Are you optimistic, pessimistic, or indifferent on the future of gaming?

Take a guess.

Indifferent. I don't spend enough time playing games anymore, or staying up to date on gaming news like I once did as a young adult. It's not that I don't have the time, I am single after all. I just enjoy living my life rather than being a hermit. :) Personally. I'm not speaking of gamers in general.

I feel gaming has gotten down hill recently,to many remakes and remasters and not nearly enough of new IP’s,good quality sequel’s,good story,storytelling has been done a billion times over between tv,movies and gaming and books included. I personally think the future of gaming will be incredibly stale in the near future.

Indifferent cos gaming is not only AAA for me.

I’m indifferent. I miss the older eras of gaming.

Optimistic!

I've been playing video games since the early 90's, and really a serious gamer since the late 90's.

I've seen a lot of change--some good, some bad, but mostly just change in general--but like the great Dr. King said "The curve of video games is long, but it bends towards improvement!"

Things are far, far, FAR more fun than they have ever been.

Most of that is due to the awesome small-scale and independent developers out there.

Optimistic. The fact that I’ve been an avid gamer for over 45 years and still find tons of great games to play these days leaves me to believe that things will be just fine for the foreseeable future.

Shitty devs will keep releasing garbage games that get nuked on the socials. Good devs will keep releasing good games. No reason to be pessimistic or indiference. Filter through garbage, and gaming ain't dead whatsoever.

@mrbojangles25: "Things are far, far, FAR more fun than they have ever been."

I'm the total opposite, Games from the 90's feel way more fun than today's offerings.

The majority of games are sold at full price then they unload a mountain of stuff to buy on the digital marketplaces, stuff we used to get for free.

Back in the 90's you would be rewarded with extra characters, cars, stages, clothes etc for beating the game. Now they just sell it to you.

Once gaming became popular it's just been monetised to the ****.

At this rate the only popular video games for the next 10+ years will be the same games folks have been playing the past 10 years. GTA, Fortnite, COD, Minecraft. Publishers are gonna burn everything else to the ground trying to replicate these games. The future looks real iffy

Optimistic, always new games coming out I wanna play.

Very optimistic. The industry is shifting to multi-platform and some gamers are kicking and screaming because of the shift. What else can I ask for.😊

Very pessimistic

Optimistic. Almost all games from the beginning are available, more ways to play like mobile, VR, Steam Deck, Streaming, etc. More ways to publish, distribute, and reach gamers. We have access to more games than ever, and there are too many games to play. There is an appreciation for gaming history and people care about things like Atari 50 and Rare Replay. Game development is more accessible, from more schooling options to development suites to funding and publishing opportunity.

There's a lot to be happy about.

There is plenty to be hopeful about

@SolidGame_basic: very optimistic because of xbox and gamepass. While Sony is busy milking remasters, remakes, MS is pushing gaming forward into the future. Nintendo makes good games but they scam people. MS is simply the best.

Indifferent. I can't think of anything to be overly excited for, but I'm not going to stop playing either.

Aa long as Im getting next Doom, Stalker 2, 007 game by IO. And some other good shit Im indifferent.

It depends on what happens from all these massive layoffs. If we see new studios popping up and/or smaller ones expanding then there could be some hope of it being less shitty in the future.

But being pessimistic is the more sensible approach

Optimistic. The industry is steadily growing and I think that's great. I find that indie games are a breath of fresh air. Not every game has to have a huge budget behind it.

Somewhere between optimistic and indifferent tbh, if the trend remains towards less exclusivity and more options agnostic of platform then 100% positive, if we see pushback and a retreat to older models then I wouldn't even call that negative overall I just would end up spending less so indifferent.

I dunno why, but I'm feeling kinda optimistic right now.

I'm about here as well. I'm optimistic for more ways to game, Indie developers getting in on the fun and growing, and new ideas being thrown in the ring. Though I'm nervous about this trend towards live gaming, and the massive layoffs due to bloated budgets and hardcore gaming not growing.

Many of you gamers have no idea how good you have it and how it will only get better in the future. ;o

For gaming that is. The rest of your world is getting all f'ed up. lol :P

Mass psychosis formation is real.

Both. Games are becoming more and more advanced, and I'm eager to see future videogames.

I also worry predatory business practices will become worse. It has already made me play way fewer AAA games than I did in the past, and if it worsens, I might stop buying AAA games altogether. Which is lame for me since I want to play big budget games sometimes but not be agressively milked, and it's lame for the companies to never get my money.

I also dislike subscription services, and I don't think those will decelerate either. MS is probably looking into making PC gamers pay for online gaming as we speak..

Give them bread and give them circuses and the people will never revolt!

So keep the Doritos- and Mt. Dew-sponsored video game content coming I guess 😁🤣😂😥😯😢

Whenever I feel cynical or negative or pessimistic or whatever, I always do a mental exercise to get myself out of my funk. And that usually involves me asking myself: are you better now than you were 5-10 or 20 years ago? What would a "young you" say about all this?

So, what would a 10-15 year old me say about this? What would me from 20-30 years ago say?

Well, if you would have told me that my beloved Half-Life of 1998 would eventually get a prequel game in something called "Virtual Reality" and that VR headsets would be affordable, he'd be ecstatic.

