Recent VG Trends

[Hawki]

So, I've been thinking about this for awhile. Enough to make a post at least.

Following trends isn't a new thing, nor confined to one particular type of media. Videogames did it with platformers. Books had a YA craze following Harry Potter. After the MCU, everyone wanted their own cinematic universe. Seems to me that in most cases, what inevitably follows is that you have the original, a few products that manage to carve out a niche for themselves, and then everything falls into memory. However, if we look on the VG front, I can't help but wonder if the amount of time between trends is diminishing.

Like, I remember when everyone wanted to a WoW killer. I remember when MMS became a template because of Modern Warfare. I remember the MOBA craze. However, in recent years...is it just me, or did things change?

Like, Overwatch releases in 2016. While it takes inspiration from TF2, suddenly everyone wanted their hero shooter. I would like to remind you that 2016 is three years ago, and we're barely into 2019 at that. In the space of those few years...what happened? Battleborn was released and was forgotten. Lawbreakers was released and shut down. Battlecry never released at all. Paladins managed to carve out a small niche for itself, but that was it. Nowadays, no-one talks about hero shooters anymore, in part because the landscape has settled, in part because we've got new trends to follow. Again, that's less than three years. In contrast, the "MOBA craze" lasted at least a decade, depending on whether you cite Dota 1 or LoL as the beginning of said craze.

So what's happening now? Well, now, everyone wants the gravy train of battle royale or looter shooters, which brings me to the second part of this ramble (yes, this is me effectively combining two subjects into a single thread). Like, I get why people want battle royale stuff, because Fortnite shows that it can sell, and can be well regarded (like, grumbling aside, Fortnite seems to be fairly popular all things considered). It's also a genre that seems to be following the pattern of "top dog, second dog, maybe a third dog, all the rest," with Apex Legends. Plus, there's the proliferation of battle royale modes in other games, such as Black Ops IV and soon, Battlefield V. So, I get that BR is now "the next big thing," but "hero shooters" were the next big thing only a few years ago.

And then there's looter shooters. And I'm left to ask, is there any actual titan of the genre here? Borderlands 1/2 are well regarded in of themselves, but they feel segregated from the likes of Destiny 1/2, Division 1/2, Fallout 76, and Anthem. It seems that every time one of these games is brought up, the response is generally negative, even if they have their own fanbases. When I mentioned the other genres, each of them had their own "top dog," or at least, some game that became the template. But with looter shooters, it seems that everyone is trying to copy a trend that so many people are disgruntled with.

I dunno. It occurs to me that of the genres I listed, almost all of them are multiplayer-centric, and so few of them are of interest to me (in terms of mechanics), but anyway, just wanted to bring it up - basically, trends seem to be coming and going faster, and that looter shooters seem to be a case of people trying to follow a leader without knowing who the leader is.

 

[Squilookle]

Not really sure what discussion you're driving at here. Are you talking about trend timeframes? Or commenting on how Hero Shooters didn't get enough time in the sun? You realise Apex Legends is a bona-fide hero shooter, right? probably why it's so popular- combining the runaway success of PUBG and Fortnite's Battle Royale with the runaway success of TF2 and Overwatch's roster of varied characters.

 

[Hawki]

Not really sure what discussion you're driving at here. Are you talking about trend timeframes? Or commenting on how Hero Shooters didn't get enough time in the sun? You realise Apex Legends is a bona-fide hero shooter, right? probably why it's so popular- combining the runaway success of PUBG and Fortnite's Battle Royale with the runaway success of TF2 and Overwatch's roster of varied characters.

I didn't think AL counted as a hero shooter - it may take HS elements, but it's a BR primarily as far as I can tell.

But I guess if I wanted to boil it down as much as possible, questions would be:

-Are trends coming and going faster?

-What's driving the looter shooter trend when it seems that every looter shooter these days is in the spotlight for the wrong reasons (by extension, does it lack a clear leader in the genre?)?

 

[Lufia Erim]

Did you watch Jim Sterlings video today? lol

Anyways, there is a simple reasoning to following trends.

a) It's where most of the players are, thus where most of the money is.

b) If you do manage to dethrone the current top dog, everyone will come to your game. Basically it's a high risk, ( very) high reward gamble. The potential for massive gains are there.

Now hindsight is 20/20 i'm sure every failed Mmo and every failed trend chaser, wish they had gone in a different direction.

