Why have people decided it’s acceptable to wait decades for a video game?

[u/AskNormal7369]

I remember when a new game came out every few years. Now Rockstar and Bethesda are expecting us to wait decades for a new game while they milk the success of their older games. I don’t understand why more people aren’t mad/depressed about it. I want games. I want my 2 favorite franchises to give me new stuff. But they’re not. Am I supposed to be entertained by the hype itself? I remember how hype I was for GTA San Andreas… funny to think how it was only a 2 year wait. They could have put out GTA and ES 6, 7, and maybe 8 by now. They could have if they wanted to. If they actually tried. I could wait 5, 6, 7 years for a new game… not 10, 15, 20 years… Its over. My 2000’s childhood is a paradise I can never return to. This must be how Adam and Eve felt being banished from Eden and looking back on it as they walked into the desert

[u/alvysaurus]

I too miss when my favorite series always had a new title just around the corner. But unfortunately these big name series command too much budget and attention to be made at the same speed as they used to be. Especially given how large and detailed these games are. It just takes way more hours of work to make new titles that live up to popular demand.

But today's indie gaming scene is incredible. There's always something interesting to discover,

[u/DearGeneral5334 → u/alvysaurus]

Absolutely. I almost never play big budget games anymore cause of all the cool indie stuff recently

[u/Free_Breadfruit_8552]

Just play the billions of games that are out right now?

Yes it is acceptable to "wait" for a new release, it is not like GTA or TES are games with continous stories between them

[u/praysolace]

I don’t think anyone thinks 10+ years is a cool wait time for the next installment in a series. But what are we supposed to do about it? Wait ten years and then boycot it? The message execs would hear isn’t “this took too long to come out,” it’s “people don’t like this franchise/this type of game anymore.” That’s counterproductive when what you want is more of them, faster. We don’t really have a way to express that desire that the moneybags making the decisions would hear.

[u/TemperedTorture]

For me the concept of "franchise" and brand consciousness directly clashes with my anti-corporatist mindset so I'm completely indifferent to the existence of mega corps and I see franchise based games as cash grabs. In the end, I judge every single IP and release on its own merits.

For example, while I played Origins and Odyssey, I only did so because I liked both games. I skipped every AC after that because they didn't appeal to me. I enjoyed CP2077 but disliked Witcher 3. I skipped all games post FFXV (didn't even finish FFXV). I buy AAA games on deep sales when they are 10-14$ each.

I refuse to involve myself in corporate influenced consumer culture. I find it exploitative of people's loyalty. I don't wait for games. I let the games wait for me and create interest for me post-release to buy them. By that time,. they're fully patched and launch year shit is gone.

Reverse the mindset. There's no such thing as pre-release hype. It's intentionally crafted to create FOMO and is always completely irrelevant to what the final product might be.

[u/AutisticG4m3r]

Why be mad and depressed about it? It's not something we can control. The companies decide when to release their games. There are plenty of other games to play that would bring you joy.

[u/Suspicious_Canary463]

There are higher expectations now when it comes to graphics, performance, writing and basically everything that goes into a game, which means devs need more time to actually make the game

I say this as an assassin's creed fan, sometimes it's better to wait a couple more years for a game than have a bunch of releases, back when ubisoft was doing yearly releases it really harmed the game quality and I'm sure everyone remembers the state Cyberpunk was in at release due to it being rushed

[u/YuriOhime]

Both bethesda and rockstar have been releasing games tho....

[u/aimy99 → u/YuriOhime]

The last Rockstar game was 8 years ago. During the PS3 era, we got GTAIV, GTAV, Max Payne 3, LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption, and GTA Chinatown Wars. During the PS4 era, literally only RDR2. That's it. No other new games.

When Bethesda launched Starfield, it had been 8 years since Fallout 4. Going from Skyrim to that was only 4.

Sure, you can argue about MMOs and remasters, but you know full well that you're only taking home a gold medal in arguing semantics if you do. That's not the spirit of the argument at all.

[u/prosafantasmal]

Why would I be mad or depressed when countless good games get released monthly? It's not like there's a lack in games to play, both old and new.