If you would have told him that video games would grow so large they couldn't fit on a DVD, he'd be shocked...and that shock would be replaced with wonder that a game the size of 20 DVD's could be downloaded in an hour or two.

If you would have told me from 20 years ago that we'd get amazing Dungeons and Dragons games...that'd I'd discover a franchise called "Total War" that not only had fantasy aspects, but also sci-fantasy franchise as well, he'd shit his pants.

If you would have told me from 15 years ago when I was being paid $11/hr I could subscribe to various publishers for a cheap fee and play unlimited games, I'd be ecstatic.

So yeah there's a lot to be happy about. Nostalgia is all well and good, but don't let it get in the way of facts.

Gaming is doomed.

I think it will be better. Smaller developers will get increasingly more powerful tools. Just look at what Unteal engine is doing for animations in 3D. Then generative AI will help indie-devs with full voice acting, music etc.

What I’m saying is that I think we will get games of the scope of say Max Payne, or Prince of Persia (in 3d) made by really small teams.

That would be huge as we would get way more variety and genres that are not profitable in the AAA - space would get a resurgence.

That’s what I’m hoping anyway 😁!

@mrbojangles25:

High five!!! :D

I don't know about doomed but I think the nature of it has changed and we just need to get used to seeing beloved franchises get eaten up and spit out over time.

The flip side is we have an industry full of professionals that gain some good skills working at soulless corporations that then branch out, establish their own studios, and make some better quality, niche, independent titles.

It's weird and I'd like to see large AAA publisher-developers do better but I think it is working out well overall. At least on PC. If I owned a console and was a serious gamer I'd have given up at this point lol.

We need to do better as consumers; I know us on System Wars are not representative of the gaming masses but the whole trend of gamers migrating towards free-to-play and microtransactions is disheartening. Would love to see some government regulation both in the US and abroad to diminish this predatory practice.

Indifferent. You look at all the mistakes being made in the AAA space and it brings you down, but then you look at all the good contributions by indies and it brings you back up again. We never had access to so many great tools and resources to make games like we do now. Devs and publishers need to figure shit out and put them to good use.

I'm indifferent at the moment.

I'm kind of pessimistic. I'm tired of the industry just peddling new hardware all the time. I also can't find many games to be hyped about.

Optimistic, always. My personal favorite time for gaming is gen 6, but that's not to say it's all doomed. There is still more good stuff being made now than I will ever have time to play. The layoffs right now are bad, but will probably lead to more experienced talent in the indie space. AAA may even have a crash at some point, but there will always be people making games, and they have more avenues for distribution than ever.

Gaming has changed, much of it for the worse, but there is still a lot to be excited about.

I'm indifferent at the moment... Mostly because we have a healthy indie scene that means developers are making games and selling them to gamers without the influence of out of touch publically owned corporations who see games as dollar signs only.

Meaning, if AAA games fail, and i believe this model will fail, we lose nothing but bad games, poor ideas, and awful tactics to gouge us. We lose unfinished games and a lack of innovation. If AAA games fail, we lose nothing but the cesspool these corporations set up for us. If they choose to rebuild it better than we will benefit... Thankfully, indie means fresh ideas are at the ready so any storm can be weathered.

There are times I look at these decisions and think, "how can they be effing up something that seems so easy to succeed with...?" but maybe we're just not there customers anymore.... The key is to find those who make the games you like to play and ignore the rest.

Woohoo!

In Nintendo and Indies I Trust.

I kinda forgot that i used to stalk you daily. My bad.

I am optimistic that Hardwenzen will get a PS or Xbox one day.

Indifferent not that there isn't anything interesting to try ,there is but I've become more chooses as time prograsses

@Pedro said:

Interesting! Digital sales are becoming more pronounced every quarter for Nintendo. I own a switch and roughly 60 or so games since launch. I own 3 physical switch games... Botw, totk and Mario odyssey. The rest were digital downloads. I only purchased physical because my son wanted to play them on his switch as well.

@TheEroica: I hope they (and all other consoles and digital storefronts) will adopt family sharing of digital games the way Valve is doing it

Family Sharing enables up to 5 family members to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game.

I'm surprised pessimistic is winning the vote, I guess there are a lot of others here sick of current gaming and the way it's heading in the future like I am.

@last_lap: either that or you created 20 accounts just for this poll

@SolidGame_basic: Did you vote optimistic, well with no Sony games coming for over a year and no announcement of any new games at all, no show at the summer games fest, you too should be pessimistic, but I guess indoctrination is quite a strong thing to break.

@hardwenzen: That's because you started to finally see the light and knew that I was right 😉

Optimistic.

AAA might be going nowhere, but the indie scene is picking up fast.

One thing do like now compared to ye old days is how less focused pc gaming is now on "le killer hardware", pc gamers are playing far more diverse games would guess.

Remember the 90s and early 2000's where it was dickheads jerking off their graphics card. This still exists but far more mitigated now. A kid booting up a pc now compared to when I was a kid is more than likely to play some fucking, indie game word of mouth, with no marketing than some boner Geforce GTX 35489 neon lights WOW game.