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State of gaming 2019


Innocentmask
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This is a thread discussing about the current state of video games and gaming in general for this year.?In this thread, you can give a brief summary on what you think about this year's gaming; How it's doing, the future of it, personal experiences, etc.

My thoughts:

2019 gaming has been a rocky year. Lots of good and bad news but bad news seems to outweigh the good slightly. The current state appears that smaller indie game studios are slowly rising to the top while the big Triple A companies are slowly lagging behind. The big ones EA, Activision, Ubisoft and Bethesda, have been cranking up their monetary practises so much that it has been receiving government attention. Even if those companies are still making money, their games show that they are losing their grasp. There are still some companies like Gearbox, Nintendo, Blizzard who still have their touch on their original properties and maintain their ratings. There is a bit of hope since games like Outerworlds, Death stranding and Cyberpunk 2077 prove that revolutionary titles can exist.

And then there is the next generation of consoles. Cloud gaming is the next evolution of consoles. (If you don't know about it, its basically a streaming service to play your games.) but there has been doubts about this working properly. I don't think it would replace traditional console gaming. I'm not really up for cloud gaming though. Then there is the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett coming next year. I am not very certain about the years console since i'm not really a gamer who uses them much but something feels that it they may not be as good as their predecessors.

Overrall, 2019 is just opening the gates for an uncertain future that may be for better or worse. 2020 is gonna be a new era for gaming.

This is the end of my brief thoughts on this years gaming. Go ahead post your own thoughts about this too.

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In general, it’s been a weaker year, and that’s just because 2 of the major companies are moving onto their next big consoles. Sony doesn’t even have enough to show for E3. 

Nintendo’s had a pretty decent year, all things considered. A lot of really great ports and 3rd party editions, a handful of 1st party games that sold well, and a successful switch lite. We still have Pokémon coming out soon, and that’ll give them a huge profit regardless. 

Some of the mid-tier companies have had some issues. Blizzard had to deal with the whole Hong Kong thing, Bethesda innovated even more ways to ruin fallout, and EA is EA. I’m not super hyped for any of the games that they’re going to be putting out soon. I might pick up overwatch but that would only be so I can play with my brother. 

As for me, I’ve enjoyed 3 Houses a lot. It took up the majority of my summer and I don’t necessarily regret it. At the beginning of 2019 I was still on a Persona craze that started ironically a couple days before joker got announced. I had bought P5 to try for the first time just because I heard some good things about it and I wanted to put my PS4 to use, and then all of a sudden he was in smash. Crazy. Then in the spring it was a lot of Zelda and going back to the older wii games I owned.

A lot of the time I spent with games this year was trying to get the most that I could out of the PS4 and the Wii U, since neither of those would be coming with me to college. I’ve been away for a couple months and I already miss the hell out of P5 and Skyward Sword. Thank god thanksgiving break is coming up soon, maybe my brother and I will play through something together. I was only able to take the switch with me to college, so I’ve been playing a ton of smash, 3H, DBFZ and Xenoblade 2. 

Speaking of DBFZ, if anything went well this year, it was fighting games. Smash is doing as well as ever, Soul Calibur made a comeback earlier in the year, and Blazblue and DBFZ are still getting interesting new content. The competitive scene is alive and well, and Nintendo’s really making an effort to try and support it, even if it’s in their own nintendoey way. Jump Force happened too, and MK11. Oh, and RIP MVC, you will be remembered. 

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2019 is a joke, for the most part. A lot of the big name titles turned out disappointing in my eyes. There's weird conversations right now about Death Stranding and whether a game needs to be "fun" in order to be rated "good" - but it really is just more people whining about "unfair" review scores as usual. Google enters the "console market" with Stadia and that will be the most forgotten headline of the year (did you know that's releasing in two weeks?). The mainline pokemon series is imploding. Bloodstained Ritual of the Night finally released after five years of development and the switch version still is not in shippable condition (but that never stopped them). Sony has basically been absent most of the year, reminding us that we're only lacking in cool games because everything that probably would have been out by now is now a crossplay launch title for PS5 next year. Fallout 76 is still topping headlines a year later. Blizzard brought more international attention to the Hong Kong protests than anybody could ask for. And Sony and Microsoft both launched their brand of "Nintendo Direct" this year, called State of Play and Inside Xbox respectively. No, you don't need to watch them.

