Did too many games release in Q3 of 2024?

Some of everyone is complaining about some of everything. Some people want more attention. I don't think there's a serious proposal to limit the amount of music made. There will always be people making music for the love of it. And since distributing it is now free, you'll need some kind of special angle if you want to get paid.

My point is that not all musicians are complaining. And nor are all the game publishers.

It depends on the game and especially studio. AAA western studios definitely sanitized themselves, but Japanese games feel pretty ageless (or dated, if you're cynical) in terms of its writing and characters.

Big difference is definitely that separation of realism. Literature is from a specific experience, TV shows try to reflect experiences. Games about a fat italian plumber throwing mushooms at go-karts doesn't really reflect any society in the last century.

I wouldn't say that at all. People are thin-skinned about plenty of games too.

Why is Friends problematic?

Already spent way too many hours in Space Age. About to start on Red Circuits and realized I need to completely reconfigure my main bus.

On a more serious note, I'm really feeling like it's safer to buy dlc and updates for old games than new ones. I was one of the people who freaking preordered Kerbal Space Program 2, thinking it would be amazing and so excited for a new KSP. And then it was such a dumpster fire, I haven't played it more than a dozen hours. From a pure ROI in playtime vs cost, I've gotten literally nine times the value from Factorio then I have from KSP 2, and twenty times the value for KSP 1 (my most played game). And I still play both of them regularly.

Why risk wasting $60 when I know these old games are still good?

I think we just probably have less time to play. In college I could blow an entire weekend on a subpar game and be fine with it, because I didn't really have competing priorities.

Now, if I waste $60 and four hours on an abysmal game, it's $60 that I could have used to take my kids to the movies, get takeout for my wife and I, or any number of other things. Same with the time. Five hours is time I could have spent cleaning the house, working on my side projects, etc.

I love gaming, and I destress by playing games, but it's not worth the now much higher opportunity cost to play the newer (usually worse) stuff.

That said, not all new games are terrible. Dredge is a game made last year that was absolutely phenomenal in my mind, and well worth the cost and time. Spent way too many late nights fishing in that game.

I think part of it is because gaming used to be avant garde and now it's being made for the general masses - especially the more expensive games. This is probably why I like Factorio - it knows what it is and really leans into it.

People still make new games for old consoles, even full commercial releases. These are done by enthusiasts, of course, but I think some people are possibly making enough money to pay their water bill this way :)

And yet, there's few early-2000's nostalgia, even 90's nostalgia or retro hasn't really taken off yet. Closest thing I can think of is Breaking Bad, and that came out in 2008, so at the time it wasn't even "2000's nostalgia".

But the thing with BB is that cheap feature-phones are an important plot device, but 2008 was a turning point in that the iPhone and Android smartphones were taking the world by storm, as did fast always-on internet. I posit that it's not so much the year or time, but the technology and experiences of the time that determine if something is considered retro.

80's was cable TV and walkmans; 90's wasn't much different, but late 90's / early 2000's was marked by the rise of the internet. But people sitting at their computer doesn't make for good TV. Late 2000's to now is the era of smartphones, but again, I don't think anyone will feel nostalgic about people sitting alone together browsing Reddit or HN for hours on end.