That's true, but M76's assertion was the people were only passionate about their causes, not games. And even some of the more polarizing titles were at least decent.
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Playstation single player games will no longer be ported to PC
- Thread starter Flogger23m
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Flogger23m
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This is also true.
I wouldn't go that far. Ruination of games was well on its way regardless. The politic aspects are just one of the issues for many games.
I agree completely. I recall it having many great quality of life improvements in shooting, driving and sounds. But the characters were just awful, and the whole story was such a wasted opportunity that amounted to practically nothing of substance.
M76
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You're not listening. I'm saying putting nails in front of your tires will cause a blowout, not that only nails can cause you to have a blowout.
Show me those great games that push values, please. If you're thinking of Baldur's Gate 3, you're wrong, it didn't force any values on you. The player had agency in accepting or refusing any party member or NPC.
Many are clearly not passionate. Some feign it, hoping you'll take them at their word, but if you press them it becomes clear. They have art degrees, and the gaming industry is one of the largest opportunities for artists, it does not mean they are passionate about game design.
Games reach billions of players worldwide, what more effective way do you know of to reach so many that is open to art students fresh out of college?
But sequels would still sell gazillions had they not ben addled by agenda pushing and owning the chuds
Besides there were plenty of high profile failures recently that weren't sequels, so this theory is false either way.
Returnal, Forspoken, Saros, Highguard, Concord, Suicide squad...all hundred+ million dollar games, that were not sequels, what's your excuse for these?
M76
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I guess it depends on what you consider the starting point. I always use Dragon Age as the example because it exhibits all symptoms.
Some say Dragon age 2, was already bad, I don't think that, in fact it might be my favorite in the series despite the rushed release and trying to make it more accessible to casual players.
I think the turning point is Inqusition where the worst aspects of ideology started to appear. Everyone knew the game was somehow off, but we couldn't put a finger on it, because we didn't even consider the possibility of malice. Before that we never considered that game designers would deliberately make choices they knew would go against players' preferences.
In my naivety I openly criticized some character design choices in the game, which to my complete shock led to getting permanently banned on neogaf. That was my red pill moment.
I read it quite clearly. Your analogy still makes clear you believe ideology has played a key (if not primary) role in the gaming market's troubles, even if it isn't the only one. I have yet to see real evidence supporting this.
Examples of popular value-driven games? The Horizon series (yes, including Forbidden West) has sold well and received clearly positive reviews. Ditto Ghost of Yotei, even if it didn't break out like Tsushima did. BioShock has long been a political franchise, having blasted Ayn Rand and American exceptionalism. Life is Strange has done well; It Takes Two and Split Fiction have been hits. And that's not including indies that have been successful in relative terms, like Dream Daddy or Papers, Please.
Can you name a prominent example or two? I don't need a comprehensive list (that would be nigh-on impossible), just someone who has clearly been uninterested in gaming but heavily interested in advocacy.
And you only reach that scale if you have a truly gigantic game like Grand Theft Auto or Minecraft. Realistically, reaching even a fraction of that audience still needs a blockbuster release, and unless the message is glaringly obvious there's no guarantee players will 'get' what you're saying. So embarking on game development is a bad strategy: you spend years of your life in school and early career work in the off chance that you might get to work with a studio large enough to produce a game that shares your message with a signficant crowd that might miss the point. You'd have an easier time starting a YouTube channel.
That's speculative. You'd need "reasons for not buying" to link reduced sales with ideology rather than other factors, such as quality, a late release in the console cycle, or a rough economy.
Concord, Highguard, and Suicide Squad were all designed as live service games using formulas that were either safe or detracted from the gameplay (Suicide Squad would've probably been much better as a fully contained story) while doing little to stand out versus incumbents like Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Destiny 2. Returnal and Saros are takes on Housemarque's signature "3D bullet hell" format, which is unique but niche. And Forspoken was just not a good game, period — the basic mechanics were lousy no matter what you thought of the characters or writing.
Think about it. Let's say you're already playing Overwatch or Valorant, and then Concord arrives offering a similar hero shooter formula. Are you going to leave the game you know and love for a familiar experience, let alone pay for it? Probably not. Even Bungie is facing challenges with Marathon, and that's a better game (in the extraction shooter genre, but stilll) with loads of hype.
