>>373022
Part of it could be due to how obivious the rot in the industry currently is and that gaming is in a much less stable position than it was back in 2014. For example, at the time of GG, we just came off of
AC4,
Alien: Isolation,
Dark Souls 2,
The Banner Saga,
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger,
DKC: Tropical Freeze,
Blood Dragon,
Saints Row 4,
Remember Me,
MGS5 Prologue,
Shadow Warrior,
Shovel Knight,
Papers Please,
The Wolf Among Us, and upcoming releases like
Shadow of Mordor,
Bayonetta 2, and
The Evil Within. Yes, we did have
DmC, nu
Tomb Raider, and
Bioshock Infinite, but those games were just drops in the bucket for what was an otherwise excellent two years and people were still in the honeymoon phase regarding
GTA5 and
Wolfenstein: TNO. Not to mention everyone calling out trash like
Dead Space 3 and
CoD: Ghosts. It was simply that the industry was a lot healthier in 2014 compared to today, a decade later, in 2024. So I assume that many people dismissed it as complaining about issues that would eventually solve themselves naturally, and seemingly did when Japanese games began making a come back over the next few years.
Meanwhile let's look at the current outlook of the industry. The overwhelming majority of games getting announced are remakes/ports/compilations, every single game console has practiclally come to a standstill in trying to sell units, majority of game sales come from Steam instead of physical sales, even the games that do succeed are failing to make a profit, developers are overwhelmingly involved in creating GaaS titles despite the overwhelming majority of players having zero interest in them, the biggest publishers in the industry are either being bought out or having to significantly downsize their staff, and game development schedules have reached the point where companies are not even releasing a "tentpole" game for over a year straight.
Just try to think of the "big games" that come out this year over the past six months. Outside of
Helldivers 2 and
Palworld, what else was actually released? I remember
Suicide Squad, but that was trash,
Stellar Blade, that's actuall rather mediocre and lost all good will when they began censoring the game literally the day-of release, and
P3 Reloaded, the
second remake of a PS2 game that is lacking
all of the content of the previous rereleases unless you pay for the DLC.