experience.

Just started watching this and OMG what a lovely dog ❤

There were actually a lot of great nuggets in there. Yeah that’s right: you need a vision to make a great product. There is no recipe for great art, because once there is, then it becomes boring. And, it’d be great if the discoverability of games was the same it used to be. It’d be great if the tangibility of games was the same. Not anymore though, and I almost don’t care what’s coming out any more, because it always reminds me of something that came before a little too much. I’m a bit worried for games, movies, and almost all art, because there’s no unifying vision and the development doesn’t feel organic like it used to. However, one thing really confuses me still, and that is why do people still get excited about remakes, reboots, sequels and the recycling of ideas. Why do some studios still make millions? It’s way too easy to become super pessimistic about it. I guess what I’m thinking is that there should be less expectations and ulterior motives for the whole thing to be “fun”. But of course, on a final, horribly pessimistic note, there will always be new generations of gamers to whom it’s all new anyway, so maybe studios can just keep reiterating and upping the graphics every once in a while or something. God, maybe, once code generation becomes advanced enough, you can automate the whole thing.

@aok9969

11 ай бұрын

@@KeysOfPerfection That’s certainly true. It’s just that when I look at it, literally everything that’s been popular at one point or another was just pulled out of someone’s ass, because “why not”. So why grow attached to that stuff at all? And where’s the risk in inventing something completely random? When big, talented studios do it, it can’t be all bad, right? Then you just get feedback and make the corrections, like you always do anyway.

Just came across your channel today, very impressed, you seem like the kind of person I wish I had as a friend (but don't :P)

Treat Treat Treat😜!!! Lol I noticed I had same name as your doggy😂😂

I was scrolling through my feeds trying to find something that didn't involve the tough times we're in. It's nice to see someone making it work, and finding space to think about making things better :)

@Psx806

11 ай бұрын

You mean trying to find something that isn't some overweight first world internet addict bitching about things they don't know anything about? Yeah I've heard enough of that for a decade lmao

Big companies tend to have communication problem between different departments, there is why consulting companies can and do help to make sure that the goal of big orgas can be reached.

38:00 I think you'd be a good organizer/manager/CTO of those 5 teams, and then maybe you could either work in one of the teams yourself, or go around to some or all of them to help with inspiration, ideas, get over hurdles, personally perform some discrete tasks on the project to help things along etc. I'm no game dev (currently, at least) but I AM a software dev and a gamer, and you sound like some you would be great to work with, both as a team member and/or organizer. You'd be someone that other devs would trust, because you know what you're talking about, and you share the passion for games, and is not just someone clueless about the craft and art, only looking at the economy side of things, with profits as the ultimate and only goal. And that trust in the vision is very motivating, and it brings people together. Need someone with a vision, and with actual knowledge of what things are like as a dev, and also being gamers themselves, calling the shots - Like you! Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

Eleventh Hour Games started as a few people on reddit getting together to make an ARPG. They got a ton of support for their game, Last Epoch, and became a small studio practically overnight. I follow the development fairly closely and it seems like a passion project still, despite the size of the team. Also, as others here have said, Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty amazing

I think art and capitalism are fundamentally at odds with one another. Games aren't always seen as an art, so when people try to build them in the same way as software, they fail. Movies are universally seen as an art and therefore the creative process there is more respected.

@DaddysFlipside

11 ай бұрын

I don't know about universally. Movies are still subject to the soulless sausage factory approach. Just take a look at the vast majority of Disney remakes. I agree that games fall more easily into that problem though.

Everytime I give up on carrying on with game development I always accidently stumble back into, I'm doing consulting and design for an Action RPG at the moment. I can understand why your experience seeing what big games are like now and perhaps your inside insight working with bigger companies would put you off it. The shortened testing cycles, the cut riskier fun ideas and repeating only what worked last time, the pressure of high funding immediately. Followed by the *shocked pikachu face* why didn't you find the fun? I might have been fortunate to have been rejected for interview by most bigger companies over the years. I have had a taste of it though for a year and it was kinda soul destroying in ways hard to describe, but in short I worked insanely hard on something that was cancelled because it was simply a slightly bigger finanical risk than another idea. The most meaningful exciting work I ever worked on gone over night without any real good reason kinda destroyed my ability to care about working for another big studio full-time.

Knowledge-based games such as The Witness, Tunic, Outer Wilds have kind of restored my faith in gaming again. Those were refreshing experiences again and took back into a time of wonder and discovery that was most felt in childhood and teenage years. I think if I could I would try to make one of those.

