Meh, some of these are new generation growing pains. I honestly feel like this is the first generational transition a lot of people have experienced, which probably isn't far off. I have around 25 games on my PS4 if you include PS+. Last gen when I had my 360? I probably had 5 games in the first year.

Sequels this time around are more prominent because a lot of annualized franchises can still be done on the old machines. It makes sense for the workflow, I suppose, which means the old generation may be phased put slower.

DLC wasn't a big thing last generation, remember that the online ecosystems were just blossoming on consoles.

The creativity one is all subjective.

*AAA gaming

Also, sequels instead of new IPs has been a 'problem' for decades.

1) That's western publishers being all about money and getting worse. How about in-game ads what we don't get anything out of as consumers? Activision is the most respectable gamer-friendly one of the big three.

2) That's something that's spread to the most desperate badly-run Japanese publishers and it's gross. Capcom is a company we need to look out for in the future, and Namco are gross with their Tales of series DLC even though that's all mainly optional matter in there.

3) You may have noticed that no matter how they portray a woman in a game, even if she is created by a woman, it gets called a sexualized anti-woman piece of garbage. Those people are best ignored. People are horrible in real life, even a lot of women are horrible in real life, thus I do not mind them being "bad characters" in GTA5 because from my life experience those are very realistic people. Even the males in it are pretty damn real.

4) New IPs are difficult and so risky that you need to have a lot of money to throw away and risk careers on, or be on a roll of several successful games in a series. Ask Sega about Billy Hatcher.

sravankb raises a damn good point below
\/ \/ \/

Honestly, the biggest change I've seen this generation is that reviews are getting more and more useless.

I mean, I understand that they're subjective and all, but most of the time it just seems like there isn't even an attempt to try and be a bit objective. As a result, reviews relay personal issues and experiences rather than mechanics, controls, etc. Plus, there seems to be a substantial amount of time set aside towards discussing story and characters rather than the gameplay, which is fine for some folks, but I tend to only care about the gameplay cause even well-regarded stories in gaming tend be meh, in my experience (with the exception of The Last of Us).

Fortunately, GB seems to avoid this issue. Call me old fashioned, but I like how technical their reviews are. They read like actual product reviews and less like blog posts, compared to most other gaming websites. Although to be fair, I still prefer Quick Looks to reviews when it comes to making a purchasing decision.

@jeust said:

I disagree that sex and feminism are peripheral issues, but let's leave that aside for a moment. What evidence is there that the increase in new kinds of criticism has in any way constrained or inhibited creativity in games? What an odd thing to bring up alongside broken games and aggressive DLC plans.

You know, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful. If you just take the time to look at it.

I was thinking about Dragon Age: Inquisition, and the males choices for romance, that players have been criticizing. There isn't a character portraying the a more classic damsel.

That's what I've been doing recently and it has made a huge difference in how I view games.

Not sure why would you think criticism is conditioning creativity, Cinema and other Mediums face even harder scrutiny and they been doing fine for decades by now. Personally I think its the other way around criticism actually encourage better products, and more creativity.

If so creativity is being held back by big publishers risk aversion and sequelitis. I hardly think it has anything to do with peripheral issues.

Most of these issues just seem like continuations from the previous generation granted they're still problematic except for the feminism one where your just being silly.

Seriously what the hell's a more "classic damsel" and why would you want it?

There is a good interview of Steve Jobs on how in tech companies marketing people get promoted over product people. The idea is a product person is less effective than a marketing person in increasing sales year after year. So this results in marketing people getting promoted for increasing profits. Eventually the majority of managers and executives in the company are marketing people. So rather then letting product people create a great product, the marketing people dictate a product they market. The company stops being about making and selling great products and becomes about selling the brand. I think DLC, Origin, Uplay, EA access, annual franchises, and day one patches are symptomatic of this. The companies don't care about the product's quality beyond can we market and brand it. So now developers have ridiculous deadlines and little room for creativity. AC Unity's dev team probably had plenty of calls saying, make it wow on show floors and then just crunch out a passable game by Nov 2014.

I think a lot of AAA publishers see the $60 box in store as dying, and subscription + add on content as the future for gaming. It starts becoming much easier for a company to operate on a subscription based income than crunched development cycles followed by expensive marketing campaigns and the risk of a flop.

Also seriously who thinks any media organization has ethics; they are for profit companies working in a field that subsists off the success of the market they write about. It's amazing this is an issue, did you guys also believe that every e3 trailer isn't prerendered footage? Hell there are plenty of jobs in companies that essentially consist of flood our product page on every online store with 5 star reviews then flood our competitor's with 1 star reviews.

