Is AAA gaming (mostly) screwed?

[CriticalGaming]

So after all that has happened in 2018 in the AAA gaming space, I thought I would start a discussion.

For years we've all heard about how the gaming bubble is going to burst. That as AAA games become more and more expensive to make stacked on top of the seedy practice of adding in extra charges around these games, at some point the market was just going to collapse.

It started with DLC, then it became day one DLC, then DLC on the disc that you already paid for, then microtransactions started, all boiling up to lootboxes. Each of these practices for extra monetization caused the games to loose an aspect of their initial quality. From DLC selling us the "real" ending, to selling us extra fighters on a roster artificially limited in order to sell us the characters on the disc for an extra price. Once AAA-gaming really started to dig deep into the Microtransaction and lootbox department, balancing of the entire game got fuck-a-doodled.

But now AAA gaming has gone even further off the rail I think. AS the backlash of the lootboxes finally reached a massive head with Star Wars Battlefront 2, to the point that governments started telling publishers to fuck off with that gambling bullshit, I feel like publishers tried to cut back on costs as well as look at other ways they could still have their microtransactions without losing too much of the billions of dollars in revenue that they've seen over the last few years.

The result are incredibly unbalanced games, or shit cheaply made games that they've tried to sell us as AAA-experiences.

Fallout 76 - an asset flip where the only thing that works is the incredibly overpriced cash shop.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - regardless of the "quality" of the single player experience, the multiplayer is the mode that people are going to play for any real bulk of time and that economy is fuck skittles. Designed to sell you gold bars so you can have something as basic as fast travel. This is only slightly better than selling save slots.

Not to mention publishers are now pushing things into areas we don't want nor do we care about. Look at Blizzard and how much everyone loved that after 6 fucking years the latest Diablo game is nothing more than a reskin of a knock off Diablo game on mobile phones of all things.

With all this in mind, are we finally facing the AAA-gaming industry reset that we've all been speculating for years? Can AAA gaming recover from this shitstorm that they've landed in?

It seems like every year, we are getting fewer and fewer AAA releases that don't come with shady business baggage. Looking forward to 2019 how many AAA games can you predict wont have some microtransactional bullshit tacked on?

 

[skywolfblue]

Well, who is the "crisis" for? Publishers aren't in crisis, gamers are.

While it's true that it has become more expensive to make quality games, most of the time it's the fault of the studio/publisher for not budgeting properly.

Dead Space 1&2 each sold around 1-2 million copies each, which is a respectable number. Then EA comes up with this idea that "Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5-million copies or the franchise gets killed!". That is colossal mis-budgeting.

The Tomb Raider reboot was wildly successful, selling 6 million copies. But then the publisher says that it was a "disappointment", again, huge budgeting fail.

Despite those failures, the rest of the game industry seems to be successful in making money.

There have always been a fair number of shit games. I wouldn't say that there is as a whole a trend towards making them shittier on purpose. (shitty games don't tend to make as much from their microtransactions)

There has been a rise in DLC and microtransactions, and the reason for that is: People buy it!

It's not that publishers aren't making enough, it's the opposite. Publishers are making money hand over fist from these practices. Is it shady? Yes. Is it bad? Yes. It's absolutely a terrible downward slope. (It is basically gambling. And the publishers are exploiting young gamers who aren't mature enough to recognize that. Fortnite in particular has made billions off of teens.)

I don't play multiplayer all that much. For most games the microtransactions thankfully don't affect the single-player portions. Multiplayer people are definitely getting ripped off.

I do buy Expansion Pack style DLCs, and am ok with that model.

There are a number of games that still offer a solid singleplayer. As long as they do, I'll keep buying.
So far the titles I'm really interested for in 2019 are Metro and Resident Evil 2 Reboot. Both of which will probably have solid single player, despite small stuff like outfit DLC, which I usually ignore.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

What exactly is this "bubble" per se?

 

[Xprimentyl]

What exactly is this "bubble" per se?

