5 Greedy Decisions That Changed Gaming For The Worse
5. Homogenization of Mainstream Games
Technically this was not one single decision, but more a gradual change over a time of period. Its impact on gaming however justifies its place here.
It is a common occurrence that whenever any kind of product becomes a smash-hit success, it inspires a plethora of copy-cats. These range from pale impersonations to overshadowing the original. This is certainly not a new phenomenon in the gaming industry. One could go as far back as the 80s, when Tetris together with the Gameboy helped re-define handheld gaming. In recent times however, things have escalated from simply trying to replicate success stories to outright shunning innovation in favor of the tried and tested.
When it comes to modern games that changed the industry in such a way, the crown arguably goes to none other that Fortnite. Released in 2017, Epic Games’ ultimate golden goose came to define the battle royale genre. Replacing the more realistic shooter-themed design of previous battle royale titles, Fortnite offered gamers a vibrant and easy to enjoy. Its rise was meteoric, with cross-culture popularity, drawing in of casual gamers, pop culture collaborations, explosion of an esports scene with absurd prize money pools, and corporate endorsements. The game had literally established itself as a signature of the cultural zeitgeist. Unfortunately, the response it invoked from developers was, “hey if that works, why bother do anything else”. This spawned a generation’s worth of games that try a little too hard to replicate at least some aspect of Fortnite. From mobile titles like Rocket Royale to subsequent installments of major franchises like Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite’s immense success has created the unfortunate trend of swapping the desire to create new concepts with the “fortnitification” of games.
Two other games had a similar impact on the gaming industry. Such was their groundbreaking success that their parent companies – Naughty Dog and Blizzard, made the greedy decision to trade exploring new innovations for regurgitating the same formula again and again. While they struggled to recreate the success of the originals, this decision too soon infected the rest of the industry.
In 2013 Naughty Dog helped change gaming with the release of the Last of Us. Its immersive, emotional, story-driven gameplay well and truly transported gamers into the world and let them feel through the characters unlike any game had done before. Often seen as Sony’s last big release of the PS3 era, its success not only ensured Sony’s own developers were happy to try and recreate the magic again and again, but others too. This spawned a generation of cinematic style games with mature themes and a lot of crawling around. While it is true this did end up giving us other classics of the same flavour, it nonetheless de-incentivized further innovation and development of newer concepts.
The other game deserving a mention is Overwatch. With its release in 2016, Blizzard helped usher in the era of the hero shooter. With its exciting rosters and gameplay mechanics, Overwatch struck chords with gamers outside of the traditional first-person shooter community. Combining a hero system with the multiplayer FPS formula left a lasting pleasant in gamers, something the companies definitely noticed. This genre spanning success inspired the rest of the industry to make hero-based shooting games a priority and after a point, an unchanging norm.
Today this issue is not necessarily limited to these examples. It is a general trend within the industry for developers to be content trying to recreate old success stories instead of conceiving fresh new ones. Ubisoft is another example of a developer submitting to this practice with its pipeline of open world games all re-using the same basic design. In truth, if one were to dig deep enough into the financial calculus side of things, it would not be hard to see why. In a 2022 study led by Franziska Handrich at Saarland University, researchers demonstrated that introducing new innovations into games, particularly into the storyline components, can actually harm long-term returns. They also showed that while creating new aesthetics and design elements can improve short-term returns, in the long run such benefits diminish.
Regardless, this cannot be an excuse for companies outright ignoring any attempts to improve their games for consumers. This gradual homogenization of games can only be seen as rooted in the greed to emulate the profits from the big hits without spending the money and resources to formulate something brand new.