Young gamers in Japan may not be forming the same attachment to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest because modern dev cycles are as long as their childhood, users theorize - AUTOMATON WEST
It's honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should've been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn't been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn't care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/young-gamers-in-japan-may-not-be-forming-the-same-attachment-to-final-fantasy-or-dragon-quest-because-modern-dev-cycles-are-as-long-as-their-childhood-users-theorize/Open linkView original on piefed.ca557
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Also, and I'm just throwing this out there, maybe the circlejerk of nostalgia bait for Gen X/Millennials means fuck-all to younger people in general because it's the nostalgia of their parents, not their own thing?
Like, aren't we seeing this in so many different properties? As time marches on, interest wanes? Nobody cares about Marvel movies anymore. Nobody cares about Star Wars anymore. The most hardcore fanatics tend to be older and had the originals, which were literally original content, as things they grew up with. Part of the mystery and excitement of them was how much was left unexplained. Seriously, the Clone Wars was this mysterious fucking thing when it was just an offhand comment by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: A New Hope. Now we have entire TV series dedicated to the background of the Clone Wars. Mystery gone. The first season of The Mandalorian brought back a sense of mystery to the series and then promptly dropped it to mix it in with every other piece of Star Wars memorabilia.
Young people want their own stuff that they're growing up with, they don't want rehashes of the shit their parents obsessed over.
Look at the continued interest in Adventure Time spinoffs, for example. Adventure Time first came out when I was just shy of 29. It would be fodder for the children of people just slightly older than me. It was also enjoyable for older folks who enjoyed silly fantasy, which gave it wider appeal. It persists more because it was an actual original thing that some people grew up with.
We live in an era where copyright that lasts 100 years after authorial death has broken corporations brains and they are scared to death of anything original in case it might not be a clear moneymaker. Letting interest in a new property grow over time is almost unheard of in the Netflix era of two seasons and then fuck you, it's over. So even when new properties are explored, most aren't given enough time to mature into something that becomes truly nostagliac for a younger generation.
If corporations want people to be as invested in long-lived series, they have to allow the option for new, interesting series to take the stage. Is it really a shocker that people are over games that started in the NES era? That young people want stories and ideas that reflect the world they live in, not the one their parents grew up in? Young people absolutely lose their shit over Undertale and Deltarune, both games made by a single auteur developer. Pokemon, referenced in the article, were sleeper hits that took time before they became an absolute craze.
I'm in my forties, and I constantly talk about how the world our parents brought us up to live in was dead before we were born. It's the same but at an accelerated pace for kids these days. The world we know and are trying to prepare them for no longer exists. Our stories and nostalgia become meaningless for our kids because it doesn't speak to their experiences.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I mean, all you have to do is look at box office numbers to know you're wrong about Marvel and Star wars.
Maybe the movies are garbage to hardcore fans, but the franchises still make a fuck ton of money.
And yet the Disney effect is a very real thing. If your franchise hasn't been milked to death, it's only a matter of time.
Yeah and they largely all fucking suck ass for about the last 5 years.
There's a difference between slop that appeals to an imagined 'median consumer' that will make a boatload of money, and ideas that are actually unique and new and captivating.
Regardless of what you or I think of quality, the median consumer is consuming them. Star Wars is still making a hell of a lot of money, it has not faded from cultural relevance in the slightest.
I want to agree with a lot of what you're saying, but this is very much not true. Regardless of whether you or I like the new stuff, those franchises are still making tons of money, and that does include younger generations.
The article mentions asking kids which is more popular, Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, and all the kids answered Pokemon. That's a franchise that's slightly younger than FF and DQ, but not by much, it's still much older than all those kids playing it. So the real question that needs to be unpacked here is: why are some franchises able to continue appealing to new audiences, while others get reduced to nostalgiabait for those that grew up on them?
You aren’t wrong but I also think people tend to forget just how much of what we grew up on were remakes and rehashes of stuff even from the radio era. Especially the cartoons that we watched as kids, so much of that was just recycled jokes and such with some jokes for the adults of the day thrown in too. Even Star Wars was an homage to the serials of the 30s-50s like Flash Gordon, which itself got an 80s remake (with an excellent soundtrack by Queen). The remakes aren’t new they are just more obvious.
On the nostalgia front I just want to say I've never been into metroidvanias and never played any kind of metroid game before, I tried metroid zero mission an hour ago and I'm already hooked. These games are just genuinely good. Not dunking on newer games I play those a lot too, just saying not everything new is better and I'd love to see some kind of happy middle ground.
My parents once taught me how to use a payphone when I was a kid. I’m 40.
Your post is exactly correct.
Wtf is a payphone
Oh my god this is a real question and I'm getting old.
Haha don't worry happens to all of us. I feel old too sometimes
There were many decades between the proliferation of home phones and cell phones. During that time many people may be away from home and need to contact someone over the phone. Payphones were installed in public places that anyone could use to meet that need. They took change in exchange for minutes using the phone.