The coming to a head of shitty dev/publisher practices and what gamers have tolerated thus far. Basically, when is ?enough? finally going to be enough, the devs?/publishers? business models become unsustainable and the industry suffers a significant, damaging setback.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

At current? No, they'll be fine. If Governments get involved and regulate microtransactions and loot boxes? Oh hell yeah, totally fucked.

Hows the tobacco industry compared to what it was in the 90s? Not great is what.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Two things you say here stick out to me as issues.

I do buy Expansion Pack style DLCs, and am ok with that model.

Before DLC and in the very early days of DLC people hated it. They hated what appeared to be chunks of their games being cut away and sold again to them later. These practices were terrible and the got worse and worse and arguably having really improved today, the microtransactions have merely overshadowed them. But there are still on-disc DLC's that shaft people (especially in fighting games) and season passes (sometimes even more than 1 pass for the same game).

You are okay with that model because it has been beaten into you for so long that you deal with it now because you have no choice.

There has been a rise in DLC and microtransactions, and the reason for that is: People buy it!

You're right, people do buy it. But are they buying it because they want too? Or are they doing it because they HAVE to do so in order to play the game properly.

People do buy these things, but I don't believe that excuse makes MT's and looboxes legitimate especially when games are designed to be manipulative towards getting the player to spend that extra dosh. Not only that, but these Lootboxes are especially bad because there is no limit to them. A player can spend and spend without any ceiling to it which is terrible for them and for the game.

Shadow of War was balanced in such a way that players were FORCED to buy lootboxes or the endgame was unbeatable. It was so bad that after the Star Wars BF2 backlash, the developers actually REMOVED the lootboxes and completely rebalanced the game.

So yes, people do buy it. Kids get their parents to buy them the new Fortnight skin or whatever. But again it's a dangerous thing because there is no limit to it.

That's why I liked how League of Legends did their stuff (at least back when I played several years ago) If you liked a hero you could just buy whatever skin you wanted and that was it. Once you bought the skin you were good, there was no gambling aspect or endless treadmill to entice you to keep spending on it. Maybe when a new hero came out you might get their skin or whatever (assuming you liked them) but it was spaced out enough that it never felt excessive.

These days I feel like games are designing around their monetization systems rather that designing around making a game fun. And the problem ultimately with that is that people only have so much time and money. When every game is trying to be the next big live service, you limit your players. Because most people only get into 1-skinner box at a time. It's how WoW stayed on top all this time despite plenty of other MMO's coming out. It's only recently WoW has started a downward shift into shitsville that the other MMO's have started holding traction (FF14, SWTOR, etc).

Every year there is usually a clear "live service winner" the game that holds the biggest player-base for that year and leaves all the other one's lacking.

This focus on live services is what makes single player stand outs like Spider-Man and God of War feel like such big deals, because they are the only games that harken us back to what we all got into gaming in the first place for. Good gaming experiences that aren't trying to milk us for every second we spend playing.

They simply let us play.

The industry really needs to stop trying to make us payers and let us be players. Because when games come out that let us just play, we reward them and they almost always do very well. Imagine if the rest of the industry was trying to 1-up Spider-man and GoW? Think about how great games would be if they all tried to top The Witcher 3. Rather than trying to see how many extra dimes fall out of our pockets.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Two things you say here stick out to me as issues.

I do buy Expansion Pack style DLCs, and am ok with that model.

Before DLC and in the very early days of DLC people hated it. They hated what appeared to be chunks of their games being cut away and sold again to them later. These practices were terrible and the got worse and worse and arguably having really improved today, the microtransactions have merely overshadowed them. But there are still on-disc DLC's that shaft people (especially in fighting games) and season passes (sometimes even more than 1 pass for the same game).

You are okay with that model because it has been beaten into you for so long that you deal with it now because you have no choice.

I... don't think you're on the same page here.
Expansion packs were things like Tales of the Sword Coast or The Frozen Throne, that, just as the name suggests, expanded the base game. Added new questlines, locations, sometimes mechanics, etc.
They came before the digital era, where you had to fill a CD with content bigger than usual downloadable junk, that is now covered under wide DLC term. And they were generally positively received, if they delivered quality stuff, that is.
Modern examples of DLCs emulating this would be things like The Ballad of Gay Tony, or New Vegas story DLCs.

