Less money to buy games, cost of games go up, quality still crap, riddled with micro transactions. Why buy a game when it comes out when you can wait to buy it on a sale while you play your backlog and by the time you buy the game it will be the best version because they had time to fix it up, almost never to the degree it should be but still the best it’s going to get
Submitted 3 weeks ago by mintiefresh@piefed.ca to games@lemmy.world
Comments
nman90@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
What stands out most from the article is that the 18-24 demographic has a 25% drop off compared to other groups with a 5% drop off.
Not a great sign for the future if cut backs isn’t simply due to deciding to be fiscally responsible, but overall money problems for every day expenses.
Reporter Rachel Wolfe concluded that contributing factors to dropped spending included a difficult job market, student loans, and a particularly high credit card delinquency rate among those aged 18 to 29.
BurntWits@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That’s exactly why I love !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works. It pays to be patient.
nman90@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thanks for another sub for me to find game deals, much appreciated.
newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not just Gen Z lol. People don’t have money, games are a luxury, luxuries are the first to go when you need to stretch your cash. Not that complicated.
Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I have money for games…but NONE of it is going to any company that makes me scream AAAAA…or when they charge 40+ for a game. screw em.
even their 100$ trash at 95% off…hell no. that’s even worse cause you know the game is extra shit.
all my money goes directly to Indy devs. games are actually fun, made with passion and they don’t try to screw me every chance they get. I stopped with big title garbage like 6-7 years ago. never going back.
this mentality even applies to all my shopping. I don’t buy crap anymore and I wish more people would do the same.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
But then how can you create an artificial divide and pit one generation against another?
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also modern games are trash, that’s kind of a big one you are missing
Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
The article says for other age groups it dropped single digit percent points, so yeah it is mostly Gen Z in this case.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
even if we do, the cost doesnt justify the poor quality of some of these games.
normonator@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Modern games fucking suck. Start making good shit if you want people to buy them.
Also fuck the useless malware anticheats. Do it server side if you want to be even mildly effectivenor fuck off.
0li0li@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Playing indie games only until so-called AAA get their shit together, if ever . . .
normonator@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I miss the the Battlefield 3-4 days for large scale shooters. Everything since has been complete trash. Battlebit is terrible, it’s not even similar.
I’m not going to get that kind of game from an indie developer unfortunately. If it happens I’ll be there.
Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What? You don’t want to play another indie rogulile/meta-commentaty rpg? How about a ‘deep’ story that they plagiarized from a kids’ show?
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
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Do they have money? I don’t have money.
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Modern games from major devs fucking suck.
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ushmel@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
They're spending their time scrolling. The GenZ equivalent of television. GenZ is also getting older. The median age is over college graduate age. They're simply working more or doing other things besides video games. Not everyone is a Paradox gamer. I'm sure the GenZ Paradox gamers, PC gamers, and FPS/sports enthusiasts are all still buying the same games. But the people growing out of it might buy 1-2 per year and play ~10 hrs per month. The "youngest GenZ" is about 13 years old now.
Ashtear@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Setting aside how unusual it is for overall spend to decrease in this age cohort (I encourage people to read the WSJ report linked in this article), this is the only comment here that hits on the most newsworthy part of this. Video games have been recession-resistant for decades, but now we’re seeing it as a leading category for cutbacks. Even though gaming is a low-cost hobby, zoomers have found alternatives, and that surely includes F2P games.
While trends haven’t been great for a while now, this is the most alarming data I’ve seen yet for the traditional gaming market. I feel like I’m gonna blink and there’s going to be a generational divide like there is with baseball.
chunes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve been living under a rock. What happened to baseball?
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Exactly.
The Internet forgets it constantly and shitty slop farms like modern day vice love to ignore it:
Call of Duty isn’t just competing with Fortnite. They are both competing with Andor and the NFL and mr beast and Subway Surfers and so forth. Also dating but genz is extra genz about that.
Its a tale as old as time itself. Once you have disposable income you have responsibilities. Some people insist “games aren’t as good as they used to be because I didn’t spend 500 hours playing Final Fantasy 29 over and over again”. Others are unable to respond because they slept wrong and tweaked their neck.