So just telephone cells? Okay
Far easier to rehash a known moneymaker than to take a risk come up with something original. Some people might point at the multiple tens of thousands of games on Steam as evidence there are people making new games that are original, but if you compare the relaitive few that take off vs the popular franchises’ success it’s pretty obvious that rehashing works. Plenty of new games languish and never really get anywhere.
I'm almost 50 but uninvested in Nintendo.
It could also have something to do with the fact that, for a 20 year old person, none of the games in the series that have come out during their lifetime have been the fan favorites. Even amongst die-hard Final Fantasy fans, you don't get people losing their minds over FF XIII the way they do for VI, VII, IX, or X. For most of the recent games, the most effusive praise I'll hear for them is that they aren't that bad once you get used to the systems and figure out how the game works.
Yeah, I was thinking that recently when I realized I've known
::: spoiler the crazy plot twist in Star Wars (Luke's daddy issues) :::
for as long as I can remember.
I've also known
::: spoiler so many iconic characters and scenes (Yoda, R2D2, Chewbacca, the metalkini, C3PO, when they boop the Death Star etc.) :::
before I was even old enough to watch the movies, too.
I'm sure they're cool movies, with lots of cultural relevance, but they've been spoiled in every possible way for me, specifically because the older generation loves them so much that they can't shut up about them.
If only children had the perspective to know alternative choices exist and they should hold out for something better. This assumes young people can control the media they are fed. It's more likely that the generation making content for them confuses nostalgia for childhood and the audience doesn't like the iterative/derivative product.
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding.
Honestly, what I miss most are the low budget straight-to-handheld spinoffs that used to flourish in that space. Handhelds especially felt like a space where developers weren't afraid to go wild with experiments, because development cycles were cheap and quick. But that attribute started to show cracks in the 3DS era, it was inevitable that this would no longer be sustainable when all of the budget had to go into bigger and bigger and bigger console games, while next generation handhelds also got more expensive to develop for too. There wasn't room for these quick and dirty side projects anymore.
A lot of that quick and dirty space is in indie dev hands now and they're doing wonderful things. Things like Window Wars or Inscryption or the recent very successful tactical cat breeding game Mewgenics
Edit: author of Mewgenics is shit who accepts shitty people. Leaving due to all the below comments but advise skipping the game.
I'd pirate Mewgenics if you're interested in it. Dipshit edgelord author used Ethan Klein and Chris Chan for VO work in the game, then justified it with some lame centrist fence sitting. Incredibly tone-deaf response for a game literally named after eugenics, so fuck him.
Wow, what a jackass.
Being pro-murder isn't a difference of opinion. What a fucking psychopath.
humor of a twelve year old with the morals of a south park character.
I just realized that that game was made by Edmund McMillan.
Honestly if you have played any of that devs games you would have known going in that that is basically exactly how you might describe most of them.
The only reason I even checked out a game named "Mewgenics" was because it was Edmund. I put up with his (literal) shit in Isaac because both it and this game are very well designed from a gameplay perspective. Not gonna reward putting murderers, rapists, and genocidal zionists in a game about doing cat eugenics though.
I've been playing Issac again lately because Northern Lion has been releasing videos again.
Still a great game.
Chris Chan the literal motherfucker? I might pirate the shit out of that just for curiosities sake.
They're just doing meow sounds for the cats. It's not even worth the controversy he caused by doing it. Could have literally recorded himself meowing as he suggested and no one would have known or cared.
Sorry, I had zero idea. I'm really getting tired of everything going to shit these days. It's sparked several comments or I'd remove it.
You don’t need to apologize. It’s a good game worth recommending as long as you don’t pay that guy for it.
Absolutely 100% I'll take this trade every day of the week. Graphics got as good as they ever needed to get during the X360/PS3 era. Obviously better is better, but theres a limit to how much you can actually do. Putting the costs aside, we're properly entering the uncanny valley with some games now, where they almost look realistic enough to be real but its not quite right. The slightest glitch and it scares me a little. When an eye starts rolling funny or something. Even that aside, theres diminishing returns. When youre running fast and looking in as many directions as possible to see if theres movement on a ledge, it really doesnt matter one little bit if the hair has full shadows and has realistic physics.
Agree, as long as we can leave the piss filter of that era in the past
I feel this way too. I just want games with at least PS2 level graphics and I would be happy if it meant they came out sooner or were more fun to play. The obsession with realistic graphics is unrealistic especially with AI buying up all the ram and gpus.
Good news! AI slop hits two of those marks!
RPGs got worse for me as soon as they shifted to adding VAs for every line. FFX (1&2) were the last Final Fantasy games I played all the way through. (FFX-2: would not play again even though the combat system was better). I'm fine with voice acting, but I liked when I could read dialogue and advance it accordingly.
