The downfall of RPGs and how FromSoftware capitalized

Gaming has become much more of a business rather than for the love of games

A company does have the right to recoup their expenses for developing the games and gaming is ultimately a business, but that also comes with a cost. Reskinning a game and selling it for another $60 isn’t innovation. Gamers in general became tired of the same formula: go here, do this, do it again, and again, and again until it’s over. Sure one could say Dark Souls is the same way and a criticism of Elden Ring has been the repetitiveness. However, fans are willing to ignore the repetitive nature of the dungeons because of the style of gameplay it has. Assassin’s Creed was also full of microtransactions and even games like Battlefront became pay to win rather than for the enjoyment of the game. I’m way more willing to ignore flaws if the game gives me something worth ignoring those flaws for.

Star Wars has even fallen into obscurity with the EA exclusive deal that was vastly more damaging to the brand than The Last Jedi (yeah, I said it). In 10 years we got two decent games and a load of games that were barely worth playing, and of those two games, one was so buggy at launch that they had a 45 GB day one patch. Lucasarts, one of the best gaming developers, was shut down in favor of DICE, a trade-off I wasn’t a fan of. To be honest, though, DICE isn’t a bad developer, I just think EA is the one pulling the strings and pushing for them to get things out before they’re done leading to a bad name in the industry. The Battlefield games have been fun and engaging with Battlefield 4 being one of my favorite shooters, but Battlefield 2042 was a game I played for about 10 hours on GamePass before uninstalling.

Even the vaunted Call of Duty is taking time off as fans are upset by the lack of content and even new ideas. Fans have been asking for a Black Ops 3 remaster since the Call of Duty 4 remaster was announced. Activision also knew fans wouldn’t want to buy the new game but rather just get the remaster so they packaged it together to charge more and still included the microtransactions. Warzone has been full of hackers and pay-to-win players and it has pushed the casual gamer off the title. I, myself, am a casual gamer and haven’t bought a Call of Duty since Black Ops 2 and a Battlefield since Battlefield 4. This isn’t because I don’t enjoy shooters, this is just because of the lack of innovation. In the last 10 years, the best shooter was Titanfall 2 and Titanfall, a game we will presumably never get a sequel of because EA doesn’t like nice things. Activision has even swapped Nick Mercs and by proxy TimtheTatman, two people who helped build the community to what it is today, for Nicki Minaj and Snoop Dogg.