Except this line of reasoning is empty and it will only ever be wielded by games journalism and large gaming companies to convince you to adopt the streaming model of gaming where you don't ever buy any games. They will make you feel like you are being so much less wasteful, because oooooooh think of the horrorable backlog of unplayed games you would have owned otherwise!?!?!! The thing is, who cares if you never play all the video games you buy, they are art for fucks sake, it is ok to buy it because you love artists even if it doesn't materially change your life, you can still be happy about having collected the work of art, ESPECIALLY when it is in digital form. I am so tired of this "my backlog is too big crap", nobody cares, great you have a big backlog stop going along with the narrative that we need to "spotify" gaming to solve this "problem".

I don't know a single gamer who would say "Yup, too much, I am not looking forward to any sequel or new game on the horizon". It's that they keep releasing corporate committee-approved boring drivel that doesn't even function on release, then getting pissy that no one likes purchasing their 1000 subscriptions and addons.

Correct, to put things into precise terms, **the corporate too-big-to-fail gaming industry is unable to make a profit in the gaming industry if there is any functional competition at all, even competition from indie game companies with much smaller budgets.** Just because large corporations with no desire to actually let artists make art cannot make a sufficient profit unless boosted with the artificial advantage of having the rest of the industry destroyed... doesn't mean that there are too many video games out there to make money from making another one.

> The market for new video games isn’t just oversaturated — it’s nearly impenetrable. Teams of hundreds of people are spending years of their lives developing games that are destined to get lost in the sea of new releases. Yeah, let's take one that didn't get lost. Dragon Age 4. A game that I personally had been watching and waiting for a release for 7 years since it was first teased, **11 years** since the last installment. According to "traditional" ways to make games it had everything going for it. A ton of development time, marketing galore, a major studio behind it, releasing on all major platforms - aaaand it flopped. Why did it flop? According to businessmen who pretend to know gamers it should have been a wonderful success! Except they obviously killed every creative idea that could have gone into that game. We got the most boring, bland experience out of any of the Dragon Age franchise. We got flat characters with no personality, we got no choices in the game, no real consequences to our actions, and what things they did stick the stake in the ground they browbeat you with zero nuance at all. Every line of dialogue was obviously decided by corporate committee and spoke like what I would expect to hear in an all-hands meeting instead of from someone who was supposedly my companion. Maybe the suits at the top need to finally realize that businesses don't make great games - creative people do, and just **get the fuck out of their way and let them make games.**

That's not my point at all, I actually agree with most of your comment. I buy games to enjoy them and I wish I had the time to enjoy them. Of course I won't be able to play every game or any other media for that matter but can I not lament that? I want to experience the hard work and creativity that people have poured hours of their lives into but there isn't enough time of day. I think the point of the article and my comments are that there are artists making amazing games but because there's so much of it they are not getting recognized

It makes total sense to me, having being a corporate drone for over a decade now. It should be obvious to them but they're too far up their own asses to see it. Any good idea is going to have some middle manager squash it because they don't like it. You can have the most interesting feature or idea ever, and even if you push it for _months_ - make presentations, evangelize it, get people on your side, you will _still_ have some jerkass too many levels above you that you've maybe sat in one meeting with before say "Nah, I don't think we have the capacity for that". So yeah, I don't see how corporations can think they can make meaningful games. In a small company, or even a garage you know how things get "approved"? They say "Hey maybe we should do this" and the other person says "Oh holy shit that's an amazing idea, yes do that!".

Omg yes. I love dragon age games and honestly if the corpo fuckwits didn't fuck up the game veilguad would have been a smash fucking hit. All that it is missing is the writing/stoy. The combat is so great! Each class is fun and unique with multiple viable builds. Reset skill points whenever. It is very different from the other DA games but it is great in its own right. More action and doges, less tactics. Oh you like the way that armor looks but the stats suck? Veilguard you can change the appearance of any armour so you get the cool looks and the good stats. Same with weapons. Spend forever on the way your character looks during character creation? Now you want to start another play through with the same "character", but you don't want spend forever in character creation again? Veilguard let's you copy the appearance of other saves!! Wanna pause during a cutsence? You can do that. Veilguard has so many great game choices and quality of life improvements. Truly the only downside is the dogshit story. These MBAs had the devs start over multiple times. The devs had some ideas, then the MBAs come in and say make an mmo. Devs are like this is stupid but you the boss. MBAs realize it's trash. Devs start over. MBAs decide to fire writers that had been there since the first game and second games. Right away veilgaurd shits on so much of the lore and world state of the previous games. All the game needs is a half way decent story, then it would have been a huge hit I swear

I can't think of any games I'm looking forward to at this point, since Subnautica 2 died. I have no planned video game purchases at this point. I'm not really looking forward to anything at all, if I'm honest. Nothing. I can't hope for the future anymore, every future I've ever met has been fuckgarbage because that's what futures are. Putrid fuckgarbage.

