Game genres that are oversaturated and genres that are undersaturated in the modern era

[Squawking Macaw]

Pretty much every one that came to mind has already been mentioned.
On the AAA side, we've got too many soulslikes, hero shooters, FPS, gachas, and Snoy-style interactive movies.
On the indie side, 90% of them seem to be metroidvanias, roguelikes/lites, survival games, and Paper Mario-style RPGs
Farming sims have also infested the indie scene ever since Stardew Valley released, and they're often shitty SV clones with a twist, like 'with witches!' or 'with dinosaurs'!

Overrepresented: third person over the shoulder cinematic camera with bog standard rpg tree and romboidal UI

Sonyggery, if you will.

This is so extremely specific yet so extremely accurate.

Understaurated: City builders, modern city builders to be precise. Apart from some games like Cities Skylines, or Worker's & Resources, there's not that many of them currently. At least historical city builders are having an slightly better time with games like Anno 1800 or Manor Lords, or the upcoming Tlaotoani

Sim City was the shit back then. Modern city builders are too autistic for my tastes.

 

[We Are The Witches]

Over-represented: gachas, shooters, at some point "battle royales", walking sims (AKA: developer's attempt at making a movie), crappy horror games...

Under-represented: good roguelike mystery-dungeon games (there are a few that are great, but emphasis on "few"; an example would be "Pokémon: Explorers of the Sky"), RPGs that catch my attention (so very subjective; an example would be "Dragon Quest IX", which would be great without the intense grinding), fighting games that catch my attention (also subjective; an example would be "Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 1" or "Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3" for the PS2, the new ones can't hold a candle in comparison), creative stuff in general (such as "Baba Is You" or "Noita").

 

[MrTroll]

I feel that there aren't nearly enough games starring blue hedgehogs who run really fast.

 

[biggacracka]

Under-represented: dogfighting... IN SPACE
Besides Star Wars: Squadron, which is simplified compared to the OGs X-Wing/Tie/XvT/Alliance predecessor, all I got is freespace 2 with new engine. Also a new Rogue Squadron-like with a more arcade-y gameplay would be cool. Not necessarily star wars games mind you. Just sci-fi space fighters

 

[The Last Stand]

Underrepresented - casual arcadey sports games, things like Red Card, NBA Jam, FIFA Street, NFL Blitz etc. Sports games now are all just simslop with the most predatory monetization known to man, there are no real options to play fast-paced and wacky sports games that anyone can pick up and play anymore

Oh, I miss licensed arcade sports games. NBA Jam comes to mind. Madden is arguably more "arcade" than "simulation" nowadays for an online meta.

Underrepresented: I want to say puzzle/card games. You know: Tetris, Bejeweled, UNO. I think Ubisoft owns the rights for Hasbro games and they're shit.

 

[scallion]

I want more of whatever the hell Prototype and Infamous were

 

[Squawking Macaw]

Under-represented: good roguelike mystery-dungeon games (there are a few that are great, but emphasis on "few"; an example would be "Pokémon: Explorers of the Sky")

I was going to mention this but my post got too rambly. Mystery Dungeon games are awesome but there's only one company on the globe who makes them and every MD game they make may be their last. Outside of Spike Chunsoft's stuff you only really have the recent PMD romhack scene.

I feel that there aren't nearly enough games starring blue hedgehogs who run really fast.

There aren't enough 3D games starring blue hedgehogs who run really fast that don't have a dedicated go fast and win button. The Adventure games and Heroes were peak 3D Sonic.

 

[NoReturn]

Under-represented: 3D platformers. Used to be way more popular and now they're almost always made by indie devs and even then they're rare. Would be nice to have more of them.

Remember how hard Quantum Conundrum bombed?

 

[Maniacal Foreigner]

Remember how hard Quantum Conundrum bombed?

One lame game doesn't mean an entire genre isn't worth the effort.

 

[Sand Mega]

Why are most japanese games either a visual novel or some type of an rpg?

 

[biggacracka]

Why are most japanese games either a visual novel or some type of an rpg?

Autism

 

[NoReturn]

One lame game doesn't mean an entire genre isn't worth the effort.

Let me clarify.
I think 3D first person platformers are not likely to do well. Given the nature of the games, they can be extremely frustrating to play if the game requires precision and doesn't include certain qol details to make it fun.

Compare how to feels to play QC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSaSHHYN6n4

vs Mirror's Edge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-OUNPqRzII

 

[Idiotron]

Games where you see things through the eyes of the protagonist with a gun in the right or left bottom corner of the screen:

Games where the camera is behind the protagonist:

There used to be a lot more variety in mainstream gaming.
Now most games look like the 2 screenshots I posted and it's boring as fuck.

 

[M3xus]

As mentioned before, Dogfighting in Space games are underrepresented after there being a period of a few coming out every year from '93-2000ish. There's a few good modern ones, like Everspace 2, Underspace, and Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw, but those are either some form of Elite-style open world or mixed with RPG or dungeon crawler mechanics. Giant Robot Sim Autism games are also under-represented, with pickings still being few despite recently releasing Armored Core 6 and another MechWarrior.

Overrepresented: why are there so many hero shooters, walking sims, and gachas?

 

[Preacher ✝]

It might just be my perception of it but it seems like we are going through a period of Boomer Shooter revival to the point that the genre feels saturated now, and I don't think I've seen one that surpasses DOOM/DOOM II, especially after the recent re-release that combined them on Steam and added a bunch of famous and beloved mod packs.