Personally,i think the Game industry is large enough to warrant having various of games in various genres. And e shoulf encourage diversity rather than trend chasing.

Do take in consideration that games take years to make. Take battleborn and Overwatch for example. They were both being developed without the other one knowing for quite some time. Unfortunately they were scheduled to be released at roughly the same time. One by Blizzard the other by gearbox. Most likely neither of them knew the other existed. And well, we all know who won that fight ( Seriously though, never go head to head with blizzard, you'll never win).

 

[meiam]

Not really sure what discussion you're driving at here. Are you talking about trend timeframes? Or commenting on how Hero Shooters didn't get enough time in the sun? You realise Apex Legends is a bona-fide hero shooter, right? probably why it's so popular- combining the runaway success of PUBG and Fortnite's Battle Royale with the runaway success of TF2 and Overwatch's roster of varied characters.

I didn't think AL counted as a hero shooter - it may take HS elements, but it's a BR primarily as far as I can tell.

I don't see how it's not a hero shooter, you pick a unique hero, you shoot target. Sure it's game mode is battle royal, but that's just a game mode. It sits in between fortnite and overwatch.

Trend aren't neatly delineated into there own little box, they blend into each others. Overwatch owns a lot to moba, where the concept of hero with unique stats/ability/ultimate was first pushed. But those idea come from warcraft 3, a RTS, that's how it sets itself apart from the crowd at the time.

The next trend to come along will most likely incorporate element of battle royal and hero but put a new interesting twist on it.

As much as I laugh at trend follower, I have to say I didn't see apex legend becoming this popular, and fortnite itself was also following the trend of player unknown battle ground (although fortnite popularity didn't surprise me the way apex legend did). So you can't really say following trend is a bad idea, but you need to throw in your own twist for it to be worth it, pure copy don't work. Company are learning that to ride a wave you need to be able to make a product quickly while the wave is still there, fortnite was able to be release quickly because it was made from an already build game that was in beta at the time. I'm sure apex legend is also build from some sort of project that was already in development around the time player unknown was release and starting making wave. But Anthem and Fallout 76 tried to build brand new game which set there release date so far away from when there trend were relevant that they just didn't have an audience anymore (although F76 was build from F4, but bethesda aren't know for there speedy development cycle).

Trend work by network effect, most people don't like those games that much, but they want to be part of the buzz at the moment, the game just has to be reasonably good that even people who aren't that much into it will still enjoy themselves. But over time fatigue set in and they start to look for something else, they still want to play what everybody else is playing, just something fresh. So things can change very quickly, because as soon as buzz build up around something else everybody who just follow trend will jump ship. This is made all the easier with F2P distribution, it's easy to jump in since there's no barrier to entry and if it turn out to suck people can leave quickly, they don't feel like they need to get there money worth.

Looter shooter are getting pushed at the moment because there easy to add micro transaction to and there addictive so you can keep the player base busy with relatively little work. Look at it this way, even if a purely single player Anthem would have been more popular player would have bough it once and that would have been all the revenue EA would have seen. Now if EA only get 50% of the player base, if those stick around longer they'll end up spending more money trough small microtransanction and DLC/expansion. Long running project like these are also desirable because they constantly pay out small sum of money, whereas big game pay out almost all at once and can leave a studio financially weak between release. They can also work just fine, warframe as been going on for quite a long time and must have made a pretty big amount of money by now.

 

[Hawki]

Did you watch Jim Sterlings video today? lol

No. Don't watch much of Sterling TBH.

Anyways, there is a simple reasoning to following trends.

a) It's where most of the players are, thus where most of the money is.

b) If you do manage to dethrone the current top dog, everyone will come to your game. Basically it's a high risk, ( very) high reward gamble. The potential for massive gains are there.

I know how trends work. Question is whether trends are getting faster (and also what exactly sparked the looter shooter trend, because it appears to lack a key leader in the genre, whereas almost every other trend has a clear point of origin).

Personally,i think the Game industry is large enough to warrant having various of games in various genres. And e shoulf encourage diversity rather than trend chasing.

Well, yeah, but trends keep coming and going.

Seriously though, never go head to head with blizzard, you'll never win).

Given the state of Blizzard right now, not sure if that's true anymore.