Cool Michael Bloomberg thinks too many games are getting released. I wonder why. Could it be that AAA/ Investor friendly buy-out shells aren't doing well. Anyway play Kitsune Tails https://store.steampowered.com/app/1325260/Kitsune_Tails/

I feel every word of this, friend. Everything would have been great if they had just let the writers wrote the damn story. Too busy trying not to offend anyone that instead we got the most boring bland vanilla game out there.

Well, not everything has mass appeal. That's why I gave a metal album as an example. Despite it being a masterpiece, not everyone will listen to it because it's not for everyone. Same with games. Not every game will sell as much as it deserves, but I believe it's more because of it not being appealing enough and not because there's a discoverability issue The closest I could find about games that are masterpieces that flopped are either old games, which is a different issue or stuff like prey (2017) or Titanfall 2. So pretty big games, just not huge.

I'm looking forward to whatever supergiant does next. Also haunted chocolatier

What do you mean hundreds daily? We barely get 1 a month and even that is a stretch. I actually do listen to new metal releases almost every day and I can promise you, most of them are a 6-7/10 at best. I'm not some snob or picky listener either, so it's not a me problem. So yeah, music might have a discoverability issue due to sheer number of stuff coming out, but I don't think gaming is quite there yet. As for the funding, I agree. But that's a society issue, not a gaming specific one.

In a sense yes there are too many. When the question is around the industrial level and making a living off the work. There 110% are too many. No industry can support an infinite number of creators. There is a finite number of customers to serve after all. There's not a single genre at this point that I can think of that isn't saturated by slop.

What I've been told Haunted Chocolatier is going to be...is not for me. In fact, Stardew Valley has evolved into something that is not for me. I've played Stardew Valley, enjoyed my time with it, put it away, did other things, had some SV content come up in my Youtube feed, watched a couple videos, they're talking about stuff that wasn't in the game when I stopped playing, casually mentioning locations and items I don't recognize, and I find I'm not curious enough to learn what those are. Eric Barone is a creative powerhouse the likes of which I will never be, I see Stardew Valley as nothing short of a masterpiece of solo game development, but I just might be done with his work. If I hear the phrase "Lucas Pope's new game" I'd probably get and play that.

This isn’t some neoliberal conspiracy. Jason Schreier is a respected journalist and given his track record so far there’s no reason for this kind of silly accusations.

You might try to keep track of every new release but you’ll never be able to listen to everything coming from local bands that haven’t managed to make a bigger splash even if they objectively deserve it. I’m hyperbolising of course with the numbers. It’s a problem in loads of forms of media these days and if you happen to consume couple of different kinds of media / genres then trying to do that means you’ll get swept by never ending tides and discoverability is just part of the problem. We no longer have bandwidth to consume everything that’s worth consuming.

Slop, sure. There's always people that wanna try making easy money. But I think oversaturation is when there's too much of the good stuff or when the good stuff doesn't get seen because of too much slop. Is that the case? Because, again, I'd argue that it's more about the appeal and the quality of the games than a discoverability/oversaturation issue. If you like every kind of game out there, sure, you'll never have enough time for every single one of them. But for those that only like driving games? Or only strategy games? Or only RPGs? I'd argue that there aren't enough high quality games out there. Way too many times I felt the need to play a specific kind of game only to look and not find anything new or to only find low quality games.

But great things have mass appeal outside their niche. Metallica is an excellent example of that because it's not only metalheads who listen to Metallica. Same thing with games. I think we can agree that soulslikes are not for everyone. Lies of p and Lords of the fallen give a rough estimate what the core audience for soulslike is, which is pretty small. But it didn't stop Elden Ring from being the biggest release of that year, because Elden Ring transcends the genre it's in. Great games will pull people from outside their niche the same way great songs, shows, movies, books and paintings can reach well outside the box people have put them in. In gaming we've seen the same thing happen with Silksong. Same thing happened with Clair Obscur and the JRPG genre. Same thing happen with BL4 and the looter shooter genre. Hades 2 will most likely pull people outside the roguelite genre. Silent hill f will most likely pull people outside the horror genre. When you have so many great games pulling players from outside their niche and hogging all the limelight, how are you going to discover those other great games that don't get any of the limelight? You won't, which is why this is a discoverability issue.

Of course. But the good stuff will rise to the top. Especially in games. When it comes to bands, unfortunately not always the case, that's true. But that's a society issue. Universal basic income would help.