Problems with the Game's Industry as a Whole

[Dankster Morgan]

Those were just examples of Eastern games that actually did their female face models justice but there's a lot more & they along with others are actually good games too. A lot of gamers are tired of ugly female characters, there's a lot of controversy around it for years especially lately with Star Wars: Outlaws & Concord.

View attachment 21982

I don’t think this is why a lot of games are bad, BUT…

Yeah I don’t wanna play as an ugly person if it’s a character action game or a fighting game. I want the guys and girls both to be someone that your want to actually be for the escapism of it.

And the girls on the bottom aren’t even over the top hot (except Lady from DMC 5 is basically perfection). I haven’t played all 3 of those games but Ashley in RE4R (and Ada) aren’t overly sexualized, they’re just good looking women, same as Leon being really good looking, way less dorky than the OG. In DMC 5, Lady and Trish are obviously very good looking, but the face models for Dante, Nero, and Vergil are so good looking that it’s distracting as a straight guy.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

A lot of people were livid about the character design & "progressive" bullshit due to SBI working on the game on top of Jon Weisnewski the Lead Character Designer being a total scumbag. Some of the character concept art from 6 years ago for Emari were leaked recently from a time before SBI got involved & she actually looked badass & cool.

The question is simple: Who would you rather use?

Her:
View attachment 21983

or

Her:

Also my main frontline/tank in Paladins is also a giant heavily armoured woman who carries a heavy weapon but she doesn't look fucking hideous:

The in game model there looks like a mobile game add you get randomly assaulted by on YouTube

 

[Law Hero]

Here's another part:

I've said this to @just_2swift profile a few months ago & talked to @Law Hero & @ReD WolF in the comments:

It boils down to ESG (Environmental, Social, & corporate Governance) & trillion dollar investors like Vanguard & Blackrock (look up every gaming company's top holders on Yahoo Finance) which is the self-defense against the whole, "Go woke, go broke" because those companies own pretty much everything. They have their filthy shit fingers in everyone's pie. Companies like Sweet Baby Inc help companies increase their ESG score with bringing in DEI. Also President Alzheimer McOldfuck passed bullshit that allows you to invest 401ks into ESG holdings. 2013-2014 was the year I started to notice changes in gaming especially with EA/BioWare since then the quality of games just dropped drastically or became so radicalized among Western AAA studios but we still had bangers like The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption II, Cyberpunk 2077, Metro Exodus, DOOM & Baldur's Gate 3 but even CDPR is bringing in DEI to The Witcher 1 remake & supposedly cutting Geralt's manwhore ways. Look at the past GOTY winners either as most came from privately owned (Baldur's Gate) or Eastern developers where DEI really isn't a big thing (yet) (Elden Ring). We've already witnessed how ESG & DEI destroy iconic developers over the years.

There's a reason why games like Stellar Blade & The First Descendant are so popular is because they don't give a fuck about ESG & DEI, the female characters are actually gorgeous, are actually great games. Look at what happened to Concord recently, PlayStation dropped $300m on developing that game for 8 years just to cancel it before launch because nobody wants to buy a game riddled with Sweet Baby Inc's DEI bullshit so it wasn't going to sell, why the fuck would I pay to play Concord when I can play Paladins for free & actually have great looking characters? Even in Sweet Baby Inc's "good" games like Alan Wake 2, still hasn't even made it's money back & it's been nearly a year since it released.

Though I have heard plenty about ESG and Blackrock stuff, I haven't done personal research on it, so I'm unaware about how much is fact vs speculation. Would it surprise me if it's all true though? Absolutely not.

You mentioned that you noticed a downward trend in 2013, but for me, I think the Nintendo Wii absolutely mindbroke Sony and Microsoft. Watching Nintendo opt out of the console war to target an entirely new and MASSIVE audience must have shaken Sony and Microsoft to their cores. I still remember the stupid race to copy Nintendo they participated in with the Playstation Move and Kinect. After the Wii's success with garnering an audience of what was historically non-gamers (children, the elderly, females), I think there was an obvious big push in a new direction for easier, more family-friendly games.

