*shitty overmonetized slopgames, also known as AAA games are losing the "attention war". The indie and AA scene is blooming.
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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I'm losing my attention for everything. The color in the world is fading and there's little joy left in vice.
No no no there's lots of good happening you just to look out and see it. Yes a lot of the bad news sucks but there is a lot of good still happening and a lot of people getting things done:
Read https://goodgoodgood.co/, and https://goodnewsnetwork.org/. Also watch Good News (That's the name) and Sam Bentley YouTube channels
For good good good.co there is also 2 articles where they cover studies on Hope (They cover many other studies, hopeful and good news too in their other articles):
- New study finds hope key to a meaningful life
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/hope-key-in-meaningful-life
- Hopeful people live better lives
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/hopeful-people-live-better-lives-study
There is a 3rd site that covers issues but in problem solving way forgot name of it though.
Never give up!! We the people have the power to make this life wonderful and free! -From Chaplin final speech video. Great video to watch
You can do anything in this life. Keep going. Connect with others and do! Find things you enjoy doing and find fulfillment from in life! Much love to you brother/sister!
I do notice that it takes more effort though. Before online platforms figured out the whole engagement outrage pattern, I spent a lot of time playing video games, yes, but also reading books or making art.
Then the online platforms started investing in trying to figure out how to engage you, and it is easier and easier to spend time online by default to the exclusion of other things and feel bad about it because your online time wasn't spent on something that made you feel good like it did in the past. It is surprisingly hard to resist the current big platforms are trying to push us down.
People on the Threadiverse have taken at least a small step by disengaging from Reddit and going to an open-source, non-corporate-controlled engagement-maxing platform. But human negativity bias still makes it a lot easier to post outrage and comment outrage and get in fights. Hell, I am making this comment because of my own negativity bias and desire to expound on how much I hate what has been done to our attention spans! It's a lot easier to complain than to analyze why I enjoy something. And I think the engagement bait outrage has ruined my brain a bit to still sort of seek that out and scroll (but better Lemmy than Reddit). I've been trying to get off but change is hard. Sometimes I relapse and click an article I know will have negativity and anger, like this article I clicked on.
I do really appreciate what you did by posting something to help instead of yet another "thing bad" even if I super agree with "thing bad", and I'm being part of the "thing bad" pattern right now.
I do know of !takeyourtimeback@lemmy.world which might be able to help with the whole online engagement problem.
That all grey episode of fairly odd parents.
Not playing games, or not playing the current live service shovelware they keep pushing out?
Lots of people are realizing there were more quality games released between 1985 and 2015 than you could ever play in a lifetime. We don't need new shit if it's just gonna suck.
There's plenty of great new stuff too, often times even modern iterations of the retro stuff we loved, but it doesn't get the same level of marketing, so it's harder to find.
You're right, of course. Indie devs with passion are still putting out some great stuff.
My ire was much more for the AAA studios, which seem to have tossed out all the talent and vision that brought them to the top.
I mean, I was Ride or Die with Square Enix for decades, when they were different companies. After 16, I think I'm just done with new Final Fantasy games altogether. Fuck you guys, imma go play 6, 8, and 9.
I don’t play AAA games anymore (haven’t in years) but I still feel somewhat sympathetic to their plight. What has happened to them is the same thing that happened in the music industry and the film industry and a long time ago in the book publishing industry.
The marketplace is too crowded with quality stuff and so it’s extremely difficult to compete with what’s already out there. The only real answer is to take massive risks and hope you can hit a home run. Unfortunately, AAA studios just like big movie studios aren’t set up to take risks anymore. They’re set up to spend a huge amount of money on a project that’s supposed to be guaranteed to succeed. Indies can survive more easily in this space because they’re small so they can take more risks.
It’s like the dinosaurs after the asteroid impact. The big ones are dying off and the tiny ones are surviving and will eventually become birds. Or something I dunno!
