Is gaming dead? Review Or Summary

[Azuwi]

Have gaming become dead or reached it's stale period? Here is my thoughts, opinion, review, and summary on why.

Based on TTV and Steam Charts, among others, let's go through the stats for the games (period) of April 02/03 2024.

The most played games on Steam right now is:
1. Counter-Strike 2, with 468000 players, where it has peaked up to 1.5 mil previously (less than 1/3 of it's peak rate), this game was also released (CS:GO) in 2012, with minor/major updates depending how you see it, a 12 year old game.

2. Dota 2, 231k players, also had over triple amount of players during it's peak rate and a 11 year old game, released in 2013.

3. Helldivers 2, this is the first new game on the list, released this year 2024 in February, but has already lost over half of it's max player since then, is it gonna be like most other new games and die out?

4. Stardew Valley, came out in 2016, a 8 year old game, recently had a major update, so many players returned, but already about half have stopped since the big update, went from ~260k to 130k. Couple more months, and will be back to normal(?)

5. Tom clancy rainbow siege, released in 2015. A 9 year old game.

6. Call of Duty, well it's CoD.. maybe never dies out but not the biggest game either.

7. Baldur's Gate 3, came out in 2023, have dropped about half it's player base since the release

8. PUBG: Battlegrounds, released 2017, 7 years old, not also the biggest game, guess it's always gonna keep the player numbers around 70-80k, but far from it's peak one time at 750k+

9. Path of Exile, just recently had a new league launch, sitting at 71k players online, but will fade away as the league gets older. maybe to 15-30k. Came out 2013, 11 years old.

10. Apex Legends, came out 2019, 5 year old game, sititng at 64k players, always gonna have around I guess 70-80k players aswell (including the ones on EA platform)

That's the top 10.. Summary:
Most games are 5+ years old, exception new CoD, Baldurs Gate 3, Helldivers 2, odds are Helldivers 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 are slowly gonna lose player numbers as time goes on, all numbers in the list have lost over double of it's peak time. 7 games out of the 10 is 5-11 years old.

Twitch.tv:
Popular streamers who use to have 20k+ viewers have now only around at top 10kish viewers, including summit1g, shroud, etc. The most mainstream played games are GTA 5, released 2013, again a 11 year old game, rainbow six as mentioned earlier, Valorant (2020), League of legends (2009), Fortnite (2017), talking about Fortnite, who also had to use it's old OG map and game to draw in players from losing most of it's peak, Cod, Dota 2, CS2(GO), WoW (2004 - 20 years old) who had to bring in WOW Classic because also lost a big playerbase, TFT (part of LOL), Dead by daylight (2016) which is nothing more then a horror among us game in a mediocre unreal engine where all you do is repair generators or play as the killer, Apex legends, Minecraft (2011) , and others like Path of exile, Rust, depending on if there is a new league/launch event or a Twitch drop/Rust event ongoing on raising the viewers for a week or so.

Epic Store / EA Games / Ubisoft :
I think only a small fraction use these clients where Steam is the majority.

Conclusion: There is not a single new game that is "main stream" today that have came out in the last 3-4 years, exception Helldivers 2 which I think is not gonna be mainstream anymore in 1 year. Twitch viewers have dropped 100-200%, and majority of games that are being streamed is old games between 5-10 years old, Steam most played games aswell.

Example:
Go back in time to 2012, we had a major game came out that became main stream (and still up to this date) CS:GO, year after Dota 2, same story, plus Path of Exile, GTA 5, we had just some year earlier Minecraft came out, League of legends, fast forward 2-3 years, Rainbow siege, Stardew valley, Dead by daylight, year after PUBG, Fortnite, only 2 year later, Apex legends, year after Valorant.

What did we get the last 3-4 years? Nothing.
Revamp of CS:GO > CS2, revamp of Overwatch > Overwatch 2, revamp or reintroduce of WoW > WOW Classic, revamp or reintroduce Fortnite > Fortnite OG. Still most played games are 5-10 years old and lost alot of players since then, player numbers at peak low, viewers on twitch at peak low.

Still waiting for the "Next big game" that will make the list and stay there.

[Start_Running]

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

if they fail to keep people engaged, objective quality ain't a characteristic they carry.

The goal of a video game is not to engage, but entertain. Not all games are meant to be played for 100s of hours. Some of them are a short journey but still worth it.

Bingo.

I mean let us be real. Games you can put 100's of hours in continuously are RARE . They usually tend to be games with Rogue-Like elements. Which is why 4x games tend to wind yup high on that list.

