(electonic beeping) - [Falcon] Gaming trends pop up and change and influence everything. And, well, some of them really, really, really suck. Hi folks, it's Falcon, and today on Gameranx, 10 gaming trends that need to die in 2025.
At number 10 is studios closing before even releasing a game. The video game industry was not in a good place in 2024. If you want proof positive, look at how many studios ended up closing before releasing anything.
I mean, recently, we even talked about like studios not even announcing anything. They either get bought or formed by some larger entity, exists for a while and then disappear. Like, literally, like we have no idea anything about 'em even.
And if there wasn't anybody reporting on their shutdown, we'd pretty much never know they existed. Like Netflix's studio Blue. It was supposed to be building some AAA IP and it was closed without even announcing what they were working on.
Casey Hudson, the director of the "Mass Effect" games, and a guy who founded a new studio called Humanoid Origins, they also shut down, nothing to show for itself. Probably remember Neon Koi, the studio that Sony shut down at the same time as Firewalk, you know, the Concord guys. But earlier in the year, Sony closed down a different studio called Deviation made up of former "Call of Duty" devs they acquired back in 2020 and they were working on some kind of PlayStation exclusive game.
We don't know what it was and we probably never will. I think safe to assume first person shooter, and unless that was, you know, not just a "Call of Duty" clone, I'm not so sure that would've lit the world on fire. Would've been nice to know though.
It's not a completely new trend. Starting out is always the most dangerous time for any game studio or even just any business. And if they don't have the funds to support themselves, or rather, the larger entity that created or bought them doesn't have the funds to continue running it, then that's it.
It seems like there were more high-profile studios closing with nothing to show for it. Like, think of another stupid gimmick to trick clueless investors into unloading a dump truck full of money on top of startup game devs. Used to be NFTs in the blockchain.
Yeah, we just need something else like that, but make it more pointless, like play to earn AI that creates a blockchain on the cloud. Somehow it creates fidget spinners. I don't know.
Go on game devs without any good ideas otherwise. Take that one, let's say for free for now, but if you get anywhere with it, you're owing me money. Also, you won't.
And number nine is unnecessary remakes. The industry went remake crazy in 2024. There were a lot of remakes.
It was kind of absurd. I know the absolute deluge of these things is starting to make people sour on the basic idea of remakes in general, but I'm not quite there yet. Like, some of these are, some of these are pretty high quality and make me pretty happy.
"Silent Hill 2" comes to mind, any "Resident Evil" remake comes to mind, third person mode in "Resident Evil Village" comes to mind. Is that a remake? Does that qualify?
I don't know. Ha, it doesn't. I know.
Don't actually argue with me on that. But see, here's the problem. Sometimes it's really nice to have those older games playable on more modern hardware or even updated to be something that takes the story and uses it in a manner that's better.
Like, in a lot of these cases, I would go to the "Resident Evil 2" remake before I went to the original "Resident Evil 2" at this point. I consider it a better game. I mean, not everybody is going to, but I would prefer it.
I prefer the new "Resident Evil 4," but those things are kind of the ideal. And, as you know, there's only one number one. And obviously there's more than one good remake, but that's not really the majority of it.
Look, we wouldn't be complaining about this if every one of these things was a "Resident Evil 4" or a "Silent Hill 2. " A lot of 'em are pretty pointless actually. They don't really improve the experience at all and you could play the original just fine, pointing at the "Grant Theft Auto: Definitive Edition" with this one.
Sony though was the crowning king of these utterly unnecessary upgrades. They mostly amounted to a new and exciting reason to buy old games at new game prices. Like "Last of Us Part II" quote-unquote remastered.
It could've easily just been a PS5 update, but, you know, they sold it for 40 bucks, which I know is a low price for a new game, but that's not PS5 update price. Like, at most, that should be a few dollars. Yes, they threw in some extras to pretend to justify the price, but did it?
They put out a remake of "Horizon Zero Dawn" as well and there's a little more nuance to this one. The game does actually look quite a bit better, but the original still looks good. I mean, aside from the potato faces, I definitely prefer the graphical overhaul faces a lot more in the faces from the sequel, "Forbidden West.
