Game Industry Observations

[Alfir]

My answer will be biased and might even be stereotyped, but I think 'game production' has a culture of its own separate from 'gamer culture'. Ignoring the market, I always had this impression that Japan in particular has very passionate game developers. However, we cannot be sure Japanese game developers are also not being laid off... For all we know, they might have it worse than Western developers.

Another bias I had was West tends to sensationalize a lot of things which in a good way would help the news to spread fast no matter how small it was if compared to the general populace. However, Japan was a smaller country if compared to the entire West, and we wouldn't see any media sensationaling stuff considering how some of us were literally on the other end of the world.

 

[Anon2024]

We can have a match in TW WH2?

You would probably destroy me. After playing AOE 4 recently, I find I don’t have much patience for RTS games.

Also, in Total War I only play campaigns, and my strategy is to outnumber the opponent through resource management over actual in battle tactics.

I think I find more fun in tower defense games, probably why I found a game like they are billions too easy but age of empires harder.

 

[SailusGebel]

You would probably destroy me. After playing AOE 4 recently, I find I don’t have much patience for RTS games.

Also, in Total War I only play campaigns, and my strategy is to outnumber the opponent through resource management over actual in battle tactics.

I think I find more fun in tower defense games, probably why I found a game like they are billions too easy but age of empires harder.

The last time I played WH2 was a couple years ago, and it was solo campaigns only. So I won't bet on myself. We can also play co-op campaign.

 

[ZukoMee]

You would probably destroy me. After playing AOE 4 recently, I find I don’t have much patience for RTS games.

Also, in Total War I only play campaigns, and my strategy is to outnumber the opponent through resource management over actual in battle tactics.

I think I find more fun in tower defense games, probably why I found a game like they are billions too easy but age of empires harder.

The only Age of Empires multiplayer I ever played was in AOE 3. I discovered I have absolutely no naval ability. We played on a map called the Carolinas. 8 players. It was 4 teams of 2 players each. My teammate decided to focus heavily on cav raiding parties to distract and aggravate enemy players while he secretly built up a large infantry force. I decided to also make a large infantry force which me and him would then merge together and move as one.

My main priority, I was playing as the Dutch so one of their unique units was a ship called the Fluyt which is crazy powerful for it's cheap-ish price and it is VERY good at handling, resisting, and killing coastal artillery. I built up a large fleet of these and decided to go pissing off another team of players who were building a pretty large fortress on the coast and had also taken control of an island.

Needless to say, I failed. I couldn't tell you what went wrong. I lost 2/3 of my fleet in a few minutes and just couldn't believe it.

 

[Anon2024]

The last time I played WH2 was a couple years ago, and it was solo campaigns only. So I won't bet on myself. We can also play co-op campaign.

Haha, I honestly don’t have the time.
I could do a battle here or there, but I’m terrible at the tactical part of the game.

I enjoy the huge battles in WH2 but I used Wemod to play them. Then I just throw wave after wave of soldiers at the insane AI army, because I just have fun sacrificing empire soldiers to chaos until chaos loses.

 

[SailusGebel]

I just have fun sacrificing empire soldiers to chaos until chaos loses.

 

[Sabruness]

i'd say, arguably, that gaming has become *TOO* commercialized. live-service with MTX and battle passes galore always looking to milk as much money as possible for as little actual content as possible.

one player review/comment for Helldivers 2 and why it's such a runaway hit when other live service games have flopped (to varying degrees of hard) i think sums it up well: 'it feels like a game made for gamers, not for investors.'. that, along with general mismanagement and misunderstanding of the market consumer, i think is really driving the instability in gaming.

 

[Anon2024]

i'd say, arguably, that gaming has become *TOO* commercialized. live-service with MTX and battle passes galore always looking to milk as much money as possible for as little actual content as possible.

one player review/comment for Helldivers 2 and why it's such a runaway hit when other live service games have flopped (to varying degrees of hard) i think sums it up well: 'it feels like a game made for gamers, not for investors.'. that, along with general mismanagement and misunderstanding of the market consumer, i think is really driving the instability in gaming.

Actually, some new information has come out that I find interesting.

It seems that the cost of games has gone up (I think it’s due to a lot of bloat on staffing and inefficient hiring, hence a lot of recent layoffs) and most companies take loans out to pay to make a game.

The cheapest loans are ESG loans, basically, studios have to adhere to the loan makers to get the money. So when a game by an ESG loan tanks, the studio tanks with it since they can’t repay the loan.

The unsustainable part is that the studios are making bad AAA games and expecting customers to pay for it.