Shout outs to Capcom, I guess? I don't think it made financial sense to make Resident Evil 2 remake or Devil May Cry 5 but wow are they everything we could want and the former is my current Game of the Year. We really don't give these guys enough credit. 

Edited by Glennstavos
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2019 has been bad for gaming. That being said Nintendo has generally bucked the trends of the industry yet again, and have been going strong, at least until the new Pokemon comes out. Most of the triple A has been mired in just the most repugnant monetization that has sapped my interest in that whole side of the industry, and some kinda crash or regulations that forces them to focus on making good games again, couldn't come faster. Its been a sh*t show, but at least some of it has been entertaining. Fallout 76 has been the disaster that never ends, and finding out there is ANOTHER disaster basically every week has been just hilarious to hear about. I can't believe its still relevant, but Bethesda just can't stop tanking the boatloads of community good will they have built up throughout the years. Activision has managed to gut the shield of community good will they bought from their Blizzard merger, which has made for a lot of entertaining and creative means of proving that China/Tencent has no idea how the Streisand effect works.

1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

did you know that's releasing in two weeks?

I didn't, because as soon as they revealed it would simply be a more dangerous way of buying video games, I ceased to care.

 

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12 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

2019 has been bad for gaming. That being said Nintendo has generally bucked the trends of the industry yet again, and have been going strong, at least until the new Pokemon comes out. Most of the triple A has been mired in just the most repugnant monetization that has sapped my interest in that whole side of the industry, and some kinda crash or regulations that forces them to focus on making good games again, couldn't come faster. Its been a sh*t show, but at least some of it has been entertaining.

I'd point out that Nintendo's Mario Kart Tour is a new low for the company. Maybe it's par for the course for mobile gachas, but you gotta remember it's a free to start mario kart on smartphones, so it seems especially predatory in addition to the game's lax quality. And there has actually been a few lights shining in the darkness for triple A games when it comes to monetization. Borderlands 3 and Death Stranding launched with no microtransactions. Outer Worlds launched with neither microtransactions, a season pass, nor even pre-order bonuses. We're not even sure if that game will have DLC. Like games from 15 years ago, all the content is there on the disc. And those games are all made by developers with critical views on the industry that no doubt lead to those decisions.

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22 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

I'd point out that Nintendo's Mario Kart Tour is a new low for the company. Maybe it's par for the course for mobile gachas, but you gotta remember it's a free to start mario kart on smartphones, so it seems especially predatory in addition to the game's lax quality.

I guess Nintendo can't buck the mobile trends, but I have given up on mobile gaming being anything other than a cesspool a long time ago. Even with my soft spot for FEH, I know its got those sinister gacha hooks souring the whole thing.

 

27 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Borderlands 3 and Death Stranding launched with no microtransactions.

Careful there, Borderlands 3 does have microtransactions. Randy Pitchford had that whole twitter meltdown after he at first claimed it didn't have micro-transactions, and games media corrected him by pointing out it does have cosmetic micro-transaction, just no lootboxes. I suppose it is better than most of the industry, but the Borderlands series has never been my thing. As for Death Stranding it hasn't been out long enough for me to judge it myself, or trust that microtransactions haven't been creatively hidden from prerelease reviewers (as has become frustratingly common in the industry). Plus Kojima Productions  is in kind of a weird position having gained independence from Konami, so I am not sure whether to count it as a part of the triple A yet.

 

45 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Outer Worlds launched with neither microtransactions, a season pass, nor even pre-order bonuses. We're not even sure if that game will have DLC. Like games from 15 years ago, all the content is there on the disc. And those games are all made by developers with critical views on the industry that no doubt lead to those decisions.

You may have a point there, but to be fair it has barely been out for 2 weeks.

