Anyone disappointed by the lack of innovation in the industry today? - Games

Fuck the goddamn crash on fp server, I typed up a long post previously. It might be a result of growing up, but I definitely feel like the industry ain't what they used to be. Anyways, I felt just really sad what the industry these days has become. Back in 2007, you had a shiton of innovative games, with titles like Orange Box, Halo 3, Bioshock, Crysis, C&C3 just to name a few. They were both innovative in terms of graphics and gameplay. It felt like the peak of the industry. Crysis felt like it was the peak of graphical achievements. If you were to release it today, it wouldn't be that far off from modern games. Its sad that companies like EA and Valve weren't what they used to be, these days, its lootboxes, rehash of previous titles, sequels etc. There's nothing really fresh from companies that do AAA titles. Hell even the upcoming BF doesn't interest me. And to think I was incredibly exited for BF3 back then. And funnily enough its indie companies and game devs that are willing to take risks for video game titles these days.

Big companies are still innovating, but most of that innovation is in the realm of VR.

I know there are technological limitations, but its going too slow. Most VR games are very rudimentary, not many big titles, and very few ports. Plus its still to expensive for most consumers to own one. If they made a GTA 5 for the vive I might be real tempted though

Gamers didn't want innovation.

For all the many and grievous faults of the AAA industry; people keep buying their shit, so they keep making it. It's the two assholes principle.

I think a lot of it comes down to people themselves, some people don't mind playing the same old game again and again. Personally I've kind of just hopped off the AAA train for the most part years ago and only really look into a few games every year. Most of what I play these days are FTP games or the occasional multiplayer game I can enjoy with friends.

Yes. The overwhelming majority of games today have some major flaw with them that keeps them from being fun in the slightest, with the biggest ones being either excessive DLC with lotsa content that should have been part of the base game locked away or they are a micro transaction riddled mess. I mean seriously I'm having more fun playing STALKER / RRT3, both of which were released over a decade ago, than I am playing almost any title released in the last 3-4 years or so. I really haven't had the urge to go out and buy any title since FO4 and even then it was still slim pickings before that.

I think the biggest issue with most games is definitely the DLC/Season Pass shenanigans. A lot of the time for newer games, I won't even bother with them until years later or even sooner when they either go free themselves or just go on sale. A recent example for me is Shadow of Mordor, I kind of looked into it when it came out but forgot about it after awhile. Picked it up when it went on sale for like 3$ a year ago and enjoyed the heck out of it. Shadow of War on the other hand just looks like it's way too bogged down with DLC and microtransactions (even though technically speaking they're getting rid of those completely next month.).

The Orange Box had 3 games, one was HL2 EP2 which was just HL2 with a bit of twist, the other was TF2 which was a rehash, and Portal, which was pretty innovative and I can't dispute that. Halo 3 was a sequel and wasn't all that much more innovative than Halo 2. Bioshock was a first person shooter with some RPG mechanics. I don't know where the great innovation here was. Crysis was basically Far Cry with a little spice, and, aside from the massive leap in graphical tech, it didn't particularly do anything too special. And if you're wondering why the graphics tech didn't do anything as major since then, that's because you can only make stuff so much more photorealistic. Generally, you could take screenshots of the first Crysis that looked pretty close to real photographs. And after that, there isn't much more you can do to get much better. Now I don't know much about C&C3, but from what I understand it was one of the last big games of the long standing and very old C&C franchise which had a bunch of sequels and this was just one of them. Can't comment anything about the new Battlefield because I literally don't know anything about it yet, but, wasn't BF3 hailed as a "glorious return to the series roots with the current quality and developments of the series and mechanics you expect from other modern shooters"? It was a fusion of BC2, which was Battlefield adapted to the reality of the modern-military-console shooter, with the large scale battle style of BF2, with the general qualities we've come to expect due to the success of Call of Duty. The "lootboxes" thing is kinda moot because we've always had our favorite "crappy monetization practice" we've always wanted to hate. 2007 was the time of DRM, Steam wasn't as loved as it is now, it was also the time of GFWL, SecuRom and others. After that we hated DLC, then microtransactions, then season passes, and now lootboxes, and tomorrow we'll be hating games as a service. And there really isn't anything funny about indies being the innovators - they have much less to lose with their risky, innovative projects and, in fact, it's basically the only way they can set themselves apart.

Yes. Agreed. AAA games don't interest me. It's all just casual shit. But I've felt that way for a long time, it's why I never got sucked into stuff like The modern Call of Duty games, Halo or Mass Effect. Reminds me of the movie industry a lot. The stuff that's designed to sell is less appealing to me than stuff that breaks the mould a little bit. These days though gaming is still staying pretty fresh with me, thanks to PC and Switch, I've got good access to the exclusives worth having as well as indies and so on. Pretty keen as well to get into the VR scene sometime in the next year so hopefully it stays strong and doesn't drop off like a fad.

