I don't know if you could tell but I really really really like video games so much so that I've made my entire career about liking video games but sometimes there are bits about games that I don't like so much these can be new trends old mistakes strange developments and miscommunications gaming is a new art in the grand scheme of things which means that we've got a lot of missteps to endure I feel like it's my duty to point out some of the disturbing Trends floating around these days that we as a game liking Community should
come together to hammer out actually these days it's much more lucrative to dislike video games on YouTube H great thanks a lot internet sniper be careful Heroes never die that's one shot one kill Blizzard's 2016 firstperson team- based shooter OverWatch was an instant success it was a fresh face in a then youthful genre dubbed hero Shooters at launch it sha with the promise of a long lifespan and regular hero updates it smelled like freshly baked bread and a rich competitive scene and the merch well just ask my good friend Widowmaker here how much we all
enjoyed the merch a lot that's right Widowmaker OverWatch changed multiplayer Shooters forever giving a new lease of life to the genre that other games continue to try and replicate emphasis on try sorry Concord kind of 5 years too late with that one it was inevitable that OverWatch would continue to evolve and it wasn't a surprise to hear in 2019 that blizzard was working on a sequel what was an eventual surprise was how they were going to launch OverWatch 2 by killing OverWatch one rather than being its own game OverWatch 2 live Services would replace those
of OverWatch one totally supplanting the Beloved original which could no longer be played essentially scrubbing it from existence considering there were sizable differences between the games 5v5 in OverWatch 2 rather than the 6v6 we were used to different health bars recategorization of Heroes and an alteration in modes one could argue that these two games were different enough to live side by side but OverWatch now no longer exists there was no morning period no slow change of hands overwatching all its Glory was sniped out of existence by its much more contentious little brother this come trampling
OverWatch one with the OverWatch 2 launch meant that everyone who loved OverWatch couldn't help but feel like two's arrival meant the end of an era the death of a friend and to some it meant that they'd never come back for more in two killing off one game to make room for another destroys a bit of History leaves little room for accurate comparisons between the two and most importantly means I can't bully teams in ranks with two Shield tanks anymore cruel Saints franchise has existed and done so many amazing effect where do you go from there
it's kind of hard to figure out somehow in the last 10 years we've ended up with just two yes two flavors of video games AAA and Indie and I'll be honest with you neither flavor Compares with salted caramel all right all right the mid budget mid-tier game between Indie and AAA hasn't disappeared completely but it has seriously dwindled as a category a plague Tale the life is strange series it takes two these kinds of games offer entertaining experiences on non- Blockbuster budgets but are increasingly rare these days the problem is games are getting more and
more expensive to make including the supposedly mid-tier ones and a single failure can bring down an entire studio so increasingly these titles just aren't worth the risk to Publishers just look at the Saints Row reboot a double a game attempting to compete with AAA Grand Theft Auto on a fraction of the budget but inevitably suffering by the comparison it sold poorly and Studio valtion was closed not long after you're too predictable am I yes not even a fist fight on a VL was enough what more do you people want if we don't recognize that there
should be games in the chasm between Scrappy Indie titles and budget busting AAA games we're doomed to miss out on that most Exquisite of things a slightly schlocky but lovable double a game and that's why we'll never see a kingdoms of Amala 2 it's okay I can say it Ellen's not in today oh yeah just give me give me two seconds I found a really good 30p part Tik Tok series on why we think the Bermuda Triangle might have moved a few feet over we talked about this you always always online hey I'm not always
online I I spend nearly three hours a night sleeping when I'm done Doom scrolling I'll tell you who's always online video games these days gone are the days when you can confidently buy a game knowing that it won't need a constant connection to the internet here to stay are connectivity issues and the inevitable server death when the only people left engaging with the game are speedrunning deviants there are of course situations where games need to be online but what we have an issue with is when the game could and should work when your Wi-Fi router
inevitably crashes but doesn't oh I've gone offline how has router technology not improved in like 20 years for reals let's take the recent example of Test Drive Unlimited solar Crown shall we 2006's test Drive Unlimited was an ambitious driving MMO where you could if you chose seamlessly play online against Real opponents or take it at your own pace and play offline thanks to fan patches and servers that game is still playable to this day for no really good reason that philosophy has been abandoned with 2024 series Revival Test Drive Unlimited solar crown and it's made
the game's launch unbelievably frustrating for fans of the series The Game can happily rustle up AI opponents for you to race against rather than the real human opponents it prioritizes but you have to be online either way you've got to wait for countdowns even if players never show up and you cannot pause a race even when everyone your facing is completely controlled by AI it makes this whole experience annoying when all you want to do is do a little driving a little exploring and do it on your own terms instead of achieving what an 18-year-old
game did the forced online nature of Test Drive Unlimited solar Crown has undermined any other advancements the series has made forced online games will suffer in the long run too eventually dying once servers are taken offline like fellow open world driving game the crew did and that's a massive shame and no I'm not just bitter about this because Club Penguin killed all my puffles when it went offline A Dark Day in the mic household 10 years ago after 20 years of making games I was burned out so I took a break but I never stopped
