[ulkesh]

I completely support thwarting monopolistic practices and even trying to prevent them from being possible. I just hope Blizzard can one day be completely divorced from Activision. Whether Microsoft is a better fit, I cannot say, but I do feel as if Blizzard has been making one poor decision after another ever since the acquisition in 2008 -- and only very recently have things looked somewhat brighter for them.

[wnevets]

> but I do feel as if Blizzard has been making one poor decision after another ever since the acquisition in 2008

"Gamers" might believe this but do the stakeholders actually believe that? The company is still printing money. [1]

[1] https://gamerant.com/diablo-immortal-made-300-million-dollar....

[cogman10]

I hate that this is true.

So many fun franchises are basically dead because they aren't nearly as profitable as a freemium game and selling digital garbage. Single player FPS is basically dead. RTSes are also effectively dead. The only place you'll find such things is from indy devs and they don't have anywhere near the budget to make something as good as what we used to get :(.

[15155]

RTS is dead because the moment 99% of players play online they get immediately destroyed: it's an unforgiving genre with a massive amount to learn.

[whatshisface]

RTS newbies get immediately destroyed because RTSes are mostly dead, meaning that all online players have been playing it for decades and know a lot. An RTS with a steady influx of new players and matchmaking would work just fine, if anyone were to get one going.

[JadoJodo]

Does SC2 do rank based matchmaking?

[bombcar]

It does (and at least when it came out) it was relatively decent.

The problem occurs when the game has been out long enough that all the active players are leagues ahead of a new player; either they wait forever for a match or get steamrolled.

[plushpuffin]

Back when I played it, there was a 50 game skill test for new players which determined which of the major rank pools you were placed in.

Those first 50 games were crazy because you were matched randomly with other new and established players, so sometimes you would play someone really good who would steamroll you in the first 5 minutes, and sometimes you got someone who had at most played the scripted campaigns against the AI and thought they could sit there for the first 30 minutes slowly building up an army.

It was actually pretty fun not knowing which way it would go, and whenever we matched with newbies my partner and I got to experiment with a bunch of different strategies that would never work in a real game.

[ThatPlayer]

Starcraft 2 is the only game the thought of queueing up for a 1v1 game gets my heartrate up (ladder anxiety). It's not so much the winning or losing, but the fact that games are just 20+ minutes of full-tilt. Whether you're winning or losing, there's zero downtime because there's always something that needs to be done.

Other competitive games like CS/Valorant gives you downtime in between rounds and when you die. Similarly with MOBAs, travel time in between your base and lane, when you die. Even fighting games, when you get a hit in, it's back to muscle memory for your bread and butter combo, and rounds are much shorter.

[Aerroon]

On an unrelated note, I think this lack of downtime is partly responsible for StarCraft pros suffering as much from RSI. There's no clear downtime while playing and the hands have to be going at speed the entire time.

[leidenfrost]

RTS is dead because it's a better overall decision to make a MOBA instead.

They're less niche and more fun to watch as e-sports for the casual player.

RTS streams are downright boring if you're not actively competing at ranked matches.

[bombcar]

MOBAs you can just watch. RTS you often need a good commenter or a really decent strategic understanding of the game.

[mesh]

Personally, I think RTSs are way easier to watch. Its easier to understand what is going on at a base level (i.e. build an army and beat the other side).

MOBAs seem super confusing if you dont play. Its 30 minutes of nothing happening, and then like 15 seconds of people getting really excited and then the game is over.

[monkpit]

I disagree that you can “just watch” MOBAs. I don’t play any MOBAs, but I will occasionally watch them. If I don’t have a commentator guiding me along to tell me what is happening (to some degree) then it makes no sense to me.

[kcb]

With MOBAs you can blame your teammates when you lose. RTSs are mostly played 1v1.

[creakingstairs]

> RTS streams are downright boring if you're not actively competing at ranked matches.

I disagree. A lot of Korean viewers never even touched the ranked online multiplayer when BW was mainstream esports. Heck even my dad watched it.

[baud147258]

Are all RTS players interested in online play? I like RTSs, played a certain number, but I've never played online. But RTS devs focusing a lot of their efforts on multiplayers, effort that are going to be wasted on a good portion of the potential market who's just not into MP and is never going to touch the online mode.

[baud147258]

> I like RTSs, played a certain number, but I've never played online.

I realized I wrote a mistake: I did play a handful of MP matches of World in Conflict after finishing the (very enjoyable) single-player campaign. It was fun, but not as much as the single player portion; and I never invested enough time for it to be fun.

[squeaky-clean]

A large playerbase and good matchmaking could solve this. Ironically the best way for any game to get a large enough playerbase for fair matchmaking and low queue times is to go free-to-play.

[larksimian]

I'd love to play an RTS that was APM capped somehow. Maybe in a tiered fashion. As it stands the design of SC2 style RTS is just insanely stressful.

I could see something like SC2 being fun with 2-3 people playing 1 player's role at a time. 1 person on the econ, 2 people on the army. Or much better AI that you can override selectively, so if you want to handle the fighting you can, or if you want to handke the econ you can.

[creakingstairs]

You should check out Tooth and Tail! Not sure if the online scene is still going on but it has a unique take on RTS that effectively caps APM.

[cogman10]

That's a factor. But the bigger factor is it's harder to freemium an RTS without destroying the game.

The fun of RTSes is the learning curve, but throw in a bunch of "you can buy a special unit for $10" and all the sudden the game balancing is destroyed. That leaves you with inconsequential things like avatar skins to sell and very few people would buy those.