If you ever get the itch, I thought XII was better than X. But if you didn’t like X, you almost certainly won’t like any of the XIII series or XV. I haven’t played XVI or VII remake yet
And yeah X-2 was pretty bad. Of the ones I’ve played I think I’d only put XIII-2 behind it
To me, 12 was the start of the downfall. Make it less like a classic JRPG and more like an MMO. Got rid of the strategic turn based battles in favor of watching your characters just do things. It led directly to 13, which to me was by far the worst thing to ever happen to Final Fantasy. It was also the moment I realized that I must be weird as hell, because reviewers kept panning the story as overcomplicated (which is basically what I live for) and praising how unique that awful battle system was.
Bingo.
Me: "I want to strategically pick from my attacks and dynamically respond to shifts in the battle with a whole optimized and customized party."
Square-Enix: "Best I can do is half-assed hybrid character action game or stupid, limited autoplaying AI."
Ah, yeah tbh I forgot that was the first that wasn’t turn based. I just remembered loving the characters, plot, and environments.
So guess the battles were so pointless I forgot about them. Maybe after the success of Expedition 33 square enix will bring back turn based. At least as an option? Please?
Doubtful. When they remade FFVII they waved their hands around about there being a menu and said "Look! It's just like the original!" despite the fact it's NOTHING like it at all. They're going to gaslight everyone about their bad, flashy effect game systems rather than give classic fans what they want.
YES, absolutely. The child in the street looking for his hide and seek buddy is cute world building, but it should take up 0.0003% of my playtime. Don’t quintuple that occasion by making his line fully voice acted.
I feel like there’s an absolute banger of a JRPG opportunity if someone can nail the interruptive timing of Guardians of the Galaxy or Class of 09. Forget AI; comedic timing is the true rare technology.
With this and the comment lamenting mobile development, I suppose I should plug Curse Crackers, a game made with GBC aesthetic.
A few years ago I was hit with the sack of bricks that is all Donkey Kong Country games being released one year apart. I have vivid memories of playing the second game for a very long time and then multiple times after while imagining what a third game would be like and you're telling me that was only one year? There's no way those games would mean so much to me if we had only had one per console generation.
Ill preface by saying I didnt read the article. But I also think that the state of gaming today is much worse than it was in the early 2000s for millennials.
When I was growing up, games had to come out complete so they were generally much more polished. However, when the Xbox360 came out, console makers gave the ability to devs to release patched versions via updates. Initially it was a great idea - devs could fix bugs they might have missed while testing. But then this quickly spiralled into studios forcing devs to release 1/2 baked games in a horribly broken state.
I also think how much you generally have to pay for games has gone way up with respect to the cost of living. Video gaming is much more of a luxury now, than a simple past time. Plus there are so many F2P mobile games out there, that there is even less of an incentive to get into a console / PC gaming.
And the other side of the coin, with the advent of DLC, being able to take a complete game and carve pieces off of it to sell separately for more profit.
For a long while, DLC has been just an excuse to foist unnecessary content on the consumer for sales. There are a few notable exceptions in this like Fallout 3 and New Vegas, earlier Borderlands, and, surprisingly for me, the recent Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon DLC.
For the most part, though, I have not bought DLC without thoroughly vetting it. I'm not talking about cosmetics. I'm talking about actual story/content additions being overpriced fetch quests which turn out to be, more often than not, just vehicles for even more useless cosmetics.
As an example, Fallout 4 DLC (much like the basegame itself) was a mistaken purchase seated in brand loyalty/a hope of redeeming the title. The DLC featured cosmetic additions for their Sims style settlement minigame, a couple cutesy fetch quests for armor, and two unfinished/unremarkable story DLCs that played like the elevator pitch of what would have eventually been fleshed out if this were an earlier entry in the series.
With most story DLC, at best, you get a lackluster and entirely forgettable addition to the basegame. At worst, you get horse armor disguised as a new campaign or an unforgivably half assed hodge podge of storylines that cheapen the rest of your experience with the game.
Edit:
of -> if
we're -> were
FYI, Cyberpunk 2077's DLC is the best I've ever seen, and thoroughly worth paying for. Unlike quite a few others, as you mention. It makes everything in the base game better, and the additional story is even better than the story in the base game.
Nice. I liked it before the dlc came out so I'm definitely down to see how it changes things. I appreciate when studios support their writers to deliver a satisfying/impactful product. It makes all the difference.
Every era of video games was affected by its business model. Games used to be far more obtuse to sell guides and hint hotlines, and they used to be hard to the point that they were less fun so that it took longer to finish them. In the early 2000s, when the industry was largely between alternate revenue streams, you tended to get a lot of padding so that they could put a larger number of levels as a bullet point on the back of the box, so the first few levels would be great, but somewhere in the middle, they'd be pretty phoned in.
Gaming was always expensive. Super Mario 3 was 50 dollars in 1990. That's 120 dollars in today's money.
