Is it too late to save the Western games industry?

Venom Feb 22 @ 5:04am

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:
Originally posted by Venom:
We need to save the gaming industry from ugly characters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3WQclYp2Fs

That video's title contains a false claim. The state of the gaming industry is NOT absolute. Many niche and less known games are doing great. Even many popular games are doing great.

As soon as Devs stop trying to pander to people so much, they'll make more money.

#31

salamander Feb 22 @ 5:09am

i thought dei and woke were done now?

#32

The nameless Gamer Feb 22 @ 5:10am

Originally posted by Venom:
Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

That video's title contains a false claim. The state of the gaming industry is NOT absolute. Many niche and less known games are doing great. Even many popular games are doing great.
As soon as Devs stop trying to pander to people so much, they'll make more money.

To an extent all developers are pandering. To their target audience. That's how they are making money. Guilty Gear Strive was a prime example of pandering to a casual audience and it worked out great for Arc System Works. It's their best selling Guilty Gear game ever. Electronic Arts ceased their mutilation of the Command & Conquer IP and outsourced it to Petroglyph games which remastered the first two games to a pretty prominent success. It's also a case of "pandering" to a nostalgic crowd who just wanted to play some good old C&C without having to muck around with third party software or disabling CPU cores to get the old games to work on modern PCs.

#33

Venom Feb 22 @ 5:21am

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:
Originally posted by Venom:
As soon as Devs stop trying to pander to people so much, they'll make more money.

To an extent all developers are pandering. To their target audience. That's how they are making money. Guilty Gear Strive was a prime example of pandering to a casual audience and it worked out great for Arc System Works. It's their best selling Guilty Gear game ever. Electronic Arts ceased their mutilation of the Command & Conquer IP and outsourced it to Petroglyph games which remastered the first two games to a pretty prominent success. It's also a case of "pandering" to a nostalgic crowd who just wanted to play some good old C&C without having to muck around with third party software or disabling CPU cores to get the old games to work on modern PCs.

They're pandering to the wrong crowds though. Making female characters less attractive just to make feminists happy isn't going to sell more copies of games. A lot of female gamers only play smartphone games or a couple game series. I feel like they're not as hardcore as a lot of male gamers. Heck, a lot of women still refuse to date gamer men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVZVbTSePvI&t=71s

#34

The nameless Gamer Feb 22 @ 5:34am

Originally posted by Venom:
Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

To an extent all developers are pandering. To their target audience. That's how they are making money. Guilty Gear Strive was a prime example of pandering to a casual audience and it worked out great for Arc System Works. It's their best selling Guilty Gear game ever. Electronic Arts ceased their mutilation of the Command & Conquer IP and outsourced it to Petroglyph games which remastered the first two games to a pretty prominent success. It's also a case of "pandering" to a nostalgic crowd who just wanted to play some good old C&C without having to muck around with third party software or disabling CPU cores to get the old games to work on modern PCs.
They're pandering to the wrong crowds though. Making female characters less attractive just to make feminists happy isn't going to sell more copies of games. A lot of female gamers only play smartphone games or a couple game series. I feel like they're not as hardcore as a lot of male gamers. Heck, a lot of women still refuse to date gamer men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVZVbTSePvI&t=71s

That's at worst the case for a pathetic handful of mainstream games. MANY upcoming and recently released video games still feature attractive and/or pretty female characters. Here, a few examples:
Vanillaware as main inspiration
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1394650/Detained_Too_Good_for_School/

Lovely lasses and big mechs
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2559370/The_Scramble_Vice/

Solo developer from Spain made this
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1828650/The_Silent_Kingdom/

Waifuvania
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429500/Frontier_Hunter_Erzas_Wheel_of_Fortune/

Has a roster with numerous pretty characters
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2076010/UNDER_NIGHT_INBIRTH_II_SysCeles/

Edit: that's just a few examples. If I wanted to, I could list games with pretty female characters all day and still not be done.

