/s

Being Japan, I suspect all the kids are sinking money into Gacha Impact or Honkai Gacha Rail or whatever else

Not only that, many gaming memories, including console ones, and even for ancient people like me, are tied to modern online experiences. Just one example, that you all share and know and i believe this, is minecraft. But how much of that is multiplayer servers over single player worlds? Some of my finest memories are chrono trigger, popolocrois monogatari, final fantasy, earthbound. And i still like them. But playing for the fun of it, i can probably tell that some simple multiplayer is still fine. But many young (and adult) people are probably playing gacha, and these are highly manipulative games. Dopamine and serotonine driven. I find my enjoyment of a game dropping down to zero when I have a mandatory gacha system in the way.

I will probably attempt to finish earthbound, I never got past the giant animated pile of puke. Sometimes later i found out that I needed to bring some fly honey for that*, or that i need to wait three real life minutes for a waterfall to open the path.

This last example is comical in lisa: the paniful, where you are required to wait 30 real life minutes in a test of patience. 30. Minutes. And it’s still the most normal thing in the game.

I need to finish lisa the painful too, come to think of it.

But also, what’s wrong with having any of those things? I’d argue it’s better to have those things with less developer crunch. We don’t need children to form “attachments” to video game franchises. That just breeds loyalty to corporations. We need games that are developed with love and care by developers who treat their employees and customers humanely. Whatever that looks like, we want that.

I used to care quite a lot about graphics, but as the years have passed, I find graphically beautiful games less pleasing than a lot of the older games. It all seems too rounded and smooth now. I’ve been playing a lot of Project Diablo 2 lately, but when the new character dropped for Diablo 2 Resurrected, I figured I should give that a shot. While the graphics are definately nice, and the gameplay is smooth, I prefer the older graphics, because the griddy, slightly pixelated world adds so much to the dark and gloomy theme.

I’ve also just absolutely had it with every single Unreal Engine game looking exactly the same. Did the devs just lose all individual artistry?

Sometimes less is just more.

Don’t forget that FF13’s development was a big hell, too, not to mention that the post launch reception was below what squeenix expected

I do remember it. And honestly, I was annoyed that it was only Part 1 of a trilogy.

During that time, I was already pretty sick of movies that push to be a trilogy. So I wonder how many gamers are like me who are waiting for the entire FF7 remake to be released before they play it.

I mean…basically FFXIV’s Dawntrail expansion. But even then, a lot of their side dungeons and such have been referencing events/worlds from other Final Fantasy games via some multiverse theory.

it came out so many times in the remakes lol. plus they keep adding new lore every time.

AAA expectations are astronomical, AAs take some extra time to keep up, and indies that actually make it take the time to do their own thing, otherwise they’re almost certainly part of the vas, unseen sea of failed indies.

Also, oldschool game dev was toxic. It had some serious crunch culture, just to start. But I think it also attracted talented devs into “sweet spot” dev team sizes; not too big or too small.

And now, if you do software and want to make any money or provide for a family… well, you don’t do game dev. And that phenomenon has gotten worse and worse.