Yep - the argument from companies that game prices "have to" go up is total bs. The marginal cost of producing an extra copy of a game is effectively zero, so the overall price can come down as the market grows. They are, as always, charging what they think will bring in the most money.
Release a non finished game, and finish it only if it's a success (TM)
I don't necessarily agree with you on this specific point (although I agree with the rest of your comment).
Gaming is unfathomably cheap nowadays and the conversion $/hrs is incredible. While yes, day 1 prices are higher than they used to be, discounts are frequent (excluding Nintendo platforms) and games tend to last a LOT longer than they used to. Excluding old-school JRPGs, I don't remember many games from the PS1 era lasting more than 10/15 hrs. Nowadays that's the baseline length for any single player game, and it goes only higher from there.
And that does not include the plethora of F2P and live service games that people can waste literally thousands of hours into, free giveaways (I have hundreds of titles on Epic Store that could probably satisfy all my gaming needs until the day I die), etc...
The cost of gaming has gone up only if you are a Nintendo aficionado who adamantly refuses to jump to any other platform and buys all new releases day 1, or a PC master race whose eyes strain from playing games at anything less than 300 fps on the latest NVIDIA card. For any other demographic, gaming prices are fine and more approachable than ever.
Street Fighter II was $80, and then they asked you to buy the game again for each updated revision.
The real difference between then and now is that when games were on cartridges, every game was expensive. No exceptions. Now, the real reason why paying $70 for the latest AAA feels like a ripoff is because sitting right next to it is Balatro for $15 and Marvel Rivals for free.
I gotta argue against the games costing more compared to cola. A new Nintendo game in 1988 was $40 to $50. At that time hamburger was 99 cents, a value meal from a fast food place was $4, a house was $80,000, a new car was $10k to $18k, and you were pretty much a Middle class family if you made $45k\year. Some original NES games even hit $60 a piece.
So videogames are one of the few things that haven't kept with inflation. In no small part due to more people purchasing games and less physical overhead, but that doesn't take away from my stance. 40 years later and a game price has gone up by like $20.
When I was young, these were also basically the only two JRPGs that existed that I could get.
Now, there are countless thousands, and these are just two names amongst many. And FF really feels like they are just phoning it in recently for me personally.
SE’s obsession with making every mainline FF game a 100+ million dollar project with hours of cutscenes and a combat system ill suited to fight the skyscraper sized enemies is killing the series.
They’re obsessed with spectacle. Nobody really cares about spectacle anymore.
I mean, being the cutting edge turn based JRPG that's on par with the most impressive AAA titles if not an industry leader itself was historically Final Fantasy's place in the market, in contrast to Dragon Quest's traditionalism.
Hell, I believe Expedition 33 is popular because it more or less filled the spot that Final Fantasy forfeited when it went action.
I still remember they put Deus Ex in the freezer, handed it over to Embracer, then they murdered it before the final chapter.
In fairness, spectacle has been a key part of the series' identity ever since Summons were trying to show off as many particle effects as the SNES could handle. And then FF7 was designed around being a tech showcase for everything the Playstation could do, it looks quaint today but at the time that was cutting-edge eye candy and it's how the game was marketed.
I think back to early 2000's, I was playing the Jak and daxter games all throughout elementary to highschool with a decent amount of replayability. Same with metal gear solid. And these were pretty fleshed out games worth the money back then.
Kingdom hearts was the first time I got fed up with development hell.
Ratchet & Clank had it's first three games released in three years. Same graphics and no one cared.
In the age of no-new-IP, why does it take so long for new games to come out…
AAA expectations are astronomical, AAs take some extra time to keep up, and indies that actually make it take the time to do their own thing, otherwise they’re almost certainly part of the vas, unseen sea of failed indies.
Also, oldschool game dev was toxic. It had some serious crunch culture, just to start. But I think it also attracted talented devs into “sweet spot” dev team sizes; not too big or too small.
And now, if you do software and want to make any money or provide for a family… well, you don’t do game dev. And that phenomenon has gotten worse and worse.
I remember reading a story from an old Sega or Capcom dev and he basically said that the boss would lock the door of their office when they had to meet a deadline. Not only toxic but the boss doing straight up illegal shit.
I saw a meme (which could be based on a real message) that said "they" (a Japanese game company) is rewarding their devs by giving them a week to go visit their family.
I wonder if Japanese companies are paying attention to FromSoft. I absolutely love that FromSoft reuses assets and improves their base engine. You can see the evolution from DS1 to Elden Ring (and Sekiro), releasing a game every year or two.
Growing up - Dragon Quest 1-4 were built on the same engine with minor improvements. FF 4-6 wasn't a massive leap, but a gradual jump in graphics.
Yakuza games seem to release yearly. They have built a workflow where people work on the same mini games and "slot" it in for whatever the newest release it is.
As much as I shit on Ubisoft, they really dialed in on their engine and tools to crunch out cookie cutter checklist open world games.
Thinking about it, all my examples could also have been plagued with toxic crunch culture.