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Hey buddy, those live service shovelware games are manufactured by Shovel-Spyware-Freemium Holdings Inc. They are returning valuable profits back to their shareholders!
And isn't that what video games are really about anyway? Think of the shareholders.
Older games are also meant to be beaten. I remember games that had reviews saying, "This game will take 40-60 hours to complete", and that was it. You could replay it if you wanted, but it was just an experience.
The new idea is live service games. Games you can never really beat, you just grind at it forever. That or they have a bunch of add on things to make the game take a lot longer so you keep playing the same thing over and over again. I'm not saying they're not fun, just that they lack a satisfying conclusion and variety.
Modern "gaming" bears more resemblance to those other-mentioned vices than it does to when it was a nascent thing and still fun. The parts of my brain that light up when playing an NES game is not the same as the ones that light up when it (very briefly) tries to engage in any of the unfinished ones in my increasingly-seldom-visited steam library.
The thing they are tracking is primarily money. If people are playing games they already own and spending money on crypto chasing a big win, that speaks more to increased economic desperation than loss of interest in video games.
Thank you. I was wondering the same thing. The conclusion that attention must be on porn/gambling/crypto is such a wild jump.
correlation != causation
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"Gambling and crypto" reminds me of when I was in DARE and they would refer to "drugs, alcohol, and tobacco," and I thought "aren't those all drugs?"
I mean, at that point a lot of games are also gambling.
No. We lost interest in corporate fuck heads with no ties to gaming, using any imaginable way possible to milk, manipulate and fuck their customers over. We still love games.
milk, manipulate and fuck
That definitely sounds like porn /s
just spent 45 on 3 new indie games. gonna play the shit out of them. also playing cash cleaner simulator and loving every minute of it.
anytime I see any AAAAAA slop on steam from companies like ea, ubisoft, activision etc...i click their game, then click ignore so I never see it on my lists again.
Those three companies are dead to me, even if they hold some IP I used to hold dear.
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Can someone explain to me how cryptocurrencies are even in this fight in the first place ? How are they grabbing and holding people's attention ? Are they staring at the graphs all day !?
Because the article is badly written.
It's confusing money spend on X must equal time spent on X.
The total amount of money spend on video games has gone done but more money is now being spent on things like crypto currency. This is being claimed that it means that people are spending more time on crypto since they are spending more money there. It ignores other issues such as who is spending on what (its countries as a whole, not amlunt on average per user), gaming is more expensive, more games are being made as a live service and are flopping (Highguard anyone?), retro gaming is getting bigger (doesn't cost a fortune), etc...
Totally. Been a gamer for 30+ years, and none of the new stuff holds my interest. Also, my hardware being less than a full time mortgage, means most new games run poorly. So, old stuff it is.
Gambling with make believe money and lots of economy and trading "experts" telling you where to "invest" in
I'm old enough to remember when games were being demonized. Don't sound too bad now, eh?
Me too. Pretty funny 😂
Games were just supposed to be games, they were never meant to compete with those things. But thise CEO's want it all.
The stock market wants it all. Infinite is no good. This is why Valve is best in that regard. Private company that moves as one without external influences
I mean, they are trying to turn video games into porn, crypto and gambling.
I mean, isn't this what Gacha games basically are?
They got the gambling part down pat.
They have been trying to get crypto in with little success.
And while porn games do exist, very few of them are both good at being porn AND being a game (modding in porn to good games not withstanding). Which sucks, because this is the only one of the three that would actually be cool.
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Bollocks. I call this bullshit.
This article should be Exhibit A in any class on "correlation does not imply causation."
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Gambling was made more accessible in the US because of a SCOTUS case in 2018. Starting later that year, Delaware became the 2nd state to allow sports betting (after Nevada). The list of states allowing access to online sports betting keeps growing, with Missouri the latest to join less than 3 months ago. 39 states now have gambling in some form, with 7 more considering legislation in the next year or two.