[MonkehMaster]

they arent rare and they come in all varieties

majority of the games i have, are either 300+ hrs, few over 1000+ hrs and the rest are pushing over 100 hrs and still counting on all of them.

though tbf, and its a small amount, but i still have a backlog that im working on as well.

tons of indie games out there with loads of replayability, unlike these crappy big company games.

[Cksalzy]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Azuwi:

Have gaming become dead or reached it's stale period? Here is my thoughts, opinion, review, and summary on why.

Based on TTV and Steam Charts, among others, let's go through the stats for the games (period) of April 02/03 2024.

The most played games on Steam right now is:
1. Counter-Strike 2, with 468000 players, where it has peaked up to 1.5 mil previously (less than 1/3 of it's peak rate), this game was also released (CS:GO) in 2012, with minor/major updates depending how you see it, a 12 year old game.

2. Dota 2, 231k players, also had over triple amount of players during it's peak rate and a 11 year old game, released in 2013.

3. Helldivers 2, this is the first new game on the list, released this year 2024 in February, but has already lost over half of it's max player since then, is it gonna be like most other new games and die out?

4. Stardew Valley, came out in 2016, a 8 year old game, recently had a major update, so many players returned, but already about half have stopped since the big update, went from ~260k to 130k. Couple more months, and will be back to normal(?)

5. Tom clancy rainbow siege, released in 2015. A 9 year old game.

6. Call of Duty, well it's CoD.. maybe never dies out but not the biggest game either.

7. Baldur's Gate 3, came out in 2023, have dropped about half it's player base since the release

8. PUBG: Battlegrounds, released 2017, 7 years old, not also the biggest game, guess it's always gonna keep the player numbers around 70-80k, but far from it's peak one time at 750k+

9. Path of Exile, just recently had a new league launch, sitting at 71k players online, but will fade away as the league gets older. maybe to 15-30k. Came out 2013, 11 years old.

10. Apex Legends, came out 2019, 5 year old game, sititng at 64k players, always gonna have around I guess 70-80k players aswell (including the ones on EA platform)

That's the top 10.. Summary:
Most games are 5+ years old, exception new CoD, Baldurs Gate 3, Helldivers 2, odds are Helldivers 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 are slowly gonna lose player numbers as time goes on, all numbers in the list have lost over double of it's peak time. 7 games out of the 10 is 5-11 years old.

Twitch.tv:
Popular streamers who use to have 20k+ viewers have now only around at top 10kish viewers, including summit1g, shroud, etc. The most mainstream played games are GTA 5, released 2013, again a 11 year old game, rainbow six as mentioned earlier, Valorant (2020), League of legends (2009), Fortnite (2017), talking about Fortnite, who also had to use it's old OG map and game to draw in players from losing most of it's peak, Cod, Dota 2, CS2(GO), WoW (2004 - 20 years old) who had to bring in WOW Classic because also lost a big playerbase, TFT (part of LOL), Dead by daylight (2016) which is nothing more then a horror among us game in a mediocre unreal engine where all you do is repair generators or play as the killer, Apex legends, Minecraft (2011) , and others like Path of exile, Rust, depending on if there is a new league/launch event or a Twitch drop/Rust event ongoing on raising the viewers for a week or so.

Epic Store / EA Games / Ubisoft :
I think only a small fraction use these clients where Steam is the majority.

Conclusion: There is not a single new game that is "main stream" today that have came out in the last 3-4 years, exception Helldivers 2 which I think is not gonna be mainstream anymore in 1 year. Twitch viewers have dropped 100-200%, and majority of games that are being streamed is old games between 5-10 years old, Steam most played games aswell.

Example:
Go back in time to 2012, we had a major game came out that became main stream (and still up to this date) CS:GO, year after Dota 2, same story, plus Path of Exile, GTA 5, we had just some year earlier Minecraft came out, League of legends, fast forward 2-3 years, Rainbow siege, Stardew valley, Dead by daylight, year after PUBG, Fortnite, only 2 year later, Apex legends, year after Valorant.

What did we get the last 3-4 years? Nothing.
Revamp of CS:GO > CS2, revamp of Overwatch > Overwatch 2, revamp or reintroduce of WoW > WOW Classic, revamp or reintroduce Fortnite > Fortnite OG. Still most played games are 5-10 years old and lost alot of players since then, player numbers at peak low, viewers on twitch at peak low.

Still waiting for the "Next big game" that will make the list and stay there.

gamings not dead. AAA games are dead. Indie devs are making better games than billion dollar companies.

[cornball]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Azuwi:

Have gaming become dead or reached it's stale period? Here is my thoughts, opinion, review, and summary on why.