Yup. These issues are somewhat present in smaller games but this list only really applies to the traditional AAA game.

Games have never been better. There are more new ideas and names in games than ever before. We like to complain, but we live in a world where Transistor can go toe-to-toe with Advanced Warfare in a GOTY discussion.

So what if the mainstream Hollywood-equivalent games have gone a bit sideways? Four years ago we'd have been screwed but you can go on Steam and pick up Door Kickers or This War of Mine and be set for weeks. There are so many more avenues for us to get our hands on games and a huge market for new ideas in the indie space.

Games are still awesome you guys.

This is patently absurd and a terrible way at looking at the world.

Also this; there have been so many amazing indie and small studio games released in the past 3-5 years that are more inventive and unique than anything AAA companies have brought up since 2007. The best part of GB is that they QL and highlight this often overlooked segment of the hobby.

This is mostly true, short story I worked in the industry for a brief period, but then I moved back to my country to work in web development. You constantly hear how great ideas get chopped by the Marketing Team or executives, you constantly heard about games that shaped to be awesome and got literary re-done halfway trough release because some executive somewhere else thought it wouldn't sell... You also get design documents torn apart and be re written by some business guy so it fits better a "business model". This is like having a rock band have their album re done by a marketing dude who knows nothing about music, but think that you would sell better if you do some shitty knock off.

The sad part is that these executives most of the time barely play games, or know anything about game design or video games history. These are people who went into some expensive college got a degree in marketing and really think of videogame as toys, they don't play nor care about games and it does shows with the decisions they take.

I know hating Apple is popular, but you can't denny it is a product first company, their products are just good... Apple devices are crafted by designers and engineers not by marketers. You can draw a parallelism with a studio like Rockstar which is a engineers-writers first studio, while the decisions they take may leave business people scratching their heads, they also sell a zillion with each release because they keep making outstanding games.

I wish more companies were like that!

Thanks for the input guys!

@sravankb:

You should have stopped at your first sentence.

The thing about feminism is that, as it has been manifested recently in the gaming community, it is defended aggressively and doesn't generate discussion, and thus the betterment of the medium, because its partisans don't listen themselves to criticism on their stance, and instead try to force their agenda on others by flayling sexist and demeaning comments around.

Feminism in itself is good, and is an idea worth pursuing, but I don't approve of the "shoving in your throat" kind of approach.

There are in reality people who love the damnsel in distress, and women who play it, as there women that are more passive and fragile. We don't need and we shouldn't pursue a medium that shows an unrealistic portrayal of women, as equal to men on all standards, no more than we shouldn't pursue a medium that shows an unrealistic portrayals of men, because then it becomes an instrument of propaganda and social justice.

And in what I've experienced the feminist movement consists mostly of trying to force others the feminism ideas, at the expenses of the ones that are already in place. There is no middle ground. Or you're for feminism or you're against it. There is no place for diversity, and that is a problem in gaming.

Feminism is a problem in gaming when, especially, developers are pressured to adhere to feminist standards, and when feminist developers try to force their one-sided view of the world without respecting other views on products they are a part of.

That might sound entitled, the last part, but games continue as limited as they go from one part of the spectrum, portraying women as depended and weak, to the other, considering super strong capable of rivaling with man on any grounds. I'm all for inclusion, but the inclusion of all sides of the discussing, because they all have their arguments, based in reality.

That being said, the criticism of the sex scenes in Mass Effect led to a drop in quality such scenes in the following games of the franchise, with characters engaging in foreplay totally dressed, and the screen fading to black, imposing a more prude perspective on the subject of relationships, that is in contradiction with reality and is only there because of the desire to appeal to everyone, giving rise to a half-baked representation.

Feminism in video games leads to things like Dragon Age Inquisition where you're straight male options for romance in women is either a strong and independent woman or a bisexual one. Where is that regular girl who happens to be heterossexual?

And these practices of forced compromise and exclusion turn games into instruments of censourship and less enjoyable products overall.

While I agree with you about the quality and quantity on indie games in recent years, they're not the games consoles are normally bought for. With a modest PC you can play 99% of them, without the need to spend 400$ in a new console. So while they are awesome, and do placate part of the disatisfaction for some, the disappointment doesn't subside or is resolved by them. Because, in my point of view, consoles are bought mainly for exclusives, AAA games, and comfort.

@jeust: But those types of games are now more available on the new machines that they ever were on console hardware. Sony has been exceptionally savvy at picking out high-quality indie PC games for their store. I understand that people who bought the consoles so early in their lifespan may not have wanted them to play something like The Binding of Isaac Rebirth or Rogue Legacy but it's more content than we ever saw than during this stage in the 360 and PS3's respective lifespans. The claim that there are no games to play on the new consoles is fallacious. Almost every week something goes up on those stores that is worth playing.