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2019 has been an ok year imho since I only really care about metroid and fire emblem it feels like at the moment. I could play more games from other series, but instead I'm actually into just looking across all the games I may of brushed off previously, or want to replay again after so long since playing them originally. I'm having a great time with them actually, as Metroid Prime  has been extremely fun for me and eye opening since I previously thought it was somewhat overrated being called "one of the best games ever made" because of the backtracking, but playing it recently completely changed how I feel about it and I had loads of fun with it...not to mention the backtracking was WAYY less painful than I remembered it being!

But yeah, while there's not any new games I care about coming up besides prime 4 (releasing in the year 2077 at this rate lol) there's still a lot I can focus on right now and have fun with 😃

 

Edited by Dinar87
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4 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Careful there, Borderlands 3 does have microtransactions. Randy Pitchford had that whole twitter meltdown after he at first claimed it didn't have micro-transactions, and games media corrected him by pointing out it does have cosmetic micro-transaction, just no lootboxes. I suppose it is better than most of the industry, but the Borderlands series has never been my thing.

I don't even like Randy (and he shouldn't have acted so petulantly), but those cosmetic DLCs have been in the game since BL1 and really are no big deal. They can technically be considered micro-transactions, but when BL1 was released, they weren't even considered micro-transactions back then because the concept of that was so far removed from what it is now. The games media were just trying to be pedantic and score some points, because evidently what Randy was talking about was pay-to-win "mechanics".

Edited by Tryhard
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Overall I though that 2019 was a rough year in video games. With average sequels being in abundant, and even more overpriced monetization models. The major exception being Capcom and Nintendo. I guess that's due to the year being a transitory period between console generations. 

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2019 has been a great year for gaming, though not a lot of great stuff came out. That said, a lot of great trends have continued, and customers have been able to push companies in the right directions.

Big things that happened in 2019:

Fire Emblem: Three Houses was a big step in the right direction story-wise, and sold really well, so the series is looking good right now.

Astral Chain was great and sold well, so Platinum's still in business.

Sega brought back Sakura Wars (FINALLY) and that looks like it'll be good.

Kingdom Hearts 3 was a lot of fun gameplay wise, whatever else you can say about it.

Capcom has continued its major renaissance by constantly putting out better triple AAA games that completely avoid a lot of the BS that other companies have fallen into. Resident Evil 2 Remake, Devil May Cry 5, and Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, have all been fantastic, and it seems that trend will continue.

On the European side of things, Cyberpunk and Horizon Zero Dawn 2 are still cranking away, and are probably going to be fantastic.

The Sinking City and Blasphemous did well, so hopefully those guys will continue to do good work.

And in America, we've got Last of Us Part 2, which is probably going to be great.

Blizzard seems to have learned their lesson from last year, and in spite of the major controversy, seems to be moving in the right direction for their games, though time will tell for the company as a whole.

Ubisoft got taught a huge lesson by breakpoint's failure, and will likely make some major positive changes.

EA is putting out Fallen Order instead of another Battlefront, so that's good.

Insomniac's doing Spider-man 2, which will probably also be great.

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Considering the fact that I've got both college and a job to worry about, 2019 as a whole is just kinda a big blur in my memory, but I try to play games when I can. Supergiant Games's Hades is one of their best works yet despite it still being an early access title, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's DLC has been absolutely brilliant, Lucia got me playing Street Fighter 5 again, Fire Emblem 3 Houses is an interesting change of pace for our mutually beloved series, Astral Chain is another smash hit for Platinum Games, River City Girls has reinvigorated my love of couch co-op arcade-style beat'em ups, and Link's Awakening has been a very pleasant experience so far. Overall I've played a good selection of titles, some of them the best I've played in years, but I can't say it's really been a good year for games because of the industry at large having massive issues. Predatory microtransactions and lootboxes plague $60 AAA releases causing world governments to take notice, more and more games are trying to force political agendas onto their players, multiple industry leading corporations like EA, Bethesda, and Blizzard have lost all integrity at this point, and there's just not a lot of lasting excitement for anything among the gaming community because we're just being drowned in mediocre releases and scummy business models.

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I can only speak for the Switch, 2019 was a good year overall. 

I was absolutely glad to enjoy Tales of Vesperia finally in a language I could understand.