" They just, they're a lot better than the original game's faces. And I'm talking about every character, every single character, they look weird. That was actually one of my main gripes about "Horizon Zero Dawn," and then they fixed it.
So in some ways, I do think that was a necessary remake, but in other ways, I mean, the original does look pretty damn good still. Now, to be fair, they did make that upgrade cheap for people who already owned the game, but for people who didn't, I don't know if it justifies prolonging the new game price, you know? And for PC players, all it really did was make the system requirements higher, fun, paying for the privilege of the game running worse.
And then there's the "Until Dawn" remake. I mean, it's easy for these to get lost in the shuffle. I almost forgot this existed and I was the one that reviewed it, if you recall.
It does look better than the original. I mean, there's positives about it. I'm not gonna say there aren't.
But it's otherwise identical to the original game that came out on the PS4, which is perfectly playable on modern hardware. I mean, I don't wanna say it's completely, it's not completely identical. That's wrong.
But for the most part, it's "Until Dawn" again at a full price. Like, adding a new ending isn't that big of a deal. Like, with the way things have been going, I doubt the remake train is gonna be stopping anytime soon.
But if it's not too much, could you guys at least try to justify their existence? Like, make it significantly more of something? At number eight is AI voice actors.
And again, I wanna make sure that you're aware that there is some nuance here. So everybody's going AI crazy. It's not a surprise that we're starting to see AI-generated images creep into games.
I'm a person who doesn't automatically think that is bad. However, I do want to say that in a lot of cases, it is bad because it doesn't look as good. And let's talk about AI voice acting for a minute.
It's generally worse than the AI-generated art that gets put into games to save time, which again, can be good and can be bad. There is a certain amount of effort that needs to go into anything. You shouldn't just be typing in things that are short and vaguely describe something and then slap it on top of something else.
You should be creating detailed prompts and also doing a lot of manual work to the thing that comes out of it, et cetera, et cetera. Ai voice actors, much worse, much worse. - [Game Character] So what?
Was your boyfriend here? - There's no need for him to be here to make me an orgasm. (girl laughing) - [Falcon] Much worse.
Like, we're not seeing it super commonly. The only real noteworthy high-profile example of a game using AI voices that got a lot of pushback was "The Finals. " - [Game Character] Cash boxes will be on the move as moving platforms greet our contestant.
(man screaming) Oh yes. I'm opening a vault. - [Game Character 2] Help!
Is someone wasting any time? - [Falcon] But there's this thing with AI voices where they're not good. Like, they're technically good, they sound like a person talking, but they sound like a person who lives in a library and not a good library.
Dull people. Lifeless, soulless, crappy voice act, like not funny voice acting, might I add. AI voice actors are, they're just, they're not there yet.
So like, I wanna make it clear. I think there's ways that AI voice acting could be good. But I will also argue that, eh, it's not.
It's generally not. In their current state, I think development temporary tracks and stuff like that might be only actually appropriate place for them. And a lot of people say, "Well, there's really advanced.
" No, there isn't. You can tell it's an AI voice actor. It's a bad performance and you can tell it's an AI voice actor.
So, no, I don't accept that. And here's the thing. It's so, so easy to get a voice actor nowadays.
There's really no excuse not to use a real person. I'm right here. None of you have asked me to be a voice actor in your game!
And it would be so easy to get into your game! Just saying! For every team that has decided to use AI over Falcon The Hero, which I might add is literally everybody who has used AI because nobody has ever asked me to be in their game.
I'm having fun with this. I don't have aspirations. I would if asked, but don't have aspirations.
And reason why is 'cause there's plenty of great actual voice actors who should have work. Like it's understandable that voice actors are going on a strike over the threat of AI voice work. I get it though.
I get the thinking behind it. And a lot of major industry figures seem to be in support of the strike. Like even guys like Tim Sweeney who are terminally techno brain supported.
And what it all really boils down to is these AI voices just do not sound that good. In isolated chunks, it can sound pretty convincing, but there's a reason that acting is acting. There's a human putting their experience into it.
It's basically that for everything. There's appropriate places to use these types of things, but unless there's some human intervention, some direction, some editing, some changing, some, you know, art, then it's kind of just lifeless and doesn't work. And I'm talking about voice actors, but that really, it's across the board for AI.
