In the video game industry, no one will ever be fully pleased with what is going on. There are faults to be found in every video game, even the ones that have perfects 5’s or 10’s as review scores. But sometimes, it takes brutal honesty to help change things, and that’s what one David Jaffe is hoping to do. For he made a video about how the AAA game industry is dying. Not because of sales or lack of good titles. But rather, a lack of quality titles that actually play differently and not just look different.
Specifically, he calls out the desire for certain studios to make their games “look good” and have “better production quality” rather than have truly new gameplay features. When asked about this, he referenced the Uncharted series:
The point of doing that is to say: what I did in 2001 with U1 PLAYS THE SAME (within most people’s minds) as what I did in U4. At a pure mechanics level, the game isn’t offering anything meaningfully new and FOR ME that is what I want in my games.
Though Jaffe was also clear to say that he doesn’t hate Uncharted, far from it, he’s calling out all games that do this:
No, I mean all of those sorts of games. Uncharted suffers from it as well: same gameplay, better production. If that works for you, I respect that. Truly. I do. For me, once I play a game, I need the next game I play to offer something meaningfully fresh or I’m out.
It is indeed a refreshing take on things, and it’s true that with some series, like Battlefield, Call of Duty, and even certain RPGs, they offer only base improvements and don’t improve on anything else. But not all games do that, and that’s the truth. Where do you fall on this?