Couple that with the fact that new players aren't likely to spend hours online playing the game (because they get destroyed) and you've got a major problem.

For me, the fun of RTSes was in single player games and lan parties.

[whatshisface]

Valve made millions off of team fortress hats that made your hitbox larger. I don't see why so many people think cosmetics in games can't sell.

[no_wizard]

This was after they sold the game at a fair price for many many years. The "freemium" play was I imagine, in part taken because sales flatlined.

I remember the transition. I kinda hated it, to be honest. Not because of the drops (they were introducing hats and loot well before this) but because the influx of players were...low quality

[cogman10]

> I don't see why so many people think cosmetics in games can't sell.

Big difference between the cosmetics for an FPS and RTS. There aren't a lot of cosmetic options you could come up in an RTS.

[Arisaka1]

Fighting games are also driven to a niche genre due to the amount of "labbing" (training mode to build combos into your muscle memory) is required.

[Barrin92]

this wasn't always a problem though. Warcraft 3 and both Starcraft games had a large and diverse audience for a long time. From competitive players to people who enjoyed the story despite the fact that they're quite difficult multiplayer games.

Elden Ring and the Souls games are difficult and even to a point intentionally alienating but have had massive success including in the mainstream.

I don't know what it is but I feel there's something else going on with the rapid decline of RTS besides the difficulty.

[josephd79]

Elden ring and Horizon Zero Dawn are amazing solo player games. I don’t wanna play pvp multiplayer. I like Co-Op multiplayer with my buddies. Elden Ring with full game co-op would be amazing. I’d buy all the DLC they could release in a heartbeat.

[ntw1103]

There is a co-op mod available for Elden Ring that works reasonably well. I've been playing through it with a friend.

[intelVISA]

I thought RTS died due to the ever diminishing market share of PC games vs. mobile and, to an extent, console.

[govg]

PC is still king for esports and competitive gaming (outside of niches like fighting games or sports). League and Dota continue to be among the most watched events online.

[Godel_unicode]

> unforgiving genre with a massive amount to learn.

This also describes chess, yet that has a significant online presence.

[wilsonnb3]

The past ten years have been good for single player FPS games though, I don’t know how anyone could think the genre is dead.

New Wolfenstein and Doom games, yearly call of duty, halo infinite, Titanfall 2, half life alyx, super hot, metro exodus, black mesa, destiny 2, deep rock galactic, the list goes on.

[monkpit]

I don’t see how you would consider Destiny a single player FPS?

[gverrilla]

I've played around 20 hours and can say other players are mostly cosmetics on Destiny 2.

[cykros]

The good news is, most of the old games still run. Unless you're married to modern graphics, there's zero reason to even bother looking at most game market places these days, unless you're really just trying to figure out how to fill up 100+ GB of disk space as fast as possible.

I almost question whether having this deal blocked may ultimately be the best for Microsoft...the game industry seems to be collapsing in on itself. The one big thing I'd argue with myself on there would be a lot of the IP and its ability to be applied to non-gaming "metaverse" applications. Games aren't getting any better, and often, aren't as good as what we had 10 years ago, but I can't argue that the graphics are improving significantly, even if it doesn't matter to me in the slightest from a gaming standpoint.

Though, I probably underestimate the never ending stream of children who are always making fun of each other for not having the latest shiniest skin or emote in whatever "Free" game they happen to be playing these days.

[lofaszvanitt]

Well, in the last 20 years or so many times it was declared that this and that genre died out. Then they all resurfaced. Indy devs do the creative work and innovation, because AAA games are all about risk aversion and money printing.

[HDThoreaun]

RTS is dead because sc2/aoe2 are unbeatable. There's just nowhere else to go with the genre.

[cogman10]

That's like saying FPS are dead because CS: Go was the pinnacle of the genre.

There could always be a sc3 or aoe18 (or whatever). There are infinite areas to explore.

[Gigachad]

There was a new AoE game but it’s struggling to compete with AoE2. It’s like trying to release a chess 2. People question why they would spend money to buy the new one when they still have the old one.

People are largely still completely satisfied with what they have now.

[p1necone]

AoE4 is actually pretty good too. The change to make walls only destroyable by siege weapons changes up the dynamics in an interesting way.

[_JoRo]

In relation to RTS games, I think it's a combination of people are largely satisfied with what we have now combined with the fact that MOBAs, FPS, and RTS are probably more appealing to the average gamer.

That being said AoE2 is an awesome game :)

[deafpolygon]

FPSes are dead because Epic abandoned their remake of UT for the crapware that is Fortnite.

[Godel_unicode]

I refuse to play Fortnite because of this, UT is the perfect shooter franchise. It’s not like Epic doesn’t have the money to do both.

[_carbyau_]

I've never played sc2 or aoe2, because I don't see how they could compare to SupCom:FA and the FAForever community.

Different strokes for different folks.

[deadbunny]

Got high hopes for Sanctuary!

[ClumsyPilot]

Company of heroes is alive and well, is getting version 3 and does not give you a degenerative clicking disease

[oreally]

Give it a chance before saying such fatalistic statements. Play some lesser known ones. I mean this is a site that found it's roots in startups, and they're are all about being the upstart and being the hope for something better.

[dj_mc_merlin]

On the other hand, CRPGs (of a sort) are still alive and kicking after a short break. If you haven't, try:

* Disco Elysium

* Tyranny

* Shadowrun, all of them

* Pathfinder: Kingmaker

All within the last decade, and at least for Disco Elysium and Tyranny, every bit as good as Planescape Torment.

