"Consumers are playing fewer games, playing them for longer, and as a result, outside of a few notable exceptions, many new games are struggling," say Ubi UK.
I’d definitely agree with that, I was a much bigger gamer when I was a kid/teen/YA, the only real franchises were Pac Man, Mario and Donkey Kong, so the field was wide open with all sorts of new and innovative games, the sorts of games that are still coming out but just harder to find. I feel like there’s a lot of people just looking a the AAA titles being announced in the presses and then just being underwhelmed when there’s a lot more going on, but as you said there’s a lot more to life as an adult so that can be too much time. On the upside, a lot of those indie games are much shorter so you can find time to play them.
As examples, work got a lot harsher post COVID, once mandatory return-to-work kicked in. It’s almost like they’re trying to get people to quit. Interest rates went up, costs went up, financial pressure went up. Political conflict with older generations in the family is going up too.
IDK where you are; this is just my perspective from the US. But it seems like video gaming could be an early casualty of all that pressure.
You make a good point about announcements too. I feel like the video game news pipelines is a little muddy, with all the ‘oldschool’ written outlets having shrunken so much?
Yeah I gotcha, I suppose there’s two types of people in those situations: those who will put down the games and see them as a distraction or waste of time in the face of all the other things they have to do and all the serious/bad things going on in the world, or those who dive full on in and escape the world through gaming. Another perspective, games used to be light and fun, hella challenging, but still fun, you could pick them up and put them down. Nowadays if you stop playing a game for a week or two you almost have to start over, at least that’s how it is for me with my sieve brain. I’m also in the US.
I’d definitely agree with that, I was a much bigger gamer when I was a kid/teen/YA, the only real franchises were Pac Man, Mario and Donkey Kong, so the field was wide open with all sorts of new and innovative games, the sorts of games that are still coming out but just harder to find. I feel like there’s a lot of people just looking a the AAA titles being announced in the presses and then just being underwhelmed when there’s a lot more going on, but as you said there’s a lot more to life as an adult so that can be too much time. On the upside, a lot of those indie games are much shorter so you can find time to play them.
And what I’m getting at is the era.
As examples, work got a lot harsher post COVID, once mandatory return-to-work kicked in. It’s almost like they’re trying to get people to quit. Interest rates went up, costs went up, financial pressure went up. Political conflict with older generations in the family is going up too.
IDK where you are; this is just my perspective from the US. But it seems like video gaming could be an early casualty of all that pressure.
You make a good point about announcements too. I feel like the video game news pipelines is a little muddy, with all the ‘oldschool’ written outlets having shrunken so much?
Yeah I gotcha, I suppose there’s two types of people in those situations: those who will put down the games and see them as a distraction or waste of time in the face of all the other things they have to do and all the serious/bad things going on in the world, or those who dive full on in and escape the world through gaming. Another perspective, games used to be light and fun, hella challenging, but still fun, you could pick them up and put them down. Nowadays if you stop playing a game for a week or two you almost have to start over, at least that’s how it is for me with my sieve brain. I’m also in the US.