alt Hacker Newsit should instead say "AAA gaming is dead now"
All we see out of mainstream AAA gaming is abused devs, private equity scalping, and mindless remaster regurgitation. Basically going through the same problems as Hollywood is with major films. You get a massive banger of a production every few years, and the rest is just endless money burning and developer harm.
Meanwhile the good indie devs are a dice roll on if they are gonna get recognized by the world at large and find success, just like small budget films.
My game library gets older by the day and I prefer it that way, but love it when an indie game bubbles to the surface and gets beloved by enough fans to break into the news cycle. Itch.io is the only place I look for games anymore unless something I need for the collection hits GoG finally.
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> it should instead say "AAA gaming is dead now"
> All we see out of mainstream AAA gaming is abused devs, private equity scalping, and mindless remaster regurgitation. Basically going through the same problems as Hollywood is with major films. You get a massive banger of a production every few years, and the rest is just endless money burning and developer harm.
The production ethics and the product are two distinct aspects.
Regarding the product itself, definitely the AAA gaming industry is, like Hollywood, a dysfunctional production model, but that doesn't mean that it's dead in terms of quality - some franchises do maintain high quality (Doom has been exceptional in this sense) but even in terms of new IP, in average, there at least couple of high quality entries in average, every year. Things could go better, but they're certainly far from "dead".
Main issue with AAA gaming was studios consulting people who wanted to tell gamers what they should want, using their capital on paying influencers and media to demonize said gamers for rejecting their games and so on.
That's what pisses off the mostly straight hetrosexual male crowd that make up most of the gaming market.
A big reason why many east asian game studios are doing so well by rejecting that tried and failed formula from the West.
This is a very rose tinted take. AAA game development was far more brutal in the 90s.
Go look up the development of Sonic Xtreme in the 90s. A brutal development process in the 90s that led to more thsn half the development team camping out in Redwood City Sega office building for months until they all got so sick half the team went on medical leave. Or Quake, where the game development process literally broke the team.