1st party engine devs have been stuck in dev hell, mostly. There are some exceptions, like you said; I’d cite Decima as another success.
But think of EA's Frostbite, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, Clausewitz, BGS, many more. Especially indies that try.
It’s not just that old games crunched, but making a new engine that supports modern platforms and modern hardware is just an immensely complex task. There’s just too much to worry about.
The best success seems to either come from:
Hyperfocusinf one's engine’s scope to one game niche. Larian's divinity engine, for example, makes BG3-likes; that’s it, that all it does. It cannot make an FPS or even a different RPG.
Engine shop very, very carefully. For instance, KCD2 leaned into CryEngine’s strengths hard, especially that dense, well-lit European foilage.
And either case needs a lucky roll of the dice anyway. See: Cyberpunk 2077 in utter dev hell (even if they eventually pulled out) from wrangling their engine. Or the latest Borderlands being a technical wreck even though they basically invented Unreal Engine alongside Epic.
Isn't it true for the developers as well? If the game development lasts 5 years, you have quite a different team and ideas by the end compared to when you started.
Same for elder scrolls or gta. Kids today get 1, maybe 2 games of their favorite series before they have to do adult things. The only teams releasing on a quick schedule are the shit mobile games.
Kids play kid's games like Roblox or Fortnite. Also i feel kids don't play single player games all that much.
Those games are what they can all play together across platforms for free, that is what matters as a kid when you get home and want to hop online with your buddies
My parents wouldnt buy me games as a kid but they bought me consoles, I wouldve loved some decent free stuff, fortnite became a thing when I could start buying games myself
i mean with those games it feels like you get one every game third generation at this point.
elder scrolls 6 is going to become halflife 3 at this point.
HL3 problem is that they want it to be as groundbreaking as the previous titles. The problem with elder scrolls 6 is that even if it is released it's probably going to be bad.
I'd be fine with Square Enix going away. In my opinion, they got greedy and way too full of themselves. Nintendo as well, for that matter.
FFXIV funds everything else and now everything sucks. They don't make fun games anymore. Remake took so long I don't even care to play anymore. First one had me hyped. Second one I haven't even touched.
I was going to buy the remake until I found out it was only partly done. Now that it has been six years and it still isn't out, I'm pretty sure I'm just not going to bother.
I actually wanted to play one of their games but you had to create a wholeass account with authentication (I think a phone number). Yeah, too much effort to entertain so this decline is a positive for me.
Which one required an account?
Only one I know are mobile garbage or the literal MMO
The online Final Fantasy. 14 I think? The one where people hype up the story. XD
Are the FF7 remakes really considered that bad?
I thought they were pretty good.
They're really not, but different people have different tastes. And the fact that's it's broken up and is taking about 15 years to finish pissed off a bunch of the general public.
I personally was not interested in them at all. I was much more a fan of 6 than 7. As such, no idea on the quality.
Because you can suplex a train?
The real reason is probably more that I was not a fan of early 3d stuff in general. The camera was kinda crap, the controls didn't feel great when walking around, etc. Not just an FF thing, either; this was for games as a whole except for racing games. I hated Starfox as well (coming from the Amiga world, some stuff felt like going backwards).
Being able to suplex a train, though, was a nice bonus.
Yep but somehow you've people arguing that kids should just play those ITT. They've aged like fine wine. Like resident evil fixed camera was so fantastic.
I mean I grew up with these moon logic puzzles and I still get very frustrated as an adult.
There's no way I would be doing this to myself if I had alternatives, and no nostalgia.
They seem like pretty good games to me, but so much of them seems so, SO far removed from my nostalgia of the original. There’s some comparison videos out there in how they deliver certain scenes, force some cameos too early, mismanage the music, tweak plot that didn’t need tweaking, and so on.
Seemingly good, just massively padded. We're talking about what was a ~30 hour PS1 RPG being milked for three entire games. One of which, still isn't released nearly 6 years later. Squeenix basically got away with selling parts of a game.
I actually own Remake and Rebirth, but I just can't get into them because... why bother? Not like I can finish it.
I cant even tell you the last original FF that came out.
it came out so many times in the remakes lol. plus they keep adding new lore every time.
I mean…basically FFXIV’s Dawntrail expansion. But even then, a lot of their side dungeons and such have been referencing events/worlds from other Final Fantasy games via some multiverse theory.
The entire GTA series exists between 1997 and 2013.
They have the next one apparently coming out this year but who cares at this point?
Games from old series should be viewed the same way Hollywood reboots are. It's just hoping a name will help with advertising.
There's not really a reason for games to be taking so long to make other than too many cooks in the corporate kitchen.
Back when studios were run by the developers, great games came out on almost a yearly basis. If they had 2 years? You're almost guaranteed a classic.
Now that the business school people make all the decisions and there's so much money being wasted on unnecessary positions in these companies, customers are left out to dry.
