Friendslop is just the tip of the iceberg, and also a chunk of the iceberg
Just zoomers having to figure out for themselves that a game simply existing does not make it worth their time (or money.)
They’re calling us drunk instead of saying AAA titles have been a garbage money grab that almost always fail to launch, torture developers, and are filled with bloatware slop? Ok, games radar.
You will pay $70 for half a game that will be unplayable in 6 months, let us root kit your PC, and spend another $60 in Family Guy skins. Our shareholders demand it.
Jank is alright, as pointed out:
“This is why I love PC gaming,” Zukowski says. “There’s just more acceptance of jank.” Whereas consoles, with their stricter approvals and more cumbersome patch pipelines, have “so much cert to go through.”
But:
“Big publishers charging $70 or $80 might find PC gamers less tolerant of jank.”
That, and mtx spam and being boring.
Like, I can look past a junky storefront if the game is sublimely written. I might run some anticheat. But AAAAs seem hell bent on achieving that miserable trifecta, and charging for it. I think the combination is more poisonous than the individual ingredients.
Maybe I’m being too simplistic, but I just think too much money ruins art. The budget gets too big and the stakes are too high, now it has to make a humongous profit. Now you’re more focused on that than your creative. It’s like clockwork, money just ruins shit.
It depends.
There’s a case for some high budget projects, but yes, there’s always a point where a bigger budget starts to hurt.
Once I got into JRPGs and rouguelites, there’s been an unexhaustible amount of games to play. Every Steam next fest I see an ocean of soulslikes. There’s a developing ocean of turn based CRPG games to match up with the ocean of Diablo-like action RPG games. I’m hoping to someday see the old KOTOR third person RTWP gameplay make some mainstream jump and get a wave of those
