• UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Problem is that executives and capitalists are the dumbest, least creative people alive and chasing trends is all their underdeveloped brains are capable of. Just look at the bizarre AI mania.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Just look at the bizarre AI mania.

      LLMs are definitively chasing trends. THATS HOW THEY WORK. No wonder the treat printers print such uninspired slop… and no wonder the treat printer apologists have such poor taste to begin with, wanting infinite waifu printouts with bland cyberpunkerino dressings.

    • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      What gets me is that there are games that, if made, would obviously print money and people would love. It requires minimal creativity or thought.

      Make the pokemon MMO.

      Make the chao garden.

      Half Life 3

      Right off the top of my head. There are so many games that people beg for that get avoided like we’re asking for healthcare. I’m not even asking for something cool like a 3D platform fighter that makes them have to shit their pants because it’s not formulaic.

      I’ll never forgive profit extraction and investment returns sticking their nose into every last facet of society

      • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        Given that gamefreak couldn’t get Scarlet/Violet to run at a steady frame rate despite the simple, outdated graphics, I can’t imagine that them attempting that but with hundreds of players per server would result in anything other that an absolutely broken game.

        • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.net
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          2 months ago

          I’m generally a defender of modern Pokemon games but to call the online features of Scarlet and Violet “outdated” would be an understatement. The tera raid battle lobbies are inexcusably awful. We figured online lobby systems out in the 90s for god’s sake.

      • Nocturne Dragonite@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 months ago

        I’ve been compling many many different ways to make Pokémon better for years; the universe has just gotten to big for Gamefreak to keep monopolizing it and releasing the same unfinished bullshit every year knowing there’s a bunch of people who will just buy it anyway.

        The series has sucked ass since X/Y

        • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          2 months ago

          Can I have some of the highlights of the improvements?

          And while I didn’t play the expansions nor did much online battling, I had a lot of fun with the gen 9 campaign. I felt like a pokemon trainer on my own little adventure.

  • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I genuinely doubt there are more than a handful of creatives in the industry who even know anything other than the trends. It’s not like the vast majority of indie devs produce anything other than cheap uncreative attempts at copying some other big indie hit. The gaming industry is simply creatively bankrupt to the core, gamers are too stupid to make art.

  • Gorb [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Chasing trends never really worked because the initial game that set the trend has already eaten up the potential user base and there’s little room for another. Like look at cod, has there ever been a successful competitor? I think the only trend chasing that worked was battle royales but that was because pubg was a half baked mess that never really saw any major changes.

      • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        They pretend to be, but at the core they’re very different games.

        Battlefield is a military sandbox with a focus on immersion and atmosphere. Lots of vehicles. An actual projectile based bullet system. Large team based gameplay.

        COD is an arcade shooter with ‘hitscan’ weapons, focused on fast paced gameplay on small maps. Actual vehicles weren’t even a thing until warzone.

        • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 months ago

          I mean last time I played either series was around the time of battlefield 3, but back then the series were very direct competitors and I played both and they were very similar.

          • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            2 months ago

            There was always a rivalry between the fans, but it was just because they were the two biggest franchise shooters. I think they fight for new fans and children, but if you’ve played either properly you know which you prefer. To compare BF3 and MW3 and think they’re ‘very’ similar I think is misled.

            • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              2 months ago

              To compare BF3 and MW3 and think they’re ‘very’ similar I think is misled.

              I disagree, and I played quite a bit of both. They’re both fast-paced round-based arcadey competitive shooters with a wide variety of different weapons with which to approach situations in slightly different ways. MW3 is slightly faster paced and more arcadey but I think it’s disingenuous to imply that they aren’t filling the exact same niche.

              • egg1918 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                2 months ago

                BF3 had 64 players on big open maps with vehicles. MW3 had tiny little maps with less than half of BF3s players. They really weren’t the same game/niche

              • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                2 months ago

                I just disagree. I don’t like modern COD. I liked old COD but I wasn’t very good at it. I have loved and been pretty good every battlefield game apart from the newest one.

                There’s a milsim community on battlefield. There isn’t on COD because it’s impossible to bring such an arcadey game to a realistic level by tweaking the settings. (Of course, battlefield milsim isn’t actually realistic but it gets a lot closer… Otherwise no one would bother)

                Battlefields flagship conquest mode rounds can last at least half an hour. COD’s rounds last 1-7 minutes. COD’s maps are for the most part classic 3 lane gameplay. Battlefield maps are much more open and the sky is literally the limit. The vehicles alone separate the franchises hard. Battlefield has recoil models, bullet velocity, and suppression mechanics, whereas COD is much more ‘quake’ style. Even in terms of classes, battlefield is oriented towards team fighting with resupplies, revives, and so on. COD is very solo-skill focused.

                Their only real gameplay comparison are their campaign missions, which neither franchises really bother with anymore. If you look at recent game releases, people are hailing DELTA FORCE as the new Battlefield ‘killer’. No one’s comparing it to COD. They’re just different. You could only not spot the differences if you’d only played TDM on Noshahr Canals.

  • Cammy [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I’m looking at Veilguard and hoping that they didn’t derail the game too hard after BG3’s success. I just want Dragon Age to be its own thing and moving away from big pillars of worldbuilding like blood magic reeks of trying to be more mainstream fantasy

    • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Speaking as somebody who used to live within visual range of BioWare’s headquarters: don’t get your hopes up. The “studio” has been swirling the toilet ever since the back half of Dragon Age 2 (and most of its ALREADY MADE DLC!) got “scrapped”, then turned into Inquisition.

      It’s just EA now.

    • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Sadly they didn’t chase the BG3 success, they actually chase the TW3 success and made the game action RPG.

    • Battle Royales are such a great example of this, because it’s a genre that inherently can’t have more than a couple big games in it or they’ll eat each other’s audience.

      If you so desperately want to make another battle royale start development in a couple years and release it in 2030 when maybe some people have stopped playing Fortnite and Apex.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 months ago

      To be fair, there were a ton of mario clones, sonic clones, hell, arcades even had a ton of games imitating popular trends. It’s never not been a part of the industry, we just forget all the games chasing trends because they always mediocre and forgettable.

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    This is why the market got flooded with a bajillion “cozy life simulator” games the last couple years. Developers saw Animal Crossing New Horizons sell like mad in 2020 and went “copy that.” Never mind that they couldn’t replicate the established franchise or releasing right at the start of lockdown elements.