This is the shittiest upcoming Holiday Season in the history of gaming.

[schild]

Discuss. Prove me wrong.

Last year was pretty bad though.

[rk47]

This salvaged 2014 for me.

[Velorath]

Can't prove you wrong. If it's any consolation though, there's some potentially good stuff in Q1 barring any further delays including The Order: 1886, Evolve, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, GTA V for the PC for those who aren't console gamers, and Dying Light depending on what your level of optimism is for that.

I've got Dragon Age 3 to keep me busy for a while at least, and I'm very grudgingly picking up the new Smash Bros. for when I have friends over even though I have no love for the series myself.

[Nebu]

[Kail]

I dunno, there's a lot I'm looking forward to seeing on sale.
-Shadows of Mordor looks pretty awesome
-Styx is interesting to me, though I don't think that's a sentiment a lot of people share, ditto the new Sherlock Holmes game
-Alien: Isolation is supposed to be pretty good, I heard (except for the ending, apparently)
-Civilization: Beyond Urf is ideal sale fodder, in that it looks like an interesting repaint of a fun game but I don't want to pay $50 for it
-Endless Legend looks like it might be fun, too
-Wolfenstein NWO looks fun, too
-Shadowrun Dragonfall is pretty sweet
-Arguably the best pigeon based dating simulator of all time has finally landed on Steam
-Secret of the Magic Crystals horse coloring book

Plus a bunch of stuff for consoles (Smash Bros, Destiny, that kind of thing).  Doesn't look TOO bad to me.

[Cyrrex]

I imagine I will pick up Dragon Age 3 at some point, so there's that.  I am also theoretically interested in the GTA5 re-release, but I cannot figure out what system to get it for or whether I will actually play it.  And Bloodbourne, which is what, Demon Souls part deux?  I still have not finished Dark Souls 1, or even cracked open Dark Souls 2.  And then there is that Grimlock game that Ironwood and Jeff Kelly made sound interesting that I am hoping will go on a Steam Sale.

I other words, that is already way too much.  I already have more on my plate than I can manage to get through.

[satael]

The M&B Vikings might salvage the end of the year for me if it turns out to be great. It has the potential since it's from the makers of Brytenwalda mod in cooperation with Taleworlds so they might have actually improved on things that suffered from the limitations of modding M&B (though I may be putting too much hope into it).

I also bought Dragon Age though my hopes for it are somewhat more muted (which is kind of sad when you remember that Vikings is just a dlc from a modding group and made for an aged game)

[schild]

I dunno, there's a lot I'm looking forward to seeing on sale.
-Shadows of Mordor looks pretty awesome
-Styx is interesting to me, though I don't think that's a sentiment a lot of people share, ditto the new Sherlock Holmes game
-Alien: Isolation is supposed to be pretty good, I heard (except for the ending, apparently)
-Civilization: Beyond Urf is ideal sale fodder, in that it looks like an interesting repaint of a fun game but I don't want to pay $50 for it
-Endless Legend looks like it might be fun, too
-Wolfenstein NWO looks fun, too
-Shadowrun Dragonfall is pretty sweet
-Arguably the best pigeon based dating simulator of all time has finally landed on Steam
-Secret of the Magic Crystals horse coloring book

Plus a bunch of stuff for consoles (Smash Bros, Destiny, that kind of thing).  Doesn't look TOO bad to me.

Excitement for sales means exactly what I'm saying. This season fucking blows.

[Jeff Kelly]

All I see is lots of broken as shit AAA titles getting released for $70 (AC Unity), Games that have forgone even the pretense of a "story" or actual fun gameplay for a "immersive online experience" (Destiny, Titanfall, Evolve), micro transactions (e.g.AC Unity, Dragon Age 3), Games that still have issues even after months/years (Battlefield 4, Driveclub). Even experienced companies fucking up online (Blizzard's WoD launch and constant 5000+ queues). Companies moving single player games to require always online (Sim City, Elite Dangerous) just making the experience shittier but not adding value.