AI can be amazing. It's also allowing people who are very lazy to do things that suck, but kind of seem not to suck, but they suck. - [Game Character 3] Endings are about to get a bit more explosive as contestants that are eliminated in the arena will go kaboom.
(gun firing) - [Falcon] At number seven, graphic updates that make games worse. This should not be a trend, but in 2024, it just kept happening. Normally updates are supposed to be your friend that make games more stable and perform better.
But last year, man, did we have examples of the opposite. Instead of updates that improved games, they made 'em a lot worse. Like the "Fallout 4" next gen update.
Ooh boy, was that supposed to make "Fallout 4" better, and ooh boy did it not. Way more harm than good with that one. Changes made stuff run worse on modern consoles compared to the old version.
The graphics didn't really look much better. And even worse, the update completely broke mod support on PC. And this was right before the impressive "Fallout: London" total conversion came out.
For a game studio that's supposedly so mod-friendly, Bethesda's updates sure do break mods. It's almost like they don't really have a good reason to continue using the creation engine other than their heels are dug in really far. Hmm.
Almost like all of that, "We use it because it's mod-friendly. We make games that way, that they're made to be certain mod-" No, no, you're justifying. You just don't wanna change.
That's it. You could change and it would be better, I promise you. But you know what?
Forget that. Let's talk about the PlayStation 5 Pro launch, eh? The Pro's new features were supposed to make games run better and look better at higher resolutions.
And I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but certain updates have just straight up made the games look and play worse than they used to. Games like "Alan Wake 2" and "Silent Hill 2," they got hit the hardest, but they were hardly the only examples. A lot of the ugliness came from the PS5 Pro's PSSR, which is basically Sony's answer to DLSS, but either from developers not understanding tech or that it was just not ready for prime time.
It makes a lot of games look worse, which is really annoying for most games because you couldn't toggle it on or off. The entire update rollout was scattershot and confusing. It was hard to tell what games actually did anything with the PS5 Pro and worked and which ones didn't.
Some would change the graphic settings to include PS5 Pro stuff. Some of them would appear exactly the same, but actually have the features. Whole thing was a mess.
One thing that was supposed to make the thing worth the eye-watering price tag was this upscaling stuff. It was a central pillar to the marketing campaign, but end result was mixed. Some games, I mean, did look better, but some of them looked worse.
And that's not what makes you go, ah, well $700, this was worth it. It's fine. It's a mid console upgrade that, I mean, for all intents and purposes has the potential to be good.
But, hmm, was it? Did it matter? And it's not a total disaster or anything.
It mostly does what it advertises. But at that price point, it should be flawless. Like, it's $700.
If you already had a PlayStation 5, that's already a serious issue. But honestly, like, none of what it does is $700 worth, at least yet. And number six is annoying logins and required launchers.
I don't know why we're still doing this. And, you know, let's just go ahead and talk about the "Grand Theft Auto" games and how I like playing them on the Steam Deck and how I don't like logging into them on the Steam Deck. It's not just the "Grand Theft Auto" games though.
It's probably most annoying when you buy a brand new game that you're excited to play 'cause you've never played it before and you get it installed, you get yourself settled in, and you have to launch some stupid launcher that makes you log in, which a lot of the time makes you start a new account, which is super annoying. I do not want to put an email and a password and solve a CAPTCHA and check my email for a two-factor code, especially if it's on PC and I have used Google's automatic login to log into the thing. It's a rare problem, but man is it an infuriating one.
It's just a totally unnecessary barrier to playing a game. Homework. It's homework.
Do your homework and you'll get rewarded by being able to play the game, which you would've been able to play if you didn't have any homework! (Falcon growling) It's even worse for the launchers for games that you don't play all the time. In fact, a lot of the time, guess what?
I won't turn on a game because they have a launcher that I don't usually use. Why? Because it doesn't remember my frigging password.
I have to log in again because it's been long enough since the last time I played that it dropped the login. That's not even counting the many issues that having separate launchers introduce to games. They can cause startup issues.
They can make games harder to mod. They're generally just obtrusive and unnecessary a lot of the time. A lot of the time, and I don't have any games I'm currently playing that do this, but I can remember several over the past few years, a lot of the time, launcher issues could be the culprit in crashing the game.