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Prince Valiant
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Examples are worthless if you won't lay out the criteria you deem acceptable.
Flogger23m
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But those games sold more poorly than their predecessors. Though for Yotei I am seeing mixed things, some sources now saying it sold more than Tsushima. Though we've seen a trend for most Sony games to see a decrease in sales.
For BioShock it was political, but it had a coherent point. It also clearly showed some of the negatives of populist and left leaning uprisings, like the black woman trying to murder a child from a rich family. So there was at least some nuance. Life is Strange is a bit different in that it takes place in a liberal place, centered around art school high school girls, probably one of the most left leaning demographics in the country. It is fitting given the theme. Even then the game isn't quite as black and white. One of the characters is set up to be a bad guy (the strict, veteran father) who ends up being portrayed in a decent light later.
Some of the newer games just smack you on the head without much thought and throw entirely out of theme elements.
M76
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Sorry, but are you serious? There can be an argument on how much of a role ideology has played in the recent struggles of the AAA gaming industry, but to say you don't see ANY evidence that it has played a role? I can only assume you are either willfully blind to it, or disingenuous.
You think Forspoken's cringe writing and hero didn't contribute to its failure? Or Returnal's choice to opt for an ugly middle aged woman hero? Or Concord's visual diarrhea character designs? These are all ideological choices, the creator of those designs didn't think oh gamers will love this. quite the opposite, they wanted to upset and go against notions of conventional attractiveness.
You said great, not popular, don't change the goalposts. Horizon Zero Dawn was not that overt anyway. Forbidden West was overt, and it clearly didn't garner the same acclaim as the first game. Sequels usually outsell their predecessors if word of mouth is good. The fact that both Forbidden West and Ghost of Yotei struggled to even match the numbers of the first game show that mixing in politics indeed drag down games.
Indie games are entirely another thing, they don't need mass appeal to be a success, if they can find their niche they can find limited success by catering to those who want that kind of thing. Although in most cases these games release to a few hundred players on steam and are funded either by government grants or activist investors, and they are not financial successes.
Like Avowed's art director, who said "gamers were a mistake"? Sorry, I don't recall his name from the top of my head, but I heard he was fired in the recent round of XBOX layoffs. Good riddance.
There are entire consulting firms who do nothing but fight for their ideology to be represented, you think these people are passionate about games or activism?
You think the person at Disney who told Quantic Dream that they need to redesign their protagonist in Star Wars Eclipse because she is too attractive and too white, did it out of a passion for games?
Or the batshit insane non-binary director who demanded to be called "the professor"? I don't even remember what studio that freak "worked" at.
Yeah, you beat that strawman to a pulp. But I did not say they deliberately go to art school in hopes of getting to work on GTA. They already have an art degree and are looking for job opportunities, most of which are in the gaming industry. They might never even thought of videogames before this. Do you think they'll get passionate about games overnight? And it's not an uphill battle either to inject their message. Most western studios are already infiltrated by activists who will hire and promote based on politics. Like the aforementioned avowed art director who openly said he wants to apprentice only black artists.
If everything else is the same but the politics is turned up to 11 and the game underperforms it is safe to assume that it plays a role. But if that's speculative what do you call what you do? Blaming everything but the agenda, refusing even the idea that it might play a role. Even the creators of these games don't use these lousy excuses like late in the console cycle, or blaming the economy.
Yes they did little to stand out, because of the awful writing and or designs. Marvel rivals did little to stand out too, except they used more appealing character designs.
As for forspoken I actually happened to play the demo, and the basic mechanics were solid, in fact I think it was a better game than stellar blade, which was actually lousy. But simply using attractive designs made a very mid game a success, imagine what attractive designs could do with actually good games?
Yes, if it was visually more appealing. With the budget they had on concord they could've made a visually stunning game, instead they chose to use the shades of political flags to create something so visually offensive that it killed the game before anyone even seen the mechanics.
Of course Bungie is facing problems with marathon, duh, it uses the a similar color palette as concord. Everyone saw the writing on the wall after the first trailer except for bungie.
SecretStash
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Just played forspoken. That game legit has a lot of good things going for it in terms of mechanics. There's some real people who put passion into the gameplay. Even has stuff that I wish other games had ot only mods would add. Too bad the New Yorker in a fantasy world thing didn't work out. If you can just accept that an orphan is naturally going to start off as self-centered and make bad choices because of that and forgive the cringe parts, then the rest of the game is really fun. There's a lot of great ideas in that game.