Lots and lots of "we make no pretense that this is anything more than video poker" free to play shit. Also lots and lots of "hasn't everything been better twenty years ago" retro titles "inspired" by 8 and 16 bit classics and indie titles exploring everything except actual gameplay.

Which is nice and all but if everything is now either a rehash of a game I've already played twenty years ago or a soul and lifeless "online experience" designed to extract the maximum amount of money out of me while exposing me to the absolute filth and low life scum that is the online player base I could just play Dota or WOW instead.
I've had more fun playing Mario 3D World, Mario Kart and Legend of Grimrock 2 than almost anything elapse I've played this year and that fact makes me sad.

[Velorath]

Not entirely sure how Evolve forgoes fun gameplay. Outside of the small thread here I've heard almost nothing but good things about it. Also not sure what Dragon Age has to do with microtransactions. I guess you could be talking about multiplayer, but I never once felt like I needed to spend money in ME3's multiplayer and I currently don't expect this to be any different.

[Jeff Kelly]

Doing the same five maps over and over and over again just for the illusion of progression while preteen scumbags scream insults at me over voice chat  is not what I would consider to be fun.

[schild]

I was really hoping to get linked to some weird not AAA shit in this thread that might appeal to me.

Alas. 2014 really is that shitty for gaming.

[Jeff Kelly]

I can't think of much really. Most of the stuff I've played is actually from 2013. Even the stuff that is hot right now or is getting a release on PS4/XB 1 is just re-releases of stuff from one or two years ago (Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, etc)

Captain Toad and Bayonetta 2 are probably the only new and somewhat interesting releases coming up, which says a lot really abou the current state of affairs.

[Velorath]

I was really hoping to get linked to some weird not AAA shit in this thread that might appeal to me.

Alas. 2014 really is that shitty for gaming.

Well, there's the possibility that Set 2 of Hex actually releases when they're saying, not that it will do you much good while you're on vacation.

[apocrypha]

I will be picking up Shadows of Mordor and Alien: Isolation but only when they're really discounted (75% is my general target these days). I'm also very interested in Bloodbourne but I don't have a PS4 nor any intention of buying one.

But I'm only playing sandbox games these days, and that's not a field that's aggressively developed for, so I don't expect game release schedules to interest me much :)

[tmp]

This salvaged 2014 for me.

... that looks suspiciously like it could be some giant robot team management harem game. What is it?

[Jeff Kelly]

Part of this comes from my total inability to understand what makes repetitive gameplay interesting. Ever since LAN networking became a thing I could not understand why people would play the same 5 deathmatch maps over and over for days on end. I could get that playing competitively is fun for some but after running the same level for an hour I get so utterly bored that even the fact that I'm playing other people is no longer fun or interesting to me.

Games have gotten much better at that though. I've played WOW for years and even though it's the same repetitive style of gaming it's much better at hiding that. Games are also much better at making you play even though you just don't want to these days and that's what I find scary. The sentiment I always hear when people talk about Destiny is that people really don't know why they are still playing the game even though it stopped being fun long ago. DotA is the same. Hell I stopped playing WOW long ago because I did ask me the same question eventually.

This is where games are headed though. Destiny, Titanfall, Evolve, they are all modelled after DotA or League of Legends style competitive online games that are 'addicting' in a real sense and make people spend hundreds of hours playing the same arenas over again and to spend money on microtransactions. It's basically the "Insert Coin" of a post-arcade world. Even anually released series are treating single player more and more as an afterthought and focus more on 'engaging online experiences' which is simply marketing doublespeak for "making sure that our playerbase is playing for as long as we can make them and is still spending money on this game a year from now"

Meanwhile the mobile gaming scene has dropped the pretense of making anything resembling a game in the first place long ago and blatantly focus on the iOS and Android versions of "gambling addiction the game" (fun for the whole family, as long as your CC is chargeable). If this ever gets regulated like casino gambling the resulting market crash will be heard from the next solar system over.