Looter shooter are getting pushed at the moment because there easy to add micro transaction to and there addictive so you can keep the player base busy with relatively little work. Look at it this way, even if a purely single player Anthem would have been more popular player would have bough it once and that would have been all the revenue EA would have seen. Now if EA only get 50% of the player base, if those stick around longer they'll end up spending more money trough small microtransanction and DLC/expansion. Long running project like these are also desirable because they constantly pay out small sum of money, whereas big game pay out almost all at once and can leave a studio financially weak between release. They can also work just fine, warframe as been going on for quite a long time and must have made a pretty big amount of money by now.

That's...a good explanation actually.

Kinda depressing, if one considers looter shooters as having roots in ARPGs, where loot had to be earnt, not bought...

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Did you watch Jim Sterlings video today? lol

No. Don't watch much of Sterling TBH.

When he's not doing is horrific, cringepocolypse skits and voices he can have some genuinely interesting insights and ideas into the gaming industry.

 

[Squilookle]

I didn't think AL counted as a hero shooter - it may take HS elements, but it's a BR primarily as far as I can tell.

If a hero shooter can be defined as a multiplayer game that involves a named character roster, with each character having powerups/abilities exclusive to that character only, designed around giving a team/squad/side maximum advantage by utilising the right balance of characters to cover each one's weaknesses, then I'd say Apex is most definitely a hero shooter.

Did you watch Jim Sterlings video today? lol

No. Don't watch much of Sterling TBH.

When he's not doing is horrific, cringepocolypse skits and voices he can have some genuinely interesting insights and ideas into the gaming industry.

I honestly hated him when he was here on the Escapist, but I've since been completely swung around on him. Aside from the whiny voice he uses to say 'Triple A games' and when quoting those within it, his observations seem solid and his points have real weight to them.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

Overwatch just took some pre-existing mechanics and then divvied them so you were only responsible for one gun and one ability. All that stuff you could do in 1999, especially with mods, and you were responsible for all of them. The only innovation is fps MOBA, and after that there isn't anything new or interesting.

MOBA has a lot to innovate, except nobody truly wanted it. MOBAs are all heavily derivative of DOTA, all trying to fix something. If the term "Doom-clone" was anything like a DOTA-clone, a Doom-clone would be Doom except you run twice as fast, have more projectile weapons, and the maps are the same but mirrored in the x-direction.

You can come up with a list containing 15 years worth of studying the design flaws, but when you show it to a MOBA player, they're going to say that things like clunky UI, inconsistencies, to straight-up bugs add complexity, or fixing core flaws would dumb it down. Things that makes the game miserable for the other team, like spawn killing, were the spoils of war. Players simply don't want the game they spent 1000 hours on turned upside down.

The trend lasted because it took years for people to realize that if they were bad at one MOBA game, they were bad at all of them. I mean, they are practically all the same. Once people stopped shuffling around and stuck to one or simply quit, that was the end of the MOBA trend.

Loot shooters were never good. Not even game journalists like them, and that's a pretty low bar. They are there for the whales.

 

[BrawlMan]

I didn't think AL counted as a hero shooter - it may take HS elements, but it's a BR primarily as far as I can tell.

If a hero shooter can be defined as a multiplayer game that involves a named character roster, with each character having powerups/abilities exclusive to that character only, designed around giving a team/squad/side maximum advantage by utilising the right balance of characters to cover each one's weaknesses, then I'd say Apex is most definitely a hero shooter.

Did you watch Jim Sterlings video today? lol

No. Don't watch much of Sterling TBH.

When he's not doing is horrific, cringepocolypse skits and voices he can have some genuinely interesting insights and ideas into the gaming industry.

I honestly hated him when he was here on the Escapist, but I've since been completely swung around on him. Aside from the whiny voice he uses to say 'Triple A games' and when quoting those within it, his observations seem solid and his points have real weight to them.

I actually had a dislike for Jim back when he was on the Destructoid. His attitude shift and him learning from his mistakes helped eased in to liking and respecting him.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Loot shooters were never good. Not even game journalists like them, and that's a pretty low bar. They are there for the whales.

Yeah, I don't think looter shooters ever were the best selling games or highest player-base (probably every COD release even now still sells more than a looter shooter when the MMS trend is supposedly over). It's just that they make more money per player than other genres. The whole "games as a service" thing is basically all about making money at the cost of selling less games.