Nothing that directly links ideology to sales results. You'd need to conduct buyer surveys for that. There's certainly a very vocal contingent that objects, but we can't definitively say it's large enough to seriously impact sales (just as we can't say for sure that it boosted sales).
Forspoken had bad writing and took hours to get going. That's not an ideological problem; that's a quality problem. Returnal did well enough that Sony was comfortable greenlighting Saros... and Concord? Overwatch has a giant hamster and a cat as hero options, and it's still going.
More importantly, you have to demonstrate causation, not correlation. What percentage of potential Returnal buyers saw the main character and thought "I won't buy this because I can't fantasize about her?" Probably a non-zero number, but 1. they're childish and 2. we don't have data clearly indicating this hurt sales.
Again, you're confusing correlation with causation. All you know is that the sequels didn't sell as well as the originals; you're making assumptions as to why. That also applies to the origins of indie games.
I'd like to see an objective, open-minded study of game successes and failures that allows for many factors. Is affordability a problem? Was there another game calling for attention? Or were they just satisfied enough with the first game that they didn't feel compelled to get the sequel? I'm not discounting ideology as a possible factor, but in my experience the boring answer is usually the correct one.
This... misses the point. Concord's designs were by and large less exciting than those in Overwatch.
And blaming Marathon's troubles for looking too much like Concord is... a stretch. They're on the neon side but hardly ugly, and the ideology is more universal and nuanced (companies and governments can both be untrustworthy, for instance). I know a lot of people who like Marathon's look precisely because it has a distinctive art style rather than gritty realism or cartoonish graphics.
That what drives me crazy. Games still going for $69+ even after a year. So I think I own like 3 ps5 games and canceled the live junk after it went to $150 or whatever a year. Yeah not paying that wasn't bad when it was like $80 a year. But definitely not worth it for me tbh I haven't even turned the thing on in a year or more.
xnaughtyowlx
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I keep reading the title of this thread and thinking "Were they porting all PS1 games to PC or something?"
M76
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LOL. So the suspect is standing over the corpse with the smoking gun in his hand and your reaction is: We can't actually know if he shot the victim, in fact he might have been trying to help
That's the whole forest you're missing from the trees. It's the ideology that causes the bad writing. If the ideology could exist without making the writing and visual designs bad nobody would have cared about it in the first place.
Saros is not a sequel to returnal, or are you suggesting sony should've shut down the studio? You're harsher than I am. Maybe they will since Saros did even worse.
So you are being wilfully blind. Overwatch has a variety of characters, some of which are a bit whacky but it's also an unserious game with cartoon graphics. Concord had like one character that wasn't completely awful and jarring, and it has realistic graphics and wanted itself to be taken seriously.
You think the only possible reason to make an attractive character is to serve sexual fantasies? Even if that were the case, if it sells games why is it problem that people fantasize about a fictional character?
i'm not confusing anything, you wishing it was only correlation does not make it so.
You don't have to be a genius to put 1+1 together. If the only obvious change is the ideology, then there is nothing else to blame. You can't present a valid alternative.
Ironic that you are calling for an open minded study while you are so close minded that you refuse to entertain the idea that ideology plays a role in the decline of game quality.
That has to be the most outlandish explanation I've ever heard. People didn't buy the sequel because the first one was too good?! WTF? When did that ever happen? Imagine not playing mass effect 2 because you like Mass Effect too much. The better a game the more excited people get for the sequel, not the opposite. This is the reason why popular games sequels usually outsell the first game in pace, unless the creators majorly fumble something.
But you can't give a boring answer, you give weak excuses.
What do you mean? Visually pleasing designs are more exciting, that's the point.
Denying that marathon's visuals played a role in its failure is like denying that ideology is a factor in bad writing. I didn't even look into marathon's backstory because the visuals immediately turned me away. Yes I've seen some people claiming to love the art style, not sure how much of it was the usual shill activity that every major release gets these days. I have not seen anyone mention marathon for months until they announced the pve mode just now. Either way the lackluster player count clearly shows that the people who love or even can tolerate these visuals is a minority.