Never take unnecessary risk when big money is involved. When you game, start noticing how small technical and design differences add up in the long run. If there is little to no innovation, most games from 2007 should hold up well against today's games comparatively, don't you think?

This. The game industry adopted the movie model in the nineties, and here we are. Innovation slowed, it rained money and people whom have no fucks about creativity are now in charge, and they aren't going to let go until they are made to by consumers.

What, TF2 is nothing like TFC.

As for innovation: because of the stupidity of the majority of their playerbase, plus a healthy dose of outrage against China, Grinding Gear Games may well see their baby gone for good because they sold most of their stock (a non-controlled stake, too!) to Tencent. Since the majority of the community there can't see beyond evil chinese company bought indie studio which betrayed us, GGG's bottom line is about to take a rather large hit. They don't understand that because how shaky the business model happens to be, it's not easy to say how long a game will last just on its players' goodwill. I know it's not possible for people to always make objective, understanding decisions, but surely you should get by now that no money = no profit = stockholder angery = game becomes p2w garbage, a la self fulfilling prophecy mode. It will piss me the fuck off if the playerbase of a game manages to kill a game because they can't see the forest for the trees thanks to their own selfishness, because to my knowledge there has been no case where it ever happened to date, more so when it's as innovative a house as GGG is.

There are a few factors, I think, that have led to the current state of the games industry: Hardware/Software limitations: Over the years, limitations on hardware and software have become more lenient. Companies can get away with more and more things like fancier graphics, more detailed environments, etc. Stronger limitations breed innovation. Now that most people can at least recently run most games on low settings, there's no need for extreme optimization of assets and game logic. The result of growing companies: You need to understand that in the early 2000s, many of these companies were still in their "growing" period and technology as we know it has only started to progress at the pace that has been progressing. This also brings me back to the first point about HW/SW limitations and how they've been incresingly more lenient, allowing for better things. The introduction and growth of the mobile market: Yet another reason for innovation was the mobile market. It came around the time when phones were becomes more powerful (see a trend here? Yea, more HW/SW limitation stuff!) and this also subsequently was happening when companies were at their peak in terms of bringing out new IPs and making strides for better gameplay. It's no coincidence that the PC games market started to adopt alternative business models such as micro-transactions around this time (thanks Zynga....). A few industry leading game developers left their companies to try and chase this trend of the mobile market by creating their own indie studios, which leads to my next point... Large companies became trend chasers, while indies became trend *setters*: The indie market blew up thanks to Valve and their acceptance of indie games on Steam. This led to small indie developers churning out games in droves, the first to the punch getting the most out of it (Braid, Super Meat Boy, etc.) and kick-starting (no pun intended) a new route for game developers to make a new and some dough. This led eventually to Early Access and Steam Greenlight, paving the way for even more indie developers entering the market. Now we 're in the present day, where indie developers are making innovations (sometimes) but it seems that there are now more trend chasers than setters. Trends have always been a thing. Even back in the 90s, there were countless clones and rip-offs of games the like of Doom and Duke Nukem. Maybe not really "rip-offs", just less successful. So there's certainly not a lack of innovation these days, just a change in where it's coming from, and how it's being utilized and improved upon.

I don't disagree with most of your post, but the "lootboxes thing" is not moot, at all. DRM is not a monetization practice. If you wanted to continue the monetization line to before DLC, you'd have to go to expansion packs. But other than a few exceptions (cough, the sims, cough), most people generally liked expansions packs. They were generally a good thing. People disliked DLC because in the vast majority of cases it's essentially the same as an expansion pack, except way shittier. Then people disliked microtransactions because they're essentially the same as DLC, except way shittier. And now people hate lootboxes because, you guessed it, they're essentially the same as microtransactions but way shittier. Saying that what we have now is shittier than what we used to have is not a moot point just because we've complained about something similar before, when what we have now is still shittier than that anyway.

The AAA industry has always been trash. This hasn't been any different in almost any era of gaming. The biggest innovators are indie, Mid-tier studios, or studios that are AAA but just starting up recently, untouched by their own publishers.

Innovations are rarely profitable, people want same crap again and again and again, games are more technically bloated (to make something creative you need way more fiddling with engine + cooperation with many departments. I don't play AAA titles simply because they hold my hand way too strong and games being more like checklist with XP bars filling, garbage collecting for crafting and in general - feeling that it's as fun as work in factory. Yes there are indie games but it's hard to find things among clones and asset flips. Oh and still some genres did not come back with bloom of indie segment.

Innovation is pretty hard to do, especially if you wanna make the big bucks.