Western RPGs though.. I don't have high hopes for ES6.

[galangalalgol]

What mistakes are you concerned about? I most value the existance of utility spells in a crpg. Spell crafting sytems are also super fun. ES has had both of those elements within some games.

Other games with those qualifications: Ultima underworld Arx fatalis Two worlds series Deus ex series

The obsidian games typically have plenty of utility spells, but not always.

[dj_mc_merlin]

Oh don't get me wrong I've loved all the ES games so far, but they do show a trend of stripping out exactly that fun experimental part. In Morrowind the game even eggs you on to do the silly Jump + Levitate/Feather Fall hijinks by dropping that dude from the sky while you're walking. And in general the magic and alchemy system is bonkers in the good way. The game encourages you to break it. Not to mention the "fast travel system" of the various utility spells which I found quite immersive.

Oblivion has some of that stuff too but it's definitely simplified.

Skyrim has no spell crafting at all, which means combat becomes "mash mouse button" or "sneaky arrow". Lycanthropy is pretty fun though, but also wears out. Mods definitely saved the game since they add all the crazy shit that is missing.

The trend is quite obvious though. Don't get me wrong, I'll still definitely play the shit out of ES6, I just don't feel it will reach the glory of Morrowind.

> Ultima underworld Arx fatalis Two worlds series Deus ex series

Sadly I've already played all of these. Never did finish Arx Fatalis though, might go back to it..

[pyuser583]

These really are hidden gems. I’m glad some are getting a second chance on mobile devices. But it’s not the same as playing on a PC.

Especially with graphics million times faster than the devs could have imagined.

[account42]

> Tyranny, every bit as good as Planescape Torment

That has got to be a joke.

Tyranny has MMO-style ability cooldowns that make combat a boring spam-what-is-availale fest, pretty much no enemy or encounter variety, companions which barely any development compared to those in PS:T, as well as a story that is obviously cut short of what it should have been.

[dj_mc_merlin]

Yeah the story is obviously cut short, but the originality of it just makes it have that special place in my heart that Planescape does. Disco Elysium is without a doubt deserving of the title though.

I also don't play CRPGs for the combat mostly. That's why the old Infinity Engine games were a lot of fun, it was about cheesing through the game in funny ways while enjoying an amazing story.

[BlueTemplar]

If you want something new and good, I don't think that you should be looking at franchises. Especially not these days when devs are not stuck with boxed releases, so are able to release early and keep polishing and extending the same game for more than a decade.

And I'm going to have to disagree about "not as good as we used to get". Is there any question that Zero-K/Spring (or BAR/Spring) aren't way better than Total Annihilation (ok, maybe not for the orchestral score), despite being entirely community-made ?

https://youtu.be/pHQkctGTm_A

[Rapzid]

Still sour that GTA V never received the single player story DLC.

[wellthisisgreat]

> Single player FPS is basically dead

hm isn't there a ton of different single player FPS out that are fairly creative? Like Deathloop recently, MW2 single player campaign was pretty good.

It's the innovation in multiplayer FPS that's gone pretty much short of biannual efforts from AAA (Battlefield, CoD) and 1-2 niche attempts from indies (Hell Let Loose was good, Cycle Frontier) Otherwise it's just closing the gap with freemium and premium

[_carbyau_]

This is where I expected HL3 to come in... years ago. They had gravity gun. They had portal gun from portal.

HL3 just needed to merge the two storylines/timelines and give players both.

Imagine multiplayer with that!

[jacooper]

story games are still flourishing, but as console exclusives like Horizon zero dawn, god of war and (to some degree) Halo.

Luckily, most of the time you just to have wait about a year to get them on PC, often for a cheaper price too.

Also single player FPS games still exist, just not standalone as they used to.

[filoleg]

A tiny nitpick - Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War (not the recent sequel that just came out) aren't console exclusives anymore (but have been for the longest time), you can buy both of them on Steam now.

[jacooper]

Yup, more like console timed - exclusives,

[BlueTemplar]

Ports will always be hindered by having been designed around a different interface (and sometimes performance available) first.

You can see this well in comparing Crysis 1 with 2 & 3.

[jacooper]

Yup, many ported games suffer a lot in terms of optimization, especially when they outsource to other smaller studios to do the job for them.

But its certainly better than not having story games at all. Sony's story games are really really good, and they finally realized that releasing on PC is a win-win for everyone, more money for Sony, more games for PC, because most of the time no one wants to switch from PC to PlayStation

[dj_mc_merlin]

Just buy a controller? They're pretty cheap and the superior way to play many games. Also IMO it's more relaxing to sit back with a controller, kb&m I find is more high-intensity.

[BlueTemplar]

Many games, yes (I do use them for platformers and the like), FPSes - hell no !

This is not just about gamepad console => m&k PC, by the way.

[sofixa]

How is RTS dead? There are new ones coming out all the time, and there are studios such as Paradox that are exclusively on RTS games.

[Laforet]

When people speak of RTS games, they are actually referring to StarCraft-like real time tactic simulators with optional unit production and resource gathering components. The titles developed by Paradox may not be turn based, but they have more common with the other 4X games like Civilization.

I also don't think RTS is dead but the category has been stale for some time. I grew up playing Age of Empires 2, and the game still has a healthy player base with regular new content being added. However compared to the turn of the century the pace of innovation has definitely slowed down.

[0x457]

Paradox is making turn-based 4X games that's not what people think when you say Real-Time Strategy.