There are games with similar ideologies that have great writing. The Last of Us Part II is considered a classic in part due to its writing and characterizations.
I didn't say it was, just that Sony as Housemarque's owner has final say over the studio's direction. It could have pressed for a shift in genres, characters, or mechanics.
Why does it matter if a character is plain, then? Especially in a bullet hell game where you don't have time to look at faces outside of cutscenes? I don't know about you, but I play games because I like the gameplay and stories, not because I'm looking for eye candy (sexual or otherwise).
Real analysis involves considering all factors. You go where the evidence leads, including non-obvious data. You'd be a terrible market researcher or scientist.
I have presented valid alternatives. Major studios are often criticized for sticking to familiar game formulas and leaning too heavily on DLC or subscriptions. We're also in an affordability crisis where people have gone from buying $400 consoles and $60 games to $600 consoles and $70-80 games, and have less disposable income in the first place.
I didn't say that. What I'm saying is that you have no evidence directly linking ideology to game quality or sales, just assumptions. If you could point to reasonably-sized surveys of potential buyers indicating that they didn't buy for ideological reasons, then sure. But open-mindedness means allowing for other possibilities; right now you're insisting that ideology is a major (if not exclusive) reason some modern games fail, and have exploicitly refused to accept that there might be other reasons.
Again, you're making assumptions that you aren't backing up with real data. Marathon is struggling, but there are other reasons that have better evidenial support. The botched alpha plans soured early adopters; the launch version of the game was unforgiving; and of course, it was coming in well after Arc Raiders and Escape From Tarkov had established their footholds in the extraction shooter realm.
Besides, some of the best games have revolved around bold visual language, like the Wipeout series, Rez, Okami, and The Wind Waker. Not to say that Marathon is an unmitigated success — I just like that Bungie went for an iconic look over a safe one.
Flogger23m
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The sales drop off compared to the first say otherwise. The story writing is really not that good. To be honest I felt similar with the first game, as it had too many character blackouts and long skips to avoid character building. But the 2nd game was quite a bit worse. A lots of pandering which did not fit the theme or setting very well.
I picked up a physical copy dirt cheap not long after release (~$12 ) because they’d clearly printed far too many copies and had to clear them out. Sales for the game were well below expectations. The story leaks saved a lot of people money by showing how bad of a writer Druckmann is. How he was allowed to kick out the two better writers and take control I’ll never understand. And how he still has a job is insane. But then Sony also fired the guy that made sure they had tonnes of great single player exclusive games before 2019 because he didn’t want to destroy the brand chasing live service slop. So really nothing should surprise me about the current corporate heads poor decision making.
DukenukemX
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Too bad killing off Joel was a mistake, and the character they wanted the audience to sympathize was also a mistake. Abby who killed Joel was never liked and is an asshole.
View: https://youtu.be/4-vxJtTUz5o?si=XpH45vjJ9rFuxzLa
This is a tiresome excuse to push for ugly characters. If anything you said was true then Anime would have stopped making attractive female characters with gravity defying breasts. Same goes for cars, because if nobody cared for how the car looks then people would have bought the Pontiac Aztek. Why do people keep buying luxury German sports cars? It ain't the reliability I assure you. Like it or not, but looks matter.
M76
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A classic in how to destroy a franchise more like. And I'm saying that as someone who enjoyed The Last of Us II. But it's story is generally considered one of the worst ever told. Even if I disagree with that assessment I can see why many people would think that.
I can't speak for why SONY didn't they demand a change. The problem wasn't with the genre or mechanics with returnal either if I'm right.
Is this a real question? Why do most games have cosmetics? Why is selling cosmetic items one of the biggest money maker? People don't just like to shoot things, but like looking cool doing it. Yes, even female gamers will choose the pretty, young, dolled up character model over what you got in Concord for example. Cyberpunk 2077 is an FPS, yet I still give a damn about how my character looks or in any other Bethesda RPG, from oblivion to starfield. It's part of the power fantasy and escapism. If you are going to have a locked down main character in a game as a developer you must make sure that it appeals to the broadest audience.
That statement should be framed it is so ridiculous. How dare I follow the evidence?!! I do the best with incomplete data, since game publishers would never give full access to the numbers, especially for flops, must hide those from investors. What you're basically suggesting here is that I must accept the official narrative no matter what, because they'd never try to mislead or obfuscate, right?