Dark Souls came out in 2011 and was marketed as being difficult game which was considered incredibly refreshing at the time which I feel is a result of the aforementioned trend having gone on for a few years. The point being, I believe that after the Wii's success, the idea that a company can make the biggest profits in the game industry by marketing to a wide audience of people (specifically people who didn't traditionally play or even like games) seems to have really become ingrained in the philosophy of game development.

Similarly with recent movies/shows, I can't even count the amount of times I've heard people say "Who is this game even for?" in regards to many new games. I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned even here when people have talked about Invasions Mode in MK1. In summary, I believe there is still a strong desire for companies to advertise to people who don't play, or worse, don't like video games, and that's why there's an abundance of sanitization in games from gameplay to story to art direction.

 

[Revy]

The in game model there looks like a mobile game add you get randomly assaulted by on YouTube

Worse.

As someone who played one of those mobile games, it had easily some of the best looking female characters (there weren't any male characters, didn't know that until I started playing) I've ever seen in a game but it was soooo creepy.

(Edit: Just for additional context, I was in the hospital for 7 weeks due to having heart surgery a few years back & bored out of mind & wanted something to play so I played that & Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.)

 

[Eji1700]

& trillion dollar investors like Vanguard & Blackrock (look up every gaming company's top holders on Yahoo Finance)

This is a "throws are cheating" level of understanding of how investment, and these companies, work.

 

[Juxtapose]

Yall all need pussy so bad so so bad

The things is, I know middle-aged married guys who complain about this. A buddy of mine hated Mortal Kombat 11 because the "chicks were ugly" and they went "PC with Jax's Klassic Tower ending."

One major downer about the world today is sensationalism is so huge, often believed at face value, and heavily (though not exclusively) propagated by social media.

 

[Juxtapose]

Honestly though gaming isn’t as niche anymore, and because games have to have broad appeal, they lose the opportunity to be super unique.

The financial aspect plays a lot into this though. The cost and time of game development is insane today compared to, say when Gears of War and Halo 3 were coming out. As the article discusses, a game needs to be the best seller to make it's money back, sounds like even micro-transactions (originally used to try and off-set development costs without charging much more for the game itself) isn't enough anymore.

Digital Foundry has also talked a lot about the modern development model, and how it simply is not sustainable (which we're seeing more and more of now).

 

[ImpostorOak]

The things is, I know middle-aged married guys who complain about this. A buddy of mine hated Mortal Kombat 11 because the "chicks were ugly" and they went "PC with Jax's Klassic Tower ending."

One major downer about the world today is sensationalism is so huge, often believed at face value, and heavily (though not exclusively) propagated by social media.

A lot of middle aged married guys don't get a lot of action, man, and that's one of the demographics most known for having sketchy opinions on women, at least here in the US. This is horny talk to care about pixels being attractive. Chracter design is another topic, but I cant believe how many people on this website have outed themselves the way they have on this topic. And the Jax thing was a little cringe, but hating the game over it is extreme.

There's nothing wrong at all with liking good designs, or even liking attractive female designs, but to say games are bad because the girls aren't pretty enough is so involuntarily Celibate that it unfucks people IVE slept with.

Today's social climate is conservative and media matches that. In the 90s the social climate was edgy, and media matched that. In the 20s people still did black face.

I miss the old days as much as the next guy, but yall have reached Old Man Yells at Clouds. "BACK IN MY DAY THE PROTAGONIST HAD MASSIVE BREASTS AND ALL THE MONSTERS HAD HUGE COCKS AND EVERYTHING WAS FREE EVERYONE WAS HAPPY AND GAMES WERE GOODER AND MY WIFE HADNT LEFT ME"

 

[Dankster Morgan]

A lot of middle aged married guys don't get a lot of action, man, and that's one of the demographics most known for having sketchy opinions on women, at least here in the US. This is horny talk to care about pixels being attractive. Chracter design is another topic, but I cant believe how many people on this website have outed themselves the way they have on this topic. And the Jax thing was a little cringe, but hating the game over it is extreme.

There's nothing wrong at all with liking good designs, or even liking attractive female designs, but to say games are bad because the girls aren't pretty enough is so involuntarily Celibate that it unfucks people IVE slept with.

Today's social climate is conservative and media matches that. In the 90s the social climate was edgy, and media matched that. In the 20s people still did black face.