Based on TTV and Steam Charts, among others, let's go through the stats for the games (period) of April 02/03 2024.

The most played games on Steam right now is:
1. Counter-Strike 2, with 468000 players, where it has peaked up to 1.5 mil previously (less than 1/3 of it's peak rate), this game was also released (CS:GO) in 2012, with minor/major updates depending how you see it, a 12 year old game.

2. Dota 2, 231k players, also had over triple amount of players during it's peak rate and a 11 year old game, released in 2013.

3. Helldivers 2, this is the first new game on the list, released this year 2024 in February, but has already lost over half of it's max player since then, is it gonna be like most other new games and die out?

4. Stardew Valley, came out in 2016, a 8 year old game, recently had a major update, so many players returned, but already about half have stopped since the big update, went from ~260k to 130k. Couple more months, and will be back to normal(?)

5. Tom clancy rainbow siege, released in 2015. A 9 year old game.

6. Call of Duty, well it's CoD.. maybe never dies out but not the biggest game either.

7. Baldur's Gate 3, came out in 2023, have dropped about half it's player base since the release

8. PUBG: Battlegrounds, released 2017, 7 years old, not also the biggest game, guess it's always gonna keep the player numbers around 70-80k, but far from it's peak one time at 750k+

9. Path of Exile, just recently had a new league launch, sitting at 71k players online, but will fade away as the league gets older. maybe to 15-30k. Came out 2013, 11 years old.

10. Apex Legends, came out 2019, 5 year old game, sititng at 64k players, always gonna have around I guess 70-80k players aswell (including the ones on EA platform)

That's the top 10.. Summary:
Most games are 5+ years old, exception new CoD, Baldurs Gate 3, Helldivers 2, odds are Helldivers 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 are slowly gonna lose player numbers as time goes on, all numbers in the list have lost over double of it's peak time. 7 games out of the 10 is 5-11 years old.

Twitch.tv:
Popular streamers who use to have 20k+ viewers have now only around at top 10kish viewers, including summit1g, shroud, etc. The most mainstream played games are GTA 5, released 2013, again a 11 year old game, rainbow six as mentioned earlier, Valorant (2020), League of legends (2009), Fortnite (2017), talking about Fortnite, who also had to use it's old OG map and game to draw in players from losing most of it's peak, Cod, Dota 2, CS2(GO), WoW (2004 - 20 years old) who had to bring in WOW Classic because also lost a big playerbase, TFT (part of LOL), Dead by daylight (2016) which is nothing more then a horror among us game in a mediocre unreal engine where all you do is repair generators or play as the killer, Apex legends, Minecraft (2011) , and others like Path of exile, Rust, depending on if there is a new league/launch event or a Twitch drop/Rust event ongoing on raising the viewers for a week or so.

Epic Store / EA Games / Ubisoft :
I think only a small fraction use these clients where Steam is the majority.

Conclusion: There is not a single new game that is "main stream" today that have came out in the last 3-4 years, exception Helldivers 2 which I think is not gonna be mainstream anymore in 1 year. Twitch viewers have dropped 100-200%, and majority of games that are being streamed is old games between 5-10 years old, Steam most played games aswell.

Example:
Go back in time to 2012, we had a major game came out that became main stream (and still up to this date) CS:GO, year after Dota 2, same story, plus Path of Exile, GTA 5, we had just some year earlier Minecraft came out, League of legends, fast forward 2-3 years, Rainbow siege, Stardew valley, Dead by daylight, year after PUBG, Fortnite, only 2 year later, Apex legends, year after Valorant.

What did we get the last 3-4 years? Nothing.
Revamp of CS:GO > CS2, revamp of Overwatch > Overwatch 2, revamp or reintroduce of WoW > WOW Classic, revamp or reintroduce Fortnite > Fortnite OG. Still most played games are 5-10 years old and lost alot of players since then, player numbers at peak low, viewers on twitch at peak low.

Still waiting for the "Next big game" that will make the list and stay there.

It seems your main issues are with the fundamentals sociology and capitalism as any art grows larger it tends to start gatekeeping itself out of existence!

tldr; make smol game ply smol gam eeee:: (3

[stmpunk]

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

if they fail to keep people engaged, objective quality ain't a characteristic they carry.

The goal of a video game is not to engage, but entertain. Not all games are meant to be played for 100s of hours. Some of them are a short journey but still worth it.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Start_Running:

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

The goal of a video game is not to engage, but entertain. Not all games are meant to be played for 100s of hours. Some of them are a short journey but still worth it.

Bingo.

