I disagree. The PC gaming market is about $76.67B. That's ~$4M for each of the 18,626 games, most of which are asset flip crap. Many of the remainder are by indie devs (generally <30 people). The article mentions about ~10% of those games receive 500 or more Steam reviews, so we're probably looking at $40M on average person game w/ 500+ reviews (i.e. probably not asset flip crap).

There are only about 20-30 AAA games released every year. The indie game market size is about $5B, and that's across platforms. Even if that was only for PC games, that's still 85% going to AAA studios, as in those 20-30 games that get media attention.

We don't have too many games, we have a problem where too few people buy indie games. The average successful indie studio isn't making $40M per game, it's likely much less than that.

This doesn’t make sense. Nobody is supposed to ingest all media. It is impossible.

You can’t hear every song. You can’t watch every movie. You can’t see every painting.

It should be celebrated that we have so much accessible art and entertainment.

This isn't a problem. For the first time in a very long time, I actually have a queue of games I want to play and din't just mindlessly scroll steam store or wait for big releases. In fact, I no longer follow game releases, there is something at any given time I can find to play

Bullshit propaganda, sorry not sorry. The problem isn't too many games, its reviewers overhyping too few games. Gta6, marathon, whatever the heck else, seriously do some basic research and you'll find great games at a great pace. There is, in fact, room for all games in the market.

XD

This is a good thing for everyone besides the capitalists who seek to profit from their game.

We need a UBI so these artists can just make the games they want, and so "too many games to play together" is no longer a financial issue.

Again, wealth redistribution fixes a problem phrased by news as a consumer problem.

Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they're raving about a new one before I've finished that last one.

That's why i only wishlist games that i'm interested in. by the time i get around to them, there's usually a sale and/or price drop. Some games have been on my wishlist for years, while I'm working through my backlog, waiting for their price to drop even further.

scale down then. or make better games.

capitalist crises of production are dumb.

You dont have to buy every game a reviewer hypes.

I’m not sure there’s any solution to this problem. Returning to the era of gatekeepers would be a regression, and the increased democratization of game development has led to more creative and interesting products all around. This glut may be intimidating for players, but it also presents them with more choices than ever before, so long as they can ignore the FOMO of not jumping on every new release as soon as it hits.

But for the companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into games that need to move huge numbers to break even, this is no small challenge. And it’s just getting harder every year.

Solution is simple, stop spending millions of dollars on the same bloody IP and cash grabs and give your devs some freedom.

There have been 'too many games to play all the ones that seem interesting to me' since the late 90s, at least.

There has always been absurd levels of competiton in video game releases.

What this person is describing has been the broad state of the overall industry as long as I have been alive.

It is not a problem.

It is totally fine that decent games are moderately popular and quite good games are quite popular and occassionally something seemingly simple is actually novel in a fun way, or hits just the right combo of gameplay / art style / narrative elements at the right time and is a breakout hit.

It is totally fine that giant evil megapublishers who exploit their employees and then slave drive and mismanage them into producing shiny, but buggy and lackluster garbage... are not making back their marketing budgets.

It is in fact very very good that they are failing.

The only thing different now is that video gaming is massively mainstream nowadays and normies struggle with choice paralysis more publically these days.

A real dedicated nerd is capable of seeing through marketing and doing their own research, thats... kinda the whole thing that makes one into a nerd, a seemingly odd obsession and inordinate amount of time spent trying to understand their hobby.

If you are just a consumer who is overwhelmed by choice and marketing, pff i dunno, get gud scrub, capitalism be doin what it do, figure it out, develop your own actual personality and sense of taste and discernment, or keep crying I guess?

Video game development democratizing via lower barrier to entry is a great thing.

Players are more likely to find and get something they want for a reasonable price, megacorps are more and more likely to spend way too much money on things they don't understand anywhere near as well as they think they do.

Whats not to love?

If their form of video gaming as a business model is unsustainable, well that sucks for them I guess?

I like having a lot of choices. You don't need to play all the games!

I've recognized there's enough digital entertainment to last me for the rest of my life.

Anyone I see who is constantly playing the newest thing is a loser that is consumed by consumption.

And then i play some city builder that cost $20 for 300 hrs

"Of the 1,431 games released last year that garnered more than 500 reviews — an indication that they were played by at least a few thousand people — more than 260 were rated positively by 90% or more of the players. More than 800 scored 80% or better."

Problem - You can't trust Steam reviews. Steam users will give top ratings to "Click the Duck".

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3110500/The_Best_Duck_Clicker/

How comes movies aren't like this? I feel like there are so few movies but so many games.

The article seems primarily focused on new games. And the article still makes some great points, but when you factor in older games the problem gets bigger.

I am not going to say that old games were better or that "they just don't make them like they used to". What I will say is that a lot of older games that are super cheap on Steam or out of print entirely are still great. There are occasionally new great games being released of course (I haven't played Hades 2 yet but I expect it to be great, for example). But there's a lot of new games being released where I think... "Why would I spend $70 or $80 on this when I already have this backlog of older games? Why would I spend my time playing 7/10 games when I have dozens of 9/10's sitting in my library waiting for me?"

I don’t feel there are too many games, because I can simply buy fewer games, but I do miss the feeling that there are games that everyone is buying and we’re all playing at the same time. I felt like everyone I knew was playing BG3 and we were all talking about it all the time. I don’t want to only play those kinds of big, blockbuster games, but I do want a few of them per year.

The first and foremost problem of the Videogame Industry is the videogame corporations. They

Over work and under pay workers

Transformed modern gaming into gambling

Enable pedophiles to run rampant on their platforms while censoring people who stop them (notably Roblox)

Needlessly price hike software and hardware

Purchase popular indie studios then shut them down

Etc

Yup.

The overabundance of games is killing great games.

Can't tell you how many fantastic multiplayer games I've bought only to find out they're ghost towns or become ghost towns soon after purchasing. And it's because players are so spread out over so many games. 20 years ago these games would have been major successes with a huge player base for years, but they're dead on arrival or within a few months. It's a real bummer.

That being said, I'm going to plug Mycopunk. Just got it and it's great. Like Deep Rock Galactic and Risk of Rain 2 had a baby. We need more players though. Came out in July. Currently on sale. But base price is cheap.