I didn't follow any of that I'm afraid.

I concur. I don't follow the train of thought either. I buy my games, old and new, from gog.com . I also have quite a few from the physical media days, along with archived patches.I have enough already to last me a lifetime using old hardware/OSes, virtual machines, Wine under Linux, etc .

It is a bit twisted yes. I understand it as: since there are already so many existing games out there that are good and since it is trivial and cheap to create new ones and/or maintain existing ones, what is the financial incentive to do so?

I have two thoughts on this that immediately spring to mind:

Firstly, the current state of so called triple a gaming is absolutely horrid. You cannot (or should not be able to?) play anything without first launching their spyware crapware launcher that phones your every action to the mothership and gets permission for everything first, then forcibly download 50-150GB of an update for the stupid nearly-a-terabyte large thing, before loading the bloated underwhelming piece of crap and logging your hours playing it. This is not real gaming. I see the young generation not only do this, but consider it normal.

Secondly, not every software project out there that is good needs to be commercial and closed source. Almost all great software I use on a daily basis is open source. Some have a commercial business case built around them, some not. In terms of games, there probably are not that many open source ones out there, but the first one I can think of is the darkplaces engine / xonotic. Furthermore, there is the oldunreal group that maintains and improves the unreal 1 code base under nda for free.

Just a couple of examples fwiw.

twiz11 wrote on 2025-04-25, 01:35:

What is the incentive for new game devs to make us ... buy new games?

Look up the sales figures for the popular games. GTA5 reportedly sold 210 million copies and made more than $8 billion. So, as usual the answer is, money.

I think you are saying that the incentive for creating new games is reduced when so many old games exist.

The evidence isn't the lack of new games but the forever game series - gta, cod, fallout, assassin's creed and so on and so on - games which win attention and profits get endless follow ons

The aim, and it has been partially achieved, is for games to be like netflix - something you subscribe to, play while available, subject to constant updates, completely lose when its dropped

In the middle of all that there has been much analysis, like with social media, as to how to keep people playing - a constant flow of new features, endless new 'quests' and 'loot' and micro transactions to build in-game abilities and access certain features

and then there is the slow decline in the notion of games machine / console - at some point why n ot just do everything server side and simple stream the game at you - where all you need is input/output - a bit like netflix again.

finally there will be ai generated content to enhance variety and fine tune the 'marketing' to you personally

so there is plenty of incentive still, its just not geared to making "new games" in the way i think was meant in the question

meanwhile, out there, there are lots of interesting, often indie developed games, that do take risks and provide something new - at least that seems to be thriving still

Alright, I'm on board now. Your first post was sort of incoherent to be honest, but now it makes sense. I agree with you, there is a definite push to making games into some kind of Netflix experience, where you're part of a captive audience that is just consuming garbage because you've already paid for it, and it's easy to just keep paying for stuff that's familiar. And of course you've got Playstation Plus and whatever the Microsoft service is, where you pay close to nothing every month for unlimited access to trash.

With games, though, I think it's even more insidious. Unlike with movies, where there are legitimate critics who can steer you away from Hollywood trash if you put in the effort, games critics are totally worthless. They don't like games, they don't know the history of games, and they don't know how to play games. You'd think that there would be some specialist sites devoted to reviewing games as games (and not as movies), but they simply do not exist. If you don't have critics acting as tastemakers, people will just consume whatever slop is marketed to them, and that's the state of AAA and AA gaming today.

Like you said, there are lots of great indie games being released now, and that's where to go if you want to play interesting games put out by people that actually like games. Stuff like Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, and GTA is made by people who have no interest in games whatsoever, and it's better to just pretend that they are the same thing as Marvel Superhero Movie #425.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-04-25, 14:14:

With games, though, I think it's even more insidious. Unlike with movies, where there are legitimate critics who can steer you away from Hollywood trash if you put in the effort, games critics are totally worthless.

Agree full time commercial critics were always useless. I kind of get it, you can't really judge a game by playing a few hours of it, it's like watching the first half of the movie then giving the review.
At least you have the amateur YouTube reviews now, Civvie 11 for example gives honest reviews on upcoming 3D shooters from time to time, a genre he is obviously passionate about.

More insidious I would say is the way AAA titles try to squeeze even more money with loot boxes, micro transactions, etc. at least when I buy a movie I don't have to pay another fee to watch the sub plot 😜

No real comment on state of gaming though.
Older games were good, often made by smaller teams passionate about the project and it showed, this is why they live on as remasters or services like gog.
Non AAA titles can be good, I'm finding I'm more and more attracted to Simulation games, not exactly mainstream or "cool" but this means they have similar communitas like the old days.
AAA titles are mass produced to chase the money, Marvel Superhero Movie #425 been the perfect analogy

The state of gaming seems pretty great to me. The occasional AAA game appears that I'm interested in, and generally they find their way onto GOG if I'm patient, and then of course there's endless indie games in the mix. My hardware lasts for years these days without becoming obsolete - I think I had my last motherboard / CPU combo for ~10 years. There's a huge pool of older games (i.e. anything 2+ years old) that I can play relatively cheaply, and there's also active communities working on some of my favourite old classics which keep improving them and allowing me play them on a modern PC at super high resolutions.