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Gaming revenue took off in 2020-2021 because more people were spending all day at home. It has since flattened, or slightly declined as a) pandemic-era games that were written and designed in those tough circumstances turned out poorly. b) gaming company execs thought the gravy train would never end, so set projections too high. c) acquisitions and mergers due to a combination of a) and b) meant massive layoffs and low-effort slop. d) VCs bought up the shells of former successes and accelerated c). Oh look:
A new report by Epyllion, a gaming industry advisory company headed by venture capitalist and market guru
These two things have nothing to do with one another, besides coincidentally happening at roughly the same time.
Shareholders: “so you’re telling me that people want a gambling, porn, crypto game?”
Already exists. Gacha H-games (which may accept crypto payment, not sure) happen to be extremely expensive to play, too.
Yeah this is probably the angle of the report. Bet it’s paid for by a firm that owns a lot of stocks in game companies. They want to push the game companies they own into that direction so they can squeeze more “value” out of their portfolio. And now they have the “evidence”.
Remember many of these industry report are paid for by someone with an agenda. They are not independent science.
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This is shareholder bait.
That's because most games suck.
I don’t know whether to upvote this or not. On one hand, I know plenty of great and amazing games. On the other hand, plenty of slop is being created or forced into existing games.
I thought GCP is Google Cloud Platform but turns out it's Gambling Crypto Porn.
Well... It's kinda like this.
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People love to waste money thinking they will make a profit. - Gambling.
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People love pussy. And girls turn 18 every day so there is never a shortage. From Christy Canyon to Reilly Reid to Sweetie Fox- Porn
2a. Just to be inclusive, people like dicks too. Johnny Sins is never out of work.
(Being super inclusive here, Reilly Reid and Johnny Sins don't discriminate. They both have fucked the whole goddamned rainbow.)
- People REALLY love to waste money thinking they will make a profit. - Crypto
Meanwhile,
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AAA studios are doubling down on micro transactions, "performative" social justice, AI slop, and live service slop. - AC Shadows
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Expedition 33 and Silk Song are the exceptions to the rule as far as how the AA performs financially. - No One Wants to Die
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Private Equity and MBA majors have too much influence on the game space. - Embracer Group
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Gamers just grow up. Some things you just grow out of. - Inflation, fascism, life, etc.
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And most modern games just cost too damned much! - GTA 6 projections.
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For a the past few years, I had wondered why videogames, movies, and TV shows nowadays feel so... Bland. Meaningless. Soulless. Corporate. Like, I know they ARE corporate, but these industries have all been dominated by gigantic corporations for my entire life. What changed recently? Am I just getting old and curmudgeonly and preferring content that was made back when I was younger?
Then I was watching DoorMonster talk about some show (I could be wrong, but I think it was the video about how Arcane had a great Season 1 that was largely ruined by Season 2) where they kept joking about not accusing them of using AI to write things.
Then it clicked. The Writer's Strike from May-September 2023. On paper, the Writer's Guild secured restrictions on the use of AI. And I can't point to anything specific and say "that was clearly written by AI". But I can say that for the past few years everything put out by pretty much every company has felt very... "Meh". Nothing new has grabbed me and said "wow I need to watch/play that". Could be a coincidence, but I also have to wonder whether AI tools involved in writing and visuals have cost us something intangible that I can still feel.
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This is simply not true
Sounds like fud, from all angles. No one but Tech Bros and their bots care about crypto, porn has always been porn. There are literally thousands of great, dirt cheap games to play.
But anecdotally, I observed YouTube suck away a lot of attention from games and TV in my family. It’s lower brainpower, so if one is (say) dog tired from work, the algorithm has a lot of appeal vs a hardcore KCD2 session or an intense TV drama.
Discoverability is certainly an issue too. If game advertising boils down to “The TikTok algorithm and YouTube influencers,” then of course the predatory casino games are going to win that war.
So they're losing non-gamers who like EA sports?
Yeah, it's got NOTHING to do with the cost of GPU's in the last 6 years...
Nothing at all...
They're not losing mine.
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