r/gaming • u/CiabattaKatsuie Console • Oct 01 '24

The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/the-games-industry-is-undergoing-a-generational-change-says-epic-ceo-tim-sweeney-a-lot-of-games-are-released-with-high-budgets-and-theyre-not-selling/

Tim Sweeney apparently thinks big budget games fail because... They aren't social enough? I personally feel that this is BS, but what do you guys think? Is there a trend to support his comments?

26.1k Upvotes

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20.2k

u/Spire_Citron Oct 02 '24

Because all that money isn't going towards making the best games they can make, plain and simple. They're just trying to scientifically concoct the most efficient money extraction machines, and that isn't very fun.

6.2k

u/matlynar Oct 02 '24

This.

It's less "people don't want high budget games" and more "you can't throw money at a shitty game and expect it to become good only because of that".

1.8k

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

I think the "scientific" part is copying the latest successful core gameplay loop OR recycling the last successful core gameplay loop your company experienced.

Should be a sure thing, doesn't always work, because once something is stale it's no longer interesting.

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u/DuntadaMan Oct 02 '24

Well that and several companies hired behavioral psychologists to turn games into skinner boxes rather than games.

799

u/amalgam_reynolds Oct 02 '24

This is the real answer. Shitty games aren't shitty because they're chasing trends; they're shitty because they're C-suite wet dreams, thin veneers of a game plastered on top of a cash shop with seasons and microtransactions and skins and FOMO and loot boxes. The amount of money that they'll let you spend without giving an iota of gameplay is disgusting.

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u/WarzonePacketLoss Oct 02 '24

I don't remember how many buggy messes I've seen in the last 10 years where the store works flawlessly. That really says almost everything you need to know.

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u/Alarming_Bar_8921 Oct 02 '24

Happened early in OW2 release, game was a mess balance wise, servers kept disconnecting, some big bugs that ruined gameplay.. devs slow as hell to patch any of it. A couple weeks in the shop bugged and it was fixed in hours.

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u/rob3rtisgod Oct 02 '24

OW2 is so poor. OW1 on release super fun. 

Then the overbalanced the game and let healers do bonkers damage, and perma heal with only Ana having an anti heal mechanic. 

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/YetAnotherAnonymoose Oct 02 '24

Maybe that's because people prefer to not get banned. I was banned for saying "that fucking Cassidy" in team chat, referring to the enemy team's. Under the new ToS ANY and ALL profanity results in a ban. Turning off IG communication is the only way to be safe.

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u/Alarming_Bar_8921 Oct 02 '24

Facts, I have been banned three times for pretty non-offensive competitive banter.

Bare in mind this is in masters which should be competitive, if I made a sick play or completely styled on someone I would type "rolled/rekt/ez/diffed" and I would get banned for that. This is a fucking competitive game, I'm not being hateful, I'm not harassing anyone but apparently a bit of banter is too toxic for precious OW players.

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u/USPSHoudini Oct 02 '24

Vietnam flashbacks of me getting the most insane plays of mine getting auto deleted by Baptiste because he heard Doom charging and just auto lamped his foot

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u/SweaterKittens Oct 02 '24

OW2 is, interestingly, I think a great example of why game companies think they can do whatever they want and have people still buy their product. Like Blizzard said they were putting new content on hold so they could release a new version of the game with an entire PvE mode with all of these features. The game got basically nothing for two years, then they just rereleased the same game as a F2P so they could charge people for microtransactions and a battlepass, saying "oh woops we just simply do not have the technology to make a PvE mode, sorry!" It was the most transparent example of shameless greed I'd seen in gaming in a long time. And yet people still play the game and give them money because they were already established.

Then you get stuff like Concord or the Suicide Squad game who want in on that games-as-a-service money and don't find success because they don't have the clout or franchise power to serve you shit and still have you buy it. On the other hand, anything with a Star Wars or Pokemon label will sell out so they never have to put any real effort into their products.

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u/amasimar Oct 02 '24

Remember when they promised that every future hero/map would be free for everyone on release in OW1?

My theory is that they made it a "different" game just not to stick to these promises, and be able to lock new heroes behind grind for BP, so you're incentivized to pay to play them instantly.

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u/SweaterKittens Oct 02 '24

I think that's exactly it, and I think a lot of people would agree with you. They just needed a good enough pretense to release a "sequel" where they could justify charging for microtransactions and locking heroes behind the BP.

It's still crazy to me. I get that OW is some people's "forever game", but I couldn't imagine trusting a company or spending any money on their product after they just wipe their ass with their playerbase like that.