The only issue I face is finding the time and energy to play 😢

badmojo wrote on 2025-04-29, 06:46:

The state of gaming seems pretty great to me. The occasional AAA game appears that I'm interested in, and generally they find their way onto GOG if I'm patient, and then of course there's endless indie games in the mix. My hardware lasts for years these days without becoming obsolete - I think I had my last motherboard / CPU combo for ~10 years. There's a huge pool of older games (i.e. anything 2+ years old) that I can play relatively cheaply, and there's also active communities working on some of my favourite old classics which keep improving them and allowing me play them on a modern PC at super high resolutions.

The only issue I face is finding the time and energy to play 😢

It sounds like you've found a sweet spot in your gaming life! You've astutely pointed out some fantastic aspects of the current gaming landscape. It's true that we're in a time where the variety and accessibility of games are quite remarkable.

Ultimately, it sounds like you have a healthy and appreciative perspective on the current state of gaming. The abundance of great games and the longevity of hardware are definitely major positives. Finding the time and energy is a personal journey, but hopefully, some of these suggestions might help you carve out more moments to enjoy the fantastic gaming landscape we have today.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-04-29, 02:57:

Agree full time commercial critics were always useless. I kind of get it, you can't really judge a game by playing a few hours o […]
Show full quote

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-04-25, 14:14:

With games, though, I think it's even more insidious. Unlike with movies, where there are legitimate critics who can steer you away from Hollywood trash if you put in the effort, games critics are totally worthless.

Agree full time commercial critics were always useless. I kind of get it, you can't really judge a game by playing a few hours of it, it's like watching the first half of the movie then giving the review.
At least you have the amateur YouTube reviews now, Civvie 11 for example gives honest reviews on upcoming 3D shooters from time to time, a genre he is obviously passionate about.

More insidious I would say is the way AAA titles try to squeeze even more money with loot boxes, micro transactions, etc. at least when I buy a movie I don't have to pay another fee to watch the sub plot 😜

No real comment on state of gaming though.
Older games were good, often made by smaller teams passionate about the project and it showed, this is why they live on as remasters or services like gog.
Non AAA titles can be good, I'm finding I'm more and more attracted to Simulation games, not exactly mainstream or "cool" but this means they have similar communitas like the old days.
AAA titles are mass produced to chase the money, Marvel Superhero Movie #425 been the perfect analogy

I find bad games or games like sonic 06 to be highly humorous because its so bad its good in other category such as speedrunning. Seriously a poorly coded game is great for speedrunning.

Civvie 11 loves to shat on games like Tekwar and capstone

twiz11 wrote on 2025-04-30, 19:26:

badmojo wrote on 2025-04-29, 06:46:

The state of gaming seems pretty great to me. The occasional AAA game appears that I'm interested in, and generally they find their way onto GOG if I'm patient, and then of course there's endless indie games in the mix. My hardware lasts for years these days without becoming obsolete - I think I had my last motherboard / CPU combo for ~10 years. There's a huge pool of older games (i.e. anything 2+ years old) that I can play relatively cheaply, and there's also active communities working on some of my favourite old classics which keep improving them and allowing me play them on a modern PC at super high resolutions.

The only issue I face is finding the time and energy to play 😢

It sounds like you've found a sweet spot in your gaming life! You've astutely pointed out some fantastic aspects of the current gaming landscape. It's true that we're in a time where the variety and accessibility of games are quite remarkable.

Ultimately, it sounds like you have a healthy and appreciative perspective on the current state of gaming. The abundance of great games and the longevity of hardware are definitely major positives. Finding the time and energy is a personal journey, but hopefully, some of these suggestions might help you carve out more moments to enjoy the fantastic gaming landscape we have today.

"If you want to chat more about the current state of gaming, or anything, I'll be here. Until then, happy gaming!" 😀

twiz11 wrote on 2025-04-30, 19:26:

badmojo wrote on 2025-04-29, 06:46:

The state of gaming seems pretty great to me. The occasional AAA game appears that I'm interested in, and generally they find their way onto GOG if I'm patient, and then of course there's endless indie games in the mix. My hardware lasts for years these days without becoming obsolete - I think I had my last motherboard / CPU combo for ~10 years. There's a huge pool of older games (i.e. anything 2+ years old) that I can play relatively cheaply, and there's also active communities working on some of my favourite old classics which keep improving them and allowing me play them on a modern PC at super high resolutions.

The only issue I face is finding the time and energy to play 😢

It sounds like you've found a sweet spot in your gaming life! You've astutely pointed out some fantastic aspects of the current gaming landscape. It's true that we're in a time where the variety and accessibility of games are quite remarkable.

Ultimately, it sounds like you have a healthy and appreciative perspective on the current state of gaming. The abundance of great games and the longevity of hardware are definitely major positives. Finding the time and energy is a personal journey, but hopefully, some of these suggestions might help you carve out more moments to enjoy the fantastic gaming landscape we have today.

This post sounds like it's been produced by AI 🧐

Art is dead, media is beautiful.