The Game Industry Is Choking Itself To Death (The Jimquisition) - Videos for the 97.4%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1hE31JGR5k Jim reiterates what should be blindingly obvious but the AAA industry refuses to learn: Episode 4398649ö236

I wish the industry would either not fuck up for a week, or fuck up very badly but in a different way than they have fucked up before. That way jim's topic would at least be different. But noooo, "AAA" continues to baffle as it just continues to fuck up even more in the same exact way for years.

wooow who knew February isn't the time of the year where most AAA games come out followed by a few months dry spell? Didn't realize that games providing more than 20 hours of game time is suddenly a huge problem in this year and the last. It is like... people can't jump between games! Just say you don't like the model, Jim. You are yapping a lot but the industry is not even showing signs of fluctuation. Not yet, anyways.

Yeah I'm still not sure how viable games as a service is, eventually the bow has to break in relation to just how much time all of the various games can soak up.

jim is getting older day by day...

sadly, despite his godly visage, he is mortal like the rest of us

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't blame publishers for the push toward extending the longevity of a title. Though, their way of going about it is not the right way to go about it. I personally don't want to spend $60 on a 6-10 hour experience like any of the singleplayer games Sony puts out. I played Spider-Man once, and when I was done I never touched it again. Had the story been much, much longer I'd probably love to continue playing it. Same goes for most singleplayer titles nowadays. Jim personally doesn't like long games and I disagree. I absolutely loved Assassins Creed Origins and Odyssey both because of their length. I enjoyed the main characters, many side quests were all interesting, and there was a lot of fun stuff in general to do. I clocked 60 hours in Odyssey in one play through, that's about $1 for an hour of my time which is a pretty solid deal in my eyes. Crackdown 3 truly wasn't that bad - flawed, but not bad considering the $1 I paid for it. The next point he makes about padding out a games length is valid. Far Cry New Dawn does this to the extreme, by forcing you to level up your home base before you can continue the story, which forces you to do outposts instead of giving you quality linear missions to complete. A lot of games do this nowadays and it's frustrating. Stop making "side activities" a requirement to advance through a main storyline. They're side activities for a reason. My ideal game is a $60 experience that will give me at least 20-30 hours of game time in one play through. I truly wish more games were like AC: Odyssey. Give me really good gameplay, and plenty of content to utilize without relying heavily on story padding / filler. I understand some people long for games of the past - a simple $50 title that nets you a few hours of game time. But I attach myself to certain titles and want to play them for a long time. I don't want sequels every year. Take the game you have and continue to improve upon it for at least 2 years

Okay, I'm gonna be honest; What in the fuck was the 'time sink' part of Metro Exodus? Am I missing Dailies in it or somethin'?

Well, I mean, what's he gonna say? The AAA industry is the same no matter how many total flops it releases, so he's constantly gonna say the same thing. I still feel like he's right here. Seasonal crap kind of demands that you glue yourself to whatever game you're playing, and most of that stuff is things that should had already been in the game from the start. Not only that, it demands that you play that, and only that. Essentialy, publishers price their games in upwards of 100$ because of the game + DLC logic, people find that expensive with 100% of good reason, but publishers keep doing it, because the logic here is that "yeah call it expensive if you want, we don't care, the idea behind it is that its so good you only want to play this you idiots hehe". They want you to play only their game, hence why they don't give a fuck about pricing, let alone how many seasonal whatevers they do throughout how long of a time they do it. A good example of this is Black Ops 4. I'll be completely honest about this. I like Black Ops 4 quite a bit. I think the game CAN be fun, but it will make you rage way more than it really should. The gameplay is downright casual to fuck and back, easily abused and pushing you to use shitty tactics to "be good", from jumpshooting mechanics that weren't in other cod games, bunnyhoping bulshit to dodge enemy fire, shitty 1shot1melee kills that take no effort, and balance issues right down to its weaponry, that for some reason are a thing and are banned from its own league play. But that by itself is a whole different discussion. Treyarch got a lot of shit for not releasing an actual update with actual content, and STILL does because people think what they got a few weeks ago is almost nothing. Before that, the game was dropping in playercount easily, and youtubers that had their bread and butter on BO4, even started complaining about it and doing content on other games. This is because the game is only good for about an hour of gameplay a day at most. The devs underestimated severely the ability people have to get the camos, which now that I think about it, is what the camos are for, an invisible progression system on top of the regular leveling system and prestiging that, imo, is a complete and utter waste of time. People are already whatever high level of prestige, already have dark matter camos from the first or second weeks of the game being released, then got stuck with absolutely nothing to do because its the same old shit that doesn't takes more than an overpowered weapon to wreak havoc on a game, everyone gets bored and jumps ship, because the devs think the camos and the prestige levels are enough padding for them to think and develop more content. You add up to this a season pass that gives NOTHING for 50€ (the maps are SHIT, the characters are basicaly padding to say "yeah you're getting this"), theres microtransactions that I have no idea why would anyone waste money on them when they're just skins and nothing else whatsoever, and then we get to the point of this post, finally... The contraband system, like fortnite's system of getting drops or whatever, is where most of the content the devs released is. Or rather, where the things that matter are. This is where you get the cool skins, which is ehh but hey if that isn't something you want then theres not much else, where you get the specialist which at the very least is the first drop right away, and where you get the new guns. The problem? The new guns are tier 50 and tier 100. This means that, lets assume you win a game each day and earn the daily tier skip, you have to play at the very least 100 days to get all of those. It's obviously less because you also get experience, and that obviously unlocks tiers, but even then, the game forces you to play it as much as possible to get the shit they made for free, or cough up the money for it, if you don't have time. This is a fucking chore. You sometimes get so many fucking shitty games, you never win, you even end up leveling up the tier with small exp incremental wins gained from losses, before you even get the daily tier skip. If you give a damn about the game and want most of the value from it, this is basicaly the only way to get it. I've since stopped it because Blizzard support is shit and they told me to fuck off because the name of my account doesn't matches my ID, despite literaly everything else being right, so I pretty much stopped because I will eventually lose the account. And that ended up being a relief, because I feel like I don't have to "go to work" on something that is fun for a couple of minutes but then ends up being boring.