[sofixa]

None of Paradox' games are turn based, they're real time (but pausable). Their own description for the genre is "grand strategy", which is IMO between what is classically understood as "RTS" and "4X".

[0x457]

Well, technically speaking all those grand stategy games by paradox have turns - one month in EU4. Every player queues up actions in between turns, but they are doing it at the same time. IMO if we're being pedantic it's neither and is something in between skewed towards turn-based.

It's nothing like "pure" RTS like starcraft where everything is actually real time. Their 4X games have: speed control, pause, turns (days and months, depending on a game and action). If you remove ability make turns simulatinusly and make a single turn into a day - not much will change in gameplay other than it will take longer.

[int_19h]

Classically understood in video gaming context, the terms "RTS" and "4X" are pretty much mutually exclusive, even though some 4X titles are real-time, as you've noted.

[p1necone]

Only if you just want to play singleplayer. If you're into multiplayer and not already an expert at Starcraft or AoE2 then good luck finding games around your skill level.

[Laforet]

I have not played StarCraft in a long time so can't speak for that, but ranked AoE2 games are still being played with players of all skill levels.

[datalopers]

Aside from maybe Company of Heroes 3, what RTS games have came out anytime recently at all? I want some mid-to-late 90s style RTS games (C&C, AoE, TA, War2, SC, SC2) where you collect resources, build and expand bases, and wage war on your enemies.

I am not interested in 4X games.

[heelix]

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliances has a significant community with FA Forever. (https://www.faforever.com/) It reworked all the stock solo missions with updated units and co-op. There are survival modes, phantom modes. There is a reasonable community online for ladder or team vs team play. In a week or so, the SupCom:FA game should be a couple bucks when the steam sales spin up. Well worth your time one remembers Total Annihilation fondly.

[ryathal]

AoE4 is a refinement of AoE2. Frostgiant is planning to release a beta of the Starcraft spiritual successor next summer. Immortal: Gates of Pyre is in alpha

[Godel_unicode]

I don’t understand why Ashes of the singularity didn’t take off, that game rules.

[SpeedilyDamage]

I just... what you define as fun isn't apparently what others define as such, at least when it comes to voting with their dollars.

I can't understand folks who don't understand this concept. You are not the only opinion in this world, and the media and critics are incentivized to create drama.

Doom Eternal came out in 2020, and LoL is one of the most popular games of all time. SC2 just released a huge patch that revamped a lot of balance issues that had cropped up over the past decade...

Gaming has never been more diverse and well funded. It's wild to me that you see the huge selection you've got available to you and could possibly believe we're in anything but the best gaming era of all time right now.

[cogman10]

> I can't understand folks who don't understand this concept.

Ok, very simple example, are slot machines fun?

I think anyone can objectively look at a slot machine and say "no, that's really not fun". Yet, people spend their entire retirements on slot machines. People DIE pumping quarters into a slot machine. People wear diapers to slot machines. Slot machines are HIGHLY profitable for casinos (which is why they have them).

Fun and profit are not the same thing. Some games, such as Diablo Immortal, have realized that addicting is more profitable than fun. The entire game industry has learned that if you randomize rewards (loot boxes) you can trigger addiction without having a fun game.

> You are not the only opinion in this world

I'd look into the mirror before giving this advice. I realize that some people find gambling fun. Whatever floats your boat. But I also realize that there is such a thing as gambling addiction and it is highly profitable.

[setr]

The proper resolution to this is the realization that fun != good. Fun is a property of context, and anything can be made fun with the right context. Multiplayer is the greatest cheatcode to generating fun -- with friends, poking a bloating corpse and playing the ol' hoop n' stick is fun.

Fun cannot be discussed, or argued, because you cannot properly share that context with others, and you cannot deny the reality of their context.

But good is a property of the game itself -- it's essentially the answer to the question "how well does the game achieve the goals it chases, and how well does it choose its goals?". This is still somehow subjective, but dramatically less so -- we can actually discuss it in a manner that's sensible. To a degree, the discussion has to factor in that we have different beliefs of what those goals are, and whether those are good goals to have, but this is true of any judgement.

And when talking about whether a movie, book, game, etc is any good, no one gives a shit whether you had "fun" playing it, because that tells us nothing about whether its good. It just tells us "your" experience -- your specific relationship to the work -- more about you than it... but we're not talking about you.

[cogman10]

This is all well and good, and I agree, fun can be different things to different people. So can good.

But that wasn't the comment I was responding to. The comment I responded to made the positive assertion "Things are fun because they are profitable"

> what you define as fun isn't apparently what others define as such, at least when it comes to voting with their dollars.

If you want to change the argument to "fun is unknowable" I can get behind that statement. However, I think the slot machine example is a really good one to prove that fun and profit are not the same thing. Even if you want to argue that the slot machines can be fun, I think you'd have a hard time arguing that addicts to slots are all having a blast.

What's changed in the gaming industry is more focus on profit and less on fun. The gaming industry has learned is what B.F. Skinner discovered decades ago [1], how to get repeat behaviors out of someone with randomize rewards.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201311/us...

[SpeedilyDamage]

I think you're barking up the wrong tree here, friend. You seem to be missing my point, which is that "fun" is subjective and there simply is no definition of "fun" that applies to everyone.

Your whole "slot machine" example is predicated on my response being, "Well no, slot machines aren't fun." However, I do think slot machines are loads of fun! Not for me, but for the millions of people who sit there, spend very tiny sums of money (think like $5 for literally 12 hours of chill entertainment), and get to feel good about themselves while they do it.

