While it's been one of the best years for video game releases, it's also been potentially one of the worst years for video games ever. We've got stuff like Gollum, Starfield, the whole Day Before debacle. So many awful PC ports. Services shutting down. The layoffs and studio closures. The track that the larger game industry is on is not sustainable and we're seeing the cracks.
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@beardalaxy I just wonder if this bubble is going to continue or the fabled second vidya crash will ever really happen... Feels like now that so many people play video games, even something garbage like Starfield can be a monetary success because it had that widespread reach.
@arc With each "monetary success" they will see diminishing returns. Bethesda will probably keep seeing people buy their games, but their good will is dwindling. Their fans are becoming more cautious of them. Even the extreme modders are sort of leaving them in the dust. ES6 will come out and be okay, probably, and it'll make a shit ton of money, but after that? I don't think Bethesda has much gas left in them if they keep going like this tbh.
I don't think another video game crash will truly happen. Not in the same way it did in the 80s. There will always be indie devs and smaller studios doing it out of passion and they typically have better games anyway. We might see the larger video game industry start to burn, but I don't think it's going anywhere. Especially Nintendo, who still manages to push out games of insane quality on hardware that's almost a decade old because they understand that the sheer amount of graphics and money you pump into a game doesn't make a game better.