Gaming Is UNRECOGNISABLE In 2024
6. The Games You Actually Want Get Completely Ignored
Gamers are constantly complaining about a patent lack of originality in the industry, that modern AAA gaming is largely dominated by generic, soulless open-world collectathons and pretty-but-shallow cinematic action blockbusters, but where's the support for all those original games they claim they want so badly?
In 2023 alone, there's a laundry list of quality, sensibly budgeted and accordingly priced AA titles which were largely ignored by the gaming masses and received only a fraction of the press that the year's biggest tentpoles did.
Where to begin? Evil West, RoboCop: Rogue City, Jusant, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, and even Hi-Fi Rush, which while more high-profile than the other games mentioned, still apparently underperformed on Xbox Game Pass.
I was just trying to say that I heard Hi-Fi Rush didn't make the money it was expected to make. But to be clear, I don't really know how Microsoft measures success. This was just a small, passing statement in a larger conversation. It wasn't meant to make people worry about HFR. https://t.co/kFHGWbp0hA
— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) April 21, 2023
All of these games have small but passionate fanbases, and if you did play them there's a good chance you had a great time with them.
But the average player is so painfully unadventurous in their gaming tastes that the fresh, original games they claim to want end up falling upon deaf ears, likely ensuring less of them are made in the future.