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.

[The nameless Gamer]

Oprindeligt skrevet af stmpunk:

Oprindeligt skrevet af The nameless Commander:

Stay stuck in the gilded past you are revering then. I'll enjoy all the benefits of modern gaming. You remain glued to Baldur's Gate 3 because you seem to be unfamiliar with any genre other than CRPG. I mentioned FOUR genres which have steadily improved. And to me, Pillars of Eternity is much better than any Larian game, because I don't have to look up an online guide to play it.

I'm not stuck at anything, just pointing out the state of the industry. In the end it culminates into the same few rules: the higher your IQ the more complex a game design must be for you to enjoy it. Considering we are in TikTok age, IQs aren't high enough most of the time to even notice the differences.

As if wasting hours bumbling in a cryptic CRPG is a bragging right. Games are supposed to be FUN, not rocket science. Games are a pastime and imagination fuel.
And by the way, I don't use TikTok. I just don't find games which are being needlessly complex for the sake of being complex fun nor well designed. They're just a chore.

[Minute Maid Berry Punch⛧]

Is porn dead?

[Pipe]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Minute Maid Berry Punch⛧:

girls these days don't know how to put on an entertaining act... 😔

[Tiberius]

These grandpas should just explain how the old bg is somehow more difficult and complex than both pathfinder titles (hint: it isn't)

[Senator Armstrong]

Gaming is booming, but I agree gaming is getting worse. New titles are consistently unoriginal and poorly optimized. I miss when games just worked 10-20 years ago. Also, factor in how mobile gaming is infecting the industry. Many hate it, but it devs do it because it's profitable. Mobile gaming is way more accessible globally.

[MonkehMaster]

yup, indies are pummeling these triple A or fake quadruple A companies in popularity, pricing, quality of work and more.

if a game with a single dev, or smaller team, can out pace and beat large game companies, then you know that said big companies are doing it wrong.

in any case, i will still tell it how it is and continue liking what i like, no matter what others think.

[R-]

AAA industry could die if they dont stop making the games bigger. One flop and rip. Start making less and smaller games but more Quality would be a better solution.

[Vickers]

I am not impressed with the industry for the past 5 or 6 years now and that's at the very least.

[stmpunk]

Oprindeligt skrevet af R-:

AAA industry could die if they dont stop making the games bigger. One flop and rip. Start making less and smaller games but more Quality would be a better solution.

they can make wider games, as long as they manage to keep depth up and running.
Best solution for that is to actually port prequels entirely into the new installments and just focus on widening the scope of the game. This way the depth's kept and attention can boil down into size.
Let's take Oblivion for instance, imagine merging it with skyrim's high-points while discarding skyrim's low points (magic being the worst offender), after that push the entire installment into full Tamriel continent. Basically freeze the systems and push for handcrafted activities over radiant bs. - Now one may think when remembering Skyrim: "why on hell they didn't do that in the first place?" well, vanity. Sheer vanity. You see a lot of the Game Designers in the industry are vain divas, they want to prove they are better than the legends that created the IPs they currently work on, so they refuse to port systems and end up shoehorning their incompetence into games, as such games' built in systems have been decaying and being dumbeddown endlessly because remaking entire systems requires both talent and looser time constraints, the higher the talent the less time is needed, yet most people within any field are average, not "diamonds", as such the less competent GDs cannot achieve the same quality the good ones managed in the past.

In sum, whenever a GD responsible for generating the best systems leaves a dev company, all subsequent games lower in GD quality... It's impossible to avert that if the producers for the games don't force the GD divas to lower their heads and simply re-utilize the systems created by better professionals... If I was heading any Developer by now I'd be simply doing that, putting untalented divas into their rightful place and simply improving game franchises, not allowing these clowns to try and change them - Many OG game installments were far superior in depth and style than their respective sequels, it's quite astonishing the amount of such cases and how there's a clear downwards graph with each new installment. Most of the changes, as in over 75%, done in sequels are unnecessary and reduce the game's depth often killing what made them fun for most in the first place. ME > ME2 > ME3 > Andromeda / GTA:SA > GTA4 > GTA5 / DAO > DA2 ~= DAI / Fallout:NV (not made by Bethesda) > Fallout 4 > Fallout 76 / and on we go... The only Developer in history that managed to improve spin-off sequels from the OG devs were Obsidian, who were always sabotaged by the OG publisher who always forced them into impossible time constraints and deadlines. All games made by Obsidian during that time period were superior to the OG installments, but didn't receive enough room to polish and remove tons of bugs and technical issues. - The times of "Epic Obsidian" are long gone, though, all the OG devs responsible for those gaming jewels are long gone from the company so there's no talent remaining in there anymore.

[JayRebirth]

Over the past 10-15 years game quality has gone down. Publishers have been buying everything up so we now get less game releases per year then we did back then. Publishers and developers now nickel and dime you for uncompleted games and cut content. They remaster/remake more now then making new IPs. Also doesn't help with all the blue haired weirdos like sweet baby inc having DEI checklists in games now. Everything has gone to ♥♥♥♥.

[Nanami]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.