 

[Saelune]

Nope. Most people are stupid whales willing to shell out tons of money for shiny bits of nothing.

I remember when everyone was mad at Bethesda for Horse Armor. Still no lootboxes in Skyrim though.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Nope. Most people are stupid whales willing to shell out tons of money for shiny bits of nothing.

I remember when everyone was mad at Bethesda for Horse Armor. Still no lootboxes in Skyrim though.

To be fair most people aren't whales, but whales spend more to make up for it. You and I may spend only $5 on microtransaction for a new game, so to a Dev it wasn't worth it to program. But that one whale will spend $400+, so that makes up for you and I not being them.
They're addicts. Just like most people don't smoke, but smokers smoke enough to keep the tobacco industry open.

 

[skywolfblue]

Two things you say here stick out to me as issues.

I do buy Expansion Pack style DLCs, and am ok with that model.

Before DLC and in the very early days of DLC people hated it. They hated what appeared to be chunks of their games being cut away and sold again to them later. These practices were terrible and the got worse and worse and arguably having really improved today, the microtransactions have merely overshadowed them. But there are still on-disc DLC's that shaft people (especially in fighting games) and season passes (sometimes even more than 1 pass for the same game).

You are okay with that model because it has been beaten into you for so long that you deal with it now because you have no choice.

I... don't think you're on the same page here.
Expansion packs were things like Tales of the Sword Coast or The Frozen Throne, that, just as the name suggests, expanded the base game. Added new questlines, locations, sometimes mechanics, etc.
They came before the digital era, where you had to fill a CD with content bigger than usual downloadable junk, that is now covered under wide DLC term. And they were generally positively received, if they delivered quality stuff, that is.
Modern examples of DLCs emulating this would be things like The Ballad of Gay Tony, or New Vegas story DLCs.

Exactly MrCalavera.

In retrospect I should have clarified what I meant by "Expansion Pack DLC". Some examples of my favorite "Expansion Pack DLC" would be "The Frozen Wilds" for Horizon Zero Dawn, "Undead Nightmare" for Red Dead Redemption, "Dragonborn" for Skyrim, "Minerva's Den" for Bioshock 2, etc. DLCs that add new places, new enemies, and have their own separate storyline. I would not buy games that have their main story cut out and put into DLCs.

There has been a rise in DLC and microtransactions, and the reason for that is: People buy it!

You're right, people do buy it. But are they buying it because they want too? Or are they doing it because they HAVE to do so in order to play the game properly.

People do buy these things, but I don't believe that excuse makes MT's and looboxes legitimate especially when games are designed to be manipulative towards getting the player to spend that extra dosh. Not only that, but these Lootboxes are especially bad because there is no limit to them. A player can spend and spend without any ceiling to it which is terrible for them and for the game.

I agree! I am not excusing or legitimizing either. The sentences following that in my original post echo your criticism.

The industry really needs to stop trying to make us payers and let us be players. Because when games come out that let us just play, we reward them and they almost always do very well. Imagine if the rest of the industry was trying to 1-up Spider-man and GoW? Think about how great games would be if they all tried to top The Witcher 3. Rather than trying to see how many extra dimes fall out of our pockets.

Oh I agree. The downside is that publishers are out to make a profit. They will only do what makes them more money. So to motivate them to create games that allow us to "play instead of pay", we as gamers need to collectively be more selective. We need to choose games that "let us play" and not give into the temptation of "pay to win". Unfortunately, gamers are a broad base. Convincing everyone to make smarter purchases is what needs to happen, but that does not reach all ears.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The far bigger problem in the AAA landscape is that they aren't making good games anymore. AAA game design is so bad nowadays, everything is so same-y nothing is new and fresh nor is it even better. Why should I play some new multiplayer shooter (say the newest COD or BF or whatever) when there's a game from 5-10 years back that's just plain better? The reason I don't buy games with lootboxes or microtransactions is not because they have said bad things and I'm boycotting that, it's because the game just isn't good enough for me to want to play it. Shadow of Mordor made me completely sick of Arkam combat because the combat system isn't good enough for combat to be basically the whole game (whereas in Batman it was like a 3rd of the game) plus they didn't even try to change or add anything to the combat system, it was literally the same exact moves and specials from fucking Batman. I wasn't going to buy Shadow of War solely because I was sick of playing the same combat system for like 10 years, it wasn't the lootboxes that drove me away. Same thing is true for like 90% of the games in the AAA market; Rockstar makes the same game over and over again, Bethesda does as well, and if it's not a developer just sticking to their bread and butter, it's another dev trying to copy someone else's bread and butter. It's why every shooter feels so same-y trying to ape COD or now PUBG/Fortnite, why every open world game is so similar, why Ubisoft: The Game exists, and so on and so on. Why are people excited for say Anthem coming up? You already played it if you played Destiny or The Division.