I don't remember which games right now were doing that to me, but there have been some. And ooh, it's the most annoying thing you can imagine. Extra launchers are just stupid.
They're stupid. What's the point? Sometimes, let's say they work exactly as they should and they actually don't crash the game or give you startup issues or whatever.
Sometimes they're just system hogs. You're trying to play a game and the launcher is like (snorting). ♪ Piggy, piggy, piggy ♪ ♪ Can't you see ♪ ♪ You're hogging all the resources on my PC ♪ Yes, I just thought of that.
On top of being a very capable voice actor, I am a brilliant musician. (Falcon laughing) All this crap needs to go though. I shouldn't be making up stupid Biggie Smalls parodies to talk about system launchers.
That's not something that should ever happen, but here we are. And I will say at least one domino finally fell. 2K removed their reviled launcher from all their games.
They all just launch directly now, except for the Rockstar ones. Nope, I put "Grand Theft Auto III" onto my Steam Deck and that was maybe a month or so ago. I was like, I wanna play "Grand Theft Auto III," and then it took me a week to do it because I just didn't wanna log into the damn thing.
And I was finally like, "There's a reason I wanna play this. I'm just gonna log into it. " And number five, I think the gaming industry's a lot like the movie industry specifically.
I mean, developers are just taking less risks and it's not necessarily because developers are making those choices either. The budgets for video games are set by, well, the buttholes that, you know, control the money. So don't think that I'm just saying every dev is just, you know, they're not creative anymore.
That's not what I'm saying at all. But games are, they're kind of starting to run together 'cause they're just, AAA means, you know, a specific range of game at this point. Basically like "Uncharted" to "Dark Souls.
" If it's AAA, it's gonna sit somewhere in there. Aesthetically, it might be very different than either "Uncharted" or "Dark Souls," like "Resident Evil" is something aesthetically very different. But, I mean, obviously, control wise, there's things that it owes to both of those games.
It doesn't feel like playing both of those games. But yeah, you get what I'm saying. And I mentioned this at the top of this point.
It's because of the budgets. The more money that you invest into a video game, the safer they want that investment to be. And therefore, the guardrails go up.
You can't do this, this, and this. Please just do this. Just make me a hit, you know, like that one.
I actually forgot one more thing. Rather than a range in between two games, "Dark Souls" and "Uncharted," maybe it should be a triangle. Live service is the other point on that triangle.
You can basically put any game on a point somewhere inside of that triangle and I would say it'd be pretty much accurate. And that's because games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make now. But, you know, so many of those are now failing.
Maybe they might start thinking, eh, you know, might not hurt to have some AA projects in the works. And then if you got something in AA that is gonna get awesome, maybe, you know, bump up the budget, bump it up to AAA somewhere in the middle of the development process. Maybe?
This is wishful thinking. That's not gonna happen. At number four is adding DRM to games after they come out.
This kind of nonsense just needs to fricking stop. There's not like a nuanced way for this to be okay. I don't wanna live in this world where not only do they chalk in microtransactions after the fact, they they do it with DRM.
Now I don't wanna say it's necessarily a completely common practice, but it's been popping up enough these past few years. Like, when Bethesda snuck Denuvo into "Ghostwire" year after it came out. A year.
Or more recently, like when Capcom inserted the Enigma protector into a bunch of their old games. And I guess because of some new anti-modding corporate policy. That's mostly what the quote-unquote protector did, messed up mods people have been using for years for basically no reason.
It didn't just kill mods either. It also made a lot of the older games run a lot worse. Because as you know, that's a fairly common thing with DRM.
So basically, they're just encouraging people to pirate their older games 'cause the DRM they're inserting makes for a worse experience in literally every way. Capcom did eventually remove Enigma, but they seem to see this as only a temporary setup, vowing to bring it back once they solve the performance issues. Spoilers, they're not going to solve the performance issues unless they can develop some way for a computer to replicate its own hardware so that it has more resources.
Like, unless Capcom is just really adamant about stopping modding, that's probably the end of it. I doubt they're gonna put the work in to actually fix their performance anytime soon 'cause again, probably physically impossible. You're adding more resource drain to a finite situation of resources.