That might be cold comfort for people who thought 2014 was going to be the year the new consoles blew the doors off with big AAA games, but as an early adopter I have a tonne of interesting games both big and small -new and remastered- to play on my PS4. That's fucking cool and more than I had when I bought my 360 midway through 2006. If people can't open their minds a little and play different types of games, then they should have waited. Saying there are no games to play because there are fewer boxed AAA releases out there is a boring opinion to me. This isn't 2005.

I agree, and I think it is a great improvement over last generation. But it's cold comfort like you said.

@jeust:

Couldn't this have just a been a nice classic thread bitching about shitty publisher practices? Did you have to go off the deep end?

Well this is a thread about shitty practices and our, my, views on them. It's kind of hard to separate issues from the way we perceive them, the deep end.

I don't see how lamenting DLC culture and the overabundance of microtransactions is even remotely related to tinfoil hat fears about feminism stifling creativity or lamenting the lack of the "classic damsel" romance option (seriously, WTF?).

They are all issues that plague gaming?

Meh, the only real issues I have found that really irritate me are micro transactions in full priced games and broken, unfinished games.

I agree, but I don't think sites like Giant Bomb are exempt. I find myself caring less and less what games media thinks of a given title by the week. Whenever I'm interested in a game or want to see it in action, I've found myself going to other gamers or channels on youtube that focus on showing off the game.

Really at this point the only thing that keeps me going to any games media site like Giant Bomb is features like Metal Gear Scanlon. That'll probably be the only reason I resub this year, if I do.

@jeust: Plaguing games? That's a tad dramatic, it's debatable that some of the points you brought up are even huge issues to begin with.

I think the main problem is that we are getting the same games as last generation. Everything I have seen so far on the new consoles are clear descendants of the games of the last generation; either being direct sequels, or games like Destiny or Shadow of Mordor which have obvious inspirations and do little new. This realisation has really sapped my interest in games, I just don't know how many more towers I can synchronise, red dot sights I can unlock or dragons I can kill. Last generation had games like Modern Warfare, Assassins Creed, Gears of War, Mass Effect and many more; games with such stunning originality in some key areas that video games were fundamentally changed after their release. Nothing like this has happened this generation. We need a new wave of such titles to bring games forward, we can't spend the generation playing pretty 360 games.

Oh well, at least MGSV will be pretty good.

hehe threatical even... still some issues are really bad, like the botched release versions.

@jeust said: Feminism in video games leads to things like Dragon Age Inquisition where you're straight male options for romance in women is either a strong and independent woman or a bisexual one. Where is that regular girl who happens to be heterossexual?

What is a "regular girl who happens to be heterosexual"? Besides apparently not being allowed to be strong and independent.

I do agree with you though on the broken releases, micro transactions bleeding into full priced games and lately I realized that on some level it's pretty sad that the games I'm excited about getting into this fall is the same series I've been playing for several years and not something new. Well, to be fair, not all games I'm excited about are part of long running franchises. So maybe it's slowly turning around. Or at the very least, I'm getting better and looking outside of my own box.

@jeust:

I have to disagree here and point out that your argument is filled with straw men, or I guess straw women in this case. They aren't trying to force just one portrayal of women on everybody. Every actual complaint is that there seems to be very little women who can influence the portrayal of women in games. This results in stereotypes and unrealistic female characters in games. The problem here is culture, what it is, and how it affects minorities in a society. Culture is a learned behavior; culture is your acquired expectations of what humans should behave like. As a man, if I were to meet you and I wore a dress and earrings you would think me weird even though throughout history and different cultures men have done this. It is imprinted very early on in our brains how the genders differ and should behave, but this stems from a male point of view. A man can't know what it is like to be a woman resulting in gender prejudices in culture's depiction of women. So in a male dominated culture the portrayal of women comes from men, and women are now voicing their opinion about that flaw. There is very long history of teaching girls to be submissive to boys that if you really think about it is unfair and unrealistic, and if we have aspirations of a free society need to be exposed and expunged.

I don't know why you'd expect to find classic damsel characters in a game about men and women getting together to save the world, but to be fair, Mass Effect did have some that came much closer to filling that role than anyone in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

I do have to question why so many of the characters are not available as romance possibilities, though. That even includes the lone black female character, which seems oddly limiting for a game that was planned with diversity in mind.

As to what you said, Josephine can be romanced, and that character isn't exactly a warrior.