I mean let us be real. Games you can put 100's of hours in continuously are RARE . They usually tend to be games with Rogue-Like elements. Which is why 4x games tend to wind yup high on that list.

They weren't, now they are = plummeting on quality... The points you try to raise to counter-argue what I'm trying to say only further my point more, not sure how your line of thinking doesn't realize that

Today it's rare to see a single gaming content creator go into a full gameplay without severe pauses or game-hopping, I raise this little factor because the games don't have to have 100s of hours, but be engaging enough for continuous playing. Best of the market were always the ones providing 100s of hours through replayability, but the long-runs would only really take anywhere from 30 to 60 hours in most cases.

Takes on mind: Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls up to Skyrim (and Skyrim was already a severe dumb-down that only survived the gauntlet due to free-work from modders), Dragon Age Origins, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, Niverwinter Nights 2 and all their respective expansions, Diablo, Diablo 2, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 (which was already the start of the decline), KOTOR, KOTOR 2, and list goes on and on and on...
Now, lookup the release dates of the aforementioned games and pay attention at the time gap between each release. If even after doing that you keep with the timeless "are rare", than I can only affirm you are overly biased and disingenuously twisting the facts.

[The nameless Gamer]

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

They weren't, now they are = plummeting on quality... The points you try to raise to counter-argue what I'm trying to say only further my point more, not how your line of thinking doesn't realize that

Care to give concrete and specific examples of games "plummeting in quality"? I'll repeat it again: Old fighting games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat II and III and all the clones and rip-offs of them have NOTHING on modern fighting games. They have bad balance, no tutorial, no training/trial/mission mode and are badly balanced. Modern fighting games have all that and are much better balanced and optimized.

RTS games have also only improved. From unit spam and horrible pathfinding now we have games with actually meaningful build orders and strategies.

Platformer games used to be cheaply and unfairly difficult to hide the fact that they are short and have maybe 30 minutes of content. Now you have platforming games which have 10-20 hours in ACTUAL content.

You keep saying a lot of nothing. Give EXAMPLES of how and why games used to be better.

[stmpunk]

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

They weren't, now they are = plummeting on quality... The points you try to raise to counter-argue what I'm trying to say only further my point more, not how your line of thinking doesn't realize that

Care to give concrete and specific examples of games "plummeting in quality"? I'll repeat it again: Old fighting games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat II and III and all the clones and rip-offs of them have NOTHING on modern fighting games. They have bad balance, no tutorial, no training/trial/mission mode and are badly balanced. Modern fighting games have all that and are much better balanced and optimized.

RTS games have also only improved. From unit spam and horrible pathfinding now we have games with actually meaningful build orders and strategies.

Platformer games used to be cheaply and unfairly difficult to hide the fact that they are short and have maybe 30 minutes of content. Now you have platforming games which have 10-20 hours in ACTUAL content.

You keep saying a lot of nothing. Give EXAMPLES of how and why games used to be better.

read the edited reply you've quoted. It's there.

[The nameless Gamer]

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

Care to give concrete and specific examples of games "plummeting in quality"? I'll repeat it again: Old fighting games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat II and III and all the clones and rip-offs of them have NOTHING on modern fighting games. They have bad balance, no tutorial, no training/trial/mission mode and are badly balanced. Modern fighting games have all that and are much better balanced and optimized.

RTS games have also only improved. From unit spam and horrible pathfinding now we have games with actually meaningful build orders and strategies.

Platformer games used to be cheaply and unfairly difficult to hide the fact that they are short and have maybe 30 minutes of content. Now you have platforming games which have 10-20 hours in ACTUAL content.

You keep saying a lot of nothing. Give EXAMPLES of how and why games used to be better.

read the edited reply you've quoted. It's there.

Fallout 1 and 2 are TERRIBLY designed as were the old Elder Scrolls games. They were designed to waste your time by telling you literally nothing about themselves and being cryptic and difficult to comprehend so the player would waste time bumbling around with bloated and incomprehensible UIs and inventories as well as stuck on a huge map without a single pointer or as much as a vague hint where you're supposed to go. Same goes for Planescape Torment and every early Larian Studios game.

Diablo and Diablo II have not aged well. Torchlight II and Grim Dawn outclass them both. And Grim Dawn is fairly modern, mind you. You focused on two genres. And my examples stand. Gaming has gotten BETTER.

[MonkehMaster]

diablo and diablo 2 have aged beautifully and are still played today and diablo 2 has mods and a quite large community... plus quite a few more games from that time.

show me any current PC games that will last as long as them, that wont be shut down by the devs or simply die out with no community to speak of.