Smart insights. I think you are on to something with the smaller teams and less pressure/distractions. Do you know about Cyan Studios, makers of Myst, Obduction and Firmament? For decades they seem to have kept the small indi structure you are talking about. The tradeoff is that they don't keep the pace or scope of AAA games. Ideal artistic vision vs practical product fabrication. One is fulfilling, one pays the bills. I suspect if you want to maximally protect the artistic aspect then the funding should come from somewhere else, like a solid day job.

I wish you the best in whatever you do!

Nice to see you back!!!

Sending much love, take care Happie ❤

I wonder the From Software core brains with Miyazaki's leading went through the Dunning-Kruger effect.😊

it seems one of the biggest issues in games (and creative industries more broadly) is the intentional weakening of labor power that comes in conjunction with the silicon valley/venture capital funding of projects, which "works" for products, apps, and services, but is fundamentally anti-artistic due to the demand for return on investment from non-creatives. one of my least favorite things in our political economy is the idea that non-involved third parties can put money into something and expect more money out. hollywood has so many industries and resources within a similar geographical area which are all important to the whole movie-production process. the manufacturing shops, the various labor crews, the infrastructure of the studios in relation to contractors and creatives. there's been more vc money in hollywood, in line with the era of the vc influx into games, which is a large part of why the strikes are going on right now. a parallel between game and movie production now is crunch. the ability to contract out cgi artists from anywhere in the globe is a large part of why we see so much spiritually dead cgi work in films which would have previously required the work of practical special effects artists. many movie's graphics aren't fully done until release date (a day one patch, if you will), bc you can just grind down the non-union people who work on the computer without any consideration of if the end result is good art, just a complete product. video games have never gone through the same labor struggles which grant creatives to work in an environment which produces creativity. the commodity is sold on the base of its use value, and art, by its very nature, is properly useless. the labor struggle for creatives in the video game industry is *immensely* more complex due to the global nature of the production process, and how so many contractors in the poorer parts of the world can provide cheaper labor. if/when gamedevs for AAA companies strike, not only is there the difficulty of collectively organizing (the video game/tech/coding space is filled with rampant individualism and the desire to be at the top), but also the fact that scabs don't even need to be in the same country. there has to be an eye to the inherently global nature of the production process, and there has to be a cultural shift away from self-exploitation for the sake of the dream job that is making video games. we've seen in hollywood many times that the creative process does require a real humanistic/humanitarian element or the whole process of making movies goes down the gutter and people have to leave an industry which they love but can no longer survive in. this is why creative roles are virtually the only place left with unions (at least in the US) after the steep decline in membership following reagan and american deindustrialization. capitalists, however, will always want to increase the organic composition of capital: they always want to decrease the overhead of labor and automate the production process. craft can benefit from automation, sure, but not art, and there's a reason we make a distinction between the two. look at the chatbot npc's that are trying to be developed right now, further devaluing already low paid writers. these npc's are boring and shallow in the way all chatbots are, even if LLM tech is impressive in its own right. there's an asymptotic point at which humans can't be removed from the creative process, and these vc investors are doing their best to push past that point. if AAA games are to continue to exist and are something that we want to keep being made, strengthening labor power via collective bargaining is the only way out. the only other outcome is another video game crash, and the only titles that will get published are indie projects and addition-producing, microtransaction-filled whale bait, leading to countless jobs being lost, and the idea that you can have a career making games (at least games with artistic value) being effectively killed. gamers are no help (consumers never are), as they want a product with no real interest as to where it comes from. the less they know, the more they enjoy, in fact. there is a deep fight for the soul of the medium, whether games are a product, or whether they are art. this tension is inherent to the tension between labor and capital, and capital has received no pushback.

@teac117

11 ай бұрын

It's less commoditization of talent and more due to the fact that VC will orient the company towards multiple overlapping revenue streams. We only have so many senior developers and they get spread thin and rotated really quickly. Too quickly IMHO so each generation doesn't venture out too far beyond their silo. That shallowness bred new generations of senior developers that are 'experts' but know very little holistically. We still pay top dollar for those that run the gauntlet and become senior, but they're practically useless. Giving more power to the labor doesn't really address this issue and merely creates more shallow 'senior' people. Unfortunately, you cannot power struggle your way out of this as the issue is with the talent pipeline.

