I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more. Not actively boycotting his projects or anything, more complete disinterest. And I’m not even saying all art has to be viewed through the lens of the artist. But there are people that have such memorable or distinct performances that afterwards they have trouble getting other roles… This is like that, but cranked up to 11.
And I know he’s a meme and we joke about it… but because of his weird hangups he chose to use violence on another person on a world stage, with cameras on him. By his own actions he made it impossible for me to lose myself in any character he plays, instead I’ll only think about The Slap.
Eh, I think he’s a good person that was hit by a horribly misplaced attempt at chivalry. There’s a lot of stuff he’s done that I don’t like, but it’s mostly been in his attempts to protect and help his family.
There are worse reasons to do bad things. It’s not an excuse; I just think he’s not a terrible person.
Oh, for sure. I don’t think he’s necessarily a bad person, he’s just not particularly likeable anymore. Maybe it’s age, or what life has thrown his way, but his personality no longer seems as appealing. That’s the main thing he had going for him, imo.
I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more
This was me when he started trying to shoehorn his kid into the spotlight with those cringe interviews and that really awful movie about not being scared of aliens or whatever. I care about it so little that I can’t remember the name of the movie and have zero interest in looking it up.
This comment about not caring about Will Smith is the maximum effort I’m willing to put into anything related to him.
His kid has been in a few movies now, and his daughter made that one song. I honestly don’t care that he is trying to promote his kids because I think they wanted that and Will had the sway to do it. I think most parents would use their privilege to help their kids. But I do agree that that alien fear movie was trash.
To be fair Suicide Squad is something he did and passed up Independence Day 2 for believing if he was in one of these “Super Hero Movies that are doing so well” it would revive his career
And he likely would have been right… If he went with Marvel instead of the DCEU
I mean, the key part of that sentence was Dunkey. Its kind of funny too because I now feel similar about Dunkey as I do Smith. They did that one persona REALLY WELL, but its just one persona, and eventually it gets old
Agreed, I used to really like Dunkey, then i watched his videos on Death Stranding after immensely enjoying the game myself and found them a little played up for content while painting the gameplay in a less than generous light.
That being said, I do realize it’s a persona, and even his “reviews” are called dunkviews, and at times he does certainly have some nice insight, and he’s funny for certain, I don’t think he’s a bad YouTuber or anything, but I hope people don’t use his videos as purchasing advice like you might a true review
I’m cool with dunkview, he calls it that for a reason. Some people will still use it as a review, like the original guy I commented to. It’s a shame if someone treats it that seriously, but I don’t think Dunkey is out there pretending to tell you the grand worth of games, it’s, in my eyes, obviously enough comedy.
That being said, not even the zombie game video was called a dunkview, that was just… A video. So some people will use anything as a review, I suppose
If no one has heard of bombs then no one can know the title of the game, because otherwise they will see or hear the word bombs. But I’ve seen the title. Do I even know what a bomb is? I think I do… but do I? The paradox of the bomb knowledge will keep me up tonight.
Is it actually known that the slap had a negative effect on his career? I don’t follow these things, but most of the reactions I’ve seen were on the neutral/comedic side
People make jokes about it but… People also make jokes about Elon musk while at the same time hating the fucker. He’s not Elon musk level hated now but the reaction in this comment section seems to show that both people really don’t like him anymore. I know I’m one of them for sure and I grew up with the dude. So many huge things in my life were him.
And then look at the facts… He’s done basically nothing since then. There’s this game. He has a few producer credits on his IMDb. And last I heard the only actual movie he works is a completely nonsensical sequel to I Am Legend.
He fucking died at the end of that movie! They flat out said they’re just going to pretend the end of the movie didn’t happen so they could make a sequel lol.
There’s two different endings. In one of them he survives, but accept that he won’t cure the disease because the camps are the next step in human evolution. Also, he realizes his experiments to cure the disease are horrific and he has become a monster.
Much is made about online cancel culture, but that’s just people making a lot of noise on the internet and doesn’t matter much.