The problem is that companies are now focusing exclusively on how much playtime and money they can extract from their player base instead of gameplay and it shows. Half the GDC talks are now business models and customer retention strategies. I'd compare it to the heyday of arcades right before consoles made that market obsolete pretty much overnight and just how much bullshit companies pulled just to get people to insert as much money into those cabinets as they could.

Add to that the ever increasing budgets and teams for AAA titles (ten dev teams worked on AC: Unity over the course of its development and GTA now has a larger dev budget than most tech companies allocate on R&D for a project) and you get the 2014 crop of new titles. Utterly conservative, devoid of any innovation, myopically focused on online, customer retention and the business model attached to the franchise and also pretty lacklustre if you take the budgets they have into consideration.

[Jeff Kelly]

If just one of those > $300 millon multi year "betting my company on Assassins of Duty 5" crashes and burns (and one will eventually) the resulting upheaval will be interesting to see. It might even take a large publisher like Ubisoft down in its wake.

[Samprimary]

I have wondered why this year isn't yet crash and burn mode for the industry.

Of course, I wondered the same last year. It honestly seems like it's due for that contraction.

I guess it's sort of like the movie industry, where the mechanisms of a collapse are practically unavoidably in place (dvd markets imploding, etc), but the machine keeps lumbering on, bolstered by asinine shit.

[Malakili]

Part of this comes from my total inability to understand what makes repetitive gameplay interesting. Ever since LAN networking became a thing I could not understand why people would play the same 5 deathmatch maps over and over for days on end. I could get that playing competitively is fun for some but after running the same level for an hour I get so utterly bored that even the fact that I'm playing other people is no longer fun or interesting to me.

Basketball always uses the same court and people go play pick up games in the park or at YMCA or whatever every day/week for years on end.

I agree with a lot of the rest.  Making good games isn't really the focus of the gaming industry anymore for the most part.  Even Valve, who has managed to do it better than anyone else with DOTA 2 style free to play (pay for cosmetic items only), still makes me nervous with the "we are offering services" kind of talk.  But I rarely get excited for any game anymore.  I've definitely been moving back towards table top games lately, where at least I can go hang out with some people at my LGS.

I haven't been legitimately excited about a game release very frequently lately and nothing coming up looks like it will change that trend.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, that was a good read Jeff and I agree with it, but you can't really slate people who enjoy the repetitive stuff, since when you're playing against people, every game has the potential to be different.  In my younger days, I loved deathmatch and was addicted to Doom/Quake/Unreal et al, so I get WHY people love it.  Even today, the SC and LOL and other stuff isn't my cup of tea, but I GET it at least.  And I can never ever quit a good game of Chess with a new person, just in case.

However, it really, really is an excuse for development laziness and that I have no time for.


This thread is mega depressing though, since it's so very true.  There's fuck all out, or even on the horizon, that's really interesting.

[Jeff Kelly]

I just wanted to lead into my rant with why I don't like many of the games that are hot right now. Just to say that part of my disinterest is because those games aren't fun to me. I get why other people might like them it's just that I don't. It shouldn't sound absolute like "all games today are shit". It's about that too, but games have changed in a way that makes it so I like them less and less for personal reasons too.

I appreciate the comparisons to other games but even there I'll probably play a few games and then do something else. I like a great game of chess or basketball but I probably won't play anything - including Chess or Basketball - continuously for hours on end if it's to repetitive. My obsession with WOW was to a large part not because I particularly liked the repetitive gameplay but because the game is really really good in hooking you into playing the same shit day after day. I don't know if that was on purpose or by accident but the gameplay is addicting in a real sense

I get why other people like it and I don't want it to sound like I diss them.

[Fabricated]

I think gamers as an audience would be fine with far less sprawling experiences with these sandbox titles if publishers were willing to try it.

A lot of the lamest games released this year (like Watch Dogs) gave me the impression that if you had the same team and half the budget, you could've gotten the kind of experience everyone wanted just by scaling it down and gamers wouldn't have complained that it wasn't some sprawling gigantic epic.

