It’s true. Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they’re raving about a new one before I’ve finished that last one. I’ve got a list of 20+ games that came out this year that I still haven’t gotten around to. I might get through 5 of them before the new year. And you know, if wouldn’t hurt my ability to play more games if more of them were shorter.
EDIT: I provided this anecdote as a reason contributing to the problems that the industry is experiencing. The article is about the trouble the industry is experiencing as a result of too many competing games being released in a given year. It is not about how I feel about trying to play through many of the ones I found interesting. Apparently Schreier had the same problem on BlueSky with people answering what they think the headline says rather than what the article is about.
There have been ‘too many games to play all the ones that seem interesting to me’ since the late 90s, at least.
There has always been absurd levels of competiton in video game releases.
What this person is describing has been the broad state of the overall industry as long as I have been alive.
It is not a problem.
It is totally fine that decent games are moderately popular and quite good games are quite popular and occassionally something seemingly simple is actually novel in a fun way, or hits just the right combo of gameplay / art style / narrative elements at the right time and is a breakout hit.
It is totally fine that giant evil megapublishers who exploit their employees and then slave drive and mismanage them into producing shiny, but buggy and lackluster garbage… are not making back their marketing budgets.
It is in fact very very good that they are failing.
The only thing different now is that video gaming is massively mainstream nowadays and normies struggle with choice paralysis more publically these days.
A real dedicated nerd is capable of seeing through marketing and doing their own research, thats… kinda the whole thing that makes one into a nerd, a seemingly odd obsession and inordinate amount of time spent trying to understand their hobby.
If you are just a consumer who is overwhelmed by choice and marketing, pff i dunno, get gud scrub, capitalism be doin what it do, figure it out, develop your own actual personality and sense of taste and discernment, or keep crying I guess?
Video game development democratizing via lower barrier to entry is a great thing.
Players are more likely to find and get something they want for a reasonable price, megacorps are more and more likely to spend way too much money on things they don’t understand anywhere near as well as they think they do.
Whats not to love?
If their form of video gaming as a business model is unsustainable, well that sucks for them I guess?
Heh, they blamed the video game crash in 1984 on “people have got bored with Pacman and Space Invaders - the video game boom is OVER”.