The real cancel culture is when most people simply don’t like an actor as much as they used to. If the majority of people like an actor just 10% less than they used to, they take a massive hit to their career. Just liking someone a slightly less means you’re just going to watch something else instead. But when a majority of people feel the same way then liking someone a little less means translates into a large percentage of people not watching something. It’s not like you are going to watch 90% of a Will Smith movie because you like him 10% less, you either watch a movie or you don’t.
Real cancel culture isn’t “I HATE THIS GUY SO MUCH I’LL NEVER EVER WATCH ANYTHING HE’S IN!” as portrayed on the internet. The real version is “Will Smith? Meh… there’s probably something better to watch.”
I don’t vehemently hate Will Smith for the slap. But The fact that I’m a little less likely to watch his movies now and the fact that there’s always other things to watch means it’s unlikely I’ll watch another Will Smith movie.
And whatever, he’s got lots of money already, it’s no big deal if his show business career is over.
Goes to show how much the slap stole the show, cause I can’t even recall what he was nominated for. Had to look it up, but he won for King Richard (the movie about Sernea and Venus Williams).
That reminds me. Some social media feminists were furious that movie about Williams sisters is named after a man.
I was like, they’re both executive producers and their other sister (Isha Price) was also involved in the making of the film. Maybe they wanted to honour their dad?
Eh…not really. He hadn’t done anything Independence Day level for a while but he was still cranking out popular shit. That movie about the Williams sisters was only 1 year before he threw it all away and that did pretty well.
I mean… Five minutes before the slap, he was sitting in his front-row seat at an internationally-televised award ceremony where he had just been nominated for two of the most coveted honors in cinema. I dunno if he was that bad off.
Outside of it looking like a game from 2012, it seems to be very much pay to win, clunky, and I watched their videos and looked through pics and read the description on the games page…Not a single picture or mention of Will Smith at all. Nothing.
Ton Cruise is incredibly successful, vastly more successful than better people with no baggage. It’s kind of weird because Cruise’s cult is way, way worse than the slap. But Cruise also seems to be more talented and outwardly likable and his cult is pretty good at staying hidden.
True, he doesn’t push it on outsiders. He is number two in the cult though and makes speeches and stuff for them regularly. His best friend is the head guy.
Cruise can pull on that star power like no one else.
Everyone knows the shit cult he’s in, but when he’s in a movie it doesn’t matter. Even basically kidnapping Katie Holmes didn’t stop him. I can only imagine how much of an insufferable asshole he is day to day, but he still rocks as an actor.
I think about that interview with Spielberg where he refused to make a comment about Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts only ever appeared in one Spielberg movie. He’s Steven Spielberg, he doesn’t have to work with assholes if he doesn’t want to.
Tom Cruise has appeared in multiple Spielberg movies. I take that as a sign he’s not an asshole. He’s just in a fucked up cult.
Will and Jada have some suspicious ties to the Church and its beliefs too. They’ve denied being part of it but some instances are so overt that it’s likely true.
From pretty much all reports Tom Cruise is generally really nice to people. If you’re a nice weirdo then whatever, they’re Hollywood people, they’re all weirdos.
But if you’re an asshole weirdo, that’s when people won’t like you anymore.
Fucking seriously. Dude was a massive box office draw and on top of that had had a truly wholesome career. He was well respected. Could really act…had solid comedy chops. Very few true stinkers in his IMDB page. And he threw it all away for a bitch who LAUGHS about cheating on him.
I hate the word because of right wing fucks but there is no other way to describe it. He’s a fucking cuck.
This is the big problem with modern gaming. Too many companies are now in hock to investors and publishers. To those at the top of the hierarchy, making a game is an investment, a bet. Innovation is stifled in favour 9f ‘safe bets’, no wonder gaming is stagnating.
It’s not all doom and gloom, there are still exceptions to the rule. But it’s certainly not looking good for fantastic single player games.
