Next evolution in gaming

[WeWuzFinns]

Instead of spending millions to develop games and using millions to get the media to Astroturf your product, it would be cheaper to just develop a bunch of indie games that are marketed as AAA. Censoring dissenting views from YouTube has become super easy, just say that they are racist and sexist for criticizing your product, and it will have no opposition. Paying your regular influencers to shill the shit out of your product is as good strategy as always. Gamers have became dumbed down enough for this strategy to work, their Marxist education has made sure that they have no good tools to differentiate good from shit. AAA games are shit anyway so the gamers have developed a taste for it, and will know no difference whenever a game cost 100k or 100m to develop.

 

[Idiotron]

I'm surprised that there isn't a big company that specializes in producing huge amounts of low budget games.
Hollywood has Blumhouse Productions, the company that made Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Get Out, the new Halloween movies and many many more.
Their average budgets are <$10 million so a movie is profitable when it makes $25 million, something that would be really bad for a bigger movie.
Once you have a hit like Get Out, $4.5 million budget and $255 million gross, that pays for 30 other movies.
Once you get a franchise going like Paranormal Activity, $28 million combined budget of all 6 movies and a $889 million combined gross, you become one of the richest people in Hollywood, like Jason Blum, the owner of the company, has.

Sooner or later, someone like Jason Blum will show up in gaming and that dude (and it will be a dude, sorry ladies) will be swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I think the cost of developing AAA games, whatever that even means, will go down. Lots of assets are available to drop in because of things like Quixel Megascans. AI and procedural generation can take care of routine world-building tasks and reduce the necessary staff, collision sounds can be created by an engine in real time, etc. Once almost everyone has powerful ray-tracing capable hardware, like in 5 years with another update to the consoles and a few GPU generations, they can drop support for older hardware and all lighting will be easier.

 

[Enceladus]

I don't really find gaming as fun as I used too. Part of that is me getting older and part of it is the complete lack of innovation in gameplay for most genres. Sure you have truly great indie titles that come along every so often. But it has been so damn long since a AAA game has sucked me in. It's just the same shit over and over again. In some ways the games have become regressive because of culture and monetization. Instead of more features we get fewer. Instead of deeper gameplay enabled by more advanced technology we get babbys first vidya. More and more shit stripped from the game and sold to you later as DLC.

I love my factorio, minecraft kerbal space program and deep rock galactic. Among many others. But at some point it would be nice if a AAA title was actually worth the moniker again.

 

[The Ugly One]

I'm surprised that there isn't a big company that specializes in producing huge amounts of low budget games.

Sea/Garena has a market cap of $104b, making it more than twice as valuable as Activision, which is just shy of $50b. Tencent, valued at $500b, and 10x as valuable as Activision, also makes tons of mobile/shovelware games. Zynga, valued at $7b, is a top 20 video game company.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

I thought this was going to be able "Where will gaming hardware go from here?"

To that I say "Good question. Very difficult to say". Once global ray tracing is perfected, and AI is dramatically enchanced with dedicated AI cores. I don't know there is anywhere to go. I certainly don't think VR is where everything is headed, at least in its current incarnation.

 

[Enceladus]

How can NPC AI in games still be so bad. I tried Fallout76 and shit mostly just stands there.

 

[Dysnomia]

I don't really find gaming as fun as I used too. Part of that is me getting older and part of it is the complete lack of innovation in gameplay for most genres. Sure you have truly great indie titles that come along every so often. But it has been so damn long since a AAA game has sucked me in. It's just the same shit over and over again. In some ways the games have become regressive because of culture and monetization. Instead of more features we get fewer. Instead of deeper gameplay enabled by more advanced technology we get babbys first vidya. More and more shit stripped from the game and sold to you later as DLC.

I love my factorio, minecraft kerbal space program and deep rock galactic. Among many others. But at some point it would be nice if a AAA title was actually worth the moniker again.

I just return to more and more old games I loved or missed because I didn't buy them or they now have fan translations. I'm perfectly content with games from the NES to PS2 era.

Everything does look the same and lacking in innovation.

Sea/Garena has a market cap of $104b, making it more than twice as valuable as Activision, which is just shy of $50b. Tencent, valued at $500b, and 10x as valuable as Activision, also makes tons of mobile/shovelware games. Zynga, valued at $7b, is a top 20 video game company.

When I thing shovelware I think Wii. I don't think we ever had more of a heavy duty shovelware era like that outside of mobile gaming.

I do miss the PopCap era. A lot of their games were fun. But EA ate them and their free stuff is basically gone from the internet.

 

[TheRetardKing]

Behold. The future of gaming.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Today the "evolution" is releasing straight up alphas and treating the actual content the game should have been bundled with as something worth several bucks a month. Having indies goes against that model since they are far harder to fool people into subscribing for.

I'm surprised that there isn't a big company that specializes in producing huge amounts of low budget games.
Hollywood has Blumhouse Productions, the company that made Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Get Out, the new Halloween movies and many many more.
Their average budgets are <$10 million so a movie is profitable when it makes $25 million, something that would be really bad for a bigger movie.
Once you have a hit like Get Out, $4.5 million budget and $255 million gross, that pays for 30 other movies.
Once you get a franchise going like Paranormal Activity, $28 million combined budget of all 6 movies and a $889 million combined gross, you become one of the richest people in Hollywood, like Jason Blum, the owner of the company, has.