Additionally I think we're seeing an over saturation of faggot-bait and porn games, which are in a sense the same thing.

Look here, the new Dragon Age game is second top selling on Steam and the first tag for it is faggotry.


As far as underrepresented games there's a genre we don't really see any more that's best encapsulated by games like Age of Piratesity of Abandoned Ships where its basically a richly fleshed out world sim RPG. I think the closest I've seen a modern, successful, game come to that kind of thing is Bannerlord and that has a lot of modernized elements that, to me, rob it of some of the charm the older examples had. I still play a heavily modded version of CoAS these days and there are people out there looking to keep that style alive with new iterations. It's still the best Pirate game out there and makes stuff like Black Flag look like the Assassin Pirate LARP it is.

Another one would be the Morrowind style of RPG which Bethesda has only offered increasingly watered down versions of. Some of the most fun I've had with video games in my far too many years of playing them was with mods for Morrowind that still see regular updates. Chief among those is Tamriel Rebuilt which, for those who do not know, adds mainland Morrowind to the game, as opposed to just the island of Vvardenfell, and in doing so provides a gaming experience that not only matches the level of quality the base game offers, but thoroughly surpasses it by every objective measure. If you enjoyed Morrowind and have not played Tamriel Rebuilt I cannot recommend it strongly enough. There's plenty of other mods to tailor the experience to your liking but if I had to pick one mod for Morrowind only it would be Tamriel Rebuilt. I'll list some of my other favorites if anyone cares to ask.

 

[Tablet County]

Oversaturated: Boomer Shooters. Not that I dislike them, in fact the majority are pretty good, but christ do we need another 20 Doom Eternal clones with Quake-style graphics?

Oversaturated: Metroidvanias. They were oversaturated when I was in middle school and it hasn't changed much.

Underrepresented: Platformers. AND I'M GLAD. FUCK JUMPING GAMES.

Underrepresented: Single-player RTS games. There's already another thread about the potential RTS renaissance, but I'm not optimistic. I'll just continue playing Homeworld Remastered until my corporeal form gives out.

I had sort of a hankering for a classic peak bioware RPG that Concord of all games somehow awakened in me. I have this thing where whenever I see a failed artistic product I start brainstorming in my head how it could be improved, and my immediate thought was "turn this from an Overwatch clone into a Third Person Shooter/RPG hybrid". After a while I started wondering if I just missed Mass Effect.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Over Represented: Turn Based Tactics that are Nu-XCOM clones
Under Represented: Real Time Tactics
I can name maybe a hundred XCOM clones like Phantom Doctrine but the last real time tactics game that I played was 7.62 Hard Life. There is all this potential for adding time management as a dimension to these autistic games but I guess the devs are so slow they need turns.

 

[Drain Todger]

Pretty much what everyone has already said.

Too many hero shooters, motion shooters, battle royale games, gacha/live service games with stupid weeb anime tiddy shit, Metroidvanias, roguelikes/roguelites, Soulsbornes, card games, hack and slash RPGs, survival sandbox games (Minecraft/Rust-likes), visual novels, walking sims, horror games (particularly Dead Space ripoffs), etc.

Not enough mech games, space sims, flight sims, 4X games, RTSes, god games, turn-based tactics games, city-builders, tycoon games, JRPGs, 3D platformers, twitch shooters, and so forth.

 

[Shart Attack]

Overrepresented:
-Zero-effort, flavor-of-the-week Unity games. I don't know what else to call them now. I don't think "streamer-bait" is quite right. A decade ago they would've been called shovelware or kusoge, and nobody would've bought them, and discussion of them would've been relegated to a handful of niche sites like HG101. Now one of these stupid fucking games takes the internet by storm at least once a week when a new funny streamer man discovers it. Think Only Up, Gollum, or the jump-scare flavor of the month -- Station 8, or whatever the hell people are playing this week.
-Games with "Simulator" in the title. This has a lot of overlap with the above. American Truck Simulator, European Truck Simulator, Forklift Simulator, Card Shop Simulator, Supermarket Simulator... There are a million of these fucking games, and a lot of them have an almost identical style.

Underrepresented:
-Detective/mystery games, like Sherlock Holmes - Crimes and Punishments or even LA Noire. I mean narrative-driven games with a serious tone and non-anime style that require you to do some police procedural work, investigation, and deductive/inductive reasoning to solve cases.
-Monster hunting games. Monster Hunter isn't the only game in the genre, but it may as well be.

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

Overrepresented: why are there so many hero shooters, walking sims, and gachas?

Walking sims are extremely simple to make. You don't have to worry too much about a lot of mechanics that first-person games have, like a good combat system, or complex resource management, or interesting puzzles. You just have point A and point B and then you can fill the middle with whatever.

Gachas make bazillions for pennies on the dollar. Most of them are 2d, have a simple gameplay loop, an story that isn't that deep, and are able to generate revenue constantly. Look at any given skin of a character, that's at least $20 of profit everytime that a sucker buys it, and all it cost you was hiring a couple of guys so that they take the same base model and give it a new outfit. You can basically print money if you know how to maintain them.

Hero shooters I can't really tell. My best guess is that a lot of them were planned/started development during the time Overwatch was huge, and the suits don't want to throw the investments they already made down the drain.

Why are most japanese games either a visual novel or some type of an rpg?

Japs are by-and-large very risk-averse. Visual novels are huge within the indie (doujin) scene, and a lot of japs grew up playing rpgs