I’m expecting gta 6 to have a much shorter single player campaign with most of the focus towards online (and more obscene earnings from shark cards 2.0).
Ive commented on this before, as sad as it is if we want innovative, expansive, beautiful AAA titles we have to accept that investors arent going to keep backing the money truck up on maybes. Microtransactions, subscriptions, dlcs… there has to be an ongoing income stream or an absolutely eyewatering launch price OR we get used to safer and safer bets or games with very narrow scopes.
Yep, it’s a real quandary. I’m not sure what the solution is, or if there is one from our perspective… it’s no point voting with my wallet when there’s millions of others who won’t.
I think you have to ask yourself if the company is behaving ethically.
If a game is F2P but has microtransactions that arent P2W and the devs are continuing to maintain the game then its hard to be mad that they want to make some money off the basic game you get for free. (Mechwarrior online is a pretty good example of this)
If its a subscription, are you getting regular additional content for the money or is the subscription just allowing you to play the game you paid for? Do you still have to buy DLCs and pay subscription?
If its DLC, is it meaningful storylines/maps/characters? Does it make the prospect of another playthrough different or more interesting? Is it a reasonable price for what it gives you?
You make excellent points. Personally, I rarely have a problem paying for proper DLC (and buy proper DLC I mean, additional story content that wasn’t obviously cynically cut from the OG game). Notable past examples for GTA, stuff like ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ were amazing expansions.
Also sticking with GTA, they’re a good example of bad practice nowadays (imo). They pivoted to online-only DLC once they realised how lucrative a pay-to-play system can be when leveraged against not being bullied by players with more disposable income. There was amazing single-player content in dev for GTA5 and they cut it to focus on MP. Worse, they left the dregs of that content in the game, allowed a ‘GTA5 mystery’ concept to flourish and left people hunting for the mystery thinking they were going to find something like GTA4’s bigfoot. Knowing all along it didn’t exist. But of course, happy that people were still playing and hoping they would get bored and try online mode.
I agree with the rest but it’s not just modern gaming it was happening back in the 90s on consoles and earlier in arcades. One of the first games I played was an obvious cash grab by Marvel, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge for the Gameboy. It was barely playable.
I personally like to think this trend of enshittification in the gaming industry is geared more towards the triple AAA side of things because a lot of the actual indie devs (not the people putting out low effort mobile games or shovelware or scams or straight up large corporatios masquerading their games as indie titles) are putting out some of the best games I’ve seen in years for single player experiences.
Though I absolutely agree with your assessment of the situation in general.
This was what I meant. It’s these smaller devs that seem to be innovating to any extent at the moment!
Maybe I’m just a bit jaded due to being an old fart nowadays… I remember playing the original Doom / Wolfenstein so especially FPS feel so overdone to me. When was the last time you saw a truly novel game concept? I’m sure I’ve seen a few over the last few years but can’t remember (see, old fart).
I don’t think I can recall something truly novel since I think we’ve pretty much gone past the point of novel concepts in the majority of genres, but there have definitely been standouts in certain genres over the years.
In the deck building and rogue like genre we’ve seen Balatro, the poker based game. In the retro inspired games genre, we’ve got Corn Kidz 64, a shorter game that controls and looks like an N64 title.
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Zombie: “Rawrrr” munch munch nom nom
Will: “Get my wife’s arm out of your fucking mouth!”
</low hanging fruit>
I’m going to assume that any game that a celebrity suddenly endorses out of nowhere is some low effort mobile thing that probably involves crypto.
Also never heard of this game before.
The top user review on steam made it sound like awful pay to win gacha garbage though, so I’ll just move on.
I really feel like his whole life got ruined as soon as he became a scientologist.
Edit: I meant to say “his” not “this”
I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more. Not actively boycotting his projects or anything, more complete disinterest. And I’m not even saying all art has to be viewed through the lens of the artist. But there are people that have such memorable or distinct performances that afterwards they have trouble getting other roles… This is like that, but cranked up to 11.