[MichaelZuo]

Who gets to define 'fun'?

[cogman10]

Anything can be fun to anyone, fair enough.

That said, I reject a definition of fun that involves how profitable something is because of the slot machine example.

If fun is anything, it's not getting a diaper rash while going broke.

[whatshisface]

People vote with their dollars against their own best interest all the time - typical examples include narcotics (don't take that comparison for more than I meant it to be, it's just an example of how people buy "fun stuff" that they objectively should not) and in-app purchases in cheesy mobile games. Profit motive can only guide profit seeking companies to serve people's happiness to the extent that people can exert self control, and that doesn't work very well.

[p3rls]

You are confusing happiness with something else. The problem of language dominates these conversations, and by not being careful you risk being refuted by Plato's Socrates 2500 years ago in the Meno among other things.

[whatshisface]

You could substitute almost any definition of happiness in my comment and the argument would still work.

[HWR_14]

I don't remember anything Plato said refuting what the GP said.

[ferrumfist]

> SC2 just released a huge patch that revamped a lot of balance issues

I feel like tossing in a patch from SC2 as an indicator that it's actively being supported is a little misleading. SC2 had the opportunity to compete with LoL and Dota2 for viewership but Blizzard made a LOT of mistakes with the first expansion that alienated players and sent them to LoL, Dota2, or CSGO.

Their game design philosophy and slow patch rhythm sabotaged the momentum that the pro scene had been building (warp gate tech, infinite value units like Brood Lords and Swarm Hosts, frontloading all Terran power into Stim units, etc). They also catered the ladder experience solely for competitive players, they didn't introduce many (if any) casual-friendly modes until far too late.

[sylens]

They also broke SC2 into three $60 boxes products, segmenting the multiplayer each time, right at the dawn of the free to play MOBA era on PC. My entire SC2 friend group ditched Heart of the Swarm for League of Legends and never looked back.

Wings of Liberty was a great time, though.

[quartesixte]

That triple expansion pack model tanked SC2.

But also, just not being able to play cooperatively with friends was the final death knell. SC was designed for an era where you played alone and then you played against others who played alone because there weren’t a lot of anyone playing SC or anything really.

LoL unlocked an entire demographic of kids who wanted to play with friends. A great explosion in online VC tech helped foster this and the rest is history. Gaming is now a social activity and all the top sellers right now effectively leverage this.

[shrimp_emoji]

It's kind of unsubstantiatable, but I think capitalism is fundamentally a poor fit for "high quality art".

The gaming industry is experiencing the same hyper-commercialization that the movie industry has experienced.

You can argue that the super hero movies of today and the remakes are "better" than older movies on the best objective metric we have (how much revenue they generate), and that we're in "the best era of film of all time" right now, but... I don't know who truly believes that, subjectively. :p It feels wild to believe that. I certainly don't, and I don't for gaming either.

Funny story: I got Doom Eternal about a year after it came out. I needed to make an account, even though I only play singleplayer. When first opening it, I got bombarded by pop-ups from a dozen DLC and update cycles, like a little history of its updates thus far. I cringed at the social media-like network integration stuff in the main menu. I play for a few days. On like the fourth day, when opening the game, this pop-up appears in-game, but it's empty. It's like some network notice, but it's broken. The pop-up is blank. There's no way to get past it. Nothing helps. The game essentially bricked itself via its own botnet bloatware (a thing an older game would never do). Apparently, it happens to console and PC users alike, and there was no solution around it. It's as if it accidentally ripped you, the user, off, in that a digital product just stopped working. (Let's not even mention the plight of future gamers trying to simulate the always-online DRM so they can play it in an emulator. Hey--at least Bethesda removed the kernel-level anticheat following backlash, allowing the game to run on Linux again!) Luckily, even though I was past the usual playtime limit, Steam gave me a full refund. :D

Also, Diablo Immortal is probably more profitable than all the previous Diablo games put together, and I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a case where profitability or even popularity maps with whatever we truly mean by "quality".

[leetcrew]

> The gaming industry is experiencing the same hyper-commercialization that the movie industry has experienced.

I agree, a lot of parallels can be drawn between modern AAA games and superhero movies. the quest to reach the largest market has resulted in products without much in the way of nuance or new ideas. this is kinda what you have to do if you're going to spend $250mm on a game or movie. even achieving wide appeal within a single large country isn't enough to reliably make that back; you have to make something appealing (or at least inoffensive) to most of the world.

at the same time, I think you are missing just how much the gaming market has expanded since 10-20 years ago. while very successful for their time, games like halflife are very niche by today's standards. there's no like-for-like comparison between cod:mw2 and a game from the early/mid 2000s.

if you expect AAA games in 2023 to scratch the same itch as they did back then, you will surely be disappointed. they aren't designed for the same audience. but by and large, more money is available to fund development for all sorts of games today. concepts that would have been a janky mod for some other games ~20 years ago are full-fledged titles of their own now. ymmv of course, but I find that when I lose the expectation for modern AAA-level graphics, there are tons of great new games available in recent years.

[joveian]

I agree, I've played a bunch of games recently due to being disabled and in the 90s and there have been many really excellent games in the past decade. While I'm sure there were some at the time, I can't remember playing any that had a particularly "artistic" feel to them in the 90s, while I've played a number recently. Games like RiME, 8doors, Hollow Knight, Little Bug, Wolfstride, Rakuen, 140, The Witness, most of Amanita's games, The Longest Road on Earth (arguably more a music video than game, but still), The Talos Principle, Haven, Arise, and Golf Club Wasteland all have a strong artistic feel to me and I enjoyed them (up through some of Amanita's are some of my favorites), and a bunch more have just a bit less distinctly artistic feel IMO (like Guacamelee, Beatbuddy, A Short Hike, or Calico, also some of my favorites). Of course, different people have different ideas what makes a game "artistic" and enjoy different types of games.