I reckon it's also because there are simply so many games available now, and countless devices to play them on. My generation had one console or computer max, and a handful of games. Now young gamers have half a dozen devices at home, and thousands of free or easily accessible titles on whatever platform is currently in reach. They don't need to commit to a couple of titles, when an advert for the next one is a tap away.
I mentioned this before on another post, but I had 5 games on my PS1 as a kid. There are currently over 400 owned games available on the living room Xbox, there's a Switch in the house, the kids have iPhones, iPads and laptops, there's a Quest 2 gathering dust etc etc. That attachment we had to one or two of the few games we owned as kids has to be in part down to accessibility.
Steam library is at over 2000 games, yet it's always Arc Raiders, Minecraft, and Peglin. Can't get them to play a game with an actual story for the life of me.
I agree this is a much more plausible reason. Not only was there less choice, there was less opportunity. Adjusting for inflation, I paid over $150 for Final Fantasy VI when it came out. Games were precious, and the good games were ones you replayed because--unless you were quite privileged--you didn't have a big library to choose from.
That's the kind of thing that endears players, and it takes truly exceptional products to get there now. There are also far more studios that have the game-making formulas to work with today, too. I don't think that's a bad thing in any way.
That's because Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest aren't making kids games anymore.
They're remaking old games for nostalgia value for old gamers like me who played those games as a kid.
NGL I'm still waiting on the dragon warrior monsters remakes because I'd always been a bigger fan of those than any Pokémon game. I doubt it's coming any time soon, but a guy can hope.
That's the whole issue though. None of these studios are putting out games for modern kids. There just rehashing their old IPs and pretending they're new games. Kids dont want spruce up 1990's games. They want games for them.
Remember the FFVII tech demo they showcased during the PS3 reveal. Good chance FF7 remake has been in development since then, but got shelved because FF15 development became a train wreck
Don't forget that FF13's development was a big hell, too, not to mention that the post launch reception was below what squeenix expected
I do remember it. And honestly, I was annoyed that it was only Part 1 of a trilogy.
During that time, I was already pretty sick of movies that push to be a trilogy. So I wonder how many gamers are like me who are waiting for the entire FF7 remake to be released before they play it.
I thought ff7re (the second part of the remake) sucked ass compared to ff7r (the first part.) The first one felt like a cool modernization of ff7 that still felt like the same game at its core, but the second one felt like complete focus-grouped buzzword filled nonsense. And the most annoying fucking element ive ever seen in a video game, birds that would constantly fly around your screen squawking and generally just being a nuisance until you went and completed their little meaningless side objective. Even the combat aspect felt like a bad monster hunter clone rather than a final fantasy game
Big agree on the ubisoft and assasins creed points. I'm also "playing through the second one" right now, though I've been on the Junon area for a month or two now, and I also haven't opened up the game in a month or two. I just don't think I'm ever finishing that game, which feels wild to me given the absurd amount of time I've spent playing and replaying the ps1 original. I'm just about as much of a simp for that story/those characters as a person can be
Not sure why they'd think kids are the target audience for a remake of a 29 year old game.
Surely all the kids are playing the latest mobile slop pocket money sink?
Being Japan, I suspect all the kids are sinking money into Gacha Impact or Honkai Gacha Rail or whatever else
I had all 5 3D GTA games come out before I was 17. The first rated M game I bought myself on launch day was GTA V. I'm almost 30 now.
Of course, GTA isn't necessarily a kid's game, but we all know who's playing it. Same deal there. There's a whole generation of people out there who don't even know we had 6 stars.
Kids will abandon most pre-existing shit to find something they can call their own.
I think I buy this worldwide, honestly. Case in point: one of the most popular video game series for young people recently has been Five Nights at Freddy's, and that series dropped its first four games in eleven months, and its next four games in four years. Minecraft remains one of the most popular games in the world, and it's releasing full free content drops every few months. Pokemon is still insanely popular among kids, and there hasn't been a year without a new Pokemon game release since 2015.
So, yeah. Hey, kids like novelty. Who knew?
You can just play the original, though.
Same with any of these franchises. The newer titles are hit or miss, but the old games have aged like wine.
They may have aged like wine but most youths don't like drinking wine. It is an "acquired taste". They don't have the nostalgia you have for them.
Then they can wait six years between sips of AAA piss, I suppose.
My friends with kids don't seem to have any problem picking up Sonic, Pokemon, or Guantlet. One's even picked up Eldin Ring.
You don't need nostalgia to enjoy nice things.
Elden Ring is hardly "aged". L DLC in the last 12 months. There are modern Sonic and Pokemon games and they hit a short cycle time.
The "can wait 6 years" is the whole point. They aren't waiting. They aren't getting attached enough to bother waiting. That's literally the whole point of the article. Did you read it?
You don't need to wait to play games that came out thirty years ago.
Plenty of young people are into retro gaming.
We can but it generally looks and controls like crap on modern screens. It has aged worse than many tank control games like Resident Evil.