And I know he’s a meme and we joke about it… but because of his weird hangups he chose to use violence on another person on a world stage, with cameras on him. By his own actions he made it impossible for me to lose myself in any character he plays, instead I’ll only think about The Slap.
I really only liked Will Smith as an actor because he seemed to be a likeable person. Now I know better.
Eh, I think he’s a good person that was hit by a horribly misplaced attempt at chivalry. There’s a lot of stuff he’s done that I don’t like, but it’s mostly been in his attempts to protect and help his family.
There are worse reasons to do bad things. It’s not an excuse; I just think he’s not a terrible person.
Oh, for sure. I don’t think he’s necessarily a bad person, he’s just not particularly likeable anymore. Maybe it’s age, or what life has thrown his way, but his personality no longer seems as appealing. That’s the main thing he had going for him, imo.
Terrible? Nah. A jerk? Yes.
Oh yeah, he deserves everything Chris Rock decides to throw at him. A mistake isn’t an excuse.
Keep Will Smith’s name out of your fucking mouth!!!
This was me when he started trying to shoehorn his kid into the spotlight with those cringe interviews and that really awful movie about not being scared of aliens or whatever. I care about it so little that I can’t remember the name of the movie and have zero interest in looking it up.
This comment about not caring about Will Smith is the maximum effort I’m willing to put into anything related to him.
His kid has been in a few movies now, and his daughter made that one song. I honestly don’t care that he is trying to promote his kids because I think they wanted that and Will had the sway to do it. I think most parents would use their privilege to help their kids. But I do agree that that alien fear movie was trash.
Oh joy another soulless zombie shooter. I have no idea why it didn’t make it
Will Smith is a “past” celebrity, relying on his name, infamy, and horning in on already proven commodities.
Bad Boys for Life, Aladdin, Suicide Squad, (oh, and “King Richard” lol, we’ve all seen that!)
Those are his “popular” movies since 2009. Put a fork in him. He’s done. He should enter politics.
Please don’t do this to us.
Maybe he can go slap putin (hckkkk sppt)
Get my wife’s name out your Kremlin!
To be fair Suicide Squad is something he did and passed up Independence Day 2 for believing if he was in one of these “Super Hero Movies that are doing so well” it would revive his career
And he likely would have been right… If he went with Marvel instead of the DCEU
Dodging a bullet on ID2 just to land on Suicide Squad. Ouch.
Yeah I think his Agent fucked up market research
Didn’t he try the celebrity YouTube route for a hot minute?
Yaaaa!
That is hawt!
Aladdin was pretty good though.
Haven’t seen the rest.
Dunkie’s review is hilarious
If that’s a review our terminology is getting a little… Loose
I mean, the key part of that sentence was Dunkey. Its kind of funny too because I now feel similar about Dunkey as I do Smith. They did that one persona REALLY WELL, but its just one persona, and eventually it gets old
Agreed, I used to really like Dunkey, then i watched his videos on Death Stranding after immensely enjoying the game myself and found them a little played up for content while painting the gameplay in a less than generous light.
That being said, I do realize it’s a persona, and even his “reviews” are called dunkviews, and at times he does certainly have some nice insight, and he’s funny for certain, I don’t think he’s a bad YouTuber or anything, but I hope people don’t use his videos as purchasing advice like you might a true review
I don’t disagree with either of you. But what do we call it? A riff track?
I’m cool with dunkview, he calls it that for a reason. Some people will still use it as a review, like the original guy I commented to. It’s a shame if someone treats it that seriously, but I don’t think Dunkey is out there pretending to tell you the grand worth of games, it’s, in my eyes, obviously enough comedy.
That being said, not even the zombie game video was called a dunkview, that was just… A video. So some people will use anything as a review, I suppose
I would play No One Has Heard Of Bombs, sounds like an interesting game
On skimming, I’d thought it had something to do with the kpop group, BTS. They have a song called Louder than Bombs.
What is bomb?
