Top 10 Modern Industry Trends That Have Gamers Worried

Part of the allure of entering a video game is learning for yourself how things work: what to do, what now to do, and how. Nowadays, games seem concerned with making sure nobody will be excluded and nobody gets bored, meaning every game seems to feature an enormous action setpiece with a tutorial throw in as well. Plus, it seems that in a lot of these games, it’s just a straight line to the solution with no deviation available. Remember the first 2/3rds of Final Fantasy 13? Probably not cause most people got bored. Of course, some games go too hard in the opposite direction, but we’ll get to that later…

Back in the days of Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64 and Halo: Combat Evolved, gamers could be found bonding with their friends on a couch. They’d compete with each other on up four player split screen action for bragging rights. With the rise of online gaming, we seem to be losing same room co-op in favor of worldwide online support. Halo 5: Guardians was the first in the Halo series released without the franchises beloved split screen Co-Op mode, upsetting even die hard fans. Then, you have certain games that are entirely built around CoOp, but with no options for same screen play; we’re looking at you Dead Island. Splitscreen is a tradition from our childhood: it’d be a shame if our children never got to experience it.

So linearity is a problem, but the opposite can be just as bad. Open world games aren’t terrible at all, more freedom is almost always a welcome addition. When there’s nothing to do in your sandbox, or if your objectives within begin to get repetitive,, then you have a problem. Pretty to look at, cool way to get arounmd, but not much to do besides find collectables and shoot anything that moves. Even highly rated titles like MGS5 are victims of wide open landscapes with not a whole lot in em’. Open world games are full of potential, so we need to demand that developers fill them with possibilities, not repetition.

It feels like we live in an era of franchises doesn’t it? Every holiday you hear more and more about the next big First Person Shooter or Open World Sandbox. Is there any room for other kinds of games, using fresh ideas on genres not revolving around mowing down armies with guns? The focus on AAA titles guaranteed to make money, but it leaves little room for less popular genres to have its day. For instance survival/ horror genre is trying to make a comeback with games like Alien: Isolation. Obviously a lot of these genres thrive in the Indie market, but it’d be nice if the big name companies could pour some resources into these soon to be forgotten types of games.

When a game strikes big, studios are ready to hit the iron while it’s still hot and profitable. When is it too much though? Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, and any EA Sports game have seen sequels churned out for every year since they first debuted. Sales may still be impressive but the fan base is starting to show waning interest from a lack of innovation. Metal Gear Solid sequels come out years in between entries. The huge sales of games like GTA5 and Metal Gear Solid 5 show that the extra time it takes to improve these games pays off. With highly rated franchises like Pokemon and the Souls series seeing a release almost every year (if you count Bloodborn from the later), we’re worried this trend might infect these extremely enjoyable series as well.

Almost every game over the last decade has been available for pre-ordering the minute it’s announced. With so many pre orders taken in for a game, studios can make back their project budgets before the game is released. This means that even if a game is poorly received at launch, a profit has been made and the studio can ignore any criticism if they please. This is far from cool. Especially when much anticipated releases like Star Wars Battlefront are also charging extra for season pass dlc content that really should be available in the game already. Don’t get us even Started on Evolve, but I guess natural selection took its course with that one…not a lot of people still playing it.

These days it seems like everyone is on their phone almost 24/7, and gaming studios aren’t ignoring this by a long shot. The gaming market is being showered with Mobile Games, so much so that it’s hard to separate the somewhat-good from the really, really bad. With titles like Clash of Clans and Game of War generating big revenue through microtransations, major console companies are starting to turn in the direction of smaller devices. With groups like Konami and Sega making it clear they plan to put more power to mobile gaming for faster sales, it’s clear that there’s big money in this trend. Since mobile gamers have gotten used to getting everything for free – at least to download – quality titles seem to be in short supply, especially quality titles without restrictive, and quite frankly, bullshit free to play models.

Remember when you only needed a gaming console, a disc or cartridge and a controller to play your games? They seem like distant memories with the now since online capability became a must for games. Many games require an online connection – even for single player. While this is a measure often used to prevent piracy, it generally ends up hurting those who bought the game the very most. Huge, highly anticipated releases such as Diablo 3 and Sim City were severely hurt by this kind of feature. Having your single player experience interrupted because of server troubles seems like a crazy concept, but welcome to 2015 bro.

Being able to patch out bugs is one of the best parts of gaming recently, but it’s a double edged sword. Now it seems that over ambitious launch dates and knowledge that you can still patch a game after it’s come out seems to have lead to companies releasing games they know full well aren’t ready yet. For example, heavily hyped games such as Battlefield 4 and Assassin’s Creed: Unity were both launched with a mix of graphical errors, game breaking bugs and online components not up to snuff, all of which resulted in negative reception for what would have been otherwise solid games. In the PC gaming realm, the much publicized PC port failure of Batman: Arkham Knight led Rocksteady Studios to suspending sales. Despite some correction this trend sadly continues to persist.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions, or rather concerns

Youtube copyright abuse

The skyrocketing prices of triple-A games

Shoehorned Multiplayer in everything

Digital Games removed from online stores

Fake Physical PC Copies

It’s a practice that seems effective for the industry and frustrating for hard core gamers. Allowing you to spend a small fee on extra power ups, items, skins or small amounts of content, Microtransactions are easy extra money makers for studios. Free to Play games may need these since developers need something to pay the bills – but we’ve already seen the damage this model has done to the mobile market. However, much to the chagrin of the hardcore market, mainstream AAA titles have now adopted the system as well, despite the fact that you probably paid for the game in full already. The general feeling amongst the community is that today’s games are chopped up into little bits in order to nickel and dime you for more cash. The only ray of hope in this realm is the recent success of the Witcher 3, Splatoon and Monster Hunter 4 – all of which gave away extra content after release – content that would have most definitely been relegated to micro transactions if another publisher were in control.

Do you agree with our list? What Modern Industry Trend has you most concerned about the future of gaming? For other insightful Top 10’s published daily, be sure to subscribe to Watchmojo.com.