Sleeping Dogs proved this; they didn't feel compelled nor did they have the budget to add in a gigantic pointless nature area with rice paddies and forests and shit to drive through. It was supposed to be Hong Kong and they made a smaller version of Hong Kong because that setting is plenty good enough on its own. They didn't need a GTA-sized map.

[Jeff Kelly]

What I've noticed though is that a lot of the talk about making games has shifted from how to make fun and engaging games to how to engage the player for as long as possible. Don't get me wrong games have been a billion dollar industry for a long time and I'm not saying that everything was better when I was young because that would be naive. Companies always looked for a way to make a quick buck.

Budgets got so big though that one game can make or break your company and much of the talk as a consequence of this is now about 'player engagement' and 'business models', 'retention strategies' and 'monetarization'. Which is really just an euphemism for getting the most money out of players in addition to the $60 for the game. What we see now is gameplay loops being optimized for 'maximum engagement' and not necessarily maximum fun.

Which - taken to its extreme - is basically the same as what casinos and gambling venues do in the design of their machines.

[Jeff Kelly]

GTA V is an achievement in game development. That they could get that sort of performance out of basicaly ten year old hardware is amazing and puts the crappy AC: Unity even more into context though.

It's a wasted effort though because the game part is pretty mediocre and most of that world is devoid of content. Why put so much effort in an open world when you can't be arsed or lack the resources to put content in. I feel like that is a problem for most open world games today. Which wastes a lot of allocated budget.

[Maven]

It's already been covered in responses to Jeff, but re: repetitive gameplay, when you mentioned people playing the same map, I immediately thought of poker as well as the experience of flow & mastery. Poker in particular is an extremely repetitive, body-withering experience, but it keeps people interested because of its mechanical and psychological complexity and the variety of personality and play styles you get.

[Ironwood]

What I've noticed though is that a lot of the talk about making games has shifted from how to make fun and engaging games to how to engage the player for as long as possible.

Yup.  Not a great idea that.

[Khaldun]

It's not that surprising that folks here are sort of incapable of considering the possibility that they're part of the problem.

I mean, if I were a developer and someone handed me a task sheet that said, "Make a game that Schild thinks is really great, but don't lose money for the company doing it", I might just save time and go out back and eat a gunshot in the mouth instead.

We're basically like film buffs who've been watching tons of releases since 1960, thought that the great serious films of the early 1970s were the best time ever not only because the films were great but because the mass audience liked them too, and have been jaded and annoyed and burnt-out long since about movies.

We've seen it all with games, and so we're both incapable of understanding how some games look and play to people who haven't played a zillion of them and we're unable to just enjoy stuff on its own terms when it comes to us--our settings are tuned to "extreme hypercritical" about everything except ourselves.

Look, right now, here's what I see when I can step back a little:

a) More independent games in general than 5, 6, 7 or so years ago, when AAA titles were swamping everything and the PC looked to be dying as a platform. Ok, so many of them are kind of crappy, but some are great. Ethan Crane, This War of Mine, Kerbal Space Program, Sir You Are Being Hunted, etc. So ok, some are less than they could be, but there are a lot of good ideas and interesting work in many of them.
b) More sandbox than 5, 6, 7 years ago. Maybe not as much as what some of us, including me, want, but much more, largely due to the success of Minecraft and the desire of a few developers to make a version of Dwarf Fortress that doesn't make you want to stab your eyes out with a fork.
c) Some fun retro games along with a lot of crappy ones. Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin. When the good ones have problems or shortcomings, even the problems are kind of entertainingly retro.
d) The occasional AAA game that does something new or that's so well put together that it's distinctive. Shadows of Mordor and probably for me at least Dragon Age 3 and maybe the new M&B, though I'm not sure that counts as AAA. Or a good sequel, like Dark Souls 2. So? How often have there been years with 5+ distinctively great AAA titles that sustain lots of gameplay and don't leave you feeling vaguely dirty afterwards for the amount of time you wasted on repetitive subpar gaming experiences? Probably the last time there was such a year, it was a year that was a long time ago when you hadn't played the shit out of games as a cultural form.