 

[Hawki]

Did you watch Jim Sterlings video today? lol

No. Don't watch much of Sterling TBH.

When he's not doing is horrific, cringepocolypse skits and voices he can have some genuinely interesting insights and ideas into the gaming industry.

It?s too bad, since chances are most people would be taking take more of them seriously if it wasn?t for them.

 

[CritialGaming]

Trends always had quick turn arounds. Very few games stay in the limelight for very long, especially in regards to the AAA-space. I think the reason why we are seeing so much of the BR and looter shooter games, is that these publishers have figured out how to make these games fit the best into their "live-service" model.

To the major publishers, the single player experience is basically dead. Very few high quality single player experiences are coming from the Activisions, and the EA's of the world. Because they are so driven by their inflated stock prices, they need to have recurring revenue systems in everything and it's harder to sell that stuff in single player experiences. Ubisoft seems to have found some partial success in doing it, but everyone gives them shit for it. There isn't a single review of AC: Odyssey that doesn't mention an irritation with the microtransaction system grind. Shadow of War got the same shit, which ultimately led to them rebalancing the game and removing all real money purchases from the game.

But the reason why Ubisoft does it and most gets away with it, is that the games they make are now MASSIVE. Odyssey is crazy big, Far Cry 5 is the biggest one I can remember, Wildlands was also huge. It gives these games lasting power to the players. The only reason why the live-service is multiplayer focus is because they want you to spend as much time in the game as possible. There longer a player is in your game, the more and more likely they become to spending some extra change on it. That's why every Ubisoft game has to big gigantic, because the more you play, the more likely you'll be to spend especially if the grind is there.

That being said, I think the biggest reason the Hero Shooter didn't stick around as long as you might have thought, is because EA fucked up the Lootbox model. So now people are scrambling to find other ways to deal with monetization in the game. Looter games have a lot of opportunity to milk people for extra cash, and they can hide it better than lootboxes. Either by adding timers to gear (for example you get a legendary item that sits in your inventory for a period of time unless you pay a dollar to unlock it's use right away, or the item itself is on a timer that eventually causes the item to delete itself from your inventory unless you pay to make it permanent), gating off content behind upcoming dlc's (special dungeons you can stick better loot inside which forces your player base to pay if they wanna get the newer cooler shit), and much much more.

 

[CaitSeith]

Call of Duty and Battlefield were such money-makers that business-minded people tried to find which aspect was the source of their success and apply it to their games; but no one managed to dethrone them. Currently no specific IP occupies their place in such monolithic fashion. This isn't the first time a trend is varied in genre, but not in concept. Remember the trend for motion controllers? Not only there was a flood of motion games; also the same way every other FPS had to have a multiplayer mode because of MW, it seemed that every other game had to have at least some motion controller feature (or voice command in the XBox 360)

EDIT: Also so many people make videos about Fortnite that it keeps staying as the top dog of Battle Royale games.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I think perhaps the trends are coming and going faster because the generation that grew up in the age of quickly and easily disposable trends is becoming a more substantial piece of the pie. They?re used to industry leaders and their half dozen clones sitting on the shelf together and having their attention fought for. They?re used to games essentially as a disposable pastime to be quickly replaced with the latest and greatest (well, mostly ?latest? nowadays.) They don?t expect anything to last very long; hell 90% have the attention span of a fruit fly on speed, why would anybody focus on trying to be standout in any specific way for any significant amount of time when the audience will have moved on to something else before they?ve polished their same-y turd to a dull shine? Sad thing is, their instant gratification is to the exhaustion of the industry?

Point in case: Tomorrow, I will have been with my girlfriend for 3 years, so I?ve seen how much her 14-year-old son loves his Xbox, and I?ve seen how the ?trends? affect him and his buddies. They don?t. In the past three years, I can?t think of a single game he and his friends played religiously for longer than? maybe 3 weeks? I?ve seen him play a single-player game? maybe a dozen times? And that?s not to say it was a dozen different SP games either. He tried Fallout 4; I?d bought it right before I met his mom, and gave it to him since I wasn?t playing it; that lasted literally a day. These kids aren?t interested in longevity or depth or variety; they?re interested in whatever is bright and flashy now to hold them over to what?ll be bright and flashy tomorrow, and they?re happy with that; they don?t know/aren?t will to demand anything more, and we, those shoulders upon which their beloved hobby was built, suffer for it.