In short, AAA needs to make good games again.

 

[Bad Jim]

The Tomb Raider reboot was wildly successful, selling 6 million copies. But then the publisher says that it was a "disappointment", again, huge budgeting fail.

Apparently, when pitching a game idea to major shareholders, it is more or less expected that you overestimate its profit potential to a ridiculous degree. Then the game becomes a "disappointment" in the sense that it did not meet that arbitrary estimate, but it could still be doing very well in real terms.

 

[Kwak]

When companies have stocks and shareholders they bring in people whose job it is to see that number value rise every year, or it is literally the worst thing ever and utter failure.
Just producing interesting games of good value is not enough, because that is not a guarantee of financial success - so they 'innovate' by coming up with ways to increase the spending of the captured customers. And even if they piss off people, there's still enough profit in the 'games as service' model coming in to justify continuing it.
Us older gamers are just holding on to what we knew from before, once we die off there'll be a generation of people who only know that model, are used to it and don't see anything particularly wrong with it. Then, as long as they continue to supply the drug of escapist fantasy, they can do whatever they want to keep that profit percentage going up to justify their yearly shareholders report. That's who all this is for.

 

[Hades]

I don't believe in the idea of a gaming crash. Its worth remembering that the gamers who track shady behavior and vocally complain about it are a small minority. I'd argue the vast amount of people don't even know a game has lootboxes when they buy it. If all hardcore gamers would boycott EA they would still be fine. EA monopolizes the sport games genre so casual games alone are enough to keep them afloat. Hardcore gamers fighting against lootboxes doesn't really harm them either because they are not the audience for it. If all hardcore gamers stop buying lootboxes then they still have the Whales who just keep buying them because they are not capable of stopping and are being exploited because of it.

 

[BrawlMan]

The far bigger problem in the AAA landscape is that they aren't making good games anymore. AAA game design is so bad nowadays, everything is so same-y nothing is new and fresh nor is it even better. Why should I play some new multiplayer shooter (say the newest COD or BF or whatever) when there's a game from 5-10 years back that's just plain better? The reason I don't buy games with lootboxes or microtransactions is not because they have said bad things and I'm boycotting that, it's because the game just isn't good enough for me to want to play it. Shadow of Mordor made me completely sick of Arkam combat because the combat system isn't good enough for combat to be basically the whole game (whereas in Batman it was like a 3rd of the game) plus they didn't even try to change or add anything to the combat system, it was literally the same exact moves and specials from fucking Batman. I wasn't going to buy Shadow of War solely because I was sick of playing the same combat system for like 10 years, it wasn't the lootboxes that drove me away. Same thing is true for like 90% of the games in the AAA market; Rockstar makes the same game over and over again, Bethesda does as well, and if it's not a developer just sticking to their bread and butter, it's another dev trying to copy someone else's bread and butter. It's why every shooter feels so same-y trying to ape COD or now PUBG/Fortnite, why every open world game is so similar, why Ubisoft: The Game exists, and so on and so on. Why are people excited for say Anthem coming up? You already played it if you played Destiny or The Division.

In short, AAA needs to make good games again.