Don’t worry about it, on an unrelated note here is a gift of a bulky alarm clock counting down to zero with many wires
I’m quite partial to the basketball-sized black sphere with a lit fuse sticking out of it.
Thank you!! I surely won’t miss my alarm with this one!
Something that comes with lamp oil and rope.
Something somebody set up us with.
Remembering this made me turn to dust and blow away
It’s a great title. Weird and evocative.
If no one has heard of bombs then no one can know the title of the game, because otherwise they will see or hear the word bombs. But I’ve seen the title. Do I even know what a bomb is? I think I do… but do I? The paradox of the bomb knowledge will keep me up tonight.
QuantumBomboo how did you become so wise
Dude slapped away his career.
Is it actually known that the slap had a negative effect on his career? I don’t follow these things, but most of the reactions I’ve seen were on the neutral/comedic side
People make jokes about it but… People also make jokes about Elon musk while at the same time hating the fucker. He’s not Elon musk level hated now but the reaction in this comment section seems to show that both people really don’t like him anymore. I know I’m one of them for sure and I grew up with the dude. So many huge things in my life were him.
And then look at the facts… He’s done basically nothing since then. There’s this game. He has a few producer credits on his IMDb. And last I heard the only actual movie he works is a completely nonsensical sequel to I Am Legend.
He fucking died at the end of that movie! They flat out said they’re just going to pretend the end of the movie didn’t happen so they could make a sequel lol.
There’s two different endings. In one of them he survives, but accept that he won’t cure the disease because the camps are the next step in human evolution. Also, he realizes his experiments to cure the disease are horrific and he has become a monster.
Yep. The one that’s closest to the book. But the actual theatrical ending he died.
Much is made about online cancel culture, but that’s just people making a lot of noise on the internet and doesn’t matter much.
The real cancel culture is when most people simply don’t like an actor as much as they used to. If the majority of people like an actor just 10% less than they used to, they take a massive hit to their career. Just liking someone a slightly less means you’re just going to watch something else instead. But when a majority of people feel the same way then liking someone a little less means translates into a large percentage of people not watching something. It’s not like you are going to watch 90% of a Will Smith movie because you like him 10% less, you either watch a movie or you don’t.
Real cancel culture isn’t “I HATE THIS GUY SO MUCH I’LL NEVER EVER WATCH ANYTHING HE’S IN!” as portrayed on the internet. The real version is “Will Smith? Meh… there’s probably something better to watch.”
I don’t vehemently hate Will Smith for the slap. But The fact that I’m a little less likely to watch his movies now and the fact that there’s always other things to watch means it’s unlikely I’ll watch another Will Smith movie.
And whatever, he’s got lots of money already, it’s no big deal if his show business career is over.
He was well washed out before the slap.
My boy, he won the Oscar for best actor on slap night. He was still pissing gold.
Goes to show how much the slap stole the show, cause I can’t even recall what he was nominated for. Had to look it up, but he won for King Richard (the movie about Sernea and Venus Williams).
That reminds me. Some social media feminists were furious that movie about Williams sisters is named after a man.
I was like, they’re both executive producers and their other sister (Isha Price) was also involved in the making of the film. Maybe they wanted to honour their dad?
Isn’t it alphabetical?
Eh…not really. He hadn’t done anything Independence Day level for a while but he was still cranking out popular shit. That movie about the Williams sisters was only 1 year before he threw it all away and that did pretty well.
He was there literally receiving an award for that movie, even
Hahaha I honestly forgot that
I mean… Five minutes before the slap, he was sitting in his front-row seat at an internationally-televised award ceremony where he had just been nominated for two of the most coveted honors in cinema. I dunno if he was that bad off.
I just checked the game out on the steam store.
Outside of it looking like a game from 2012, it seems to be very much pay to win, clunky, and I watched their videos and looked through pics and read the description on the games page…Not a single picture or mention of Will Smith at all. Nothing.
Doesn’t help that he’s a bitch
Used to be one of The top movie stars in the world. Not even Tom Cruz has thrown it all away yet. Smith managed it though.