Getting old is a bitch in general, but when it leads to a kind of cantankerous bitchiness about everything it gets old real fast in a very different sense of the word. Nobody wants to hang around while people hatewatch and hateplay everything that they come across except other folks who enjoy doing the same.

[Bunk]

I'm pretty much counting on Dragon Age 3 to be my gaming savior of the season. GTA V will get picked up eventually just because I didn't get around to finishing it on 360 and I think the first person approach might be really fun.
Probably not in most people here's wheel houses, but I'm actually looking forward to 2k's WWE game coming out - it's the first one done for next gen machines and the first real "upgrade" to the series in years.

Other than that... Next thing I see coming that I care about is probably SR4:Gat out of Hell in January?

[Falconeer]

My Steam wish list has 133 games and there's probably only 5 AAA titles in there. If this is the thread where we complain about the shortcomings of the AAA industry, sign me in. Otherwise, I'll go back to my 128 artsy indie games and be happy with it. There's a lot of stuff I wanna play and the only part that sucks is that my holidays aren't long enough for all of it.

Anyway, without going too much into obscure territories, and trying to stay away from early accesses, here's what I am looking forward to buy in the next couple of months:

- Dying Light
- Mount & Blade Vikings
- This War of Mine
- Elite Dangerous
- Hotline Miami 2
- The Crew
- and Dragon Age 3, because I enjoy a big huge trash show from time to time.

I would have said Evolve but after trying it I have no intention of getting it. And I am not counting Bloodbourne cause it comes out in March, so not exactly Holiday season.

Anyway, I think there's a lot of good games out there. Not sure about "GREAT", but there's a lot of good games. The problem is that we are less excitable, less entusastic, less passioante about it. That's what jaded means, and at the same time we have seen everything, we have played everything, of cours it all feels like more of the same. We'd love for designers to come up with something new, really new, and on top of that amazingly executed, but that isn't so easy especially because sometimes in a company they have (the ideas) or the other (the polish) but not both. We played so many games, it's not easy now to make us raise an eyebrow. And Schild's eyebrows in particular, they hardly ever twitch (but when they do, it's time to reach for the wallet).


One last word about competitive games. As someone else said, you don't quit playing football or hockey because the field looks always the same, or chess because the board is always black and white. When it comes to competing directly versus other humans, no game plays the same and it's easier to understand this if you have ever been in sports. WoW is certainly not good at hiding repetition, it just happens to be your favourite flavour of repetition. Sports (and eSports) are not repetitive as every engagement is always and inevitable unpredictable while at the same time fair, which is the catch. But for the same reason, as happy as I am that there are some great PvP games (World of Tanks, Smite, LoL, Dota, Counterstrike, Team Fortress, MechWarrior, PES), I agree that the proliferation (and the surplus of it) is part of the problem as developers and publishers see an easy opportunity to make money without risking too much, and invest less and less in more interesting projects.

[Jeff Kelly]

I've waited for someone to bring that old familiar friend 'you're all just a bunch of jaded fucks' to the discussion and I was not disappointed. You mention movies. Interestingly enough movies and games share some of the issues.

Do you know why Peter Jackson split the Hobbit into three movies, why they usually work on a second or third installment of a franchise well before the first one is in cinemas and why Marvel just announced a fuckton of Superhero movies the last of which releases in 2020? It's because to make a current effects heavy blockbuster work financially you'll have to split the cost and the risk over two to three films if you don't want one movie to potentially tank your whole business. You're also only attracting enough investment capital if you can guarantee a return on the $200 million+ budget of a blockbuster. That's why blockbuster movies tend to be so conservative nowadays.

Budgets have also gotten so big due to production values (and lots of intermediates that add no value but only cost) that independent productions get more and more 'priced out' of being made at all. A sub $10 million dollar film won't even get to run at festivals and will therefore not get into distribution and no one hands a rookie with a great idea a appropriate budget to waste it on something 'innovative'. A similar trend can also be seen in smaller games that now tend to employ teams of > 20 people and need budgets that reflect that. Bastion was made by a team of maybe five people and still probably cost a six figure sum to make, the Transistor team was probably closer to twenty. That's a budget you'll need a publisher for and they want to see some sort of return on invest so good luck being too innovative.