For me it this, plus the micros, the DLC (either locked on disc or separated), lootboxes, and games aping COD, Assassin's Creed, or GTA. It's why I didn't get RD2, the sequel/prequel is just another over hyped open-world game. And most people are just waiting for the shitty multiplayer once it launches. I stick mostly with either niche games or mid-budget games you rarely see anymore. Most AAA games can fuck off for all I care.

As for the OP, look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8IwkdTW74w

Like most posters or this video says, they're barely minor setbacks for companies like EA or Activision.

 

[Siyano_v1legacy]

I almost to the point to leave AAA. Now that even beloved developer tried and failed to do something interesting rather than go a "safe" route and just squeeze us. and like CoCage is saying, AAA is trying more and more to take more money from us, with giving us granular content, loot box, repeated yearly launch, even pay to win/skip...

Its been years that now I am almost exclusive to Indi, from the "golden ages" in 2014-2015 or so, with Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, FTL, Mark of the Ninja and a lot of other, I think for me, unless a game offers more than just a hyped version of the last and try something new, I'm staying away from most AAA

 

[Lufia Erim]

Nope. Most people are stupid whales willing to shell out tons of money for shiny bits of nothing.

I remember when everyone was mad at Bethesda for Horse Armor. Still no lootboxes in Skyrim though.

To be fair most people aren't whales, but whales spend more to make up for it. You and I may spend only $5 on microtransaction for a new game, so to a Dev it wasn't worth it to program. But that one whale will spend $400+, so that makes up for you and I not being them.
They're addicts. Just like most people don't smoke, but smokers smoke enough to keep the tobacco industry open.

1 millions people spending 5$ is 5 million dollars. People blame whales, but i doubt there are enough whales that spend enough money to make them at fault.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Nope. Most people are stupid whales willing to shell out tons of money for shiny bits of nothing.

I remember when everyone was mad at Bethesda for Horse Armor. Still no lootboxes in Skyrim though.

To be fair most people aren't whales, but whales spend more to make up for it. You and I may spend only $5 on microtransaction for a new game, so to a Dev it wasn't worth it to program. But that one whale will spend $400+, so that makes up for you and I not being them.
They're addicts. Just like most people don't smoke, but smokers smoke enough to keep the tobacco industry open.

1 millions people spending 5$ is 5 million dollars. People blame whales, but i doubt there are enough whales that spend enough money to make them at fault.

It really used to be that whales were responsible for the majority of sales, at least on mobile. I've seen numbers from years past ranging from over 50% of all in-app purchases coming from 20% of players, to half of all mobile gaming money coming from less than 0,20% of customers (insane if true!).

But a more recent report [https://gamedaily.biz/article/238/report-whale-spenders-dont-make-or-break-f2p-games-anymore] seems to indicate the tides may be changing since according to a study, most of the income now comes from casual players. Although not everyone seems to agree with this assessment, stating the megasuccess of Fortnite is skewing the results.

It's a fairly interesting and none too long read, assuming you can stomach all the PR & marketing speak.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Yeah kinda, but if you stay away from EA, Activision, and Ubisoft you'll be able to circumvent most of the crappy, greedy, disgusting AAA shenanigens permeating the industry.

I mean, AAA is pretty much all I play, and with games like The Witcher 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Yakuza, Uncharted: Lost Legacy, God of War, Spider-Man, heck even Detroit: Become Human and Bloodborne, I can't say I've been wanting for good content. And that's not even mentioning the AAA games that are highly regarded that I don't really care for, like Mario Odyssey, Smash Bros. Ultimate, Nioh, and Nier: Automata.


For as much as the scum as increased this generation, AAA on a whole has been more enjoyable to me now than it was previous gen.

 

[Xprimentyl]

For as much as the scum as increased this generation, AAA on a whole has been more enjoyable to me now than it was previous gen.

Question, somewhat related to the diminishing returns of appreciable improvements from one console generation to next discussed in another recent thread, do you feel this way because it?s been genuinely better or relatively better? Last gen, great titles were like finding $5 bills tucked throughout a stack of $1s; today, the great ones are like finding $5 bills tucked throughout a stack of Monopoly money... in a trough-style urinal? at a strip club? and the strippers charge by the article of clothing they remove and the article of choice is random.