I miss the old days as much as the next guy, but yall have reached Old Man Yells at Clouds. "BACK IN MY DAY THE PROTAGONIST HAD MASSIVE BREASTS AND ALL THE MONSTERS HAD HUGE COCKS AND EVERYTHING WAS FREE EVERYONE WAS HAPPY AND GAMES WERE GOODER AND MY WIFE HADNT LEFT ME"

This is a good balanced opinion, you've articulated something I'd agree with better than I was able to explain.

For me (24, married, baby on the way - Dankster fucks confirmed?!?!), I still don't want characters that are intentionally uglified - especially for existing characters. It's jarring to see characters just get uglier between releases, seemingly for no reason. Characters don't need to be blatant goon material, but when it's a matter of "oh they clearly took the face model, added 5 inches of jaw width, added 15-20 lbs of fat, etc" it becomes pretty obvious that they're doing it to purposefully make it "relatable". Xbox outright told developers to avoid curvy women (who exist irl, there's a ton of them lol), but you won't see anyone say " this male character is too cut or muscular, or to shave a couple inches off his jaw line, maybe give him man tits to relate to the losers who play games".

 

[Juxtapose]

A lot of middle aged married guys don't get a lot of action, man...

Yeah, for my friend though, that's before the kid when he was (as far as I know) having regular sex, which made it all the more baffling.

Xbox outright told developers to avoid curvy women...

Wait, when did Xbox say that?

 

[Eji1700]

This is horny talk to care about pixels being attractive.

Think you're going to the other extreme and over generalizing. People have an aesthetic they like. It doesn't always line up, but there's absolutely characters in media that people will like more, or less, because of how "cool" they look. Attractiveness often factors heavily into this, and for a lot of people it's "gee I wish I looked like that".

Granted "boy i'd like to fuck someone like that" is undoubtedly also a major factor in making attractive characters but that’s kinda the point of covering multiple bases with the design, ideally.

point is there’s a reason you don’t see Rufus or Bob anymore, at least as launch characters, and it’s not just “not enough people want to fuck them”

 

[Dankster Morgan]

Yeah, for my friend though, that's before the kid when he was (as far as I know) having regular sex, which made it all the more baffling.



Wait, when did Xbox say that?

Look up their inclusion guide

 

[Kal]

While the industry did a nose dive in many many ways, luckily there are tons of alternatives in every genre to be able to skip out on the shit and end up with lots of great games. In this day and age, avoiding shit companies like Activision, EA, Epic, Ubi, WB is usually a great start.

 

[Tony at Home]

About 20,000 people were laid off in the game industry in about a 6 month span between 2023 and 2024.

It's weird that today we don't refer to that period as a crash the same way we did with the dot-com bubble... but it was absolutely a crash. The problem is, it wasn't a Market Crash but a talent crash. Consumer spending on games tends to stay constant no matter the quality of the games. We have an amount we spend on games and we spend that money- and hopefully its on good stuff, but if crap is all there is, we buy crap. But the crash was a talent crash.

The good news is the AAA game industry isn't dying. It's dead- with some exceptions. There's 20,000 people on the market and often instead of trying to find new jobs in the industry, they team up with their other unemployed buddies and start their own thing. This is what happened with the dot-com bubble- it produced a HUGE amount of tech companies after.

So my prediction is we're going to see AAA continue to suck eggs but there will be a an amazing AA sector built from talented people who don't want to go back to companies that are just going to lay them off whenever the last game they worked on gets finished.

I'm not sure how many people here are aware of The Unity Controversy but the good thing to come out from that is investment in Godot skyrocketed, and for the first time ever we have a game engine that AA devs can use that has absolutely 0 licensing or royalty fees and can publish on consoles.

So it's gonna suck, but it's also an exciting time

 

[Vulgar]

This thread didn't even make a full page before reaching the Black Rock/DEI conspiracy theories and the, "I don't personally want to fuck this imaginary girl, so game is bad."

I don't think that games are necessarily in a bad spot per se. I think working conditions and unhealthy crunch and fair compensation and workplace harrassment/discrimination are far, far bigger issues in the gaming industry than games themselves.

