Games are not the same anymore.

You right twan

you right twan

i almost never play a AAA from >2013, firstly because my pc isnt able to run these games very well, secondly because i think most franchises just became repetitive after that, so i just play the older games online mode, which im used to, so when im going to buy a game on steam, i usually search for indie games, you can find a lot of hidden gems this way! 

while i can't trust most indie games, i definetively see that games as a whole seem to be following the most unecessary priorities. all the big game industries try to invest more into graphics and voice acting (for some reason) and completely forget about innovation. i wish games could bring out more interesting features like half life did in it's begginings, but for now we only rely on indie games for that instead.

ive noticed a good chunk of indie games seem to fall into the same thing which is a shame.

It sucks because it's only so common cause the average person doesn't gaf and will buy every new cod that comes out. As long as its consumed I guess they see no reason to change

Many of the bigger companies have definitely gotten lazier and greedier. 

I don't think it's entirely necesarry to worry about gaming as a whole. There are still great new releases every year if you just know where to look. I play mostly indie anyway so I haven't had much trouble finding good games to play

The industry certainly isn't what it once was. The eighth generation was the beginning of the end.

you ever see a opinion you kind of agree with repeated over and over again, and less and less eloquently each time to the point that you begin to disagree out of spite because nobody's saying anything of value anymore

the last game rockstar released (that wasn't a rerelease or add-on of some sort) was red dead redemption 2. they've been working on gta 6 for the past decade, if i had to guess. i thought it was quite clear that's where the money from the online stuff was going. you could certainly argue that they're too comfortable resting on their laurels, but i don't know why they're brought up here.

obligatory "nintendo is exempt", feel free to not read this part of my reply, i know everyone's sick of people defending nintendo, objectively the worst corporation to ever exist, but unironically nintendo doesn't even fall into most of what you've mentioned here, aside from their first party games being expensive (and arguably the graphics point which i feel like means nothing), and even then i'd argue there are ways to mitigate that: you can buy secondhand, you can wait for sales (contrary to popular belief, nintendo games do go on sale quite often, they just don't do the weird deep discounts like steam does where they basically give games away), you could just pirate like most people who complain about nintendo, i don't know why they're even a part of this discussion
not that they're excused for charging $80 for mario kart, but they still largely make games of consistent quality, how a person may subjectively feel about a given game of theirs is a different discussion (i personally don't care for a majority of nintendo's offerings but you don't see me wishing for them to go bankrupt because they're not catering to my daydreams)

i cannot name the last game microsoft themselves have even developed in-house. completely different and unrelated developers that microsoft owns release games with heavy xbox focus in ads, like bethesda, but i cannot remember the last first party microsoft release. is the problem that they're just not competing?

i don't get the point about the halo 3 advertising. if anything, i'd argue games now put too much focus on advertising, with getting celebrities to advertise games and having flashy cinematic trailers that don't reflect the actual game at all. i'd understand it if that was what you said in your post, but it wasn't, so i'm confused. not that advertising or promotion should have anything to do with one's enjoyment of a game, i have adblocks installed.

there're a couple of minor things that irritate me about this discussion as well, like people hyperfixating on AAA while also seemingly not knowing what the term even means because people keep calling certain games/studios "AAA" at random
most games are "AAA" technically, the term's a measure of how much budget is going into a game and it's pretty well-known now that a lot of games now suffer from disproportionate budgets and/or corporate mismanagement, which causes development costs to balloon
or people shilling indies incessantly, ignoring that not everyone is going the newest quirky pixel soulslike rougelike metroidvania about depression (i feel like "indie" has also kind of lost its meaning since Silksong and Deltarune are both called "indie" when both of those have whole teams working on them, and also publishers, which by definition no longer makes them "indie", but that's neither here nor there)
or people complaining about a "lack of innovation" in a medium that is now over 40 years old. we've already hit the ceiling when it comes to what games are capable of in terms of technology, i don't know what else people are expecting (or a "lack of innovation" in long-running series, which i don't disagree with, but then people also complain about certain series being dead/stuck in limbo, which does not make sense in conjunction with the last point, everything becomes stagnant eventually if it goes on for too long, you can't really have your cake and eat it when it comes to that)

sorry if this came off as aggressive i'm just tired and i feel like nobody actually plays video games

(Gender neutral) Dude i agree, especially when it comes to EA.

I mean it’s no secret that corporate greed is ruining gaming. The average AAA price tag is going up and up, and shows no sings of stopping at any point, companies are focusing on making live service games instead of standalone entries just so they can squeeze as much money out of them as they can, and if u ask any person who recently worked on a AAA project, the crunch culture in game development is CRAZY.

But with that being said, i cannot be any more excited about the upcoming indie revolution. i think the greedy snake will finally devour it’s own tail, and when the dust settles we’ll have an all new environment of gaming in every aspect. My prediction (or hope, if that seems more fitting) is that the culture surrounding gaming will drastically shift, and gamers will learn to appreciate short passion driven experiences, and will finally give time to developera to let them develop the best project they can. 

I’m not saying i want every single AAA studio to fall, for example I can’t wait to see what cd projekt has in store in regards to the new Witcher trilogy they’re cooking up, and more cyberpunk! But i would love to see them learn a lesson in giving gamers what gamers need, not what they want.

Sorry for the long and maybe a bit off topic rant, i just get really passionate about gaming =^_^=