[D. Flame]

Ursprungligen skrivet av MonkehMaster:

diablo and diablo 2 have aged beautifully and are still played today and diablo 2 has mods and a quite large community... plus quite a few more.

show me any games that will last as long as them.

Mario Bros.

[MonkehMaster]

Ursprungligen skrivet av D. Flame:

Ursprungligen skrivet av MonkehMaster:

diablo and diablo 2 have aged beautifully and are still played today and diablo 2 has mods and a quite large community... plus quite a few more.

show me any games that will last as long as them.

Mario Bros.

true, but i was leaning for pc games :P

[stmpunk]

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

read the edited reply you've quoted. It's there.

Fallout 1 and 2 are TERRIBLY designed as were the old Elder Scrolls games. They were designed to waste your time by telling you literally nothing about themselves and being cryptic and difficult to comprehend so the player would waste time bumbling around with bloated and incomprehensible UIs and inventories as well as stuck on a huge map without a single pointer or as much as a vague hint where you're supposed to go. Same goes for Planescape Torment and every early Larian Studios game.

Diablo and Diablo II have not aged well. Torchlight II and Grim Dawn outclass them both. And Grim Dawn is fairly modern, mind you. You focused on two genres. And my examples stand. Gaming has gotten BETTER.

And with that reply we get a undeniable confirmation that you are definitely disingenuous to push your bias.

The games mentioned are simply outdated and lacked UX, but when it comes to core Game Design they were exceptional, and overtake anything modern under the same genres. The oddity here is seeing such attempt at degrading these games from you when we have a current mass of overhyped people drooling over Baldur's Gate 3, which carries over all the issues you've mentioned in a much more inferior Game Design system. I take it you don't like BG3 than? Because if you do than I can be 200% you are just being dishonest.

[The nameless Gamer]

Ursprungligen skrivet av MonkehMaster:

diablo and diablo 2 have aged beautifully and are still played today and diablo 2 has mods and a quite large community... plus quite a few more games from that time.

show me any games that will last as long as them.

Aged well with 20 frames per second? The animations are clunky. Grim Dawn and Torchlight II are visually much better, offer the same amount of mods if not more. Torchlight II has at least a dozen user-made classes and a few endgame mods which largely extend the play time. Grim Dawn vanilla already is much better than Diablo I and II. It has more starting classes and a multi-classing system. And has a whole lot of mods too.

[MonkehMaster]

well that person did try to force me to defend my opinion, on games i liked in the past... so its not surpising.

but as you can see, by the replies... they arent being genuine in their responses...

games made around 1998 and still played today (26 years later), with a huge modding community and community playing them, but according to them, they are bad games

blizzard even remastered some of them (20 something years later), all because we wouldnt stop playing them lol.

this is the steam forums for ya.

edit: not sure where that person came up with 20fps, too be correct it was 25fps... (btw, we are talking 1998).. lol.

not to mention POD and PD2 mods for D2, which brought it into the modern times.

edit: Maffs

[The nameless Gamer]

Ursprungligen skrivet av stmpunk:

Ursprungligen skrivet av The nameless Commander:

Fallout 1 and 2 are TERRIBLY designed as were the old Elder Scrolls games. They were designed to waste your time by telling you literally nothing about themselves and being cryptic and difficult to comprehend so the player would waste time bumbling around with bloated and incomprehensible UIs and inventories as well as stuck on a huge map without a single pointer or as much as a vague hint where you're supposed to go. Same goes for Planescape Torment and every early Larian Studios game.

Diablo and Diablo II have not aged well. Torchlight II and Grim Dawn outclass them both. And Grim Dawn is fairly modern, mind you. You focused on two genres. And my examples stand. Gaming has gotten BETTER.

And with that reply we get a undeniable confirmation that you are definitely disingenuous to push your bias.

The games mentioned are simply outdated and lacked UX, but when it comes to core Game Design they were exceptional, and overtake anything modern under the same genres. The oddity here is seeing such attempt at degrading these games from you when we have a current mass of overhyped people drooling over Baldur's Gate 3, which carries over all the issues you've mentioned in a much more inferior Game Design system. I take it you don't like BG3 than? Because if you do than I can be 200% you are just being dishonest.

I'm indifferent towards Baldur's Gate III and the whole CRPG genre. If I want to play a roleplaying game, I'd take Dungeons and Dragons or Shadowrun on pen&paper any day. I'm more into fighting games, roguelites, metroidvania and RTS, which all improved over time. You are making blanket-statements based off of cherry-picking in a SINGLE GENRE while blinded by nostalgia.