I mean, it's stupid. I hate it. It just really sucks how, you know, at any time, a game developer can decide, ah, I want DRM in my game now.
They won't tell anybody, they won't give notice. Just one day, it's there. Fun.
At number three, it's microtransactions, particularly overpriced ones. This would not be a Falcon gripe list if we didn't go there. The cost of microtransactions was outta control in 2024.
We're past the point of calling any of these prices micro. Everywhere you look, there's seemingly a new microtransaction controversy, and it's mostly surrounding the price. $30 skins in "Apex Legends," 20 bucks for "Kill Zone" stuff in "Helldivers 2," "Black Ops 6" battle pass in a battle pass.
Like, it's battle pass-ception here. I know somebody else has made that joke. I definitely am not the first.
There's no freaking way. But you get what I'm getting at though. The prices are outta control.
And the thing is, people are gonna keep buying 'em because that's how it works. They don't make stuff based on some kind of a demand because if they ask the players, "Hey, you want more microtransactions that are more expensive? " I don't think any person would say yes.
Not one. I really don't think so. In terms of popularity, these things are not high.
But also, here's the problem. It's incentive. They're always going to have some kind of incentive to buy something in these games.
You get more for the pro battle pass, to be frank. You're missing out. FOMO.
You look cooler if you buy the skin. And hey, if you buy the $30 skin, you're really proven that you love "Apex Legends" more than those, you know, $5 skin people. Ugh.
They set up a pretty manipulative economy, and it works. People are gonna keep buying these things because, I mean, it makes sense to at least some extent within the logic of these games' communities. The normalization of this crap, I mean, live service games have done it.
There's always an outcry because nobody actually wants them. But at the same time, they know how to set it up so that you wanna participate eventually. And there really isn't much of a solution.
I could tell everybody to vote with their wallet and not buy these things, but there's enough people who play games that have the money to waste on this shit that makes it enviable in some way. And if it doesn't automatically make it so, they do everything that's possible to make it so. And if we're clear, I don't believe in vote with your wallet.
I voted with my wallet so many times in my life and the positions I've held are not unpopular ones. But you can't get everybody to vote with their wallet because some people's wallets are so fat, this stuff doesn't look like a problem. And you know what you felt when somebody showed up at high school with the new Nike's or whatever.
You thought, "Hmm, I don't hate the new Nike's. The new Nike's are looking pretty good, actually. " It's FOMO, man.
They know how to weaponize it against us. And a lot of people don't have the money to be playing with it, but enough people do that they get sucked in. Yeah, something big's gotta change for this to change.
I hate it. I want it to go away. I don't believe it'll go away.
And number two is shutting down critically acclaimed developers and studios. Is this really where we're at now? Where a studio can make a universally praised game and get shut down the same year?
That's what happened to the team behind the "Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown," a game that was never gonna be a runaway hit, but for what it was, it was critically acclaimed and people who bought it, you know, bought it. They liked it too. It's not like people hate this game.
People really liked it. But it also proved that there was life left in the "Prince of Persia" franchise. It's a good game.
So of course Ubisoft staked everything on it. They had impossibly high sales expectations. There's no way for "Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown" to meet the expectations they gave it.
And so the team was disbanded before even giving 'em a chance to make a sequel. Like, that's the specific reason why it didn't go gangbusters by the way. With something like that where it's a dormant series that people aren't necessarily prone to trust due to the mishandling of it over time, you gotta do like one game as a proof of concept, and if it does decently, the second game is where you go in.
That's where the marketing money goes. But, I mean, Ubisoft clearly has no sense. And I mean, both S-E-N-S-E and C-E-N-T-S.
(Falcon chuckling) I mean, I don't mean to just like talk about this game specifically 'cause it's certainly not the only one. I mean, "Hi-Fi Rush," let's talk about that. Not just critically acclaimed, but a legitimate hit that most likely made a shitload of money for Microsoft.
They're like, nah, shut 'em down. I don't know how you have a hit and it's not a big enough of a hit. Like, there's no way that wasn't a profitable game.
It did go gangbusters for what it is. Its budget could not have been that high. I don't know.
I don't know. I'm not so naive to think that just because somebody makes a good game it'll be a success. But it seems like success isn't really the factor here because I just gave you an example of one that was successful enough and one that was actually a legitimate hit and both studios got shut down.