They are not valid alternatives since it is demonstrated over and over again that those familiar formulas still work if the game stands out otherwise, and the easiest way to stand out is to make characters appealing again, and not just phyisically.
If affordability was a real factor all games would be affected not just bad games.
I have my two eyes still and I can see that every game that lets ideology dictate the direction is bad usually in multiple ways. I don't need a survey to tell me that. I already said this, even provided an analogy. I'm not saying all bad games are caused by ideology, but that ideology causes bad quality games. Sometimes it's just the writing, sometimes the character designs, sometimes even the gameplay is bad, or all of the above.
You don't have any real data supporting this either, you just insist that it must be something else and not the graphics design. And it's not like I'm saying it is 100% the design and nothing else, just that it is a major factor. Why can't you acknowledge that?
Never even heard of most of those games and Wipeout is like 30 years old, we didn't have realistic graphics back then. I looked up Okami and it was also a flop according to wikipedia. So why even bring it up? It is proving my point.
You can't afford to be artsy-fartsy when spending hundreds of millions on a live service game that needs a huge player base to be sustainable.
How much they matter depends on the medium, genre, and social attitudes. Movies and TV shows are all about passive viewing, so of course you're paying more attention to how people look (though anime is often about indulging unhealthy fantasies). And cars? That's called product design... if you can blend form and function, that helps.
In games, though? While I wouldn't say looks are irrelevant, you're missing the object of the exercise if the attractiveness of the player character is a dealbreaker.
This is veering too far off track, though — the point is that we have no tangible evidence recent game industry struggles are tied to ideology. We can't point to the vocal minority grousing about it on social media or forums, as they don't have nearly as much impact as they think they do.
If you don't have enough evidence to reach a verifiable conclusion, you don't make that conclusion. You don't have to accept the official line; you just admit that more data is necessary.
For a parallel: many cultures believed the universe revolved around Earth because all they could see was planets and stars spinning around them. They had evidence, but they came to the wrong conclusion as they had incomplete data and incorrectly assumed they didn't need more. The right thing, whether it's for the universe or game sales, is to say "we don't know." And if we'll never know? Too bad. You don't insist on having an answer at all costs.
This is why your "two eyes" assertion falls flat. You're mistaking your confidence in one possible answer for a complete picture. After all, ancient peoples were absolutely certain comets were signs from the gods; that didn't make them right.I can't say for certain that Marathon's design wasn't a factor, I'll admit, but the evidence is stronger for elements like gameplay put-offs or simply a crowded market.
...And you just lost a lot of credibility.
The Wind Waker, for a start, is a Legend of Zelda game. It's considered one of the best in the series, in no small part because of its cel-shaded art style.
Rez? It's one of the best-known games from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, considered one of the best individual game designers, full stop. He's responsible for Space Channel 5, Lumines, and Tetris Effect, all popular titles that sold well thanks partly to iconic art. Rez alone has been remastered/updated multiple times to keep it playable 25 years later.
Okami didn't sell well at first, but it's also a classic that got a remaster and now has a much-anticipated sequel in development. It's the definition of a slow-burn success that has sold millions of copies.
You can absolutely be creative with live service games. That doesn't mean anything goes, but the Destiny games thrived with help from distinctive art.
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DukenukemX
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Credit to M76 because I over looked cosmetics. If a characters esthetic doesn't matter, then why are paid cosmetics such a big business?
A lot of cars built in the past were built to look kinda like a woman. It's called aesthetic proportions and ergonomic design. Designer Raymond Loewy used the female hourglass shape for 1963 Studebaker Avanti. Some cars are meant to look angry. You can think of cars on the very low end of the uncanny valley.
That's because a lot of games are deliberately trying to make characters ugly. Ripley from Aliens looked natural, while the female character from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet took the time to shave her head bald. If she were a guy, she'd be an edge lord. If she were a guy, she'd be just as hated because who wants to play as a bald guy? Even that smug face would be hated if she were a guy.