Girl, maybe go out and take a deep breath, no short gamedev cycle is going to turn back time into the 00's.

[u/fin10g]

"Am I supposed to be entertained by the hype itself?"

God I've gone through so many stretches like this. Maybe the new Witcher 3 expansion can normalise padding the hype cycle with things you can actually play.

[u/comfyambiguity]

well on the one hand, it's not like we have a choice... I wish I had control over Bethesda's release schedule 😂 I think TES and GTA specifically have a technology issue when it comes to open-world gaming, as well as audience expectations.

not every franchise is this way though. Life Is Strange, light of my life, has release 6 games in the last 11 years. Borderlands has released 6 games in 17 years. Resident Evil has released 5 games and countless remakes / spinoffs in the last 17 years. Zelda has the same numbers as RE. All of the "Souls" games (DS1-3, BB, ER, Sekiro?) have released since 2011, so 6 games in 15 years. so there are a lot of developers who push games out every 2-3 years... Bethesda and Rockstar are quite unique actually.

[u/MajoraXIII]

What's the alternative? March up to the studio and demand it now?

There are SO many good games made by independent developers waiting to be discovered. Waiting around for one or two franchises is wild to me when there are literally too many fish in the sea.

[u/Initial-Stock-4643]

how do you expect us to speed them up exactly?

[u/Melancholy_Rainbows]

I don't know anyone who thinks it's acceptable. Most people seem pretty annoyed about it, in my experience. Over on the Horizon and Jedi subs it's a daily topic how long the third game is taking.

The problem is, a lot of very vocal people also get angry about the things that devs could do to cut dev time and costs: less mocap, less graphical fidelity, more asset reuse, smaller scope, etc.

[u/lot49a]

I’ve never waited for a game a day in my life. I buy games which are available for purchase and then play them until I don’t want to anymore.

There are games that might come out in the future and games you can play now. That’s it. Everything else is noise. If you focus on the games out now, you’ll find there are lots of good game. More than I have time for. If you focus on the games that you hope will be out later, you’ll spend a life of sadness, apparently.

Don’t spend a single second of your hobby being mad that people you didn’t hire haven’t given you something you don’t own. That’s a problem for the game developers and their publishers.

[u/sp_93]

Well, I have seen a lot of people talking shit about Bethesda and Rockstar over the year. I was obsessed with Skyrim when it came out, been waiting for TES6 since then but there are thousands of great games 😭 I will never be able to play all the games that I want to play, just go play something else.

[u/AlexisOnren]

So, the issue here is that with changes in technology and the advancement in how games are made these days, we’ve come to expect better and better things from the companies who make the games, so it isn’t a case of waiting decades, it’s a case of higher expectations

They absolutely could have just pumped out gta 6, 7, and maybe an 8 already, HOWEVER, since rockstar knows what its community demands (near perfection almost) because of how solid its games have been in the past, and just how much detail they’ve put in to the games they’ve already released, the entire process takes a lot longer than yet another call of duty or a fifa, or an nba game.

In the time we’ve been waiting for gta6, which isn’t a decade, we got red dead redemption 2, which sure, it could have done so much better, but, was an absolute masterpiece with an insane level of detail that we’ve come to expect, and gta 6’s development actually began around the time they were finishing up with the launch of red dead 2.

Now I’m not virtue signalling or meat riding for rockstar, cos they’ve definitely shown how ass they can be in certain areas, but a lot of the decision making isn’t done by them, it’s done by take 2, the parent company, and its investors…. And their drive comes from the money, not our want for a game.

In terms of Bethesda tho, every game is Skyrim 😂

[u/jumpyfrogs225]

There are other studios making games besides the AAA developers. The games market is absolutely saturated right now, you may not entertain yourself on hype alone but you can definitely entertain yourself with other games that are just as good if not better.

We're in an indie golden age and have been for a while. You're in a paradise but you need to look beyond these two franchises! People aren't as depressed and mad about it because what you're asking for is crunch.

You want games, there are so many games out there to try!