Three Houses was definitely one of the more enjoyable Fire Emblem games. 

And I am super excited for Xenoblade Chronicles 1

In general the content of Switch's games me surprised me positively.

 

I am also excited for Trails of Cold Steel 3, but I have to wait for a PS4 which I hopefully will get whilst Black Week. 

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Looking ahead, what does Nintendo have planned? How many titles have they actually announced for next year? I don't think there are very many. Is there a sudden announcement to be coming in the new few months for Spring/Summer releases, is E3 going to be a huge rush of new announcements for 2020's second half?

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I guess 2019 was a decent year overall for games. Will folks remember even a tenth of the dumb headlines and controversies a year from now? I vaguely remember calling 2017 the Year of the Lootbox but that year was also the unlikely revival of Japanese triple A games. Really it's the games we'll remember. And in this age of updates there may be no evidence left of the games that were once broken at release. When people revisit Kingdom Hearts 3 in its Final Mix rerelease of 2021, will they remember the high stakes of such a release, and the decade of waiting? Probably not. 

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Looking ahead, what does Nintendo have planned? How many titles have they actually announced for next year? I don't think there are very many. Is there a sudden announcement to be coming in the new few months for Spring/Summer releases, is E3 going to be a huge rush of new announcements for 2020's second half?

9 minute Breath of the Wild 2 trailer at the Game Awards or riot.

Edited by Glennstavos
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I can't really remember much about 2019's state of gaming other than "I liked Bloodstained and Three Houses, I guess". It didn't appeal much to me.

If there was something that 2019's game industry made me look up to, is to 2020's state of gaming. I expect so many games for 2020 that I already feel even more broke than I am. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 (and its many themed games that are due to be released in 2020 and beyond), Crusader Kings 3, Silksong, maybe Death Stranding, Nioh 2 and other games that I'm forgetting right now.

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If this generation marked the revival of the Japanese game industry then it also marks the decline of the western one. The key difference is that the Japanese decline was primarily an artistic one as they just failed to properly address the rise of the western market. The Japanese devs of the last gen really struck me as being at a complete loss and making bad decisions because of it. The decline of the west meanwhile is a deep moral decline where the companies not only know what goes wrong but are doing it purposely and arguably with a lot of malice to boot. 

And the state of gaming in 2019 is just a continuation of this western decline. Complaints about lootboxes has stopped being a fringe complaints but has went over to the mainstream gaming audience, and even the mainstream public in general is occasionally joining in on criticizing them. Despite this and despite even governments getting involved the western game industry stubbornly refuses to address this issue. EA especially is leading the charge by the whole ''surprise mechanics'' things or insisting on breaking Belgium laws. 

Lootboxes aren't the only moral failing with crunch and unreleased games being increasingly common or at least increasingly noticed. Even game companies that used to be the darlings of the public like Blizzard and Bioware are widely believed to have decayed considerably. 

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On 11/9/2019 at 10:21 AM, Etrurian emperor said:

If this generation marked the revival of the Japanese game industry then it also marks the decline of the western one. The key difference is that the Japanese decline was primarily an artistic one as they just failed to properly address the rise of the western market. The Japanese devs of the last gen really struck me as being at a complete loss and making bad decisions because of it. The decline of the west meanwhile is a deep moral decline where the companies not only know what goes wrong but are doing it purposely and arguably with a lot of malice to boot. 

And the state of gaming in 2019 is just a continuation of this western decline. Complaints about lootboxes has stopped being a fringe complaints but has went over to the mainstream gaming audience, and even the mainstream public in general is occasionally joining in on criticizing them. Despite this and despite even governments getting involved the western game industry stubbornly refuses to address this issue. EA especially is leading the charge by the whole ''surprise mechanics'' things or insisting on breaking Belgium laws. 

Lootboxes aren't the only moral failing with crunch and unreleased games being increasingly common or at least increasingly noticed. Even game companies that used to be the darlings of the public like Blizzard and Bioware are widely believed to have decayed considerably. 

I'd say it's more explicitly "America" in decline than "the west" as a whole. Europe's been on a roll for the last few years. 

