I know I am definitely in the minority when it comes to how I feel about most popular games, but this year has honestly felt pretty meh to me. That said, I am happy to hear people are having such a good time with so many titles. I would love to feel like I’m in the same boat.
It’s a lot of marketing, but also it’s an active commercial field where people have a lot of influence on the outcome of their projects.
Given that and how it’s a growing market, it wouldn’t be surprising if the average number of real good games went up nearly every year.
Great AAA games seem genuinely rare now. They development cycle is shockingly long. I’d be surprised if there’s even a similar number of AAA games released, even more so good ones. You can make up the difference with indie games, but release year isn’t always related to when a good indie title is actually discovered.
I don’t disagree. As games have higher demands, they take longer to make.
I think that experience churn is also a part of what makes it harder to see a continuous improvement in quality. In this comment area, you can see a little microcosm of what I mean. “Best year” seems to be a good year that lands during a certain age/point in your gaming experience journey.
I see that every year there are fewer games that I want to spend my time playing. I also see that I’ve got less time to play, and that a lot of games are just derivative, incremental refinements, sequels, or just “another game like…”. I also see that a bunch of those games are being massively praised.
My take is that the games are better, I just have a raising threshold for novelty, and a game can be good and also not meet that threshold.
No matter how good your game is I’ve already played a puzzle platformer, so the new one won’t be the same.
This sort of thing is very personal. IIRC 2018 was the last time we had one of these years and I was really meh on the entire year. Not bad, but it certainly didn’t thrill me.
'23 has been wild though, so many games have hit with me.
I know I am definitely in the minority when it comes to how I feel about most popular games, but this year has honestly felt pretty meh to me. That said, I am happy to hear people are having such a good time with so many titles. I would love to feel like I’m in the same boat.
It’s marketing that has to make every year the best ever, but I doubt there’s been a top 5 year in the last decade.
It’s a lot of marketing, but also it’s an active commercial field where people have a lot of influence on the outcome of their projects.
Given that and how it’s a growing market, it wouldn’t be surprising if the average number of real good games went up nearly every year.
Great AAA games seem genuinely rare now. They development cycle is shockingly long. I’d be surprised if there’s even a similar number of AAA games released, even more so good ones. You can make up the difference with indie games, but release year isn’t always related to when a good indie title is actually discovered.
I don’t disagree. As games have higher demands, they take longer to make.
I think that experience churn is also a part of what makes it harder to see a continuous improvement in quality. In this comment area, you can see a little microcosm of what I mean. “Best year” seems to be a good year that lands during a certain age/point in your gaming experience journey.
I see that every year there are fewer games that I want to spend my time playing. I also see that I’ve got less time to play, and that a lot of games are just derivative, incremental refinements, sequels, or just “another game like…”. I also see that a bunch of those games are being massively praised.
My take is that the games are better, I just have a raising threshold for novelty, and a game can be good and also not meet that threshold.
No matter how good your game is I’ve already played a puzzle platformer, so the new one won’t be the same.
This sort of thing is very personal. IIRC 2018 was the last time we had one of these years and I was really meh on the entire year. Not bad, but it certainly didn’t thrill me.
'23 has been wild though, so many games have hit with me.