Gaming industry rant

Quite simply, I think the gaming industry is screwed or at least on its way to being screwed.

Why is that? I have some reasons or contributors that have become more and more apparent as this year, E3 especially, has gone on.

The long and short of it is that money talks and is a very powerful evil. Gaming companies, especially the big ones like Activision and Ubisoft, have gotten to a point where they repeatedly push out cash grabs or otherwise very generic games that aren't very good.

A very clear example of this is when Ubisoft announced a subscription service for their uPlay storefront, on Google Stadia of all things, which in itself is a subscription service, so you'd have to pay two subscription services all at once on top of whatever other subscription services you'd happen to be using.

Another clear example of this is the numerous stories that have come out recently of game companies forcing their devs and employees to work crunch time to the extreme, to where they work 100 hour work weeks, nearly working their devs and employees to death in the process.

What really stings to me about this transition/state that the gaming industry seems to be in is that in the process of pushing out these cash grabs and generic games, they (big gaming companies) seem to have lost touch with their roots as to why they made and continue to make games in the first place: The supportive and tightly knit community that helped them get where they are by buying their products of yesteryear and showing appreciation for the creative and immersive worlds they've built. They've completely shoved any essence of a community aside, with any attempt at a community being fake or disingenuous for the most part, and instead made old fans just another number in their sales statistics.

Now, I fully realize that in order for a big game studio or company to run at all, they need money. I also realize that sometimes these companies hit a rough patch when trying to think of creative ideas for the next big entry in a coveted IP of theirs' that fans would be happy with, and end up having to resort to these cash grabs to again, make money to keep the studio running and meet sales expectations. However, overworking their staff nearly to death and making generic games that turn out to be boring as hell is not the solution (at least, it's not a good solution).

I have been playing video games since I was 6 years old. I came into this hobby by enjoying very well made games and interacting with a loving and caring community that I have made quite a few friends in. This gaming industry in its current state is something I did not sign up for when I picked up this hobby 13 years ago. I fear that the gaming industry is on a trend where there'll be so much of these cash grabs and boring generic games, combined with very much justified community discontent, that we'll get a video game crash much like the video game crash in the early 80s. I also see that happening sooner rather than later with stuff like Google Stadia and various other games-as-a-service kind of deals coming out recently.

As a long time fan of video games, I would hate to see the industry come to that point, and hopefully it gets better in some way.