It was a shortcut around the points you made. Minecraft _was_ made by one person, and is now a team of who knows how many people for the best part of a decade. Stardew valley I think is a great example where it's an incredibly polished experience to the point that the polish level is up there with AAA games.
> and probably several of the others you’re talking about.
And you're ignoring the game of the _decade_ - a $100m follow up to one of the most loved games of all time.
> Fallout might not be ‘focused on shooting’, but it still has the look of a typical FPS game.
You mean it has a gun in it, and it's in first person? If that's your gauge for a shooter game then I don't think you're informed enough to have a discussion on this topic. A game or movie with nudity in it isn't pornographic any more than a game with a gun in it is a shooter.
> It’s as if game developers have mostly converged on a standard game design.
You're just spouting nonsense now. Here [0] is a list of the top games of this year. Only one of the top 10 is a shooter (And it's a critically acclaimed final expansion to a 7 year old game that has shown how to do a fun shooter). If you go back to 2023, you'll see the same.
> I think it is true that most money in the games industry goes into making games that heavily feature guns
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". Of course mnost money goes into games that heavily feature guns; because if you look at absolute spend on development and marketing costs, pretty much everything is going to be dwarfed by Call of Duty. Meanwhile you have Baldur's Gate 3 which again, is probably the best received game of the decade, Cyberpunk (one of the most expensive games made), Star Citizen (lol), Genshin Impact - all of which are _not_ based on guns (but may contain them to some extent) with mind numbing amounts of money being spent on development.
> You mean it has a gun in it, and it's in first person? If that's your gauge for a shooter game then I don't think you're informed enough to have a discussion on this topic. A game or movie with nudity in it isn't pornographic any more than a game with a gun in it is a shooter.
I am a Fallout diehard, but you and I both know combat was the worst part of those games. Imagibe how a Fallout calibre game without combat could be fun and you might start to see what I mean. All that amazing lore, story and worldbuilding and then the only activity we come up with is combat. Snooze fest.
> You mean it has a gun in it, and it's in first person?
That's not what I meant, but even if it was I think my point stands. There are too many 'first person games with guns' in general. It's hard to imagine the possibilities precisely because the market is so saturated with monotony.
> spouting nonsense
By the way, your response seems unnecessarily aggressive. Sorry if you interpreted mine as such; that wasn't the intention.
To address your list of games: it's worth observing that they all fit very neatly into categories (shooter, fighter, platformer, etc.), so I do think this shows a lack of creativity. Even within each category, there are similarities — every game seems to build on the existing idioms that have built up over the last thirty years or so, and that's without mentioning all the firearms paraphernalia and language that is standard in most big-budget games.
But the same is true of music and film and probably everything else, so it's probably just that my taste is unusual. I'm aware of that.
I actually think Minecraft was a good example of fresh game design — it didn't fit into any of those categories. Hell, it didn't even have much of an objective and it certainly didn't feel like a reskinned version of a thousand other games.
It was a shortcut around the points you made. Minecraft _was_ made by one person, and is now a team of who knows how many people for the best part of a decade. Stardew valley I think is a great example where it's an incredibly polished experience to the point that the polish level is up there with AAA games.
> and probably several of the others you’re talking about.
And you're ignoring the game of the _decade_ - a $100m follow up to one of the most loved games of all time.
> Fallout might not be ‘focused on shooting’, but it still has the look of a typical FPS game.
You mean it has a gun in it, and it's in first person? If that's your gauge for a shooter game then I don't think you're informed enough to have a discussion on this topic. A game or movie with nudity in it isn't pornographic any more than a game with a gun in it is a shooter.
> It’s as if game developers have mostly converged on a standard game design.
You're just spouting nonsense now. Here [0] is a list of the top games of this year. Only one of the top 10 is a shooter (And it's a critically acclaimed final expansion to a 7 year old game that has shown how to do a fun shooter). If you go back to 2023, you'll see the same.
> I think it is true that most money in the games industry goes into making games that heavily feature guns
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". Of course mnost money goes into games that heavily feature guns; because if you look at absolute spend on development and marketing costs, pretty much everything is going to be dwarfed by Call of Duty. Meanwhile you have Baldur's Gate 3 which again, is probably the best received game of the decade, Cyberpunk (one of the most expensive games made), Star Citizen (lol), Genshin Impact - all of which are _not_ based on guns (but may contain them to some extent) with mind numbing amounts of money being spent on development.
[0] https://opencritic.com/browse/all/2024/score