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The state of video games in the year of our lord 2025 continues to astound me. I continue to wonder when the inflection point was, between the ascending art form, and it's degenerate form we see today. Insane stories nobody wants to hear, ugly unlikable worlds, artless current year lampshading, technical issues out the wazoo, "gameplay" that seems to revolve around trying to hook into as many addiction centers as possible and draping casual-tier game mechanics over top of it as a fig leaf. it's a disgrace.
An obvious flashpoint was Gamergate, and that's been beat to death. But before Gamergate, Bioshock Infinite killed the AAA title as it was understood up until that point.
Arguably, Bioshock Infinite was the perfect game. Gamers loved it, reviewers loved it, it was philosophical with something for everyone (except a few wokies who got upset that it depicted both sides as capable of great evil), and most importantly it sold gangbusters. And it still couldn't earn it's money back (allegedly1), the developers basically closed down, reducing in size to a mere skeleton crew that never released another game. I'm struggling to find good sources for it, but I recall this sent shockwaves through the industry. I remember panicked headlines on Gamasutra which I had been reading at the time for some fucking reason. Suddenly everyone was shitting their pants afraid that they'd been shoveling money into a business model (big budget AAA singleplayer games) that would lose them money. And to my memory, this is when the changes began.
Publishers were desperate to do anything but a AAA singleplayer game which would lose money even if it succeeded because it cost so damned much. You saw more games as a service, more DLC, more online requirements, more courting of controversy to make up for obvious lack of quality. Or maybe the woke shit was just a convenient hack to get free publicity and better reviews from a gaming press that Ziff Davis had centralized in San Francisco and then abandoned. Who's to say.
I'm obsessive. I keep a spreadsheet of all the retrogames I aspire to play again, the year they came out, the issue of Computer Gaming World they got reviewed in, which of my stable of retro PCs I should play them on, etc. Around 2015 the list stops. The last game on it is Rebel Galaxy. The last big budget AAA game on it is Borderlands 2 from 2012. I didn't stop at that date because the games weren't retro enough. I stopped because as I was perusing lists of top reviewed or most popular games year by year, that was roughly the time upwards of 80% of them became Games as a Service. Either always online DRM, a multiplayer focus, or even 10 years of perpetual updates chasing "engagement" made them unsuitable for a list oriented towards posterity and nostalgia. Which once again, is more or less right around the time Bioshock Infinite and it's disastrous aftermath was rippling through the industry.
Arguably, Ubisoft has been fighting the good fight. I make fun of Ubislop titles, and their super generic, open world, casual action adventure mechanics. But they are still ostensibly offline big budget single player games. Which really only leaves woke-baiting as a tactic to try to punch above their weight. Alas.
In the 2000's I think it was, Nintendo announced they were no longer going to devalue their games by reducing their prices. It was customary to release $20 versions of games that had sold a bunch. It was easy in the back half of a consoles life to stock up on all the classics pretty cheap, and brand new to boot. Nintendo argued this created a race to the bottom, and quit doing it. People were upset, accused them of being greedy. Gamer entitlement is quite the sight to see. But in the meantime, I think Nintendo was largely vindicated. The first party games that released for the Switch were all 1000% worth the money, especially when compared to the GaaS titles Xbox or Sony were pushing. One again Nintendo is pissing gamers off raising prices. Switch 2 games look to cost $70 or $80, and the console itself is priced at $450. This could be greed. Or like in the early 00's it's Nintendo insisting on being paid what they are worth. Unless you want them to start whoring it up on the corner of Woke & GaaS.
It was already slop. I still can't understand to this day how they managed to spend this much money on what was essentially a less interesting Bioshock at every level. Especially after they managed to make 2 so good.
Those admittedly pretty graphics must have really been the bee's knees, because the gameplay was shite (it could neither commit to being an immersive sim or a proper FPS so you get bulletsponges and exploration that amounts to fiddling in trashcans), the story was shite (multiverse time travel is hard to write about: railroading character development edition) and even the philosophical underpinnings are shite (we went from a legit interesting deconstruction of objectivism to facile decolonial criticism of american exceptionalism whose only reedeeming quality is admitting that communism is bloodthirsty).
Fuck that game. It's the poster child of watering down everything interesting about a videogame franchise. The fact that its only notable contribution to art entirely revolves around pornography is a fitting end.
Hah. I knew people had some strong opinions around it. Interesting to encounter them in the wild.
I remember loving it and being totally along for it's ride when I first played it. Second time I tried to play it years later, I found it profoundly boring. But I also felt that way about Bioshock as well. Never tried Bioshock 2. One thing that always amused me about criticism I saw of Bioshock Infinite, was that it was a worse Bioshock. But, IMHO, Bioshock was just a "worse" System Shock 2. But that all depends on what you were trying to get out of those games. I thought Bioshock had more imaginative world building than System Shock 2, even if the RPG systems were largely removed. It also had a lot better action. Infinite leaned even harder into action and narrative. There were trade offs.
I'm an immersive sim aficionado so I feel strongly about these in particular. Especially since infinite killed the genre for years so I've had to scrounge up indie jank like EYE and Cruelty Squad to scratch that itch ever since.
Bioshock was a definite step up from System Shock 2.
One can quibble about the writing, most people prefer Rapture, but I always thought SS2 had underrated worldbuilding.
The gameplay is just strictly superior. SS2 suffered from this old adventure game syndrome of softlocking you if you made reasonable but wrong choices. You could end up having to start a new save if you didn't upgrade the right skills and there's no obvious logic to what you need. Compare Bioshock which actually lets you engage in different playstyles without punishing you if you don't do it the intended way, and you can tell that there was a Deus Ex in between.
Pacing is also vastly improved. Bioshock is one of the best written video games I know in terms of pace, you're always engaged in the story from the beginning to the end, whereas people tend to forget that the last chapters of SS2 were a slog.
If you've never played Bioshock 2, I recommend it. It's probably the best in the franchise, the story is surprisingly nuanced and the gameplay is a more mature version of the first one in a way that makes Infinite's level design feel amateur in comparison.
Yeah, I can't disagree too strongly with any of that. But I think it's relative to where you put your high water mark. For you it's Bioshock 2, for it's writing and gameplay. For others it's System Shock 2 for climbing to the top of the hill Ultima Underworld discovered, with it's inventory management, statistics, skills and all. I think by the time we get to Bioshock Infinite, it's bifurcated, it's a distinctly different genre than what Ultima Underworld and System Shock were. But circa Bioshock 1, that wasn't clear yet, they were just beginning to go their own ways. So people might look at one or the other and say "Clearly this one is better" depending on whether they wanted a narrative action game or a first person RPG.
Fair enough, but I always thought of immersive sims as their own genre where the exact blend of RPG and action has to serve the context.
For instance, Deus Ex's aiming mechanics, despite being a bit weird in hindsight actually made logical sense, guns don't hit harder if you're more skilled, they're just easier to aim. And so forth.
But there's definitely a point where RPG and action game touch and on either side is something different. I personally believe that point is Morrowind.
Deus ex guns did do far more damage with skill btw
Shit you're right! Can't believe I never noticed that.
I guess the location modifiers just overwhelm it so much I never felt like I couldn't kill something with a low skill weapon. I guess I'll have to look for it next playthrough.
I remember checking as a kid when I ran out of pistol ammo and tried going rambo with the assault rifle at untrained. Turned out the gun inexplicably does no damage anyway, even with the skill boosts.
Like it's so weak the 1st skill gives no extra damage because 3x1.2 = 3
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