@peoplethesedaysberetarded

Ай бұрын

Lots of words to say, “I’m a pussy.” It’s work. You do work. If you don’t like that work, you do different work.

Love that you are posting videos again, as for games I would recommend Path of Exile. It perfectly captures on the vision topic as the main devs have notoriously had a specific vision for the game (the game was created by a few guys in a garage in response to Diablo 3 being such a disappointment and they have held their vision of being a Diablo 2 successor even a decade later). It's honestly one of the few game dev companies that give me hope.

13:50 The Mythical Man-Month, whole book on it

Very enjoyable listen, thank you

About Cyberpunk, my understanding is that what we got was not a game that had been worked on for 5+ years but most of that stuff had been thrown out, or for large swaths of time not worked on at all, and what we actually got was only around a year and a half or work? Also, the street features you talk about were well known techniques by now. The people who developed the Lego City Undercover games also hadn't ever made a GTA style game before, but they managed to make a much better system.

I completely forgot this channel, out of nowhere you stopped uploading videos, so i couldn't miss watch this one... it's kind of sad the realization that you had with the industry... 20 years ago didn't seem like game development was something about generating a lot of money, but just a bunch of people trying to create the next masterpiece, and that's the emotion i try to not forget when coding my things.. I miss this channel, it takes me back when i was on my old room at programming til morning 😅

What you're saying kind of comforts me as a young, 22-year-old writer. I realized a lot of novellists actually achieved their novels aged 30 or even more. And that you need some maturity, some experience of life that comes beyond literature or grammar or orthograph to tell meaningful stories. I also went through college, majoring in theater for a bachelor degree to go that route - possibly. And now I find myself working a bit, learning 3D technology, to draw... So yeah, I feel like I'm having fun just progressing and building on a day-to-day basis a set of experiences, but that it'll only ever become a masterpiece if fate has it in store. If life is so emotional and meaningful that I have the drive to. They say inspiration can be sought but I feel it's that type of neoliberalism, productivity ideology that runs contrary to nature, to what humanity is actually like in its perfect state. And what you're telling about how artists need years, even decades to produce a worthy craft... I feel that in your decade older than me, you have also reached that truth. I don't live a similar life to you, wouldn't film myself facing a camera, wouldn't have a dog, wouldn't go outside to shoot (not at the moment I guess), but that you have reached your perfection. Maybe not totally since you're saying that if you made a studio you'd think more on your ideal structure, number of members, funding... Things we should all think about in our projects too. All that to say, I kinda relate with that which you spoke about and wanted to reach your soul too. As a poet and French stateman Alphonse Lamartine said in l'Automne (Fall), "Peut-être l’avenir me gardait-il encore Un retour de bonheur dont l’espoir est perdu ? Peut-être dans la foule, une âme que j’ignore Aurait compris mon âme, et m’aurait répondu ? …" "Maybe fate still kept from me in store A return of happiness whose hope is lost? Maybe within the crowd, a soul I don't know Would have understood my soul, and would have answered me?" Also yeah, 10 million dollars seems a modest amount to make a game... I've done some with $0, the quality wasn't there but it was due to inexperience.

I used to LOVE games. Between 2000 and 2011, games were AMAZING, but then I noticed a shift where large studios wouldn't touch different genres anymore and instead only focused on multiplayer games. I hated where the industry was going and wanted to change the industry by becoming part of it. I spent 12+ hours a day for 6 years learning C/C++, reverse engineering C/C++ compiled code and UE4 game development. I got my first development job in 2020 doing work on the anti cheat software for Valorant, by Riot Games. But by this point I already realized I wouldn't ever be able to change the world and didn't enjoy games anymore, so I quit and used my money to start an Etsy business instead and now I am much happier. Games isn't everything and it's okay to move on to other hobbies. :)