Ton Cruise is incredibly successful, vastly more successful than better people with no baggage. It’s kind of weird because Cruise’s cult is way, way worse than the slap. But Cruise also seems to be more talented and outwardly likable and his cult is pretty good at staying hidden.
That’s the thing. You see Tom in interviews and he’s actually talking to the interviewers and making jokes and stuff. He is likable.
He’s also one of the only celebrities I’m okay with separating art from artist. He makes some goddamn entertaining movies.
Dude understands what makes a movie work. So if Tom Cruise is involved with a movie it’s likely to be really good.
It’s a kind of “say what you will about Tom Cruise, but the man knows story structure” kind of things.
Yeah it’s hard not respect his professional work. He is one of the few people making modern day action movies fused with old-school elements.
Also, Cruise doesn’t go around championing his cult to outsiders as far as I’m aware so it kind of makes it easy for people to ignore it.
Didn’t he jump on Oprah’s sofa yelling about how they’re going to save the world?
No he was excited about marrying Katie Holmes.
Also Tom and Will are both Scientologists (or were, I don’t keep up) so that part at least cancels out.
True, he doesn’t push it on outsiders. He is number two in the cult though and makes speeches and stuff for them regularly. His best friend is the head guy.
Cruise can pull on that star power like no one else.
Everyone knows the shit cult he’s in, but when he’s in a movie it doesn’t matter. Even basically kidnapping Katie Holmes didn’t stop him. I can only imagine how much of an insufferable asshole he is day to day, but he still rocks as an actor.
If you’re one of the most charismatic men in the world, what you actually believe is much less important to people.
dude went for a full CHA build and actually raids end content.
From what I’ve heard he’s a legit nice dude.
I think about that interview with Spielberg where he refused to make a comment about Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts only ever appeared in one Spielberg movie. He’s Steven Spielberg, he doesn’t have to work with assholes if he doesn’t want to.
Tom Cruise has appeared in multiple Spielberg movies. I take that as a sign he’s not an asshole. He’s just in a fucked up cult.
Will and Jada have some suspicious ties to the Church and its beliefs too. They’ve denied being part of it but some instances are so overt that it’s likely true.
No likely about it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-will-and-jada-pinkett-smiths-scientology-school
From pretty much all reports Tom Cruise is generally really nice to people. If you’re a nice weirdo then whatever, they’re Hollywood people, they’re all weirdos.
But if you’re an asshole weirdo, that’s when people won’t like you anymore.
Fucking seriously. Dude was a massive box office draw and on top of that had had a truly wholesome career. He was well respected. Could really act…had solid comedy chops. Very few true stinkers in his IMDB page. And he threw it all away for a bitch who LAUGHS about cheating on him.
I hate the word because of right wing fucks but there is no other way to describe it. He’s a fucking cuck.
His wife even gloated about fucking thier kids friend. Dude could have had any woman in the world and he picked that bitch.
Wasn’t she originally tupacs girl or something? And basically chose and treated will as second choice from the beginning
Tupac didn’t want her, think he banged her a few times and realized how nuts she is.
Only bullet Tupac ever dodged.
The only bullet Tupac ever dodged was Jada.
Thats what I will never understand. Maybe sticking with her after cheating? but to LAUGH ABOUT IT IN AN INTERVIEW.
It’s just abuse and people are most often helpless to leave. Actors are just normal bags of meat too.
Very true
Bonus: Dunkey made a video on the game
I’m 100% convinced this was an elaborate scam. No way this broken asset flip needed over 100 million dollars.
How did I miss this masterpiece of a game?
Oh my god they broke out into a song.
Game of the year.
Holy shit, that really was worse than it sounded
that is what i call a BBB game
I’d go CCC myself, but to each their own.
Maybe he needed a tax writeoff to avoid paying some taxes?
This is not made by Will. He only did some advertising and stuff for it I think.
I like how men look like regular men but all the women are almost anime like goddesses
I would’ve loved a proper game using his I am Legend fame, but it seems like even publishers didn’t care about it.