Just in 2023 we had:

Tears of the Kingdom
Baldur's Gate 3
RE4make
Dead Space Remake
Marvel's Spider-Man 2
SF6
Alan Wake 2
Armored Core 6
Hi-Fi Rush
Lies of P
Blasphemous 2(my personal favorite)

The list goes on. Banger after banger.

The real issues in the gaming industry aren't the games themselves, but the working conditions and predatory monetization stuffed into games by greedy, uncaring companies.

But that's just my opinion.

 

[ImpostorOak]

My biggest issue with the industry rn is there are 3 games that come out every year:

1. Open World RPG with known IP(SW:Outlaws, Hogwarts, etc.)
2. Open World version of games that were not Open World prior(Elden Ring, Ass Creed, Zelda, etc.)
3. Live Service or Live Service Lite Games(Everything Else)

 

[Law Hero]

This thread didn't even make a full page before reaching the Black Rock/DEI conspiracy theories and the, "I don't personally want to fuck this imaginary girl, so game is bad."

I don't think that games are necessarily in a bad spot per se. I think working conditions and unhealthy crunch and fair compensation and workplace harrassment/discrimination are far, far bigger issues in the gaming industry than games themselves.

Just in 2023 we had:

Tears of the Kingdom
Baldur's Gate 3
RE4make
Dead Space Remake
Marvel's Spider-Man 2
SF6
Alan Wake 2
Armored Core 6
Hi-Fi Rush
Lies of P
Blasphemous 2(my personal favorite)

The list goes on. Banger after banger.

The real issues in the gaming industry aren't the games themselves, but the working conditions and predatory monetization stuffed into games by greedy, uncaring companies.

But that's just my opinion.

I think that list of the best games of 2023 does a pretty good job of showcasing one of the big issues in the industry today. Of those 11 games, 9 of them are remakes, sequels, or the latest installments in long-running franchises. If over 80% of the best big releases of the year fall into the "Remake of beloved classic" or "Sequel to successful game from 5 or 10 years ago" categories, then that's probably a pretty strong indictment of the current state of things, don't you think?

Regardless, I find it funny that the games industry has been trying so hard to win the approval of the film industry for the last 20-30 years despite dwarfing said industry, and now it's running into the same issues and receiving the same criticisms regarding constant remakes and sequels.

I don't know enough about the horrid working conditions to comment, but I'm pretty sure every single person I've heard speak about their experiences working on games has said it was an absolute nightmare, so I believe it.

 

[LEGEND]

This thread didn't even make a full page before reaching the Black Rock/DEI conspiracy theories and the, "I don't personally want to fuck this imaginary girl, so game is bad."

I don't think that games are necessarily in a bad spot per se. I think working conditions and unhealthy crunch and fair compensation and workplace harrassment/discrimination are far, far bigger issues in the gaming industry than games themselves.

Just in 2023 we had:

Tears of the Kingdom
Baldur's Gate 3
RE4make
Dead Space Remake
Marvel's Spider-Man 2
SF6
Alan Wake 2
Armored Core 6
Hi-Fi Rush
Lies of P
Blasphemous 2(my personal favorite)

The list goes on. Banger after banger.

The real issues in the gaming industry aren't the games themselves, but the working conditions and predatory monetization stuffed into games by greedy, uncaring companies.

But that's just my opinion.

That list really highlights how rare a unique AND good game really is.

edit: looks like law hero beat me to it

 

[wsj515]

I think that list of the best games of 2023 does a pretty good job of showcasing one of the big issues in the industry today. Of those 11 games, 9 of them are remakes, sequels, or the latest installments in long-running franchises. If over 80% of the best big releases of the year fall into the "Remake of beloved classic" or "Sequel to successful game from 5 or 10 years ago" categories, then that's probably a pretty strong indictment of the current state of things, don't you think?

Regardless, I find it funny that the games industry has been trying so hard to win the approval of the film industry for the last 20-30 years despite dwarfing said industry, and now it's running into the same issues and receiving the same criticisms regarding constant remakes and sequels.

I don't know enough about the horrid working conditions to comment, but I'm pretty sure every single person I've heard speak about their experiences working on games has said it was an absolute nightmare, so I believe it.

I don't think sequels should count as an indictment, but remakes definitely should.