The GAAS trend aren't really that much of a problem, it just take a lot of trust on the developer side which most of them lack these days. It's a decent way to increase the longevity of a game, and since video games are becoming more and more costly to make, it's definitely a way to fund more contents for a game. The part where GAAS games is gonna take up all your time is such a non point to be honest. It's true that these games usually offer some kind of daily/weekly missions that tries to keep players playing by offering rewards but you can always ignore them if you don't feel like playing game. Some games may requires you to grind out its content but then most of the time you can always just buy it whenever you feel like via stuffs like Season Passes, and if you couldn't buy them it's the problem with the monetization not GAAS. It might be like the time where everyone is making MMOs to be the next WoW but it is not going to kill the industry. People switching to other newer games isn't a new thing. They've been doing this since video game is a thing. From Garry's Mod to Minecraft and Terraria. People grow tired of things all the time, and they'll either try something else and forget about the game, or they'll come back when there's new content and they're bored of the new thing. On the other hand, maybe I am getting it wrong, but is he complaining about the way we are getting TOO MUCH video games? What is the problem with that? No one is forcing you to play all the games at once and you can always complete them later. Again, the point that AAA games these days are a time sink isn't a really a problem. Video games have pretty much always been a time sink, especially for some genre like RPGs. Sure, open world games like Far Cry may takes a very long time to complete everything, but the majority of these are bonus content or side content to let players take a break from the usual gameplay loop. The main game itself usually doesn't take that much long, at least nothing out of the ordinary, to finish. It's not like we're not getting more decent single player games either. There's some bad games, but that happens all the time. RE2make is a remake for sure, but it's also a complete reimagining of the original game that I would treat it as a separate, new game personally for all the difference between both games.

I get he wants short arcade games. But I grew up with and adore long games such as Mass Effect/Fallout and etc. So I prefer those. I don't know why he lumped Metro in on it.

This is just the old professional reviewer complaining. If you don't want the thing you love to become a chore don't make it your job. You don't HAVE to play every game under the sun, and when you feel done with a game you do want to play you can just stop. He's bitching about games being too long but indies are almost exclusively short. If AAA games aren't his thing he shouldn't bother with them. He doesn't have to play anything, he's his own boss. Choking all his time with games he doesn't want to play is his own problem. And he's not wrong about a lot of the issues games have, but that doesn't mean everything he complains about is the worst thing imaginable.

What the fuck does he mean by ""LIVE SERVICE"" ? He's trying to coin this phrase but all I understand from his bitching is about how games are time sinks?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service

I'm so tired of GAAS's trying to rope me in and assail me with content to keep me busy. I sank massive amounts of time into games long ago because they were fun. Whereas in the 5th and 6th generations it felt like you'd have shorter third party games that tried to focus in on content, nowadays it feels like there's that same amount of content, but they've added in all sorts of timesink mechanics in to artificially inflate playtime, and often times the gameplay mechanics are just "good enough" because the thought is that the sum will be better than the individual parts. At this point I'm kinda done with games that eschew tight, fun gameplay for "good enough" content and systems.

I'm not a fan of 99% of games as a service games. Gameplay suffers in most cases. I only played some of them since I found the gameplay fun. I played Overwatch since the gameplay was fun, I played Team Fortress 2 since the gameplay is fun. I'm playing Apex since the gameplay is fun. Here is another note: Especially for Overwatch, I avoided playing durring events since It just seemed like shallow additions that are temporary or skins. I don't really care much about skins at all.

I think it's weird he's lumping long games in there, but I totally agree with his point on the over saturation of live service models.