Periferal issues conditioning creativity: the portrayal of sex, feminism;

Peripheral.

Issues surrounding women in video games aren't peripheral, either, they're pretty important. There isn't a whole lot of positive female representation in games, and a lot of the "strong women" in games tend to also be "sexy". That's not to say that there is something wrong with being sexy, but that's the first trait that people notice about major female characters in video games - they're often wearing less clothes, less sensible clothes, clothes that are made for sex appeal and not necessarily to fit whatever they might be doing in the game they're in.

The criticism towards sex in games isn't asking for censorship, you've got it all wrong. It's asking for better, more positive representation. You want someone beautiful in your game? Sure! Great! But that shouldn't be what defines them.
(I feel like someone could respond to this with the word "Bayonetta". OK, but that's only a series of two not-particularly-popular games and it isn't a counterpoint to what I just said).

As for the rest of your issues

Broken games and beta versions of games being launched, and fixed after being sold to its consumer audience;
A larger focus given to DLC;
Microtransactions;
Sequels instead of new original intelectual properties.

These were all issues that cropped up early last generation or before, they're nothing new and we'll be fine with them.

@jeust: But there is no agenda, and nobody's shoving anything down our throats. Anita S, for example, is hardly radical in her points - she's shedding light on issues she finds to be "problematic" (admittedly an overused buzzword in and of itself), but neither she nor any of the other people talking about female representation in games are demanding wholesale changes or censorship. Do game devs have a red feminism phone in their offices that I don't know about?

@ll_exile_ll: @hodor: @believer258: @stryker1121: @jeust: Looking at the conversation you guys are having about feminism made me think of that SNL sketch from last week about The Dudleys TV show.

Honestly, the issue isn't with feminism specifically or with games. Feminist thoughts should be included in discussions of games and there's no reason they shouldn't be. But there really is a problem with PC politics overrunning the creative process. Across all forms of media. Content creators are walking on egg shells because there's always going to be someone offended by some omission or stereotype. That doesn't mean we can't discuss poor female representation or that it isn't an issue, it obviously is to many, but the way we're approaching these discussions seems to be to smear the person or product and aggressively force a change in stance instead of learning and growing.

Feminism is a beautiful thing and benefits everyone. The way it is currently being inserted into the collective conversation is extremely abrasive and the gaming media is certainly a guilty party to it.

@believer258: Someone else who gets it! Hallelujah!

@spraynardtatum: I don't think that asking for better representation or a better portrayal of women is "walking on eggshells". There are people who will never be satisfied, but a good creator can parse the people who will never be satisfied with the people who have criticism worth hearing.

It seems like the biggest problem is that amid all the tumult, there isn't really anyone who is a good enough writer and a good enough speaker to "lead" in some way. The whole conversation needs a feminist who fully understands the concerns of both sides and holds an excellent understanding of video games and is inhumanly calm and patient. I haven't seen someone like that pop up yet, it's all been a bunch of yelling and anger, and that's why I've largely viewed the issue from a distance.

The reaction to feminism as it relates to gaming is astonishing to me.

As someone earlier said, this kind of criticism has been around for decades in other media. Film, literature... I mean, it's all there. And I don't think I've once heard a feminist say that "games are bad and sexist and people who like them are all misogynists." The problem is that most people trying to argue (I'm sorry, "discuss") with them often intentionally misrepresent what feminism actually is, or willfully remain ignorant of it. That, and a lot of people who REALLY don't like what the feminists have to say sort of prove their points for them (death threats, rape threats, sexist insults... etc.) Seriously though - I feel like a lot of people's heads would explode if they went into any English department in any college - feminist critique is a pretty established thing. The fact that it's moved to games (albeit lightly) shouldn't be taken as an invasion or massive call for censorship, or as people trying to denigrate gaming. What it actually means is that people are actually starting to take the medium seriously, and treat it like any other form of art. That's a good thing!

All this cheese and whine now days over who your character is and who you can bang in the game. When I was your age you either played as a robot, a ninja or a cop. Most of the time is was a combination of all three and you were glad to have it! Now get off my lawn!

I think that these issues you talk of are really only a part of the current gaming landscape. More specifically, certain AAA publishers are to blame for the current depressed mood of gaming, and they are at the very least having the blame pinned on them. Hopefully there are some lessons to be learned for them (Ubisoft, I'm talking about Ubisoft).

Here is what is currently great about gaming;

1. Independent developers have more freedom and exposure then ever, with Sony seeming very keen on supporting them and MS making strides in that direction.

2. New gen is still in it's infancy, and there are some growing pains associated with that. 2015 is going to be a hell of a year, hopefully.