playing games nor loving them and now I'm ready to come back and I'd like to show you something I've been working on but I don't want to build any old game I want to build a universe I want to build a game I always wanted to build but I didn't have the tools to do until now Early Access is both a blessing and a curse the ability for Studio to deliver a game to fans before it's fully finished has brought us such success stories as the bestselling balers Gate 3 novel Factory Sim satisfactory and the
smash hit that was Hades you can turn back or I can send you home the painful way what will it be I'll have to go with the painful way there's no doubt that early access gives the developers an insight into how to make the game good for the audience they're aiming for even if it means making a dork wizard progressively hotter for launch it seems you've been paying attention to me though there is always room for improvement what isn't so cool about the process is that some developers forget that eventually you're going to have to
get rid of the zero point in the version number and progress to a 1.0 you have to launch your game eventually there are a fair few ambitious games on the market these days that haven't got a full launch in sight and it begs the question at what point will they ever launch will they ever launch we're in a world where developers can fund their games through the Goodwill of fans that's also a good thing if you're looking at Shovel Knight at Divinity original sin 2 or a Broken Age these games are cool and they definitely
100% launched eventually in other cases however you've got games like Star Citizen 2 which is maybe 80% launched if you're generous Star Citizen is the epitome of this problem because it was due to launch over 10 years ago has hoovered up millions in crowdfunding and pre-release sales of in game spaceships and somehow it's still in a form of advanced Early Access with no sign of an official release I expect to actually live in space by the time that game comes out it'll be like playing Bus Simulator that's not the only problem with Early Access if
you launch into Early Access too early it can permanently ruin the reputation of your game and kill it Stone dead just take open world survival game the day before a game that promised the Earth before its Early Access launch when it became obvious it was years away from ever being the game that was advertised the day before features a huge stunningly detailed post-apocalyptic world destroyed by a terrible virus almost immediately after the day before debuted in Early Access Players called out its shoddy State and the game was shut down not long after without having a
chance to develop into something those people wanted to play so yeah Wake Me Up When Star Citizen actually launches and when I say wake me up I probably mean from cryo sleep in the year 2174 you can create your own textures to make unique artwork or turn real world object into 3D models to include an enoy it's time to Showcase your Limitless creativity I am well aware that AI is a contentious subject right now it is a very small acronym for something that's caused a massive debate in the video game industry and Beyond AI can
and should be used in specific circumstances that would allow us humans to spend more time on fun things like art and less time on tasks devoid of any artistic Merit like writing Adam Sandler films hey chat GP right grown-ups 3 oh you've done it already however the most common use case for AI thus far in games is taking the jobs of hardworking game artists notably there are testimonies from developers who say that Activision is now actively encouraging its teams to use AI in development this isn't some kind of sci-fi future prediction there is in fact
already a Call of Duty skin bundle titled yo-kai that was developed using AI even more terrifying than a hand with eight fingers on it this is factually a product that some fans of the game will want to purchase but when fans buy these AI made items it rewards Activision for cutting out developers reducing the need for real human workers and from there it's not hard to envisage even more layoffs in an industry that can't seem to get enough of them it's stands to reason that if something is AI generated that the person buying it should
have a right to know that rather than finding out through say a wired article where developers risk their jobs by blowing the whistle in the case of upcoming life Sim in on the other hand the human artist usurping AI is front and center in that players can generate AI textures for among other things their characters clothes it's more honest sure but will it put texture artists out of a job could be we have various AI functions that make creation easy for everyone okay based on this texture Maybe not today but tomorrow if Publishers can get
away with it who knows my gifts will remake you unable Unstoppable so if you'd asked us 5 years ago about the most disturbing Trends in gaming we would all in unison have shouted what the ising about no no no it's loot boxes all right loot boxes boxes loot boxes there go yes it was obviously loot boxes OverWatch Apex Legends the FIFA games League of Legends I could go on loot boxes were seemingly everywhere and because of valid concerns about gambling and in some cases pay to win balance issues they've been phased out of many products
or never introduced in new additions of games at all some of the old some of the new what has happened in place of loot boxes is that skins previously a common Place reward in said loot boxes are now simply purchasable in games but for massively inflated prices valerant for example has skins in game that are considered so special that bundles cost like 90 if the math I'm doing is correct I could buy at least one undertale a slay the Spire a batro and an Elden ring for that money buying skins by themselves isn't even the
biggest problem to be honest yes they're expensive but running a free-to-play game like valerant is also expensive so that's inevitably part and parcel of keeping a game like that up and running what is more annoying is the manipulative fomo generated by Publishers making the availability of these skins limited to a certain time if you want them past that arbitrary deadline too [Music] bad there are enough gun skins to go around I promise creating artificial scarcity for a product in a game that is literally just code is manipulative especially when you're offering these products at premium
prices valerant isn't the only game that does this but it Skins are notably expensive I have the money Riot let me exchange it for the things I want that's how capitalism Works do you hate capitalism thank you so much for watching this video about disturbing Trends in gaming I've noticed a disturbing Trend you haven't been clicking on these videos These Fine videos that we've made for you one here from outside extra and one down here from outside Xbox let's turn that Trend around folks and if you enjoyed this please check out the ox supporters Club
at patreon.com Club thanks