GOG still exists to avoid most single player DRM issues (some games have limited single player content that requires an internet connection) and with a better refund policy, although unfortunately they don't have good Linux support. I have an entirely offline game system and rarely have any kind of issue due to that (Zachtronics games are some of the worst since you can't see how well you did on a level without an internet connection, unless they changed that since I last tried one a few years ago). GOG has about 4500 games at this point (catalog shows a few hundred more with "hide DLC and extras" but some are miscategorized DLC), not nearly as many as Steam but still quite a few (unfortunately, some developers don't keep the GOG version up to date).

[onlyrealcuzzo]

$300M compared to WoW printing $7B per year in profit in its heyday is almost a rounding error.

To put things into perspective - in its heyday - WoW was half as profitable as Tesla is now...

It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

They made WoW. It was insanely profitable. Their valuation soared. They sold. They declined.

It's hard to say if its reversion to the mean or the Activision acquisition - but it's hard to argue Blizzard hasn't declined by every metric.

[octodog]

$7b seems wrong. That would require about 40 million subscribers each paying $15 a month. Peak subscribers was 12 million and many would be paying for slightly cheaper long term subs.

[Aerroon]

I don't know what the true numbers are, but didn't they also sell the game and expansions for like $40-60 on top of the subscription?

[virgildotcodes]

Plus they sell in game services, cosmetics, and game time tokens.

[Kamq]

They didn't do that much much at the peak of WoW. There were some pets you got by buying the collector's edition of the game but that was it. No paid mounts, no server transfers, no level boosts.

The paid stuff was a monetization tactic after the decline.

[wnevets]

Are you really saying a mobile game earning 300M in roughly 4 months is bad?

[Retric]

That’s earnings not profit.

Considering the cost to create and amount of reputation damage it caused, YES. Diablo immortal was a massive failure.

[snapcaster]

I miss old blizzard too, but it was a massive success. It makes tons of money

[Retric]

How much did they spend in development and advertising before that 4 month period and how quickly are those earnings dropping?

That’s the calculation you need to look at, not earnings as if expenses prior to release was 0$.

[PeterCorless]

It also gave us SusanExpress and gold farming. Heaven help us.

[wnevets]

What percentage of that 300M do you believe went to cost?

According to the article they generated roughly the same amount of revenue in 4 months as the previous record breaking game did in an entire year. I wish I had that kind of reputation damage.

[Laforet]

Mobile games live and die by aggressive marketing. With conversion ratio in the single digit, it's not uncommon for half of their operating costs to be advertising. And then you add the actual housekeeping and R&D on top of that...

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I'm saying a 1-time $300M revenue compared to $14B in revenue per year for ~8 straight years is not really that significant.

[wnevets]

I am saying comparing a mobile only game to a MMORPG back when gamers were willing to pay to play MMOs is misleading. Which MMOs are making 14B in yearly revenue in today's entertainment market?

According to the article I linked Immortal generated roughly the same amount of revenue in 4 months as Raid Shadow Legends (the previous record holder) did in their best year. That is a domination of that gaming niche.

[skupig]

Yeah, cashing in on your reputation is bad. Short-term thinking like this is killing every Blizzard franchise.

[sbagel]

> WoW printing $7B per year in profit

Do you have a source on this $7B a year profit figure? I've tried to find it and can't find anything even close to $7B revenue let alone profit going back to 1994.

[seattle_spring]

As far as I can tell, they're way off the mark. This thread [1] estimates WoW at around $1b in revenue.

Also fyi, WoW was originally released in 2004, not 1994.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-revenue-does-World-of-Warcraf...

[kraig911]

So can we as stakeholders honestly think when we're on Diablo 22 in 2039 that we can expect this kind of money making continue? Look at what Activision does. Look at how Fortnite is eating Call of Duty and Overwatch's lunch. Software companies are expected to revolutionize and innovate not 'evolutionize' and rehash.

[ac29]

Was that $300M number ever confirmed by Blizzard/Activation? Your article cites mobilegamer.biz which cites Appmagic - those third party estimates are never going to be fully accurate and could be wildly off.

Anecdotally, I played the game briefly at launch and it died in terms of player numbers very very quickly.

[p1necone]

They're only printing money because of the brand recognition and goodwill back from when they still made good games. That isn't going to last forever.

[Waterluvian]

I'm not convinced the acquisition was responsible. The problem I've perceived (with my very limited wisdom on the topic) is that once they made it huge with World of Warcraft, shipping a "pay-once + expansions" product is just such a financial footnote that it's seen as a distraction.

I wonder if that's why the "Real Money Auction House" from Diablo 3 existed.

[bombcar]

WoW was too big of a cash cow for too long, and sucked the oxygen out of the room at Blizzard; everyone who was involved with making non-WoW games left.

[SkyMarshal]

How can that be true if Blizz still had multiple non-WoW games, including new releases like Overwatch 2 and upcoming Diablo 4?

[holler]

Totally, but also excited to see what ex-blizzard creatives at Frost Giant Studios and their upcoming RTS Stormgate will bring. Happy to see the talent reform elsewhere.

https://playstormgate.com/

[Goronmon]

The track record of "ex-<Popular Game/Company> devs/etc" splitting off for new companies/IPs isn't that compelling to me personally. Lots of games have been sold with that angle, and few that I can remember were able to come even close to the previous titles.

