Tales of an Aging Gamer: We keep getting older, the games stay the same
I am not QUITE at this person&#x27;s point yet, as I am currently 29. But I am struggling to find a game I enjoy lately.<p>I would argue that games have not stayed the same. Video games have become aggressively monetized at the expense of the consumer. Companies are now looking to exploit a small percentage of core users, &quot;whales&quot;, hoping to get them to spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions.<p>There is also a focus on &quot;live services&quot;. Basically releasing the game as a poorly constructed product, and then slowly updating it over years and years while charging for the updates along the way. Look at the most played games right now, and you will notice very few of them are from 2018, but rather are older games that have been continually updated.<p>Some examples:<p>1. The other day I logged back into my Destiny 2 account after lapsing over the holiday seasons, and to my dismay I discover that I am now expected to pay an additional $20 on top of the $80 I have already paid total for the game.<p>2. So, I decide to log into a game that had launched around a year ago but was not in a state I considered acceptable, Battletech. I figured more time in the oven would make it better. BOOM. $20 season pass, otherwise I am locked out of new parts of the game.<p>3. So I switch over to Call of Duty Black Ops: 4, a game I had not played in a few months but thought was fun enough when I started playing. In the time between they added gameplay affecting micro-transactions AND a $20 &quot;expansion pack&quot; that consisted of a few levels.<p>4. Last year&#x27;s Star Wars BattleFront 2 was LAMBASTED due to being a full-priced $60 product which monetized all progression with an absurdly expensive loot-box scheme. After people did the math they realized it could cost hundreds of dollars to acquire some of the characters in the game, and that the drops from the loot boxes heavily influenced gameplay.<p>Video games have become excessively monetized. Companies have realized they can make more money by making the same games over and over again. Gone is the risky, interesting &quot;AA&quot; games of the last generation. Now the only games are being made are extremely expensive to produce and obnoxiously monetized &quot;AAA&quot; games. Now that these companies have gotten a taste of the loot-box whale money, they do not want to go without it.<p>Take a look at the work done by Jim Sterling for a more detailed analysis.<p>edit, adding more thoughts:<p>Another thing is that they are all the same games. Low TTK shooters turned into team shooters transformed into Battle Royale games.<p>There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with interesting movement mechanics. It is all low TTK tactical shooters. Low TTK is an equalizer between low-skill and high-skill players. Even a very bad player can get a point if they sneak up on a good player.<p>The thing is, the mobile game industry is RAKING IN CASH and the AAA game industry wants a piece of that action. It is becoming hard to justify creating Call of Duty 5 if you can make a lame gatcha mobile game and make more money. Investors want that mobile game money so the big game companies are getting desperate chasing that dragon.