Thank you and enjoy your break.A lot of what you said resonates with me, and I hope gamedev can deindustrialize on industrial scale. Just the name "the industry" already shows what's wrong with it I think. Games are something supposed to be crafted. You can't industrialize this process and excpect anything worthwhile coming out of it. A shoemaker wouldn't say he's in the industry. The problem is, that modern games require resources on industrial scale, so it's a dillemma. I'm handicapped with chronic pain, so the natural path for me was to do technical art, where I can let the computer do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. My hope is that I can help make world creation a less painful process for everyone. Perhaps, making development itself more fun, easier and cheaper, is a way to make better fun outcomes faster. And by that more money too. I have a pretty bad analogy for this: It feels like gamedev is like a tunnel drill moving ever forward, hitting obstacles - some harder than others, but ground down, and the trail of people who have to feed the machine have to make their way through the rubble of cracked problems and challenges. It's like there is nobody moving away the rubble, and people just have to make their way somehow to get to the machine if they want to make it. I spend days of my life biting through insufficient documentation, and then I don't have any time left to write documentation for my own tools. It's like a cosmic joke of some sorts. I don't have a way out either, but it's just my perspective. I'm kinda envious of that garden and break. I will get a small garden as some sort of peace oasis for myself too soon. I will grind on some longer to save enough to be able to afford that break as well - one of my core dreams was to drive around the continent, scan vegetation and produce them into content for developers to use in their games. I hope I can get that much needed break and that this dream still exists afterwards. Anyway. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and also all these tutorials you did. I'm also '94 and grew up with random games from the rental store, and a crafty brother who found ways around certain rights managements. If there isn't a way, make one.

@bluesillybeard

11 ай бұрын

I like your drill analogy, I think it works for the open source and coding community as a whole.

I've recently learned that my opinion isn't worth much because I am an outlier. Rift Wizard and Noita each held my attention for three to four months. I am eager to delve into the new Dwarf Fortress. They're very different games, but I'm always looking for amazing replay value, and these games delivered. I think they're all from tiny developers too. Thanks, Happiecat, and THANK YOU, Ranger.

I liked the plane rl sound fx :)

How long did you worked at 343i? you seem like such a good and pure person, keep up with the videos please!

you should look up the live theatre model. How new plays are created are similar to your 5 small teams example. Theatres fund playwrights to write plays (stories), then perform a couple of workshops, then readings/radio plays, then more revisions, etc until a theatre picks them up. Then you hire a director (vision) with designers and actors and create a show. I can't imagine if theatre was the way you describe the game industry.

Really appreciate this very honest discussion! I had totally forgotten I had subbed to this channel during my senior year of college to watch some of the game dev videos xD Unrelated to the video, but question to you as a former game dev... I currently work as a SWE for VMware but have been wanting to switch to a more B2C company or at least work on a product I'm a bit more passionate about (can't exactly say I'm very passionate about logging solutions for VMs & SDDCs :p). Anyways, to keep the question short & without going too much anecdotal, I'm just curious if you having worked in that industry have advice for someone coming in; tips for what to prepare in terms of portfolio/etc (I've got quite a bit of SWE & dev experience, but going in to game dev is new). Also is there a particular difference for someone coming in to the industry applying for positions in big vs small/indie studios. The end goal for me, similar to what you said, is to build my own game one day - but short term just wanna work in an industry/on a product that I am passionate about. Anyways, bit ranty but tldr - just wondering if you have advice to a dev switching to the industry :) TIA!

It's not just games, it's also movies, TV, music, and to some extent books. All of these industries (very telling word choice, btw) have been scaling off of increased reach leading to a larger potential consumer base. I used to be the weird kid for playing console games and listening to foreign non-English language music, now even young girls walk around in public wearing Razer gear and Blackpink merch. In that kind of an environment (coupled with zero interest rate) it makes sense to take on mega-projects that are designed to appeal just enough to as large a number of people as possible, even if that means tweaking the script of your Disney-movie in order to avoid offending Chinese sensibilities. In games I think we already hit the peak of that 10 years ago when the extremely bland Tomb Raider reboot sold only 3.4 million copies and was considered a failure. They had checked all the individual boxes that would broaden the appeal, but there weren't enough people. Games needed a new monetization strategy and if you can't expand to more people, then the only option is to extract more money out of the players. The obvious problem being that if you make everything into a live service, you can't get everyone to pay for it since they're all already continuously paying to play some other game they like. Everyone knew you couldn't make another subscription MMO since everyone was already playing WoW, but the industry has now either forgotten that or are willfully ignoring it. People are gonna keep playing the thing they are already playing, just like Ed Sheeran's Shape of You is going to continue to be the most streamed song of the year every year until the end of time (or more likely all streaming platforms imploding under their own financial infeasibility). What worries me is when I see people like Josh Sawyer join the tweet-storm (X-ing-storm?) around how Baldur's Gate 3 is an anomaly and most companies can't make that. Pentiment was my favorite game of 2022 (sorry Elden Ring, you were great but felt like a greatest hits album) and the only game in years to make me laugh out loud when the consequences of my choices were revealed to me, but now I think that after the Microsoft buyout we will never see a noteworthy game out of Obsidian ever again. There are so many large game companies that should be able to do something like BG3 or Elden Ring. Ubisoft have been making Assassin's Creed for so many years now--they have the experience, the talent, the technology--but instead of a magnum opus they just deliver some bland slop every few years. The obvious difference here is vision, Swen Vincke of Larian is deeply involved in the development process and every Miyazaki game is very obviously a Miyazaki game.