Same thing plays out in the movie industry, both are businesses and remakes / sequels with proven popular IPs are a safe play, this isn't going to change. Sequels in movies usually suck though, whereas they're often much better in games.

 

[Juggs]

I’m not sure if it’s just my ADHD getting progressively worse and never having ever actually taken medication for it, or if the article linked in the OP is just poorly written, but I’ve tried to read it several times and it legitimately feels like I’m trying so hard to understand the point but keep failing.

Can someone give me a TLDR in concise manner? And I’m not saying dumb it down, just… what is the point that the writer is making? Btw like I said, I fully realize the problem could just be me. So if someone could help me out that’d be great lol

As far as the game industry, I have a lot of opinions. But idk if it’s related to this article/topic or not, which is why I want clarification before I start spouting off schtuff

 

[Eji1700]

I don't think sequels should count as an indictment, but remakes definitely should.

Same thing plays out in the movie industry, both are businesses and remakes / sequels with proven popular IPs are a safe play, this isn't going to change. Sequels in movies usually suck though, whereas they're often much better in games.

Meh even remakes can do good things. MK9 and 1 are arguably remakes. And reusing the same stuff is often a big part of the FG genre.

That’s not even getting to this like the FF7 remake which both gives a visually impressive game at the time a chance to be so again and had fundamentally changed the core system.

As always quality is independent of any obvious identifiers. Remakes/sequels can be red flags for pandering and thus poor quality, but it doesn’t have to be

 

[Eddy Wang]

About 20,000 people were laid off in the game industry in about a 6 month span between 2023 and 2024.

It's weird that today we don't refer to that period as a crash the same way we did with the dot-com bubble... but it was absolutely a crash. The problem is, it wasn't a Market Crash but a talent crash. Consumer spending on games tends to stay constant no matter the quality of the games. We have an amount we spend on games and we spend that money- and hopefully its on good stuff, but if crap is all there is, we buy crap. But the crash was a talent crash.

The good news is the AAA game industry isn't dying. It's dead- with some exceptions. There's 20,000 people on the market and often instead of trying to find new jobs in the industry, they team up with their other unemployed buddies and start their own thing. This is what happened with the dot-com bubble- it produced a HUGE amount of tech companies after.

So my prediction is we're going to see AAA continue to suck eggs but there will be a an amazing AA sector built from talented people who don't want to go back to companies that are just going to lay them off whenever the last game they worked on gets finished.

I'm not sure how many people here are aware of The Unity Controversy but the good thing to come out from that is investment in Godot skyrocketed, and for the first time ever we have a game engine that AA devs can use that has absolutely 0 licensing or royalty fees and can publish on consoles.

So it's gonna suck, but it's also an exciting time

I'm aware and i'm following.
I have a team that was planning a game for unity in the mid of that happening, we're changing to godot

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I don't think sequels should count as an indictment, but remakes definitely should.

Same thing plays out in the movie industry, both are businesses and remakes / sequels with proven popular IPs are a safe play, this isn't going to change. Sequels in movies usually suck though, whereas they're often much better in games.

I’ll take the remakes, because games like RE4R and Dead Space wouldn’t be so good if they didn’t have the blueprint of old masterpieces to follow. I have serious doubts most developers could come of with an original idea that would result in as good of a game as Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space. I’m more excited for RE5 remake than RE9.

 

[wsj515]

I’ll take the remakes, because games like RE4R and Dead Space wouldn’t be so good if they didn’t have the blueprint of old masterpieces to follow. I have serious doubts most developers could come of with an original idea that would result in as good of a game as Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space. I’m more excited for RE5 remake than RE9.

There are exceptions to the rule, and of course I'd love for all of my favorite games to be playable on current-gen with great graphics, but I think this cannibalizes resources that could be put towards new IP / original ideas in exchange for easy nostalgia plays.

Creativity is like a muscle, the more you attempt to use it, the better you get. Maybe the reason current devs come up with great original ideas way less frequently is because they spend 90% of their time on stuff like remakes, or live service support.

 

[Juxtapose]

Look up their inclusion guide

Ah, I did. In general, I don't have a problem with it provided it's applied equally (i.e. to male characters). Apparently, Sony did something similar in 2019, but only to their Japanese developers, oddly.

MK9 and 1 are arguably remakes.

They're soft reboots, actually.