Sooner or later, someone like Jason Blum will show up in gaming and that dude (and it will be a dude, sorry ladies) will be swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck.

It seems some companies have indie divisions, but the problem is that both sticking out and being worth spending time on is far harder in games compared to movies. In the end it's easier to market to smart phones where the big money seems to be.

 

[B2_Spirit]

I thought this was going to be able "Where will gaming hardware go from here?"

To that I say "Good question. Very difficult to say". Once global ray tracing is perfected, and AI is dramatically enchanced with dedicated AI cores. I don't know there is anywhere to go. I certainly don't think VR is where everything is headed, at least in its current incarnation.

Back in the 90s everyone thought we'd be the Lawnmower Man and the interwebs would be like Johnny Mnemonic. Instead almost nobody plays VR, Cyberpunk 2077 was shit and the biggest game of all time is Minecraft.

Lots of sweet oldschool style platformers out from indie guys, though. I don't play them as much as I'd like due to time constraints but compared to most of the actual 80s and 90s platformers (being honest), these are great and the music is bangin', and a very small team can crank them out pretty quick while AAAA's get bogged down in half a decade of development, only to disappoint or give minimal replay value. The future of gaming could be a lot more of the indie with a lot of no-risk bigger companies going under due to financial crash. Or maybe we'll just be left with the Metaverse and whatever Farmville-esque rubbish comes with that gayness to fill our time under eternal diseased house arrest.

 

[mr.moon1488]

AAA is likely dead imo. Cyberpunk was the last AAA title I was even somewhat interested in, and I'm glad I didn't pre-order it since it turned out to be absolute garbage. I kind of suspect that like with comics, most of the movie and gaming market is going to head to Asia where if a bitch can't code she just gets fired instead of accusing half the dev team of rape and getting a million-dollar settlement.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

It's been happening, it's a process. First they get people to accept shitty games, then shitty production values.

 

[WeWuzFinns]

How can NPC AI in games still be so bad. I tried Fallout76 and shit mostly just stands there.

Creation of good program controlled enemies requires high IQ coders and everything is pajeet nowadays. There are plenty of older games that have perfectly fine scripted NPCs, for example metal gear solid games have good NPCs with diverse functions. The main driving force for cheese AI is that normies don't care about them, but then again fallout76 was also a disaster in multiple other aspects.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Creation of good program controlled enemies requires high IQ coders and everything is pajeet nowadays. There are plenty of older games that have perfectly fine scripted NPCs, for example metal gear solid games have good NPCs with diverse functions. The main driving force for cheese AI is that normies don't care about them, but then again fallout76 was also a disaster in multiple other aspects.

The problem is usually that there's little point in investing in smart/realistic enemies since the average dumbfuck player hates challenge and will call the game out for cheating if the enemies engage in basic tactics.

 

[Billy Beer]

How can NPC AI in games still be so bad. I tried Fallout76 and shit mostly just stands there.

Because making difficult AI puts the babies, journalists and nu-gamers in to a fit because they can't beat the AI. AI was dumbed down sometime around Gears of War 2, because 'gamergirl' and the casual gamers were struggling too much against it.

On top of that the extra computational power needed for AI has instead gone to tracking and spying software designed to record every move, gun shot and win/loss so that big companies can better peddle crap and DLC to you.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

AAA is likely dead imo. Cyberpunk was the last AAA title I was even somewhat interested in, and I'm glad I didn't pre-order it since it turned out to be absolute garbage. I kind of suspect that like with comics, most of the movie and gaming market is going to head to Asia where if a bitch can't code she just gets fired instead of accusing half the dev team of rape and getting a million-dollar settlement.

The film industry can just move to Georgia and other places. The US-based games industry is always going to have problems with women because of the critical mass of awkward men. $100 million gender discrimination settlements aren't sustainable, and you can have some or all of your coder bros working remotely.

 

[Grand Omega]

The cutting edge of gaming was more exciting in the late 90's and early 00's, where each generation had visible progress that outweighed the occasional stinkers. Now it's become so bloated with virtually every AAA title aiming to be a blockbuster, diminishing returns in advancement and a lot more hassle for customers to put up with.

I haven't delved into the indie market as much since there are so many older games that are just as playable. However, their position of having a smaller budget and less tools better suits the creative aspect of game design, as it did in the past, whereas having a massive arsenal of technology and overambitious or uncoordinated manpower can cause a project to collapse under its weight.

 

[JamusActimus]

I've gone full indie.
Best games of the year (imo)
2021: Incryption
2020: Hades
2019: Outer Wilds

 

[Whatevermancer]

Creation of good program controlled enemies requires high IQ coders and everything is pajeet nowadays. There are plenty of older games that have perfectly fine scripted NPCs, for example metal gear solid games have good NPCs with diverse functions. The main driving force for cheese AI is that normies don't care about them, but then again fallout76 was also a disaster in multiple other aspects.

I think that "players want smart AI" is largely a meme that everyone keeps repeating.
AFAIK F.E.A.R.'s AI was originally too smart: they would quietly flank the player while remaining completely hidden behind the environment and then ambush him together, and the player felt like the AI just spawned behind him. So they got dumbed down and given voice lines for every action they performed, so that the player could hear

Flank him!

and think

Wow, now that's smart.