icemann on 7/5/2018 at 17:47
There is a healthy amount of indie and KS content that continues to thrive. So it's not all bad.
Judith on 7/5/2018 at 19:10
From the top of my head, and in no particular order:
- MGS staying in hands of Konami
- Rise of lootboxes, "games as service", "turning players into payers", etc.
- Rise of open-world games of constant busywork and boredom (thanks Ubisoft)
Tony_Tarantula on 9/5/2018 at 00:04
Tossup between any EA acquisition.
But if I had to pick one I'd probably say the WestWood buyout. Something unique died with them.
icemann on 9/5/2018 at 09:29
It's like the Origin buyout. It wasn't an immediate death, but a slow one over time. That's how EA does things.
For Origin the Wing Commander games got really damn good after the buyout, and for Westwood the C&C games stayed strong for a long while. Up to and including C&C 3 + Kane's Wrath. Went to shit after that.
Tony_Tarantula on 11/5/2018 at 03:02
They were dead long before that.
It became apparent with Earth and Beyond....where it came out after the fact that they'd thrown away the entire original plot arc, a rather compelling civil war between the different factions, away because EA's marketing thought people would be more interested in yet another alien invasion story.
demagogue on 11/5/2018 at 07:53
The line for me was crossed somewhere around HL2 / 2004, when gaming dev culture really jumped from inspired glorified hobbiest to soulless megaproduction. The only silver lining has been the proliferation of indies to fill the gaps.
EvaUnit02 on 12/5/2018 at 03:31
Quote Posted by heywood
but the engine is poorly optimized.
Yeah nah, the optimisation was fine. Just don't use the resource hungry MSAA option.
Tony_Tarantula on 14/5/2018 at 00:19
Quote Posted by demagogue
The line for me was crossed somewhere around HL2 / 2004, when gaming dev culture really jumped from inspired glorified hobbiest to soulless megaproduction. The only silver lining has been the proliferation of indies to fill the gaps.
Part of why I've largely made the jump to tabletop. As long as you stay away from anything Games Workshop, the industry is almost entirely the former rather than the latter.