So I thought I wrote an article about this already, but apparently I didn't and I only passively mentioned it in my recent "best gaming year" posts and one previous post about battlebit. But I actually do have a theory for why gaming is seemingly on the decline in recent years. I call this idea "peak gaming."
The term is inspired by the term peak oil. Basically, our global economy runs on fossil fuels. There's only so much out there. Our economy is growing infinitely, and it's only a matter of time, unless we find another energy source or shift to renewable green energy, that we will eventually hit a wall so to speak. Between our needs constantly growing, and our supplies constantly dwindling from use, at some point, our needs are going to exceed the amount of energy that we can produce, and that is going to completely mess up the global economy. Eventually. We haven't hit that point yet. And hopefully, given we're trying to switch to other sources of energy by 2050 due to climate change, we never will. But it's been one of those hypothetical economic doomsday scenarios for a while.
I would say gaming has its own analogues here. First, there's moore's law. It's been slowing down. Basically, Moore's law predicts that the number of transistors on top end microchips will double every 18 months. but as we reach really tiny microscopic levels of processes, we're getting to the point, further shrinkage is impossible. So computer hardware is going to get faster a lot more slowly, and we're already seeing the effects of that with modern CPUs and GPUs being more expensive, and also a lot more power hungry than they used to be.
But it's not JUST that. if that was our only issue, it would be the least of our problems. We're running into real problems with the realities of developing games. It used to be, 10-20 years ago, that game development was relatively fast. Developers would get a new game out every 2 years or so. Games would be relatively simple, and would not cost a fortune to make. But as games get more complex, we start getting to a point of diminishing returns. It now takes longer for games to be developed. It takes more employees with larger studios, which makes it more expensive. We see prices go up, more waiting times between releases, and the final product is often kind of lacking something. As people have pointed out, often times we're getting less content, longer time between updates, and games are increasingly buggier. Again, this all goes back to the increasing complexity of games. You can still get relatively simple low requirement games out of indie studios that run great, play great, and have tons of content. You might have to put up with worse graphics though. But AAA games have to put more time, energy, and manpower into getting out those fancy blockbuster games that really drive sales. And that's where the problem is.
A huge problem with modern gaming is that it's taking much longer to get out new releases, meaning more time in between releases. Games are costing more than they used to, they don't go on sale as deeply as they used to. They often don't provide tons of content if live service games (see the halo infinite problem). And again, many of them are buggy broken messes at launch. And yes, this is a problem with complexity. If development cycles are taking longer, AND we're seeing games come out regularly buggy and broken, who is at fault? To some extent it is management, despite the longer time in between games they still rush them out the door to meet their quarterly earnings expectations, but the core problem is that the games are probably more complex than they used to be. Games 10 years ago ran on about 1/10th of the processing power as games now do. And they probably were far simpler at the same time. it took less time to pump out expansive maps that were less detailed. It took less time to program behaviors because they were less complex. We are reaching a point, in my opinion, where games are just getting too complex for their own good.
Again, the concept of peak gaming is that at some point we're gonna reach a point of diminishing returns, where much like peak oil, we're going to be doing more for less, the same thing is true here. We are starting to do more for less. We are getting worse games that take longer to make, have less content, and are more expensive. Gaming really WAS better like 10-20 years ago in my experience. And while subjective to my own tastes, I just provided the empirical data to prove it by looking at the games i generally enjoyed every year.
I'm not saying this is the only reason why gaming is worse now. Admittedly, gaming has somewhat "moved on" from me and my tastes. New games are often of different genres or subgenres that i dont enjoy and/or don't wish to learn. Games are more competitive and esports based. To some extent, the game formulas that i enjoyed 10-20 years ago just arent prevalent these days as gaming has shifted from millennials as the prime demographic to zoomers. But again, it's not like those franchises don't exist. it's just that, outside of call of duty which just keeps regurgitating iterations of the same thing year in and year out, aren't really providing content as regularly. Halo infinite took 6 years to develop and get out the door and then we only got updates every 6 months. battlefield 2042 took 3 years to make and another 2 years to "fix." Now we're not likely getting another battlefield game until 2025 or later. Respawn entertainment stopped caring about the titanfall series since they got their cash cow with apex. Arena shooters have largely died out. To some extent it is the whole problem of putting out products far less frequently, but to some extent it also is that things have changed, and games have gone in a different direction than they've used to be.
Either way, I don't see it as good for the consumer. We're getting fewer games with the games that exist often being worse than previous iterations. I wouldn't be surprised if there's another video game crash in the next decade as this business model becomes unsustainable. As far as im concerned, we've been on the diminishing returns train technologically since the start of the PS3/360 era. That's not to say we havent still made progress, but right now it's starting to get PAINFUL. And that's why I'm writing about it.
I mean, there is some empirical evidence that outside of some really good years, every year since 2020 has been mediocre to outright awful for me. 2019 was literally the last truly great year for gaming for me, and the only one that has even been "good" since then in 2021. Every other year has been hot trash. And I'm waiting years for games to come out from the franchises i like, only to end up holding off on buying them because they're a mess. Like starfield. it took bethesda at least 5 years to make that, given their last title was fallout 76, and before that, fallout 4. And it was a buggy, broken, boring mess that i couldnt even justify buying. And now, because of that, we arent gonna see the elder scrolls 6 until like 2027 or something. And then we're not gonna see a real fallout 5 until 2030.
Meanwhile we got fallout 3 2 years after oblivion, skyrim 3 years after that (with another studio giving us new vegas in between then), and then it took 4 years for fallout 4, and 3 years for 76, and you get the idea.
That's the consequence of peak gaming. Notice how we went from 2 years between releases, to 3, to 4, and now to 5, with future elder scrolls and fallout games being released a good 15 years after their last mainline title. This isn't really acceptable IMO. Something has to give. My personal idea would be to go back to just sticking with PS4/XB1 era graphics for forever and sticking to 3 year release cycles, but again, everyone has to have the shiny graphics and extra complexity even though it means waiting longer for games that are worse.
And yeah. That's my take on why gaming is going to crap in recent years.
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