I am legend really loses something when mistitled
It is rewind time.
This is the big problem with modern gaming. Too many companies are now in hock to investors and publishers. To those at the top of the hierarchy, making a game is an investment, a bet. Innovation is stifled in favour 9f ‘safe bets’, no wonder gaming is stagnating.
It’s not all doom and gloom, there are still exceptions to the rule. But it’s certainly not looking good for fantastic single player games.
I’m expecting gta 6 to have a much shorter single player campaign with most of the focus towards online (and more obscene earnings from shark cards 2.0).
Ive commented on this before, as sad as it is if we want innovative, expansive, beautiful AAA titles we have to accept that investors arent going to keep backing the money truck up on maybes. Microtransactions, subscriptions, dlcs… there has to be an ongoing income stream or an absolutely eyewatering launch price OR we get used to safer and safer bets or games with very narrow scopes.
Yep, it’s a real quandary. I’m not sure what the solution is, or if there is one from our perspective… it’s no point voting with my wallet when there’s millions of others who won’t.
I think you have to ask yourself if the company is behaving ethically.
If a game is F2P but has microtransactions that arent P2W and the devs are continuing to maintain the game then its hard to be mad that they want to make some money off the basic game you get for free. (Mechwarrior online is a pretty good example of this)
If its a subscription, are you getting regular additional content for the money or is the subscription just allowing you to play the game you paid for? Do you still have to buy DLCs and pay subscription?
If its DLC, is it meaningful storylines/maps/characters? Does it make the prospect of another playthrough different or more interesting? Is it a reasonable price for what it gives you?
You make excellent points. Personally, I rarely have a problem paying for proper DLC (and buy proper DLC I mean, additional story content that wasn’t obviously cynically cut from the OG game). Notable past examples for GTA, stuff like ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ were amazing expansions.
Also sticking with GTA, they’re a good example of bad practice nowadays (imo). They pivoted to online-only DLC once they realised how lucrative a pay-to-play system can be when leveraged against not being bullied by players with more disposable income. There was amazing single-player content in dev for GTA5 and they cut it to focus on MP. Worse, they left the dregs of that content in the game, allowed a ‘GTA5 mystery’ concept to flourish and left people hunting for the mystery thinking they were going to find something like GTA4’s bigfoot. Knowing all along it didn’t exist. But of course, happy that people were still playing and hoping they would get bored and try online mode.
I agree with the rest but it’s not just modern gaming it was happening back in the 90s on consoles and earlier in arcades. One of the first games I played was an obvious cash grab by Marvel, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge for the Gameboy. It was barely playable.
I heard also that even earlier than that, there was an E.T. game that may have been a bad cash grab. I doubt it had any serious impact, though.
I personally like to think this trend of enshittification in the gaming industry is geared more towards the triple AAA side of things because a lot of the actual indie devs (not the people putting out low effort mobile games or shovelware or scams or straight up large corporatios masquerading their games as indie titles) are putting out some of the best games I’ve seen in years for single player experiences.
Though I absolutely agree with your assessment of the situation in general.
Indie games is really where it’s at right now.
This was what I meant. It’s these smaller devs that seem to be innovating to any extent at the moment!
Maybe I’m just a bit jaded due to being an old fart nowadays… I remember playing the original Doom / Wolfenstein so especially FPS feel so overdone to me. When was the last time you saw a truly novel game concept? I’m sure I’ve seen a few over the last few years but can’t remember (see, old fart).
I don’t think I can recall something truly novel since I think we’ve pretty much gone past the point of novel concepts in the majority of genres, but there have definitely been standouts in certain genres over the years.
In the deck building and rogue like genre we’ve seen Balatro, the poker based game. In the retro inspired games genre, we’ve got Corn Kidz 64, a shorter game that controls and looks like an N64 title.
Totally depends on the genre, though.
It’s a hard question to answer I know! Racking my brains here, the most novel thing I can think of is Portal.