I think his overall point is that there’s too many games that are too large meant to earn “ALL THE MONEY” that the industry sets its goals higher than is feasible and creates a situation where we have a glut of media but none of them are selling as expected because of the deluge we’ve received. I think thats what he means

stop kinkshaming the game industry

The video game "Hold my beer" industry

I think that's the problem with the game itself rather than being it being GAAS. Overwatch's gameplay is fairly easy to get bored of and I don't think the reason is because the game being a live service, but rather it's badly designed from the start. TF2 had similar Halloween limited event which is essentially the same thing to the events in games these days. I think the way that you can't really dedicate yourself to the other games you listed is due to the fact that they're more designed like MMOs where you're supposed to keep playing to catch up for the latest content. There are a decent amount of games that doesn't require you to keep playing i.e. Rainbow Six while still working on a live service model.

I think the reason why games like DOTA 2 and CS:GO are so popular is because they offer great mechanical and strategic depth, which is a far more legit means of extending playtime than the "play x hundred matches on the same 10 maps to reach prestige" AAA has fallen back to since RPG-style progression systems in non-RPGs have become popular. I honestly don't like games as a service because I like playing many different games instead of sticking to the same one for years but I can understand that getting a high quality game for free or for cheap where you don't have to pay to stay competitive is very appealing. It's also frustrating how much money cosmetics and lootboxes move every day, like goddamn you could buy tons of games with that kinda cash.

The new hip thing for games journos is to claim every long game ever is now inundated with artificial grind. You first saw this from Jim Sterling himself with AC Odyssey where he literally started the bandwagon that everyone joined, despite the game being easily completable with no grind, if you just did 10% of the side quests (which still have story) available or a few of the throwaway activities they added (which don't have story). I can't say if Metro has any of this, but I can tell you that The Witcher 3 had this VERY MUCH! where you literally wouldn't get through the game without having to do a good few side quests to keep up and back then, no one batted an eye. Nor did they cry foul when AC: Origins was the exact same way. The American "Garme Jurnalism" industry needs to crash more than the gaming industry itself does. The amount of either blatant lying or destructive mouth-breathing going on is so fucking obvious. rephrasing it to fit Jim's own rhetoric: Don't claim to have played a game and push debate on problems you haven't 100% ascertained are real. It creates muddy bullshit and bullshit creates confusion and confusion serves "corporate greed!". Because when it becomes too messy to separate the bullshit from false bullshit, people give up and just get lazy with their money! I almost always agree with his core sentiment. I also do here. but he needs to stop talking bullshit. It wouldn't have been controversial for him to just admit to not playing AC: Odyssey in the first place and approach his piece from an angle of transparent ignorance.

I feel like you, and everyone who's taking his small side comment about Exodus so seriously are failing to even remotely grasp the context it's mentioned in. He doesn't shit on it, he doesn't complain it's too long, he just states that for the industry to be unloading so many games in such a small time window is a poor business practice that likely harms the games that come out in that time period. Or you could just be extremely hyperbolic, up to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqIqSi3iy8Y

I don't see why it's a problem to also address his little side points and I think you're being disingenuous when you dismiss any discussion of it as "extremely hyperbolic" I'm not dismissing his argument in this video at all I agree with the notion that releasing constant 100 hour games all within weeks of each other is over-saturating an sniffling a sub-section of the market that is already hard to navigate, due to shit games like Destiny and Anthem. I'm questioning whether his opinion on Metro is in any way valid, when it was blatantly obvious that his opinion of AC Odyssey started and ended with not putting the damn disk in the damn console and then pretending he actually did. might have grind. Odyssey had the exact same type of content that Origins and W3 had. In my book, that's not grind. in his book, 2 out of those 3 exact same progression frameworks weren't grind, but the third arbitrarily was. he's ever so slightly borrowing from the same dishonesty that much of the "traditional" gamesjourno industry is busy starving itself to death with. I don't for a second think he'll ever really go there. but he's playing a bit loose to make his already good arguments look better when he really doesn't need to ( and even if your argument wasn't strong enough to stand, you still fucking shouldn't!).

I think you're really taking your opinion of AC Odyssey as a hard and fast rule about the game. I enjoy it, and it's a good game, but to say it isn't filled with padded content would be, in my opinion of 100 hours of ACO played, untrue. The game has tons of padded content. So did Origins! It's a great game with tons of good content, and good stuff to do, but it's also padded. Those two things don't contradict each other.

wtf are you on about with this? are you suggesting that he stole the gameplay he showed in his videos, then?

I'm getting the feeling I've either been to unclear in what I'm trying to address here, or you're misreading me. What I'm addressing is him playing 3 games with the exact same approach to progression and calling one out for grind while the others get a pass. He's being a hypocrite. Whether AC:O^2 and W3 has padded content or not (they do) never enters the argument. It's the damn allegations of artificial grind firstly being untrue and secondly, being applied selectively.

Isn't AC:O storyline content gated by level? And doesn't the game also sell fuckin XP boosters to make the grind in that game not as bad? Am I insane or wasn't there a HUGE stink about AC:O being grindy as fuck at release and selling XP boosters??