This veers a little inside baseball for me as someone outside the dev/publishing industry, and strictly a consumer (albeit hopefully discerning one) of video games, but I can absolutely speak to the fact that the game experiences I crave are the bold ones that shake me out of systems boredom and apathy. I will pay good money and spend hundreds of hours on the latest from a studio that isn't putting out its annual iteration of a decade+ old formula, but is demonstrating something truly exciting with its next release.
I'm not looking for experimentation or sweeping innovation necessarily, just a sense of assurance and confidence that their next game is one they actually wanted to put out in the world.
I really enjoy the challenge to game makers that you set forth. Stagnation and commodification and tentativeness are a big challenge we face. And the panacea is a willingness to be audacious.
It will take time to truly earn that trust from players but if major game studios can walk forward arm in arm on this vision for the game industry I think players will be quite receptive once we can get out of the safe place of eminently knowable and just barely sufficient entertainment experiences.
Maybe that’s just the nudge we all need to get out of all this.
This veers a little inside baseball for me as someone outside the dev/publishing industry, and strictly a consumer (albeit hopefully discerning one) of video games, but I can absolutely speak to the fact that the game experiences I crave are the bold ones that shake me out of systems boredom and apathy. I will pay good money and spend hundreds of hours on the latest from a studio that isn't putting out its annual iteration of a decade+ old formula, but is demonstrating something truly exciting with its next release.
I'm not looking for experimentation or sweeping innovation necessarily, just a sense of assurance and confidence that their next game is one they actually wanted to put out in the world.
I really enjoy the challenge to game makers that you set forth. Stagnation and commodification and tentativeness are a big challenge we face. And the panacea is a willingness to be audacious.
It will take time to truly earn that trust from players but if major game studios can walk forward arm in arm on this vision for the game industry I think players will be quite receptive once we can get out of the safe place of eminently knowable and just barely sufficient entertainment experiences.
Maybe that’s just the nudge we all need to get out of all this.