That's because this is hard to track information. Do companies go to gamers and ask them if this female character makes their peepee smol? They assume you're a misogynist and blame the consumer. The only game that I've seen that got away with pushing an ideology hard, was Baldur's Gate 3. The only reason that game gets a pass is because it's such a good game. If that game was even slightly less good, then a lot of their ideology would be too hard to deal with. I had that problem with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 where Samuel of Kuttenberg was such an insufferable character. Problem is that KCD2 is a bad game, and these parts of the game only make me hate it more. I can't even kill the guy. If this were Baldur's Gate 3, I could kill him and the entire games story would have to change around that fact. You wouldn't even be punished as in BG3 you get different rewards for different actions. Of course being a bad guy may get you better or worse rewards, but at least the game lets me choose.
View: https://youtu.be/kCEmPht-R8g?si=K30mMYymtSXYDm3s
it's hard to track, but that data is still important The whole point is to explain why people don't buy games; if you don't have a truly representative dataset, you don't have an explanation.
And it's easy to ask neutral questions. If you're surveying someone who didn't buy, you can offer answers like "I objected to the game's ideology" or "I didn't like the appearance of some characters" alongside basics like "I couldn't afford it" and "I didn't like the gameplay."
You'd think "we don't know" was a dirty word based on some behavior in this thread.
DukenukemX
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I am a gamer and I know what I don't like. If there's a number of people who are upset with how games are made, then it isn't worth ignoring because you think an ideology has no effect in games. Everything matters, but some things do matter more in games. An ideology isn't super important until it's made into a problem. People were fine playing as Nazi's in WW2 games, even after Extra Credits video. People were fine playing as women in games, until feminists wanted shaved bald lesbians.
View: https://youtu.be/UCj8llyzfWo?si=KJ_mxYvvtJJw4IPa
There's a reason why sometimes this doesn't work. You could ask if people have a problem with playing as a lesbian, and most people wouldn't. That is until people see what is their visual interpretation of a lesbian. Just ask Stephen King of the Lesbians.
Who doesn't know? The corporations, because they totally don't. Going back to Sony games, it's not like their games don't have some controversy's. God of War had an issue where there's a black character in Norse mythology. Ok fine, but the next God of War won't have Kratos. That's like Sonic The Hedgehog without Sonic... which has happened and has pissed off fans.
View: https://youtu.be/DyTN4VvDYhg?si=-yUIaPvyKIOttbNK
Even the original creator of God of War hates the new direction. Point is that Sony had better make sure their games are bangers because they won't have PC sales to offset their mistakes. Doesn't seem like Sony is avoiding those mistakes.
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/1VLBODeIHwo?si=WcMMM45_u7Y1gNJf
You also don't represent all gamers, and many companies also know not to confuse the loudness of a minority with its impact. There's been an anti-feminist camp in gaming for over a decade, but in real life they've had little influence (beyond the death threats, that is)... and why would Sony or anyone else want to be seen giving into hateful people? That would damage game sales considerably more.
They clearly did confuse the loudness of a minority with its impact. The shift to trying to sell products to the "modern audience" was at the behest of fringe political activists. These activists were aided by financiers like Blackrock (for their own political reasons), by tying conditions to cheap loans that force studios to conform to "modern audience" standards in games, as well as force strict hiring policies to not hire based on merit but instead on skin colour and sex. So the product became full of unpopular propaganda and was also being made to a lower standard because of the drop in employee quality.
Since those activists don't play games, and the "modern audience" doesn't exist, we see the current state of the western games/television/movies/comics market with publishers/studios losing hundreds of millions / billions on products that will never or barely recoup their investment.
Sony shows no outward sign of trying to change direction like Microsoft is currently doing by cleaning house of the rot that had built up in Xbox. The PS5 era is arguably the worst era Sony has ever had for first party title quality. All thanks to a fixation on chasing live service and the "modern audience". While I don't disagree with their choice to move back to exclusive first party games on the PS6 (as it's a sound business decision if their quality is there to force people to buy into a closed market). Without a change in direction to stop the alienation of their core customer base, I can see the PS6 losing traction and players moving over to a PC or xbox. The only reason I bought a PS3/4/5 was because of their reputation for good single player exclusives. Who's going to buy a PS6 for trash exclusives. By the time the PS7 rolls around, no customers will be left.
