b e a r d
i'm always like 5 seconds away from never playing another new video game ever again. they're just getting more and more shitty. it's not even nostalgia talking because i can go back and play old games i've never played before and find them way more fun than the new slop that comes out. even if it is extremely refined slop, there's still something missing. even something like baldur's gate 3 which was by all accounts an amazing game did absolutely nothing to hook me beyond the 4 hours i played.
half life, FEAR, and portal are games i have played within the last couple of years i hadn't before. they are absolute gems that are still better than the vast majority of shit that's come out in the past decade.
Old devs loved their craft.
@Zerglingman people would sleep at the office and work on animations unpaid as a janitor because they wanted the game to be as good as it could be and they believed in what they were making. it helped that the suits hadn't really stepped in much at that point to dictate shit, at least not nearly as much as they do now. they'd see a good concept with a developer that could back it up and let them explore it. now the shareholders kind of suck all of that out and people who want to "make games" but don't have the drive to do it, or have the drive sucked out of them in the current state of the soulless industry, are the ones pushing us this slop.
@Zerglingman it is a bit weird how you have a lot of devs complaining about crunch and being overworked and stuff these days, but in the old times (and this is even described in a video about some old devs i recently watched and shared here), they would still do that stuff but they knew it was because they had to and they did it because they believed in what they were creating.
i don't think people should be forced to work on Christmas or anything like that, you know, but damn I worked on my game at least a little bit over the holidays because I enjoy it and I want to create something cool that I'm passionate about. feels like that's just been lost when it comes to the big, and even semi-big studios. and that's both an issue with people just doing it for a paycheck to begin with, and suits being suits that suck peoples' passion away.
people always ask why i don't go to college and get a degree in game dev and go work for a studio so i can make more money and crap like that but man, i do not want the thing that i love to have all of the joy sucked out of it. i want creative control and i want to do it on my terms. it's not about the money.