I'd be really really interested to see personal programming/art content in the future. If you find yourself still enjoying software engineering and creating :)

Games have gotten worse in the sense it's more about making money and less about creating awesome games.

@BartJBols

11 ай бұрын

That is completely in your own hands, you can make awesome games today and give them away for free. Nothing is stopping you. People are doing this.

@kaleomungin

11 ай бұрын

@@BartJBols Sounds great! Do you volunteer to pay the bills?

@HonsHon

11 ай бұрын

@@BartJBols Better yet, make awesome games and then sell them.

@error.418

11 ай бұрын

Yeah, because ultimately games haven't gotten worse, just capitalism (in the sense of big corporations "running things") has gotten worse. But that's just louder and more powerful, it's not the only thing that exists. So there's more shit, but there are also more gems. The hard part is tapping in to the community that fits you so you can more easily discover the games that fit you.

@fastmovingvolcanomatter

11 ай бұрын

While I think this is true, I think it ignores the bigger picture a bit. Games have rapidly inflated in terms of cost-to-produce, the sorts of large scale, high budget games that AAA studios are expected to push out are more expensive to make now than they've ever been. As a result, it's a lot harder to simply make cool games that make people happy; for large studios, the investments involved in creating games are of a size now that they *have* to be more aggressive about turning a profit. It's a lot easier to invest $20 million building a cool game idea that *might* succeed than it is to invest $200 million; and at that point your options usually are either playing it safer with an idea more likely to succeed (which leads to genre saturation and stagnation), or finding a way to maximize the profit from the riskier idea you're settled on (which leads to micro-transactions, battle passes, general means of recurring payments, scheduled income).

30:29 - I agree, parts of the games require a player to slow down, write on paper, and talk about the game which are all skills that help people become more people-like!

I just discovered this 2 days ago "Ancestors: the Humankind Odyssey" It's my favorite game of all time now. It's like a small world in itself. I'm positive that games will see a major shift, in the coming years which will make games fun again. And the last time I loved something like this was 10 years ago, when playing Diamond Rush on a Nokia mobile

You know i grew up watching this channel and its wild coming back to realize you had a whole job while i was in college i didnt even notice they stopped posting wtf.

I loved that you didn't cut the plane part out. As a web developer, I feel like the things you said might be how all software companies work.

I'm so happy KZread showed me this video, I've been subscribed since the old introductory Godot video, seeing your channel name made me so nostalgic 😊 BTW one of the very few games I've played in the past few years is Satisfactory, it's made by a small very creative studio with the most transparent community management approach, I really love it, you should check it if you haven't 😊

13:55 Warren Buffet knowledge

While I think it is fair to be desluioned with AAA games since so much being made are copies, remasters and microtransaction driven gameplay, along with games that appears to be designed by market research team. there are also plenty of games with good gameplay/story and mechanics being produced. Just this year we had Hogwartz legacy, LoZ tears of the kingdom, diablo 4 , new final fantasy, baldur gate 3, and startfield coming later this year. Not to mention the great stuff coming from the indie scene. Two things i personally liked in the last few years. Gamepass when it showcases new indies, this allows me try and play game genre i probably wouldn't have tried if had to buy them, and the steam deck which works great with smaller focused titles inviting me try games i probably wouldn't play if i am sitting next to my desktop PC (like persona 5 royal, dragon quest, octopath traveller, scarlet nexus ...)