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Yes, but look at a lot of the cosmetics. They're not all attractive. Lots and lots of clowns and various characters from different genres. On Fortnite, from what I've heard, the most used skins tend to be the ones with the smallest hitbox but the trends keep shifting all over the place. Some people absolutely choose attractive people but others will be all over the map. Some of the character creator stuff in Saints Row back in the day were hilarious. You always got your share of top-heavy women and hugely muscled dudes but equally you'd see tons of fat clowns or skinny dudes in speedos. When you take the limitations off a character-creation engine you get all sorts of disturbing, and funny, stuff. People end up all over the map and for some games, like Saints Row, that's great. For other games you don't want to remove all limitations.
That said, if you cater the game to image then people who play that game will be focused on image and thus it becomes no shocker that cosmetics are popular. If the game doesn't focus on image it creates a different dynamic with the players. You can have the same person playing both games they just approach the games differently. I've played most of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games and spent god knows how many hours modding the crap out of them. But, I've also played games like Halo and other FPS where you can't customize your appearance at all (or much). When I play the different games I have a different reason for enjoying them.
You're making an assumption that the ideology mattered more than the quality of the game and using that as the basis for your argument. As has been shown time and time again, shitty games, even with no ideology, lose money. The common thread is the game having terrible gameplay. That's always at the heart of the whole thing. If you don't like the gameplay you're not going to tolerate anything else. I've played some games where the story and art style sold me but I couldn't stomach the gameplay at all. So even if the story sells well and the ideology matches yours perfectly you're not going to chew on that steaming turd of gameplay simply because the ideology speaks to you.
If the games that lost money had better gameplay they would have sold better, simple. The word of mouth would have gotten around that the gameplay was great and that would have pushed gamers to play it even if the ideology annoyed them.
The Last of Us 2 had great gameplay. But spectacularly failed to meet sales targets 100% on the ideology of the lead on the project. (tlou1 40+ million vs tlou2 10+ million sales) He completely wrecked the story of a story based game to push "modern audience" ideology. This failure was then repeated in the TV show, where people liked season 1 but then absolutely hated season 2 for the same reason game sales stalled for the 2nd game. He's set to release a complete stinker of a story for his next project. I feel sorry for the people employed there that have to work under him.
Not going to indulge in the conspiracy theories, politics, and "activists don't play games, we're the real gamers" gatekeeping here.
The bigger issues in gaming are cookie-cutter games and the overemphasis on live-service titles. The PS6 is safe from the competition as it's effectively the only game in town for a dedicated living room console unless the new Xbox turns things around. The bigger concern is whether software selection and console price hikes will help it fare as well as the PS5, and that's the wildcard.
He's not wrong..
Back on topic though. I couldn't give a fuck less. Sony is just pushing woke nonsense. Look at the new God of Wars. Absolute woke bullshit and so far from the originals. So yeah, fuck them and their gay, woke, bullshit.
M76
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Oh, but you are allowed to conclude that ideology is not a major concern? I think it was proven beyond reasonable doubt that ideology very negatively affects game quality. Your insistence that it does not makes no sense, unless you are defending it for ideological reasons too.
Newtonian physics are technically wrong too, they do not take into account the full picture. But they have proven helluva useful and still used in everything daily. Just as not knowing that the Earth is not the center of the universe didn't really matter for those people. In the same vein, it is not necessary for me to know exactly how other factors affect game quality, to know ideology plays a major role.
What evidence you have for the prime reason of its flopping being the gameplay instead of the art direction? Did you do a survey, like you demanded from me?
LOL, if all else fails poison the well?
Nintendo was never big in former communist europe where I'm from. So I have zero attachment to that company and its ips.
I fail to see how not playing an ancient 25 year old game in a 40 year old franchise relates to ideology affecting games in 2026.
And I hate cel-shaded graphics, but that's neither here nor there.
I didn't say you can't have a live service game catering to a niche. I said if you spend hundreds of millions on it then you can't afford to make it divisive. Destiny's look is complete milquetoast compared to Marathon. And Destiny II already underperformed, so it's not exactly a good milestone.
M76
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In movies I am an outside observer, not a participant, so the looks of the MC does not reflect on me, I am not imagining being in the place of the hero.
I think you are the one missing the object of the exercise if the looks and personality of the character you control is not important to you. Even in pixelart 8-16bit games they did their best to draw important characters as attractive and idealized.
