Everyone is.
I don’t buy new releases anymore.
Why?
Cause the prices are getting stupid. Cause its all digital downloads with no physical product. Cause my “ownership” can be revoked at any time by the platforms whims or the platforms shutdown.
What happened to digital downloads being cheaper, anyway? Thats the promise we were sold 10+ years ago. That by sacrificing physical products, Publishers/Devs wouldnt have to pay for printing, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc, so they’d be able to sell AAA new releases for 30 dollars, and Pub/Dev would still make more money.
And now we’re supposed to be paying 60, 70, 80 dollars or more, for these digital download games… that we don’t even own? And because they have no product on the shelves, prices never come down either. Sure, you might find a sale like on steam or something… but those sales pale in comparison to what they were 5, 10 years ago
Fuck that. Amazing how the only promise fulfilled on moving to digital download was that pubs/devs would get more money… and they get that by skyrocketing the costs, not because of the sacrifices we made to give up boxes, disks, manuals, and ownership
oh they are talking about AAA and AAAA games, so then they are not buying/playing fewer games but moved to the indie scene.
The seven seas are way more friendly
Well, gee, I wonder why. Not like their money isn’t going more for necessities after all
and indie games are cheaper and better
I sometimes forget GenZ are now adults. Some now do porn.
Well you cant say that without giving some recomendations around here
As a old member of Gen Z, i can definitely say the prices aren’t helping. A lot of people in my age group just don’t work from what i’ve seen, so with 70$ and sometime 80$ games they aren’t going to be buying many. On top of that, and this may just be the people i’ve exposed myself too, but most of them don’t want longer experiences. They’d rather plop down with something like FF14 or Mario Kart and play that over and over and over again. That’s not a bad thing, but i definitely think it’s not helping. And like i said, this might just be the people i expose myself too.
True, I enjoy games like Spelunky and old arcade racers a lot more. Play for a bit and leave it. No story to worry about.
I can definitely get that. I like to keep a good few games on hand i can just hop into after a long day, it’s nice to be able to kick back with smaller games even if my favorites are always bigger story games.
It also helps that most indie titles don’t need the latest and greatest hardware. I have a budget laptop and it runs most indie games well at 1080p.
As someone who’s first laptop was a Dual Core with 6GB of RAM, I appreciated when Indie Games ran amazingly on it. It was a life saver
Y’all, this market is beyond saturated. And the AI gaming people are flOOOoding the space with more and more stuff.
In terms of a fun way to spend an hour or two, or a few go-to games, there’s unlimited options, many free or free enough. Meanwhile, everyone churning out titles expects full attention and wishlist and dropping $50 on them for simply existing.
Feels a bit like the 80s market crash. Too many low quality games flooding market.
There are also some games with active modding communities that can be played basically forever without getting boring.
Even without modding I have in the last couple of years found myself mainly in a cycle of playing the same emergent gameplay (were the game-space and/or game characters are random) games, one game at a time until I get bored then the next and the next until eventually I’m not bored of the earlier played games anymore and start it again.
These are mostly Indie titles like Factorio, Rimworld and even The Lone Dark in free mode.
The curated experience - which is what most of the AAA stuff is - just doesn’t have this infinite replayability.
From my perspective as a millennial, people are running out of time and energy too.
Like, I know a couple, both working, no kids, avid and techy gamers who know to play stuff like KCDII, yet they mostly plop down for YouTube at the end of the day. A VG or longer form TV is too draining, and too long.
Video games have been my biggest hobbies for basically my entire life, but I barely play them anymore for basically this reason.
For me, I didn’t have the mental energy. At a previous job, I was so mentally strained working 8 hours nonstop on highly mentally taxing tasks that even if I wanted to play a game, it felt like a chore rather than something I can enjoy or wind down to. Even if I had the time, since I do other stuff outside of work.
The strange thing is, when I work I have the money but not the time nor energy to justify buying games to sink time into. When I don’t work I have the time and energy but not the money to justify paying $80-$100 on a game I probably won’t play as much as I think otherwise.
I’ve in recent years looking more into reviews and such to weigh in whether or not I want to buy the game in the first place. Compare that to years prior when I could look at a trailer or short snippet and get a good idea of what the game has to offer. Now I’m more weary of grindy game mechanics and predatory micro transactions.
there are also almost no new games worth even looking at anymore. There are some, but they are quite rare
In the AAA space, sure
Yeah. People have no money. Ask one of the billionaires to prop up this failing industry.
Edit: /s
Did industry try to raise prices even more? Maybe higher prices is what’s missing for gaming industry to blossom /s
Could it be that the economy fucking sucks?
Nope, clearly it’s our fault for not just going out and buying stuff.
Judging by the comments, reading the article seems to be a lost art. Here’s the image for y’all:
It’s very specifically about 18-24 year olds, compared to last year, with video games seeing the steepest decrease.
You can stop complaining about games being soulless, unless you want to claim that wasn’t a problem last year. Well, you can, but it’s unrelated then. Compared to last year, this age group has felt the need to cut back at everything more so than anyone else.
To be fair, the kids are just a pretty good indicator of where this whole boat is headed. Someone who’s been adulting for a while probably has savings and is willing to burn some of those to keep doing the hobby they like, especially when they’re invested with hardware or friendships that exist through gaming.
We’re headed for a crash, and the junior positions are the first ones that CEOs think they can replace with LLMs (they can’t but that will take a few years to bite them in the ass)
Almost like they have no money to spend after rent and food.
I hope they make it abnormal to own a $3000 gaming pc in middleschool again.
I don’t even have one that expensive, even now that I earn enough. Anything above $2000 is just going into silly territory where the marginal improvement per dollar increase is weak.
$2000
$1000
