Over the years, I’ve noticed that there’s been a decrease in high-quality games. Instead, game developers have opted to focus more on shoving out unfinished piles of trash that damage the franchises and the developer’s reputation. So, why do they do this? Money, the thing that drives the industry, is why game developers have opted to put out below average games yearly instead of working on super high-quality games. Now that’s not me saying that when games take years they are always going to be good, Cyberpunk is an excellent example because it was worked on for over seven years and turned out to be a disaster, and it’s also not me saying that every game in an annual release-based schedule is bad.
I can’t say that the old way where game developers take years to release a game is better without evidence. I also can’t blame them for trying to release games quicker because our attention spans are decreasing and will probably keep falling. Meaning that we will get sick of games and want new ones coming out as soon as we are done with them or even mid-way through the game. If you want some proof that the past had more good releases, let’s look at some years. One good year was 2012, with games coming out like Far Cry 3, Borderlands, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, CS:GO, Assassin’s Creed III, and even Hitman: Absolut… Never mind, that game wasn’t good, and even the year after that we had good games: GTA 5, Battlefield 5, The Last of Us, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Payday 2.
And that’s just to name a few, but if we look at some huge games that came out last year we had some good ones like Halo Infinite, It Takes Two, Hitman 3, and more, but if we look at some of the most popular bad games from last year; Battlefield 2042, Balan Wonderworld and GTA: Definitive Edition and that’s just to name a few. Don’t even get me started with Call of Duty, the franchise has been descending in quality for a long time now the only reason why people keep buying the games is because of the titan the franchise is now. It is good to see that they are taking a year-long break though but that still might not change the issue, Ubisoft tried this with the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and it did help, but it’s still getting boring and generic now.
So why do they do this and ruin their reputation? It seems dumb right? But truly the reason is so they can stay on top of the gaming trends. For example, look at all of the EA Sports games. They have to release new games frequently to stay on top of the new and popular athletes. So that makes sense, but why does Ubisoft and Activision release yearly games? The simple answer is that people will keep buying every single new release. Of course, the player base has started to take notice, but it doesn’t change how big the franchise is. It’s just like Apple, they can sell overpriced stuff, but it doesn’t matter because people will buy for the prestige the end product has.
I hope more game developers start to make more high-quality games instead of trying to make games as quickly as possible because it can really damage the franchise and the developers behind it. Some people even blame the developers for bad games, but the reason for some is because the publishers rush them. If you do want high-quality games that aren’t just half-assed cash grabs go look at indie games because the thing is that indie dev’s actually care about their game. Unlike the gaming titans that just see you as a number.