...suddenly thinking about how most of my favorite games are from the ps2 era, when I was a young teen...
Naw but for real, I do think there has been something outright lost from videogames as an art form since then. Too much capitalism has bloated the costs of these games so goddamn much, and demands such an absurd profit margin to determine if something is worth continuing, that modern games literally cannot afford to be too interesting or experimental.
Pretty much the only good/ interesting stuff is from the indie scene, but the harsh reality is that even if they're great games by great devs (sometimes ones that previously worked on big AAA titles and left to the indies to avoid being broken completely), they still suffer from lack of spotlight and lack of consistent funding for their projects.
Completely, and its not even just that AAA games can't afford to be interesting or experimental, they are actively made worse and worse by the insertion of mechanics that serve nothing by profit extraction. The one area that companies tend to innovate in now is monetization of their playerbase and its to the detriment of their games
...suddenly thinking about how most of my favorite games are from the ps2 era, when I was a young teen...
Naw but for real, I do think there has been something outright lost from videogames as an art form since then. Too much capitalism has bloated the costs of these games so goddamn much, and demands such an absurd profit margin to determine if something is worth continuing, that modern games literally cannot afford to be too interesting or experimental.
Pretty much the only good/ interesting stuff is from the indie scene, but the harsh reality is that even if they're great games by great devs (sometimes ones that previously worked on big AAA titles and left to the indies to avoid being broken completely), they still suffer from lack of spotlight and lack of consistent funding for their projects.
Completely, and its not even just that AAA games can't afford to be interesting or experimental, they are actively made worse and worse by the insertion of mechanics that serve nothing by profit extraction. The one area that companies tend to innovate in now is monetization of their playerbase and its to the detriment of their games
One thing increasing the cost of games is how big you can make a game.
But also indie games a cool because a small team can accomplish more than they could decades ago