It’s true. 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. I’ve got a list of 20+ games that came out this year that I still haven’t gotten around to. I might get through 5 of them before the new year. And you know, if wouldn’t hurt my ability to play more games if more of them were shorter.
EDIT: I provided this anecdote as a reason contributing to the problems that the industry is experiencing. The article is about the trouble the industry is experiencing as a result of too many competing games being released in a given year. It is not about how I feel about trying to play through many of the ones I found interesting. Apparently Schreier had the same problem on BlueSky with people answering what they think the headline says rather than what the article is about.
Back when I was on Reddit years ago, one of my favorite subs was the Patient Gamers one. There are a couple of similar ones on different Lemmy instances but they’re nowhere near as active.
I remember friends of mine assuring me I absolutely HAVE to get games like Atomic Heart, High on Life, Avowed, the Oblivion remaster, Starfield, Prey, the Outer Worlds, and many more. There are series that I have enjoyed in the last that have way too many entries to keep up with- 3D Sonic, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, Yakuza (with all it’s spinoff games like Judgement and others). I’m sure a lot of those games are great, but I just don’t have the time to play then all. And with hundreds of games in my backlog already, these games need to be on sale for dirt cheap and without anti-features like DRM and micro transactions and online requirements in order to get me to buy them.
So I think it’s worth asking- are there enough whales willing to buy these games for $70 or even $80 to subsidize people like me picking them up for $10 in five years? If not, perhaps these developers and publishers will need to move to a different business model. Maybe there are simply too many devs and too many games getting made.
I have a friend that insists on getting games at launch. When I get the games years later though I notice they haven’t even played them for a hour while I go on to actually finish them.
So I think some people buy because of the hype than to actually play the game, since the act of purchasing gives them the high.