We absolutely do have evidence: Every game pushing in hard on ideology majorly flopping. Including Dragon Age Veilguard which even I didn't expect to be a flop, I thought the name alone would carry it to at least mild success. It's funny how the so called vocal minority has no power, yet it immediately gets blamed when something flops.
M76
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Baldurs Gate 3 wasn't pushing the ideology like Veilguard for example. In Veilguard you are forced to participate and side with the ideology. in BG3, you can reject everyone if you don't like them.
Everything I've seen doesn't indicate the numbers you quote. Selling less, yes, but not 1/4 The numbers I've seen indicate the Last of Us (PS3) when it first came out sold 8.4 million and the Last of Us Part 2 (PS4) sold 10 million. The big seller was actually the PS4 remastered version of Part 1 which sold 18 million. So, yes, the first game (released on two different Playstations) sold more.
Then again, lots of sequels sell less. God of War 1 sold more than God of War 2 and 3. No ideology involved. Lots of time sequels sell more games but that isn't always the case and it has never been a slam dunk. Right now, in my opinion, the media world across the board has the general public suffering from "sequel fatigue" and "remake fatigue". People are getting bored of remakes and sequels with some exceptions. TV shows are getting less seasons than they used to, generally speaking, as so many more options are available and people are chasing different experiences across different platforms. Attention spans are shrinking and people are losing interest faster. I think it is a bit of a sad state of affairs all around personally.
M76
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Last of Us sales remained strong for a long time, including the remastered version indicating a very good reception for the game. Word of mouth carried it.
Last of Us 2 started very strong but then sales fell off, indicating mostly negative word of mouth.
It most definitely didn't meet targets, which probably played a role in the cancellation of the multiplayer, and then the stand alone live service last of us game.
And if hypergalactic or wth it is called isn't a success, naughty dog is looking at job cuts, I'm sure.
DukenukemX
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We've seen enough failed games as a result of them pushing for "modern audiences". Don't make me press the Concord button, which was Sony's $400 million mistake.
View: https://youtu.be/WAh7IBUp0Xw?si=uK1Z8PeF7B7lE9Y2
You do know Sony made Stellar Blade? Feminists were very upset that a sexy female character was the main character of a video game. When ported to PC, it became the best selling Sony PC game. It beat out Ghost of Tsushima, God of War, and even Spider-Man. Stellar Blade sold over 1 million copies in its first three days on Steam. I don't see any damaged sales here.
View: https://youtu.be/d5oL21ni1T8?si=WoCw08Jhc3FEikLu
Fortnite has a page for it, and it's dominated by females. This skin is #5 in top used skins.
Safe is relative here, as PS5 emulators are already started to do 3D in games. Just like Sony blames gamers for removing physical media, then Sony is responsible for creating PS5 emulators on PC. As for cookie-cutter games, the real reason this is an issue is because companies want to manufacture games, which is impossible. One can't put a lot of money into a game (Concord) and expect to make lots of money. The reason some games push for ideologies is because they're manufactured.
This is why Sony not releasing their games on PC is a mistake. Unless Sony is absolutely sure they'll make one amazing game after another, they can't be sure to recoup the full return of their investment by just sticking to Playstation. The new God of War Laufey game is likely to be failure, and also likely to be PS5 exclusive.
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I won't conclude that it isn't a major concern; we just have no firm evidence to show that it is, and saying "proven beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't make it so. I and now Ididar have already pointed out both contradictory evidence and other potential factors. No, I haven't conducted a survey, but I do know that gameplay, reviews, affordability, and sheer sequel fatigue are possibilities given historical patterns.
The problem is that Newtonian physics have still been rigorously tested and are solid, repeatable models. You can't say "games always fail when they push ideology" because that's not only subjective criteria (which ideology? Where's the breaking point?) but demonstrably false in at least some cases. If we're going to abuse the physics analogy, it'd be as if inertia only applied some of the time.
I appreciate that cultural differences meant you had limited exposure to Nintendo, but that doesn't change that Wind Waker was a massively popular game whose art style played a role in its success. I've never watched Titanic, but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant.
The point is that distinctive art often sells games rather than taking away from them. Nintendo's business is arguably built on it.
Destiny 2 lasted for nine years and was second only to Call of Duty when it launched in 2017. I'll agree it was less polarizing, but I wouldn't call Marathon botched.