Fortunately, Tango Gameworks got resurrected, but that didn't happen to the "Lost Crown" guys. Just sucks how quickly and suddenly they lost it. I hope things start to stabilize this upcoming year.
The industry can't be this volatile forever, right? At some point, the post-pandemic hangover has got to end. Does drinking a cup full of eggs get rid of hangovers?
Does that work? I've heard that works. Can we do that?
And finally, at number one is massive flops everyone could see coming. At a certain point, gaming got so big, it stopped being the playground of creators and it became big business. The paradox of the entertainment industry is that it's run by businessmen who, by their very nature, don't know anything about art.
They're boring losers. Some of them have a creative bone in their body, but not many. And when they do, their job is essentially to contradict that bone at any chance they can.
All right, so anybody with two eyes could understand that "Concord" wasn't gonna be the financial success it needed to be. I don't understand how this game got greenlit, how it got the budget that it got, and then it got a bunch of money sunk into marketing like that was gonna just like magically make it so that people wanted to play that. I'm not saying there was nothing appealing about this game, but it was the same damn game, again, with a generally less good coat of paint.
And that's honestly kind of generous. I don't wanna get into it. I do want an answer how no one in the entire creative process will just come out and admit that this thing was a big fat turkey in the making.
"Skull of Bones" kind of has an excuse for it. Ubisoft made a deal with the government of Singapore to release the game come hell or high water and that explains why that game came out rather than being canceled. Although, if it had been canceled, we probably would've mourned it 'cause it sounded cool.
But either way, there was no excuse for "XDefiant". What's the deal there? Just this characterless, soulless corporate product.
It makes "Call of Duty" look unique and interesting. And I'm not saying "Call of Duty's" bad, so don't jump my ass. I like me a "Call of Duty" campaign, but it's also "Call of Duty.
" We know what "Call of Duty" is. It's not like we play it 'cause it's the most original, innovative series that's ever been made. It's "Call of Duty.
" It's actually kind of old school at this point. That's not an insult. But unique, it's not.
And then of course, there's "Suicide Squad. " Don't get what anybody was thinking with this. Seems intentionally designed to be as unappealing as possible to its core demographic.
In this case, it's still got some rock steady charm to it. It's not like all of the gameplay is bad or anything. There's some stuff that works.
It's not the majority of the stuff sadly, but, I mean, some of it's there. Still don't understand why Warner Brothers decided to bet it all on a game where you violently murder all your favorite superheroes. Yeah, clones, whatever, but the core premise is off-putting.
It's also, and I don't just mean "Suicide Squad," but all of these games have this weird oversaturated color palette. Saturation itself isn't a problem. There's a version of every aesthetic that works, but it's not this.
They're all trying to be cartoonish, but also hyper-realistic at the same time. It's wrong. It doesn't work.
Clashes with itself, which is not good. And yes, there's a way to do that that is on purpose and works, but it's, again, none of these games. They were all bad ideas from the start.
Someone with some kind of authority should've looked at 'em and canceled 'em years ago. But here's the thing, anybody who wanted to do that probably had no authority. It was probably the other way around.
And the people with the authority kept saying, "No, we're not gonna cancel it. Keep working 80 hours a week on it. Thank you.
" It just makes everybody at Warner Brothers look out of touch and clueless because you have to be in order to release that stuff. But hey, whatever, multimillion dollar boom doggos. We talked about 'em enough, haven't we?
I got a bonus before we leave. "Silksong" jokes, those should go. I'm calling it.
"Silksong" jokes are done. They hit the saturation point in 2024. They got annoying.
It's time to stop. This game's either gonna come out whenever it comes out or it's not. At this point, I have to imagine a lot of other people just don't even care.
I'd be happy if it happens. But until then, just stop talking about it. Stop anticipating "Silksong" and every Nintendo direct to Sony state of play.
Put away the clown makeup. Let it go. I know this is the internet and the ultimate expression of the internet is running a joke into the ground.
But in 2024, we can let this one go because it's officially time to bring back "Half-Life 3" speculation! It's in the air! It's happening for real this time, guys!
I just know it. And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let us know what you think.
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