Last edited by The nameless Gamer; Feb 22 @ 5:35am

#35

Faiyez Feb 22 @ 5:29pm

Western developers are "lazy, entitled, slow and woke" according to Netease CEO. They are dropping funding for studios such as Quantic Dream/

#36

The Maddog Feb 22 @ 5:46pm

Money talks. Everything else walks.

Is western gaming dead? No.

Money will still be made but it will struggle and some studios will fall. Gaming is popular and will remain so. Humans like their entertainment.

Will it course correct?

Eventually.

Look at the movie industry. It's had it's ups and downs. One moment America had it's day, then Europe, then America again and then Australia had a moment... if you're in the west it kind of becomes homogeneous after a while but India has Bollywood, Korea or China has plenty of studios and then there's all the things going on in Africa..

People tend to pay attention to what they know and understand, not what they don't.

Gaming, isn't centralised. there will always be something interesting and companies will eventually course correct. We've seen some recent bangers come out of China and sooner or later Devs will course correct more to what players want. They die if they don't.

#37

Iggy Wolf Feb 22 @ 5:48pm

As usual, making a mountain out of an anthill. There's plenty of things wrong with the AAA industry. "Wokeness" isn't one of them. Or at least, it's so miniscule as to be insignificant compared to the real problems. When publishers are constantly doubling down on live service crap despite games failing due to being another live service slop, then the real issue is the disconnect between what gamers want and what publishers THINK gamers want.

More micro transactions, crappy DLC, and season pass/battle pass ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at $100 a pop ISN'T what people are asking for. "Woke" could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn't fix ♥♥♥♥ about the industry because the usual practices will still continue. Don't worry about DEI. Chances are, your rig won't be able to play the newest UE5 stutter slop anyway because you didn't sell your soul and a kidney to buy a 5090 for $4K.

#38

trousers Feb 22 @ 5:55pm

What's a "game"?

#39

TheHogfather Feb 22 @ 6:02pm

Literally who? Spiderman will save the gaming industry.

#40

Punished Rusty Shackleford Feb 22 @ 10:12pm

It's pretty much over. China will usher in the next wave of good gaming which excites and frightens me but way better than the slop the west is making.

#41

Amuro0079 Feb 23 @ 3:49am

Originally posted by Iggy Wolf:
As usual, making a mountain out of an anthill. There's plenty of things wrong with the AAA industry. "Wokeness" isn't one of them. Or at least, it's so miniscule as to be insignificant compared to the real problems. When publishers are constantly doubling down on live service crap despite games failing due to being another live service slop, then the real issue is the disconnect between what gamers want and what publishers THINK gamers want.

More micro transactions, crappy DLC, and season pass/battle pass ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at $100 a pop ISN'T what people are asking for. "Woke" could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn't fix ♥♥♥♥ about the industry because the usual practices will still continue. Don't worry about DEI. Chances are, your rig won't be able to play the newest UE5 stutter slop anyway because you didn't sell your soul and a kidney to buy a 5090 for $4K.

I was thinking about getting a 5090 when the stock situation goes to normal. But now I completely lost interest. It's missing ROPs, a Astral catching firing, melting connectors, extremely poor physx performance, black screens, bad drivers... bad news after bad news. LOL.

Last edited by Amuro0079; Feb 23 @ 3:50am

#42

Incarnate Feb 23 @ 3:59am

This is surreal. You know there's a culture shift when even the spineless corpos at Watchmojo are going anti-DEI.

Who are we kidding; money talks, and this is just content for the algorithms. Besides, Western gaming has a lot of bigger issues than pandering writing. They can't even get half of their games to run at a stable frame-rate or implement AI and physics on par with games from 2010

#43

Troll Hunter b Feb 23 @ 4:03am

Yes it is too late.

https://youtu.be/NXn0Cao8jm4?si=XAXC07cBnf7F96Yw

#44

joco Feb 23 @ 4:15am

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:
Save it from what?

Woke garbage content.

#45

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