3. Japanese publishers have realized that the PC market exists and should be supported. The response to Valkyria Chronicles and FF13 is incredibly encouraging, whether you are a consumer or a publisher, and is a marker of good things to come. Here's hoping to a great Ground Zeroes port.

4. Very few games have any sort of gender politics ruining the creative process. Just look at MGSV; both Konami and Kojima have stuck to Quiet as a character.

5. Holy shit, Persona 5 and MGS5 are probably both coming out next year. Holy shit you guys.

I think that certain things in gaming or gaming culture only get you down if you care about them. Just ignore that twitter nonsense and enjoy some video games, whether old or new.

@spraynardtatum: Just not seeing the correlation between social critique and games development. Can you give a specific example of where this kind of impact is taking place? As a couple of folks have said already, feminist critique in particular has been part of pop culture for decades. Why should games be any different? On that subject, here's an interesting take from Carolyn Petit on how unreasonable it is to ask games writers to keep politics out of their reviews:

http://agameofme.tumblr.com/

@jeust said:

I don't agree this gen has "increasing" problems, I do think the gaming market is splintering and AAA console games are losing their exclusive dominance financially and socially of the market to mobile, f2p, indie games and just other non-gaming diversions altogether, but with that change comes new opportunity.

And as @adequatelyprepared: pointed out there have been many positives this gen too.

If there is any core problem in today's games, it is the continued rapidly escalating cost of AAA game development coupled with their single stream of revenue (New Game sales).

That leads to most of the other "problems" you mention DLC & microtransactions (not necessarily a problem imo, just depends on execution), Sequelitis & Creative Risk Aversion ( a big problem) and busted & incomplete games ( a huge problem),

The issue of feminist critique OTOH of video games is not only not a problem but a sign of health and that games media has hit a wider mainstream audience. All creative media is subject to literary, political and social criticism. All commercial products is subject consumer feedback. AAA games are a mix of both, they are products and they are creative works.

A fair amount of women are saying games aren't giving them what they want to play (there are of course also women who are 100% satisfied with what games offer today) and they don't like how they are portrayed in these games, I'd think most businesses would listen to and value that feedback. Not all may agree with it or act upon it, and that's there right. But the opportunity to capitalize on it is there for those who to pursue it.

I fail to see how that's a bad thing.

To be honest, none of the romance options in DA:I are particularly compelling because the characterisation of the companions is pretty drab. Consider the gay female side of things - they have a choice between the boring bureaucrat type and another character that gives Aerie a run for her money in terms of vexatious behaviour.

So are you saying that every single character in the game should be strong and independent ?

There are many layers for people in general (for both men and women) .Limiting video games to a certain types of characteristics will obviously affect creativity and ruin the video gaming experience ,in the long run .

Occasional, fairly reasonable feminist arguments in entertainment sure are so insane and ruinous, huh fellas? It is almost as if video games have entered into the realm of criticism everything else was in like over 100 years ago (besides film, that was still in the 20th century though.)

To be fair, it seemed like the current generation of consoles sort of blindsided developers. It caused them to rush products to market which made the games laden with technical issues. I wished they'd let them bake in the oven a bit longer, than release a slew of broken and unfinished games to market just to make positive earnings calls at the cost of consumer confidence.

DLC, Microtransactions, and the such are to me a bigger problem overall. When I see the stuff it makes me wonder what was created after the fact, or was something withheld from the final product so it could be monetized. I totally understand that game prices haven't increased in 8 years (although I remember some SNES games being $60 at retail, ie. Chrono Trigger), but I don't want to be nickel and dimed for content that would have already been in the game otherwise.

On sequels and franchises, that will always be a commonplace practice across all forms of media. For there to be more original content ("IP" is marketing lingo I refuse to co-op), there has to be more creators in the mix. Different people with new ideas will always bring something new to the table.

Finally, in regards to outside influences on creativity, I'll say this: A good creator worth his/her salt will always consider valid criticism without compromising their vision.

@giant_gamer: I'm saying the way that's written implies (to me) being strong and independent somehow excludes you from being "a regular girl". Besides, I don't think anyone is trying to limit character creativity but rather make it more diverse (which is more creative, actually). And in the process of making it more diverse, there will naturally be times when the "classical" gender portrayals will not be part of the picture because the spectrum is too broad to be applied to a limited set of characters.

Developers setting out with the intention of making a storefront, where they used to set out with the intention of making a product. That's pretty much what it all boils down to.

The games press being a lost cause doesn't help either, as there's now nobody to hold the industry's feet to the fire.