If you aren’t from the United States this message may not ressonate quite the same, but the overall rhetoric remains; A triple A’ price tag, does not equate to a quality title.
I find that as more time goes on and the more commercialized the gaming industry becomes, we see a decline in quality from the Developers/Publishers we once trusted with our hard earned dollars. This poses a question to our budding and veteran gamers: Are the games we play really about joy and entertainment, or like Disney have they also fallen from their graces devolving into nothing more than a profit machine?
I had been thinking about writing this article for some time now and as I saw more and more disappointments from developers big and small, my frustration with the industry grew. The game that sat at the tip of my iceberg of frustration however, was none other than No Man’s Sky. For the readers out there who know me, I like Indie Games, I don’t apologize for it. So when I heard small Indie studio “Hello Games” was making an ambitious space exploration game, I was beyond excited. The initial screenshots that I saw had me pumped more than I had been about a new game in a long time. This excitement of course only made the utter disappointment that much more of unbearable. I write this right after Hello Games breaks their vow of silence after months to actually release content for the vacant game, but unfortunately the damage was already done.
I have looked back over the last 5 years and have looked at the titles that I have spent the most time/gotten the most joy out of playing and the large majority of those titles are sub $60. With all the thinking I have come to realize. I do not trust $60 games. It doesn’t matter who the developer is, big or small, I have gotten more enjoyment out of playing games like Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Don’t Starve, Counter Strike, and Factorio than I have with a lot of my $60 library.
Now I’m not writing this article because I am pessimistic about the future of the game industry. If anything, we have a bright future of games ahead of us, we’ll just have to stay guarded to avoid disappointment. We have the power to change the industry by voting with our wallets and making our voices heard. Don’t let developers get away with crappy ports and unfinished games, and the same goes for major media outlets. We all know when sites clearly are getting paid for their reviews, or paid to show bias, because they give crappy games great scores. Make your voices heard, because you can make an impact. I once exposed IGN for a video showing bias to the console versions of a multiplatform game causing it to eventually be pulled by the editors. Now this is far from a big victory, but any small triumpth only perpetuates the idea that we as gamers can have an impact, especially since this happened before I started writing for DSOG.
I want to know what games you all are looking forward to playing in the comments down below. I have been gone for a long time and would like to be able to engage with this great community again.
Matt Followell is another contributing author here at DSOGaming. A long time fan of PC Gaming and a huge supporter of the open source and homebrew movement. You’ll see him interacting with the community from time to time going by the user-name of Radapples.
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