What I hate about western video game industries

Last year I made an article about the decline of Japanese video game industries. In this thread I want to focus on what went wrong with western video game industries in these days. One thing I do like about western video game industries is they are generally friendly towards indie developers unlike in Japan where they are generally hostile towards indie developers which they saw indie devs are nothing but nuisance, profit stealers, perverts(they usually made pornographic games), etc.

There's one thing I hate about western video game industries in recent years: Lack of genre variety. They can be either multiplayer-based shooters or action RPG with more "action" and less on "RPG". Of course I only talk about big-name developers and publishers. Only The Sims 4 and XCOM 2 aren't shooters and action RPGs from major developers and publishers.

I think the the real culprit of genre bottleneck is the explosion of multiplayer shooters, both team-based and battle royale in recent years. As the internet connection gets faster, cheaper and much easier to connect, more and more people able to play without spending much money and in fact some of these games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends are free to play. Most single-player games especially action RPGs today almost focused on action alone, not on character building and tactics. For example in The Witcher 3 leveling up only to unlock higher level side quests weapon restrictions.

I know that The Sims 4 is a shameless cash grabs that were milked for DLCs but it offers completely different experience to me alone. Unless most people battle royale genre no longer fashionable to them anymore, don't expect the genre to die.

With all their faults (DLC, microtransactions, DRM), I still prefer Western game development. Japan is in a technological rut. They focus on anime, turn based gaming, and their culture far too much. None of which I care for. They also don’t gamble innovation and their budgets are quite low.

I'm more into JRPG's myself. I've generally just been a big Nintendo fan these days.

That is a load of nonsense, to say there is a lack of variety in genres.

Obviously there are the more popular genres, the big sellers, but that doesn't mean there is a complete lack of presence or interest of other genres.

I guess that actually is sorta true in many ways.

Simulation games are still being made. You can mow fields all day in a combine harvester if you like. Also Garbage Trucks, aeroplanes (boring), and others probably.

Also the management genre like football manager or Factorio or Stallaris or Prison architect clones, racing... Orpg which are more than just fighting.

I don't know what genres Japan is responsible for right now apart from scrolling shooter and graphic adventures.

It is kind of unfair to pit just one country against all the others really. But Japan did have a head start in many ways and have seen it fade in terms of innovation.

They remain the only country capable of making a fighting game. Mortal Kombat would still be cool if it played like 1 and 2.

Gonna have to disagree, if you look at something like Steam, games are quite diverse, they just aren't big budget games.

Just have too look, whatever your itch, it's probably there.

I think the western video game industry is just in an infancy period so theyre all over the map... I thinkc hecking again in the future it might be a totally different situation oin many levels... IMO

anyway.

There are way more, if not too many, good games out there today in each genre than ever before. I honestly can't keep up with my backlog. A perfect RPG this gen for me is Assassin's Creed Origins: a seamless beautiful open world, filled with mystery, skill trees, an interesting story and fun gameplay mechanics.

Hate is such a strong word... are you sure it's hate?

Everything has RPG element now and more often than not they are also action games.

Games labelled as RPG are just slower action games now a days ... or you have "dialog choices" yeah whatever.

The trend nowadays is to remake rather than innovate. This is why you see more sequels and remakes rather than new IPs. Take a look at the Xbox lineup for exclusives this year. Absolutely horrible.

There's no risk in remakes and sequels. If it makes money, people will buy a remake or a sequel. But when you try to innovate with a new game that nobody knows about, there's that risk. But with great risk comes great reward. We wouldn't have great IPs like Resident Evil or Uncharted if people never took that risk.