I am not a velociraptor
They are probably highly understaffed. Also underfunded, and working on yearly releases.
There is reason for this: either greed or incompetence. Or both. There is no reason for game freak to keep their studio so small if not to save money or because they can’t manage more people. They have the most profitable IP in the world, it can’t be a lack of funds.
If you want a big open world game, I can recommend Mad Max, you can find it in fanatical (a legal and trusted store) for $2.49. I had a lot of fun with it and it will give you tons of hours of fun.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/mad-max
I actually recommend you that site for steam keys since they often do bundles very cheap to help your library grow without spending a fortune.
Indeed. Today’s problem is that graphical fidelity takes so much of the development time and resources that the rest of the aspects of the game are completely left aside.
Yeah, I can count how many freckles this character has in their face, but that’s all these games offer now, and I don’t need to count freckles, I can do that in real life. I want to have a good time with the game.
I’m not really sure it’s completely like that. In the early 2000’s we had “beautiful” games (aka the most advanced graphics that technology could afford) but games were fun.
Devs invested in graphics, but they also invested in innovative formulas, in gameplay… You could tell a game was unique and beautiful.
Today, AAA games are just a checklist of things that must be included (almost none pointed at making the player have fun) with an incredible level of detail that makes every single leave of every tree move independently from the rest.
I’ve been doing that for years. And I’m trying to make my friends see how these things are bad for them even if they don’t pirate.
But then, Nintendo releases a new Pokemon and everyone goes “eh, I know that Nintendo is the worst, and I know they are harming the industry… but I can’t skip this pokemon game!”.
Nintendo customers suffer from a big case of Stockholm syndrome and nobody can’t convince me of the opposite.