I’m not young or American, but I can tell gaming has been changing. I can’t even remember what was the last “AAA” game I bought, because it must have been a couple of years ago.
Most games I buy are 40€ connoisseur titles or 20€ indie games. I don’t hear about any “must-play” AAA titles through the grapevine these days. I do hear about interesting indie stuff all the time, though. Most of the 60€+ games I hear about are kind of niche stuff.
The hobby is getting more expensive while income left over after cost of living is going down. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Maybe they can ask their AI to inspect the size of everyone’s nose? Maybe that’s the trick to get us to buy more AI chips in our games and TVs and phones and cars and in our fruit probably. There’s gotta be AI in our food somewhere.
Can’t wait till the indie wave wakes up the realization that there is a goldmine of 90s games that were incredible. Star control 2 for one could probably be mistaken for a new indie hit nowadays.
I’ve been playing X-Wing. The mad lads who built XWVM have essentially modernized the game and got it working on and with modern hardware, while strictly preserving its feel. It’s amazing.
Depression has me not so interested in playing games anymore. Reading instead. Gaming is losing its magic for me. I’m 36.
I love the constant onslaught of articles that are like “people aren’t spending money anymore!!!” Open your damn eyes. We all got smart and refuse to pay $80 (which is now the new forced norm for “AAA” garbage) and are replaying oldies and indies. Hell, I revamped my 3DS and have dumped a ton of games onto it. I can even play some of them online with people again via Pretendo.
Like all of the reasons are so obvious why people aren’t dumping money into this industry anymore. Capitalists fucked it all up and put profit over fun. We’re not all dipshits that fall for the constant micro transactions and grifts.
I legit don’t give a single shit about any of the new “AAA” games coming out. Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
Exactly this. The new game cycle these days is:
- Game is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff.
- Release date is announced.
- Game is delayed.
- Reviewers/early access people get it, turns out it has none of the cool stuff form the announcement video.
- Game is delayed again.
- Game finally comes out, with 3 different tiers that are like $80, $100 and $120 CAD depending on if you want the version of the game that’s 30%, 40% or 50% complete.
- Game doesn’t work.
- After about two years and 10 DLC packs you have about 80% of the functional game, the other 20% being stuff they were supposed to add but just never bothered, what are you gonna do about it? By this point you no longer care about the game anyway.
- Sequel is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff, devs promise they’ve fixed all the broken stuff this time for real.
- Company gets bought by EA or Epic, all devs are replaced.
- Game is delayed.
Like genuinely who wants to bother with that nonsense anymore TBH.
Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
If they’re still functional, thankfully there’s the Stop Killing Games movement.
I love the movement that has gotten. I’m cheering for it.
People are dumping money still, revenue isn’t shrinking
Yeah, I think the decline is a drop in a bucket considering. I know plenty of people still buying the Switch 2 etc. on launch day.
I said in another thread but I’ve been unemployed for a while now. Even jobs I’m referred to my old coworkers aren’t giving me interviews. If capital wants me to spend money, they have to pay me money first. Until then, fuck them.
We can’t justify the price. The end. That’s it.
I was super interested in the Dune game, then they decided to not participate in the stream sale. Okay. Too bad. Life goes on. Get fucked, greedy devs.
greedy devs
Publishers, mostly.
When new games are approaching $100 and you know you can wait a month or two for it to drop $40 it’s an easy decision
60-80 for the base half-finished game plus 30+ for DLC, console extras
I know I’d rather wait a month than spend $40+ extra for the privilege of being an unpaid beta tester
Might as well wait for them to finish the game and release it as a game of the year edition, whatever that means anymore
kinda stupid that it isnt called complete edition
Video gamesspending by young Americans is droppingFTFY
Who would have thought that if you squeeze out every single penny out of 99% of Americans to pocket them, 99% of Americans would have no penny left to spend?
Some American billionaire probably
i think the impact of all the free games shows too
i removed a bunch of shit from my wishlist because it was free on epic amazon or gog at some point. my heroic games launcher library keeps growing and i dont see the point of buying games when i have this huge backlog of things i actually want to play. notable exceptions to the no buy are extreme high quality outliers like baldurs gate and cyberpunk(dlc) and niche indie games i want to support. those i buy on steam (or gog)
at the same time i hope i only cost epic and amazon money
Yep, I know a lot of people who would balk at buying games but have no qualms dropping more than 100$ per month on gacha games.
We desperately need to ban all forms of real money gambling in games, or at least prevent kids from accessing it.
Mayhaps the former young Americans are now aging into, uh… being not young Americans? Mayhaps said former young Americans also don’t have children because this entire county’s culture is all about feeding all the money to 1%ers yacht purchases?
I honestly don’t trust any “adult” who’s my age that doesn’t play viddy games, like what are you into for entertainment? A lamp?
I honestly don’t trust any “adult” who’s my age that doesn’t play viddy games,
This is like the modern version of, “Don’t trust anyone over 30”
the people around 25-35 that dont play vidya are either into extreme sports outside all the time (adrenaline junkie) or are fat fucks who watch every show on the planet with 100 bucks a month in subscriptions (sedated paypig)
oh and the other option is exhausted parents whose only wish would be uninterrupted sleep
Show me the Lämp, brother
Wing noises intensify.
I rarely buy new AAA games. Mostly indie titles and heavily-discounted AAA games.
Every game or movie that comes out now is a reboot/remake. Why would I buy that? I already bought that.
Definitely not true in the case of games.
Charging 70 dollars USD for barely 40 USD of content and everyone knows. The only people I know intent on buying all the latest stuff are people into steamer culture, aka trying to be a streamer or interact with them and follow their trends.
for barely 40 USD of content
This is completely relative, and different for everyone… But I have a hard time backing up statements like this given that it costs nearly $20 to go to the movie theater and watch a 90 minute movie. If I can get like 40-150 hours from a $70 game… That’s really not that bad in terms of value. In my opinion.
I think we have been a little bit spoiled (that isn’t to say that video game publishers aren’t greedy corporations that over charge to increase their profit margins, of course they do and fuck them for it).
Nope. All video games are bad, overpriced etc. same with movies as tv shows.
And we all have the right to the creative work of others. So pirate everything. That’ll fix it! /s
its half assed, like a something switch console game of nintendo has been doing since 2020, which turned me away from the console altogether, i stuck to pc , but not high end games. my bro bought a brand new switch when they were selling new variations but he has barely played since.
