My Current view on the State of Video Games

Definition: in-between(intermediate: being or occurring at the middle place, stage, or degree or between extremes)

Over that past 5-8 years I have seeing a lot of articles and youtubers talk about that video games are in a recession, games are not good enough, or we might be in a depression of video games. I think a lot of the focus on that has been with the lackluster performance of video game releases, where a game is hyped up and have some initial high numbers on some charts for a couple of weeks(3-6 weeks). Then after it kinda poofs out of the talk. This is not true of all games, Elden Ring has been one, for me at least, best game of the 2020’s era(2020-2029) so far. Games do not have the same luster as they did when I was a kid however, so I feel that the environment of video games is not a recession, depression or a high state. Its sort of in between. Its in a weird middle of the road. Let me explain as best I could. Again, I could be wrong on this.

Lets talk about the 6th generation of consoles. The reason I want to talk about this generation is because I believe this was the high point of video games. Playstation 2 ended up being the most sold console eventually with some of the greatest games that have series still going to this day. The Gamecube which was one of my favorite consoles to me was Nintendo trying to finally jump into more graphic intensive games(considering an AMD GPU finally). Microsoft jumping in with the Xbox. Wanting to essentially Dr. Evil its way in to carve out a piece of that delicious video game mojo. Xbox itself was a piece of marvel with some forward thinking aspects that were tried in the past but trying to make it mainstream again(LAN/internet connectivity). This was a generation with great tech and great video games. Even though we lost a piece of hardware at this time(Dreamcast), we were in my opinion at the high point of gaming.

This is actually where things started to go wrong and the reason why I believe gaming is lackluster. See at this time, most game releases where single player or couch co-op. You got the game and you had the ability to play the game at by yourself, if you had a more co-op game, you called your friends over to partake. This generation changed that, and that started with the Dr. Evil of the group the Xbox. You see the Xbox made online easy, semi affordable and easier to digest. What I mean by all this is that the Xbox was exactly what it was designed to do. A well packaged hardware to lock you into an ecosystem of not owning and always online play. Gamers got hooked. No longer did the single player/co-op matter. Why ever play by yourself, when you can get your 8 online friends to play. Why ever play a game once, when you can have a continuation online. This idea further got cemented, in the next generation. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 both were systems designed to lock you into there ecosystem and try to keep you engaged in there online platform. I won’t mention Nintendo here just yet. However, this is where video games took a turning point. I am not saying that video game releases where not great. Halo series, call of duty, and God of war series were all great games for this generation. The player base was slowly telling video game vendors, they wanted more online, and also wanting quicker access. See that was another issue. Physical vs digital. Why wait at a gamestop at 12am for that sweet release when we can just buy it online and get it faster. Again, this further let vendors knows, oh gamers want digital, lets deliver more of that. This further changed the dynamics of the overall business. Gamers wanted, more online play, easier access, and more intense graphics the next crutch. The battle for graphics was very intense with the 8, 16, and 32 bit consoles. It started to change, once PC hardware started to get involved and the Big 3 console makers relied less on self designed GPUs(I understand PS3 used a custom chipset and most consoles do have some variation to over all layout of the way hardware works that is not the same as PC hardware). Graphics of games where getting very beautiful and very realistic. As a gamer myself, I was loving it. Truly this was an amazing time.

To this end, this is where I, as a gamer felt tired. Gone were the days of pretty amazing releases year after year, as now video game vendors took longer to make games. They took long before too as well in previous generations but now pushing for more intense graphics and adding unique features pushed game development out further. Games started to release unfinished or I should say felt unfinished. Games now have Day one patches, and DLCs that to me actually made the game complete. More and more games had online features and gameplay which meant the single player aspect was either too short or near non existent. Also the joy of owning something physical was gone. Most games these days don’t even have the whole game in it where you have to download the rest.

This is where I say the video game industry itself is in a in-between state. Speaking as a gamer all these things of access to game downloads, online play etc were things I read in magazines, or talked about in the school playground. How we wanted to play with friends somehow over the internet and how cool would the graphics be if it were like the sci fi movies. We got that but that want put a giant weight on video games where they were stuck on what to deliver. Vendors made more choices to deliver games with just enough to make you buy but not enough to hold your attention, and given or attention economics these days, vendors started looking for the next thing to get our attention enough for us to buy and move on to the next thing. So the state itself is in between cause we do sometimes get great games. Call of duty games are still a hit. Elden Ring became a stable. Creating a very hard game with great replay ability that you want to play over and over again. Spiderman from Sony has been just amazing. That is the top pressure to deliver, and the bottom pressure is locking gamers in an ecosystem where they give more and more money with games(mostly online games) that are fun enough in a group but not enough to hold your attention where they have to make more of those games to get the money to make 1-3 single player games for the other part of the pressure. So what direction is this going.

Most of the example above basically is a criticism of Sony and Microsoft ecosystem and the vendors that deliver games on those platforms. Nintendo is not that far out from the same criticism but they are a unique beast. See Nintendo really did not take the bait on online play or very powerful hardware or intense graphics. They took a different direction, in that they wanted to deliver a fun experience. To this day, they do. Considering the Wii, Wii U and Switch, these 3 systems offer unique playing experience, which had the players interact more with hardware with motion controls and still play with friends not online but together(couch co-op). As much as Nintendo can be a pain with video game preservation and emulation, they still deliver some of the best single player and couch co-op experience then most other consoles. Mario, kirby, zelda and metroid, all first party games provide the best replay ability then most other games. The formula Nintendo has use over the years I think provided this little glimmer of what gaming should be. Have a good piece of hardware(yes even the wii U in my opinion) and a plethera of good single player/couch co-op gaming. While also slowly figuring out the best way to deliver online content but not making it the main driver.

I understand this article seems like a love note to Nintendo but my TL;DR(Too long; didn’t read) thesis is this. Gaming is still great, but it has fallen into the same enshitification, locked ecosystem as other parts of other products and services. Gaming took the middle road of where to go next and the cross roads are coming up. I think Nintendo, too the road of still deliverying great single player experience but there online is lackluster at best. Sony and Microsoft have great graphics and online but some single player experience are just way too short or replay ability sucks. The hope is, the decision is to get those things working in such a way, where we have a new road that is an interstate to greatness. I think we are getting there, thanks to the indie devs which are providing great support for the single player side(hollow knight, blasphmous, and hades) with some good online support.