[leidenfrost]

That's true, and somewhat related of what I think about nostalgia.

Sometimes it's not that they lost the touch or that they sold themselves. It's just that we're not teenagers anymore, in an old internet cafe playing on LAN with our friends. Even if a similar game is coming back, the entire moment with all its context is not.

Still, I'm happy to see they're still alive and faithful to their roots.

[lelanthran]

> Lots of games have been sold with that angle, and few that I can remember were able to come even close to the previous titles.

Even revenue for the developer, or in enjoyment for the user? Because Torchlight (ex-Diablo-II ICs) was a humdinger of a D-II sequel in terms of gameplay, but sales? Not so much.

This makes me think that the biggest value that the studio brings to the table for revenue is brand recognition.

IOW, it doesn't matter how good the game is, brand recognition gets you over the line sometimes.

[t0lo]

Respawn entertainment (Co founder of infinity ward) has been successful, with Fallen Order and Titanfall 2 both being memorable games.

Obsidian has been arguably less so, but grounded and the outer worlds have both been unique feeling and creative titles in my eyes.

[Aeolun]

The Outer Worlds mostly lacked a compelling main narrative, but it was a pretty fun RPG. I dunno, the soul was a bit missing I think.

[caskstrength]

> Lots of games have been sold with that angle, and few that I can remember were able to come even close to the previous titles.

Troika? Obsidian?

[SgtBastard]

Outer Worlds just made me sad after New Vegas.

[Pulcinella]

Blizzard and Activision definitely need a very, very thorough house cleaning when it comes to worker mistreatment and sexual harassment.

[TillE]

All I want is Bobby Kotick and his friends on the board gone, so I can think about maybe buying Diablo 4 when it's released.

[Firmwarrior]

Diablo 4 is a grindy MMORPG with some Diablo elements, so don't get your hopes up too much

[gopher_space]

All I've ever really wanted was a modern D2. I like what Beamdog have done with Neverwinter Nights 1, even though they focus more on the backend.

[vkou]

> All I've ever really wanted was a modern D2.

That game exists, and it's called Path of Exile. It is also the poster child for why most of D2 aged really, really, really poorly.

Another take on that same concept is called Last Epoch.

[account42]

> I like what Beamdog have done with Neverwinter Nights 1

Double the price for minimal fixes? They didn't even bother including fixes for known issues which known workarounds available on the vault like e.g. HotU companions sometimes not using most of their abilites because the AI selects the mount ability as the best available one.

Really, these old games should just be released to the community to maintain them like iD used to do. And if someone like Beamdog wants to profit off such maintenance then they better be able to do so without taking the original down from sale because they know they can't actually compete with vanilla + community patches.

[extesy]

Grim Dawn is an excellent modern take on D2 formula. Single player, no MMORPG nonsense, no microtransactions.

[Sakos]

Pretty much. They're responsible for an employee committing suicide. The Microsoft acquisition was the last hope of getting rid of them. So much for that.

[Eji1700]

From my pov blizzard was already draining LONG before activision. The success of WoW killed their creativity and standards as they could just focus on recycled cliche on rails content and make loads of cash.

That said, even if it's activision, and even if you can can somehow separate them, the talent that made blizzard blizzard (whatever era of it you enjoyed) is likely long gone.

[baud147258]

> I just hope Blizzard can one day be completely divorced from Activision.

What for? Blizzard's a shell of its former glory and hadn't done much of note recently (even if it's still making money). The way things are, within Activision, Microsoft or on its own, I don't really see Blizzard making anything on the level of their best games in the future.

[Camillo]

Overwatch launched in 2016 to critical and commercial acclaim. I would say the opposite, it's in the last few years that Blizzard seemed to really go off the rails.

[AlexandrB]

I think Overwatch was a sign of things to come. The loot box monetization, the focus on competitive play to the detriment of other elements, and the very rigid structure of the game (can't choose map, role queue) all felt like downgrades from Blizzard's previous efforts. At least the gameplay was good for a while.

Overwatch was the first Blizzard game that I liked less and less the more they patched it.

[AgentME]

Overwatch has had prominent open queue, arcade, and custom game options for a long time now, and with Overwatch 2 they've removed loot boxes.

[a_t48]

Instead of lootboxes, we have $/time locked heroes. :(

[swagmoney1606]

It's frankly pretty insane to me that heros are gated behind a paywall in a competitive game mode. Is this the first pay to win competitive game?

[djtango]

As someone who grew up paying £25-60 for a brand new game, I find it pretty insane that we've been trained to want games for free despite it costing millions to develop and run dedicated servers for millions of players.

I tried out Overwatch 2, despite all the negative press it is fun and sweaty. I had plenty of fun despite not playing as Kiriko and I'm sure I could easily derive 10s if not 100s of hours before feeling a need to unlock Kiriko.

If a game is taking so much of your time and you have a job, why isn't it ok to just pay a bit to unlock a hero?

I'd take these kinds of monetisation over destiny 2 which didn't even have p2w or clash royale (before season pass)

[babypuncher]

Hasn't League of Legends been doing this for over a decade?

[a_t48]

Yeah I refuse to buy the battle pass on principle. I would have probably bought them if it were just cosmetics.

[SpaceManNabs]

Blizzard was done before Activision. Even before the Vivendi deal.