There the comparison ends. AAA games and blockbuster movies may have similar budgets but The Avengers has a potential audience that is magnitudes higher so it's easier to justify a >$20 million budget on a smaller title that will make that money back in ticket sales or DVD/streaming fees eventually while the potential market for $60 games is much smaller. That said even the movie business needs to nickel and dime you with concession stand fees, higher prices for 3d movies and charging you again if you want to own it on DVD/Blu Ray or digitally.

There's also televison that has become sort of a creative haven for creatives fed up by the movie business and that can afford risky ventures easier due to the different business models.

I expect the age of indie development to end soon though as budgets increase overall. As the marketplace for indie titles gets more crowded production values become important as a way to differentiate yourself (and justify your budget).

[Jeff Kelly]

I wouldn't have thought that a statement about why I personally dislike certain games (I as in me as in not everybody) would get me so much flack 

[Malakili]

. But for the same reason, as happy as I am that there are some great PvP games (World of Tanks, Smite, LoL, Dota, Counterstrike, Team Fortress, MechWarrior, PES), I agree that the proliferation (and the surplus of it) is part of the problem as developers and publishers see an easy opportunity to make money without risking too much, and invest less and less in more interesting projects.

The other thing is that competitive games are actually really hard to make good for like, hours 50+.  Pretty much any new game can be kind of intriguing and interesting for a while.  It often takes a while before you realize - oh wait, the balance in this game is terrible and because I was new I didn't notice.  Too bad I already spent 30 bucks on some of the free to play stuff.

There is a VERY short list of actually good competitive games.

[Paelos]

DA3 made me install Origin, which says something about my expectations of the game if I've finally given up fighting against that shitty delivery system.

Farcry 4 is coming out, and I expect that to be complete garbage given what Ubisoft is pulling lately with PC games.

The guys that did Two Worlds are putting out a pirate game called Raven's Cry here shortly. Will it suck? Not sure, but it looks interesting and likely janky as fuck.

Eternal Winter which is that weird game where you try to survive in the snow. Could be weird and fun.

[Falconeer]

I think you are right on many things Jeff, especially the financial observations. I also think it's fair to say we are all extremely disappointed in the AAA industry because we feel they could do so much more with all that money and talent, while at the same time we all probably play one or two of their games every year (maybe in secret? heh). I couldn't wrap my head around why so many people on f13 cared about Destiny, Shadow of Mordor, Assassin's Creed, and the likes. But then again, I loved The Last of Us and I am about to buy Dragon Age 3, so to each their own comfort food.

But I stand by my impression that we have become much harder to impress while at the same time we demand to be impressed. It is obvious that lots of people who could come up with impressive games (Schild himself for example) aren't being funded nor supported and that sucks, but at the same time I am sure that our age and our experience are working against us and our ability to have fun with videogames. Not making it impossible, but making it harder. We have played sooo many things that we carry around a fatigue for all genres, and more often than in the past we pass on a given game as soon as we read that ONE feature is not what we wanted it to be, or one element of the interface is not where we'd prefer it, or the tutorial isn't designed specifically for our unique mind map. Or at least this is a behaviour that I see prevalent among the people I know, and with myself. It's certainly and rightfully less patience for bullshit, but not just that. We are flooded, overserved, overburdened.

Also Jeff, you might be right about production value becoming (again) a factor that could crush a lot of future indie developers, but let's not forget that for all the reasons we just agreed on the more you raise the production value, and so the cost, the more you limit the span of your innovative design. Because of this, since their rebirth of a few years ago, chances are there will always be a niche of "innovators" working in a basement to build the next amazing project that AAA companies will cannibalize for the next two decades. I am not an optimist, but I am sure we'll see more great games. It's chaos theory, it's bound to happen even if only by mistake.