I was playing elden ring listening to this and your dog made the EXACT same noise as the dogs in elden ring, i had no flasks and damn near shit my pants ;(

Games back then used to be passion projects almost. If the same amount of passion put into Doom was put into modern day games, it would be insanely different. Especially with AI honestly. Not only would we have LLM's letting people interact with NPC's better, but we could add gameplay. Imagine a battlefield game where you can have bots on your team, that actually talk back to you that you can coordinate with. Imagine a battlefield game where your more of a squad leader, and direct NPC's to do things from drive supplies to a FOB, or scout out an area beyond. Imagine a mix between GTA Online and Space Engineers. Just being able to build your own machines, facilities, and other stuff, and fighting other players. We have so much computational power these days, but we never actually use it for anything good. We just throw it at graphics, and at that point, it just gets boring. We need the dynamic and social atmosphere that older games had honestly

I'm curious what your thoughts are on fighting games? They are currently going through a transition phase of their own. In the past, the developers of these games relied heavily on the offline aspect of the game and did not supply proper netcode to facilitate a great online experience. Now every single one of them not only have to if they want people to entertain the possibility of people buying their game but it's practically going to be the only way now for most tournaments to be run because most of the local offline tournaments are being phased out. This will speak to a different issue because I'd argue the social aspect of fighting games are probably the most important piece of the fighting game community. I've never been to an offline tournament but the fabric of special moments of the last decade for the fgc usually happened offline. The competitive aspect of fighting games (1v1/3v3/5v5) are what really makes them interesting. They force you to take a step back and think of a solution and work on overcoming that limitation to achieve victory. The untapped potential of the genre is going to be if another company can build themselves up to the stature of a Capcom, netherrealm studios, or bandai namco and establish their brand as the 4th option of the Big 3 (Street Fighter, Tekken, NRS)

oh cool a new thehappiecat upload its been like 8 years

I'm curious, Do you think the big 'bland' company approach to attract gamers as little flies to lamps have led to the revive old titles and re hashing nostalgia? From where I'm sitting, it feels really old and never actually properly hits that nostalgia part

I wish there were more deep immersive sims like Dishonored 1. Dishonored 2 and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, didn't feel as original and foreign as Dishonored 1. I feel like the sequels had that slight "shitification" you talked about. They were beautiful and high quality games, but just didn't feel like a foreign world anymore. Which was a crucial aspect of what made Dishonored 1 *immersive*.

20:00 This is what i feel after the main people left Rocksteady, my favourite team is now just a shell of a team. Would love to join a small team with those who left.

Did you ever check out the project Star Citizen? Biggest crowd funded (to be) game yet. While they stopped making deadlines because they often... well nearly always, broke them, it's still incredible what they achieved and still what challenges are ahead.

Can you make a video on indie games vs big studio games, and whether there is any hope for small, passionate teams to still make amazing games without succumbing to VC pressure or selling out? Interested in your thoughts.

@mercai

11 ай бұрын

Here is a simplest checklist for any small, passionate team 1. Having that amazing game vision in the first place. With expertise and ability to achieve it! 2. Having a vertical slice of the game. An image is worth a thousand words, and a vertical slice is worth a thousand pitches. 3. Having enough resources for lasting negotiations. The less the team needs to achieve their goal, the bigger their leverage in negotiation with investors and publishers. And that is it, that simple. Match these 3 criteria and the team can make whatever they want.

subbed from youtube recommend

love your videos! ♥️

There are a few publishers I really like, because they make unique games and highlight new ideas. Devolver, Serenity Forge, and the sokpop collective to name a few.

Ive heard of nightmares frim game studios. I desided that i should try to stay away with a 9 foot pole.

Without having watched the video yet, this is like asking if movies have gotten worse, or music. We all know deep inside that it has, but nobody knows exactly why, so we want to pretend like nothing has happened. It all went downhill after the early 2000's, and exponentially so.

Big same. I lost all interest in being a game maker, sadly. I mean...maybe not ALL interest, but most of it. I'm actually sick of the word "industry" when people talk about this (no offense). It's like when people refer to themselves as "consumers". Is an "industry" what we really want when it comes to something like this? I don't think it's just semantics either. I too played the hell out of Elden Ring. From Software is still one of the few game companies I even believe in anymore in terms of doing the right thing and making good games without questionable practices.

Hard to plan how a game will come together. A large 200 person team will also progress differently than a 5 man Indy shop. In any case there needs to be a central vision keeper with the authority and skill to stick to that vision, and enough stable financing to back that up. Else you have some trainwreck like Skull & Bones.

As an MMO fan, where games require investments larger than companies are willing to accept, unless its a proven (read: played out/contrived) themepark formula, I don't think any studio will make something captivating ever again. Also the quantity over quality nature of games today, makes it extremely difficult to even go through and research everything available, unfortunately many games are simply not very good. I feel sort of the same as you about general tech work as well, the more decision makers the more the service tends to degrade and lose vision. Maybe I'll try smaller companies since my mindset is poisoned by big tech.