[tarsinge]

I never got over their shift to cartoon fantasy art style, and how it contaminated fantasy art in general in the 00’s ruined it for me.

[chowells]

Shift... to cartoon fantasy art style? You mean the style of The Lost Vikings, Rock'n'Roll Racing, Warcraft (all of them), and so on? Any games not in that style are outliers.

[tarsinge]

These elements were present but better balanced. The cartoon aspect for 16-bit games like Lost Vikings is on point. In Warcraft 2 you had a perfect mix of seriousness / grit with humor. Over the top art AND comic/anime style AND polished don't work for me. It's Fantasy, the subject is already silly, humor can be present but everything else has to be serious, it's a fine balance otherwise it devolves into parody.

Another way to put it is that for me it worked while Samwise contributed but was in check.

Edit: Now I'm not blaming them, from a business perspective they had to follow the shifting zeitgeist and it obviously worked, old school D&D/Warhammer/Heavy Metal/... were totally uncool at the time especially for teenage millennials.

[p1necone]

Yeah, I wish MS could buy Blizzard from Activision rather than acquiring both of them. But I suspect they're mostly doing it to get Call of Duty so that wouldn't really work.

[Godel_unicode]

It’s interesting that nobody is talking about King, candy crush is a license print money.

[n4bz0r]

> and only very recently have things looked somewhat brighter for them

Haven't been following recently. What have made the things to look brighter? It's really hard to see these things as a non-player these days because of all the negativity surrounding the company. Can't say I don't see why it is that way, though.

[rubyist5eva]

Nothing monopolistic about this acquisition. Microsoft is a small player in a huge market right now.

[Godel_unicode]

In America today, when people say “monopoly” they just mean “big”. It’s watered down to the point of being meaningless.

[beebmam]

I don't understand how this is any way monopolistic. There's an enormous amount of competition in the gaming space. If anything, this just makes Microsoft into more of a conglomerate: something we should be encouraging and is good for a society!

[sofixa]

> don't understand how this is any way monopolistic

It's oligopolistic, you have a virtually integrated behemoth across multiple sectors that is too big to fail, which is not good for competition and thus for consumers.

> If anything, this just makes Microsoft into more of a conglomerate: something we should be encouraging and is good for a society!

Is this sarcasm I'm missing? There's nothing wrong with conglomerates, but enormous vertically integrated with exclusivity ones aren't good for society.

[Godel_unicode]

What market does Microsoft operate in where there aren’t strong competitors? Google docs, AWS, PlayStation and Nintendo, Zoom, Chromebooks, Postgres/Oracle, Splunk/McAfee. If Microsoft exited any of those markets the competition would soak up the market share and keep right on going.

Doesn’t sound too-big-to-fail to me. Big on it’s own isn’t necessarily bad.

[sofixa]

The only reason the majority of Microsoft's product still exist is the company behind them. E.g. Azure, Microsoft Teams are objectively extremely poor products with tons of drawbacks compared to any of their competitors, and would never survive on their own - their only "advantage" is that they come from a known brand enterprises already have relationships with, so it's "easy". So legitimate competitors lose market share to a poor cross-subsidised product propped up by Microsoft's cash. This is not good for the competition nor the consumers (be they business or consumer).

[NaturalPhallacy]

I miss the days when Bill Roper was there.

The fact that they repolished D2 into a game absolutely worth playing today on modern hardware, gorgeously really shows how good he was. And tbf, how good the graphics team is. D2R is a wonderful game, and the fact that the same old (but great) engine is actually still running is kinda incredible.

I wish OW2 was a gem like that. A friend and I have over 1k hours each into OW1.

[sergiotapia]

All of the people responsible for the Blizzard seal of quality are long gone. They are Blizzard in name only.

[madrox]

I believe that ship has sailed and the culture has changed. Simply removing Activision's influence won't put things back the way they were. Perhaps bringing back some of the original leaders might.

[jxi]

As a childhood fan of all things Blizzard (clocked in thousands of hours on their games), Activision has destroyed any respect I had for this company. They defiled every franchise, and Diablo Immortal is a sickening game.

Sincerely hope the deal falls through and the company goes bankrupt.

[sakras]

To be honest, I thought Diablo Immortal was pretty good if it weren’t for the micro transactions. The fact that it was a free game made certain parts super slow and grindy to incentivize purchases, but if it were a real game you have to buy, I’d have thought it was pretty good. It makes me think the game designers there are still good, they’re just held back by the business people.

[chrononaut]

> Diablo Immortal is a sickening game.

I actually only (re-)learned of the game recently (I recall its original announcement), but not enough to know anything more about it and I have been meaning to go back to it and check it out. Do you have a short version of what lends you that opinion?

[AlexandrB]

It's fundamentally "pay to win" - money spent matters more than skill or mechanical mastery. Since it has a PvP mode, this means that if you're not whaling you're just krill for the whales to kill.

[Zircom]

I think the biggest issue people point to is you have to sink literally 10 years or $100,000 into the game to fully upgrade a character with how the rewards are structured/priced.

[ghastmaster]

I've been playing Diablo 1 for about two decades, not every day and not every year, but I assure you it is countless hours. I have not found all the items that would perfect my characters. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to find them. Some items I may never find in all my life. I enjoy playing the game. Some people are willing to play, some pay.

[Zircom]

So by 10 years I don't mean playing casually for a decade, it's literally 90,000 hours. And Diablo Immortal is a little different being a PVP game, having good gear doesn't just let you solo dungeons, it means people paying their way into kicking your ass every time.