Japan's been hitting their stride as they are finally catching up to the west in technology. Substance Designer suddenly became a thing, and even Nintendo is using it, Mario Odyssey being the first game I know of they used it for, though Nintendo is a bit of a black box even in the game industry.

Capcom, similarly, has implemented SpeedTree (first used for Witcher 3), as well as marvelous designer to great effect.

Additionally, Japanese companies have started bringing in more international artists, which has helped them greatly.

Finally, the a lot of Japanese companies are switching to Unreal, rather than trying to build their own engines. Most of Square Enix's problems for the last decade were either out right caused by bad engines, or were exacerbated by them. By switching to Unreal for everything, they're saving a lot of time and effort, and it shows in DQ11 and Kingdom Hearts.

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9 hours ago, dragonlordsd said:

I'd say it's more explicitly "America" in decline than "the west" as a whole. Europe's been on a roll for the last few years. 

True but for much of gaming's history the western market has been dominated by the States though there were always outliers like Rare. Ubisoft is the biggest European gaming company though and they're in the same boat as EA and Activision. 

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As far as the west is concerned it's a complete trainwreck outside of the indie scene anyway. What with EA and activation and their beyond predatory and scummy monetization models. Blizzard and the whole Hong Kong and Diablo fiasco. Bethesda and the entirety of fallout 76. Yeah a ot of big western/american companies aren't doing too hot. The japanese market seems to be booming which is good cause I mostly play japanese games anyway.

Nintendo's been going pretty strong this year with smash DLC and great exclusive titles like astral chain, Luigi's Mansion 3, Fire Emblem Three houses, and hopefully pokemon later this week.

Besides that you have capcom with games like DMC 5 and the iceborne expansion for monster hunter world(a personal favorite of mine) as well as remakes of some old resident evil games. They seem to be doing really good for themselves.

Bandai Namco just recently helped publish code vein which I am absolutely loving among other decent titles.

Fromsoft's Sekiro I hear was pretty well received as well.

Really the only major japanese company that hasn't really done much good is konami but they really haven't done a whole lot this year to my knowledge.

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Oh and Scott the Woz's recent video reminded me this was a big year for streaming services, both for tv and games. And although the mediums are different, the problems with streaming aren't. Services are often overpriced, ill suited to the console market, and since every publisher wants their own platform to publish their stuff on, it results in less potential content for the other services making it only worse for the consumer who has to pick and choose their subscriptions wisely. Years ago, it was common for somebody to say "man, what if they made a netflix for games" as if that was a fabulous idea and now we've taken it to its logical, hellish conclusion in 2019. 

@ the japanese industry discussion, those guys still aren't above their own vices. Their monetization practices may not pervade AAA titles (yet. We'll see how Square Enix's Avengers live service game pans out) but they do have their own dedicated apps. Low effort gacha games featuring your favorite characters. Sony is still a joke too with draconian practices regarding cross platforrm play for any game not as large as Fortnite. Only a month ago have they finally lifted restrictions, but those headlines seem iffy now since I still haven't heard any more noteworthy games enjoying crossplay with PS4. And worst of all is the state of Japanese fighting games that still refuse to improve netcode. What they've done instead in games like Tekken 7, Smash Ultimate, and SF5 (in its first year) was institute much higher input delay on offline game modes so that the player would be less likely to notice lag when it happens online. That is disgusting and hurts the competitive viability of these games when players need to account not only for a human's reaction time, but the absurd delay of their inputs reaching the game.

Edited by Glennstavos
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my 2019 gaming have been largely retro since i didnt buy much games outside 3ds. 3DS wise, Nexus was technically a 2018, but it was pretty decent despite my issues with the direction taken with the game

 

Bought Cyber Sleuth as well.... is currently in procss of CS1 and..... boy. Was that. A thing.

Theres something i want to say about its story and its NOT exactly a good thing. Gameplay wise its ok. I only really play it for digimon beatdown experience in the same way i don't play SMT for gameplay and more for absurd demon min maxing customization shenanigans and break the game wide open

Edited by JSND Alter Dragon Boner
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