Lots of people just wanted a nice graphical update with some quality of life improvements. I'm sure that shouldn't take a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to complete.
RE has been remastered at least twice by now.
Square loves nothing more than to dust off an old game, tweak it for modern hardware, and then re-release it for $60.
Fortunately, you can pirate these updates for free.
I'm seriously seeing the difference between reddit and lemmy in this post. Last time I saw somebody mention how franchises were pretty frequent releases they got jumped on hard for not knowing anything about how games are made and that it does take 15 years to make a decent product.
I'm of the opinion that it really depends on the nature of the game.
For example, the children are super hyped for GTA VI, because even though GTA V came out before some of them had object permanence, they've been playing it for years. It's remained in their consciousness this entire time.
Compare that to Skyrim, which came out only a year or so before GTA V, and we haven't seen an Elder Scrolls game since... The young don't give a toss. They weren't playing it then, they aren't playing it now, so there's absolutely no attachment to Elder Scrolls as a series.
Games used to stay in the consumer's consciousness before by having sequels made every few years, sometimes even every year! Now? It's all live services, so it doesn't feel like the game hasn't had a new iteration for over a decade.
In other words: Kids aren't attached to franchises anymore because the game industry is stagnating.
Existing franchises are missing the young people because they're about squeezing pennies out of nostalgia, rather than making good games.
The Indie developers of today are creating tomorrow's lasting franchises.
It's a tale as old as game development.
It's all there from day one in the history of Atari and Activision.
Atari's CEO decided that game developers should wear ties, keep standard work hours and be happy with a salary instead of any equity. This brilliant leadership vision led to the founding of Activision.
Atari went on to become a brand husk company.
Activision went on to become Blizzard / Activision and get bought for more money than I'll ever see.
It's much easier to build momentum around a franchise when you release 7 games in 10 years than 2 games in 7 years.
I mean, when games take a long time to come out and then still have serious flaws (looking at you starfield) can you blame anyone for not feeling too attached to a franchise? God I remember when veilguard was first announced after Inquisition... Announced, cancelled to be reworked into live service, cancelled again only to completely change everything that really made it a DA game.
I prefer quality over quantity. Problem is we don't have quality, even for games that take a long time.
The graphics and "the biggest game ever" races have led to this.
No, you do not need physically accurate bubbles flowing in the shaded beer bottle that you will at best appreciate for 3 seconds while looking to get on with the game.
Or realistic horse balls. Or 4K skin textures. Or ray tracing in every game. Or 40000 side quests on a map as big as Mars.
I used to care quite a lot about graphics, but as the years have passed, I find graphically beautiful games less pleasing than a lot of the older games. It all seems too rounded and smooth now. I've been playing a lot of Project Diablo 2 lately, but when the new character dropped for Diablo 2 Resurrected, I figured I should give that a shot. While the graphics are definately nice, and the gameplay is smooth, I prefer the older graphics, because the griddy, slightly pixelated world adds so much to the dark and gloomy theme.
I've also just absolutely had it with every single Unreal Engine game looking exactly the same. Did the devs just lose all individual artistry?
Sometimes less is just more.
But also, what's wrong with having any of those things? I'd argue it's better to have those things with less developer crunch. We don't need children to form "attachments" to video game franchises. That just breeds loyalty to corporations. We need games that are developed with love and care by developers who treat their employees and customers humanely. Whatever that looks like, we want that.
Nothing. I'd take more good games instead of fewer hyperrealistic ones, if I had to choose, but those features themselves aren't anything bad.
The compulsion that every game has to have them, that's what's annoying, particularly when it comes at the price of putting developers under pressure.
If we are to have them at all, yes, less crunch is better.
The loyalty to corporations is a bad thing, absolutely, but I can also see how forming attachments can be nice. I very much enjoy my attachments to various movie or game franchises.
The shitty part is that these franchises are linked to corporations. I like Star Wars, but fuck Disney.
Absolutely. Grand games should get the time and care they warrant. Commercial pressure is poisoning game development and has been for way too long already.
I've never played dragon quest, but as a long time final fantasy enjoyer, final fantasy 15 sucked so much I put it down and I never went out of my way to play 16 because of that.
FF7Remake was amazing. FF7Rebirth was good in many ways but also had way too much garbage and goofy shit so I have very mixed feelings about it. Also like the post said it's a very long wait for a complete story. It also is not really an entry point because FF7 is a huge franchise in itself.
If you take those out of the equation, the last FF games were 13 lightning returns in 2013 which I think is probably good but very different (I didn't end up finishing but not because I didn't like it) and 13-2 which in my opinion is one of the best in the series but gets slept on because it's gated by 13 (2009) which I like but I wouldn't call amazing or transformative.
I think FF12 might would qualify as a worthy childhood formative game, which means (excluding 16 since I just don't know) the last good FF that is also an entry point came out in 2006. 20 years ago.