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u/isekaitis_victim Oct 02 '24

They removed heroes from battle pass and anyone with the full roster unlocked can play them instantly, this is old news

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u/amasimar Oct 02 '24

Don't remember when I've last played, but I remember, in order to unlock older heroes I had to do some tedious quests like win like 50 games with the quest active, or pay, so thats what I remember.

anyone with the full roster unlocked

What do you mean by this? Is there a lock on part of the roster for F2Ps now or what?

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u/isekaitis_victim Oct 02 '24

Just the same lock that prevents new players from jumping into comp before completing 50 qp games, PvP is stil free to play.

They no longer put heroes into bp’s after the disaster that was mauga’s release. They were forced to choose between making heroes f2p from the get go or nerfing any new heroes so that the game doesn’t become p2w. And they really wanted new heroes to perform well between those that are already well known. I mostly called it old news because there’s little to no chance of it being reverted, mauga really wasn’t that long ago now that i think about it

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u/Alarming_Bar_8921 Oct 02 '24

Yeah, it's so transparent.

I played quite a lot of OW2 for the first year it was out but refused to give them any money for a game I had already bought a few times. I somehow got about 8 seasons worth of battlepass for free when my lootboxes/currency converted. As soon as that ran out I stopped getting them. Nowadays I barely play which is a big change from the 10+ hours I used to play every week.

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u/th3davinci Oct 02 '24

Happened in Apex Legends once too.

In reality, it's this way because fixing the shop is simple from a code perspective rather than fixing any deep gameplay issues the game has.

But it still sends a bad message.

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u/Dreadlock43 Oct 02 '24

its also because it can cause massive legal issues too, not just from the customer who got ripped off, but the banks and card companies when the customer does a charge back/dispute.

Easier in court to defend a game being broken for a week or two than for the shop to be taking money but not giving the product

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u/KnightofNoire Oct 02 '24

Yea just pick any obvious cash grabs games. The store works perfectly among the sea of bugs

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u/Zamkawebangga Oct 02 '24

And the first thing being fixed and announced on their twitter lol

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u/AzraelChaosEater Oct 02 '24

cough Apex legends cough

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u/Certain-Business-472 Oct 02 '24

The instant top tier priority any time a shop goes down or bugs out kinda stands out. Gamebreaking bugs? Fix in 2 weeks. Shop is down? Give it 2 minutes.

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u/Pommy1337 Oct 02 '24

tbh coding a webshop is a pretty basic thing and in most cases its nothing more. everyone who learn coding at an university gets to do that.

still not an excuse to make shitty games. for me it came to a point where i just don't care about most AAA games anymore. they can promise whatever, i won't buy it. there is enough really good indiegames.

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u/IAmBecomeTeemo Oct 02 '24

The remake of Modern Warfare II (or more accurately the sequel to a reboot) completely fucked up something as simple as the pre-game menus. It was weirdly difficult to do something as simple as changing the attachments on your gun. You had to go too many sub-menus deep to do many things. And they introduced a new feature of setting up a gun, saving it, and then being able to copy it to multiple loadouts. Which is great in concept, but it was just really unintuitive, especially how it interacted with custom skins of a particular gun being kinda the base gun but not really.

This is Call of Duty, the most AAA you can get. And to redesign the menus for a sequel and make the UX so obviously worse is baffling. Until you open the shop. Then it all makes sense. The shop works perfectly, and is a marginal improvement over the previous game. That's where the money comes in, so that's where the money was spent. The redesign was clearly made to improve the shop, to hell with the rest of the menus.

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u/Pommy1337 Oct 02 '24

they is really scumbag behavior, but doesnt really shock me that activiaion blizzard does shit like that. they even hired for gambling consultats that usually work for casinos during diablo immoral development.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

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u/chadintraining1337 Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

Not a single mobile game has a better or more balanced core game than a free browser game running since 1998. The only thing they have going for them is cheap copy pasted graphic assets to hide their dogshit game loops behind.

https://wiki.the-reincarnation.org/Archmage

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u/robisodd Oct 02 '24

Weird, I wanted to fix their broken link at the bottom of that page ("The Reincarnation external link" goes to HTTP not HTTPS), but you need to log in to modify the wiki, but there's no way to create an account. (The "CreateAccount" special page is gone: https://wiki.the-reincarnation.org/Special:SpecialPages)

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '24

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u/Thelango99 Oct 02 '24

Apple Arcade has some decent games actually.

