[rogual]

Yeah. Maybe I'm just getting old, but popular games do feel very "samey". They've dropped a bunch of 3D models into an environment, and you control one of them, and there's a minimap with flashing dots. Next year, a different team has dropped some different 3D models into a different environment, and the minimap is circular now.

The material rendering and poly count keep getting better, and some of these games are really beautiful, but the fidelity of the simulation itself hasn't really changed since 1998.

I do still enjoy games that actually do something new. I liked Minecraft when it came out, and Sleep Is Death, and Yume Nikki... in fact, there's a whole genre of "weird games" that can still be a lot of fun, because you're never sure what will happen next. The sense of wonder returns. Haven't found any good ones lately, though.

[throwawayffffas]

Yeah it's the AAA curse, my advice to you if you still enjoy games is look to indie. There might be the occasional jank but there are a lot of gems to find.

[somenameforme]

I suspect most people don't really understand what indie means in terms of games, especially when contrasted against AAA. Many indie games now rival AAA games in terms of scope and scale, a decent chunk are even getting up there in production quality, and the overall quality/refinement often already exceeds AAA games which are increasingly often just buggy messes at launch.

Valheim [1] is a nice example. That is an indie game, made by a 5 guy team, primarily based on one guy's toy projects. Tools and resources for game development have increased so much that it's possible for very small teams to do some really incredible things.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/892970/Valheim/

[me_me_me]

Its the same pattern as movies, cookie-cutter patterns are most familiar to broadest audience and because of familiarity publishers push for those type of products to be pumped out for safe and large return on investment.

There are still smaller games/movies that are interesting and ambitious, just harder to find.

> there's a whole genre of "weird games" that can still be a lot of fun, because you're never sure what will happen next. The sense of wonder returns. Haven't found any good ones lately, though.

I highly recommend Inscription