Tldr; I don't know if FF16 is a worthy childhood formative experience, but if it's not, the last candidate is TWENTY years ago, so ofc young people aren't getting attached to the franchise. They're probably playing jrpgs that are actually good instead.
As a non FF player who played 8 and 9 I thought 13 was kinda bad.
Lots of hallways when the previous games had more discovery to them.
Have not really played one since as I wasn't into MMOs and figured I would try the 7 remake when they finished which it looks like they never will.
It's not announced yet but it's almost guaranteed to come out next year.
A lot of people have the hallway complaint, and honestly I think it mostly came down to visuals and sound design. So many games people love have exactly the same level design, including FFX, but there is normally enough to look at, and you don't have the "high heels on tile" footsteps exacerbating it. I'm also pretty sure a large part of it was a YouTube video pointing it out and people jumping on the bandwagon.
Why you gotta diss my boys like that?
I do think there was a lot to like in the bones but the execution was just so bad :(. The combination of 90% of the content of the game being doing ubisoft map slop and the story being broken up across media made it pretty miserable, but the moment to moment writing/character development for the party was top notch for sure. I really wanted to like it but actually playing it felt like a chore :(
I can see that. I probably only enjoyed it because I hunted down the story in the other sources provided. I also enjoyed the fishing.
Yeah, that makes sense. Do they need to be forming attachments to the same series that we did though? Certainly stories told by contemporary writers are more likely to resonate with someone growing up in today's world, rehashing and up the stuff that resonated with us isn't necessarily the best move for getting the youths on board. Let the ones with interest in the history of gaming play dragon quest and final fantasy.
Also DQ remake characters creep me out.
Modern dev cycles are as long as their childhood, and as mine adulthood.
I didn't play the second of the remake games because it was a PS5 exclusive. I usually buy into one platform (it was Xbox this gen) and hop on late in a console cycle for the other side to get cheap consoles and games, but for the first time consoles are getting more expensive over time, so I still don't have a PS5. It's on PC now, but building a PC costs as much as a modest house right now.
I won't argue your point that PCs cost too much nowadays but gotta say you got some really amazing house prices.
Really short article but kind of an interesting point. To be quite fair, the games don't just take very long to produce but their appeal keeps shifting towards more adult themes so younger players might not even play them. FFXVI was basically Game of Thrones and prior to that you had... whatever the fuck FFXV was what with a road trip royal theme? Hell, even DQ12 was announced to have adult themes.
DQ spinoffs have a better shot but they haven't been particularly good and FF spinoffs are money grabs, so there's that too. The article points to more popular franchises in Japan like Pokemon, although at my kids are literally watching Pokemon TV designed for toddlers, that's kinda cheating with how everywhere that franchise is, lol.
Isn't FFXIV an MMO? I don't remember it being very Game of Thrones-y.
Typo, or likely auto correct for FFXVI. Yup, was autocorrect, as it just did it again just now lol. I'll correct it.
Yep because they drove up expectations while gaslighting and pretending they had tech they didn't over and over and over and over to make "theoretical" money and used short sighted abuse of developers to milk all trust from all up because heretical insane hyper capitalist profiteering models are actively destructive and the owners are heartless fools lacking ethical compass because we bred and selected them to only be slaves to the megacorps and do its will without dying from the incurred emotional impact that is supposed to come to those morally corrupt traitors of human kind that rape their own species to serve idols of hyper capitalist delusional demonic entities that are a raw blight spawn from the greed of dying or dead sociopaths ego
Games from 30-40 years ago aren’t popular anymore! The kids aren’t worshipping FFVII! It’s the collapse of gaming! People not liking the same things I grew up liking are ruining everything!
/s
Was that necessary for that one? Is anyone actually spouting shit like that in earnest?
Edit: Never mind, I just remembered reading that article…
I mean, you already got one downvote suggesting someone didn't pick up on it.
I miss satire…
Maybe because other games are more fun?
Did you read the article? The point here is that nowadays games in general, especially AAA games, takes very long to develop. In my opinion one reason for that is that games have became way too big, usually at the expense of gameplay. Of course there is some series like NBA 2K and CoD that keeps releasing a "new" game every year. However we all know that for many years they have repeated themselves a lot. New releases should be just patches that updates the roster or something like that.
Maybe don't build your lives and identity around games?
What? What does that have to do with it? They're not engaging with once massively popular stories, not bemoaning how they can't be obsessed with them.
Why would you have an "attachment" to patterns of light on a screen?
What an odd thing to say with such a bold username.
... Because they tell a compelling story?
I can have a preferred color combination (turquoise and violet) without making that color combination my entire personality. You can do the same thing with video games.
☝️🤓 why do you have an emotional attachment to wavelengths of light?
Because I love wavelengths but it doesn't feel the same. It just goes through me. ☹️
A romantic attraction to something going through you? Lewd!
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if you're satirizing the initial poster or not :(
Oh, I absolutely am.