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u/Suired Oct 02 '24

Reminder that the shitty games are the market leaders. The clones and niche carvers are the ones struggling to fail. Fortnite, GTAO, and gacha games aren't actually fun once you strip away the skinner box elements. If you could have an account with 100% everything, you'd be bored of all of them in a week.

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u/Atlanos043 Oct 02 '24

And even with those games it doesn't work making another one because...these games already exist. Why would you play some Fortnite clone if you could just play Fortnite instead?

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u/Christmas_Queef Oct 02 '24

MBA's ruin entertainment.

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u/The_Process_Embiid Oct 02 '24

Yuuupppp I mean I have at least a grand in valorant skins…I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m above it. But when it’s in EVERY game and games where it shouldn’t be. Then there’s a problem. Why is there a battle pass in every sports game? Money. If u open up madden nowadays. Go to the ultimate team section there are 3 currencies. Coins, points, and whatever seasonal objective thing is. It’s crazy

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u/Piggstein Oct 02 '24

Yeah but a bunch of games perfectly meeting your description sell like hot cakes, so where’s the logic? Is it just marketing?

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u/amalgam_reynolds Oct 02 '24

There's lots of answers to this that all contribute, but probably the most relevant is that they aren't selling like hotcakes anymore. People are getting tired of it. But other contributing factors to some of these games doing well is that they prey on people's psychology and addictions, which drives the sale of things like skins and loot boxes. In addition, the vast majority of the income from these things often comes from "whales," the very few people who spend significantly more than anyone else. There was a report a while ago (either from TenCent or Supercell, can't remember which) that some publishers are making almost 50% of their net revenue from 1% of their base. So there's a huge incentive to target that type of audience specifically, and you can afford to piss off pretty much 99% of your fans doing so.

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u/BarackaFlockaFlame Oct 02 '24

my favorite part of overwatch 1 was being able to earn the event skins by playing the game. in 2 it's only obtainable through spending money.

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u/Next_Program90 Oct 02 '24

Like Genshin... it's a great game at its core, but the horrible Gaccha & daily grind FOMO mechanics turned me away in a matter of days.

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u/DuntadaMan Oct 02 '24

I saw some of the mechanics and started playing for a few hours... Then quit because even the solid mechanics didn't make up for that.

And genshin is one of the less terrible gachas supposedly.

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u/Shastars Oct 02 '24

Can be both

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u/Kiralalalere Oct 02 '24

And they make a shitload of money on mobile games thanks to that :(

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u/ValBravora048 Oct 02 '24

Oh this is a fantastic analogy

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u/DuntadaMan Oct 02 '24

The thing is it's not even an analogy. When I was still studying psychology this was a major ethical crisis that had the entire field up in arms around 2004-ish.

Game companies were actively hiring behavioral psychologists who specialized in addiction treatment. They were asking them, however, to basically actively design scenarios and practices that would create addictions.

Clearly much of the field believed this was a direct violation of the core ethics of the field. You don't intentionally induce pathology in your subjects.

As always, the side with corporate money won though.

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u/Onetool91 Oct 02 '24

I would like to know more!

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u/DuntadaMan Oct 02 '24

In fairness I was and still am very strongly in the camp of "this is a fucking monstrous use of our education" and am biased. So here is an article by someone who is more favorable to the idea.

I will look for some more articles concurrent to the argument at the time , but the old internet is hard to find things on anymore.

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u/Onetool91 Oct 02 '24

I appreciate your timely response, thank you!

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u/bigblackcouch Oct 02 '24

Destiny 1 proudly boasted about how they hired behavioral studies to design the game to be so reprehensible.

Glad I'm one of the weirdos that doesn't "get" Bungie gameplay. When I tried out destiny 2 for free I thought "this is it?"

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u/GrynaiTaip Oct 02 '24

I'm pretty sure that all of them did it.

Also all other top staff are office drones, whose job is to analyze consumer trends and market nuances to maximize profits. I bet that most of them don't even play the games their companies make.

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u/wearethedeadofnight Oct 02 '24

Only several? I think this is just about standard practice at this point for any AAA title.

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u/DuntadaMan Oct 02 '24

I can't say if all of them actually hired qualified psychologists for the job for that, or if they just copied things others were doing.

All I can say for sure is that while I was studying psychology there was a period of time actual companies were hiring behavioral psychology graduates. Loot boxes came along shortly after.

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u/ashoka_akira Oct 02 '24

For as long as modern marketing has existed they’ve been hiring psychologists to manipulate you into buying shit. Its one of the major reasons I don’t really trust the field of psychology as a whole—they will sell you on anything They think is right.