Other outlets (including both Aftermath and Remap which are ACTUALLY the gaming news parts of the good vice…) have talked about this ad nauseum. Kids, generally, aren’t buying even 50 dollar games. They are playing f2p shit on their phones or playing fortnite or roblocks which are also both f2p games. And the spending for those is generally not tracked alongside the GTAs and the like.
Like, we all shit on Sony for their horrific mismanagement and their quest for a live service game (and cheer that they aren’t as bad as microsoft, I guess?). But… there is a reason for that. That might not be what us olds want to play (I actually like some live service games but whatever…). It is more conducive to what people who still have time to spend money on gaming want. Which is ALSO why there is such a big push for “collector’s editions” and “limited re-releases” so that the olds who don’t have time to play will still buy a 200 dollar cartridge they’ll never use.
ushmel@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
I'm not a gaming stats expert but if they don't track the mobile and f2p game spend with the general gaming spend, then that's kind of a bogus stat to draw the article's conclusion from. Most "mobile gaming" people I know spend more money on those games than I do on Steam with an incredibly long backlog of games I'll never play.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
You nailed it with the age thing.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
From my perspective as a millennial, people are running out of time and energy too.
Like, I know a couple, both working, no kids, yet they mostly plop down for YouTube at the end of the day. A VG or longer form TV is too draining, and too long.
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Video games have been my biggest hobbies for basically my entire life, but I barely play them anymore for basically this reason.
ifmu@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
For me, I didn’t have the mental energy. At a previous job, I was so mentally strained working 8 hours nonstop on highly mentally taxing tasks that even if I wanted to play a game, it felt like a chore rather than something I can enjoy or wind down to. Even if I had the time, since I do other stuff outside of work.
The strange thing is, when I work I have the money but not the time nor energy to justify buying games to sink time into. When I don’t work I have the time and energy but not the money to justify paying $80-$100 on a game I probably won’t play as much as I think otherwise.
I’ve in recent years looking more into reviews and such to weigh in whether or not I want to buy the game in the first place. Compare that to years prior when I could look at a trailer or short snippet and get a good idea of what the game has to offer. Now I’m more weary of grindy game mechanics and predatory micro transactions.
Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah. People have no money. Ask one of the billionaires to prop up this failing industry.
Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Judging by the comments, reading the article seems to be a lost art. Here’s the image for y’all:
It’s very specifically about 18-24 year olds, compared to last year, with video games seeing the steepest decrease.
You can stop complaining about games being soulless, unless you want to claim that wasn’t a problem last year. Compared to last year, this age group has felt the need to cut back at everything more so than anyone else.
bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Almost like they have no money to spend after rent and food.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
We’re headed for a crash, and the junior positions are the first ones that CEOs think they can replace with AI (they can’t but that will take a few years to bite them in the ass)
Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
To be fair, the kids are just a pretty good indicator of where this whole boat is headed. Someone who’s been adulting for a while probably has savings and is willing to burn some of those to keep doing the hobby they like, especially when they’re invested with hardware or friendships that exist through gaming.
Mark12870@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I also didn’t really buy many games until I had proper salary. 🤷🏻♂️ Some of gen-Z are still pretty young and they are just poor students…
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They don’t come out with original work that get’s people interested and/or they enshittify the franchise. If GreatGame was good, we’re on GreatGame VI with microtransactions, paid skins, fortnite play, no immersive single player campaign, and ads with no real change to anything else.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Look outside AAA gaming. It‘s never been better.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Almost. It was better a few months ago before the payment processors started threatening the game platforms
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
there are also almost no new games worth even looking at anymore. There are some, but they are quite rare
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
In the AAA space, sure
Phelpssan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Like others said, it’s not just Gen-Z.
Funny enough, the main reason I’m spending far less is the gaming industry’s push to kill physical copies.
I used to buy a lot of physical games at full price because they would be much harder to find later on, but since I’ve been forced to go towards digital games this is no longer an issue, so I just let them sit on my wishlist until I they’re massively discounted.
Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Me, looking at my physical stash of games
I OWN them!
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Why buy a new game when you have no money and your backlog will take years to go through?
rockettaco37@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Could it be that the economy fucking sucks?
Nope, clearly it’s our fault for not just going out and buying stuff.
hansolo@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Y’all, this market is beyond saturated. And the AI gaming people are flOOOoding the space with more and more stuff.
In terms of a fun way to spend an hour or two, or a few go-to games, there’s unlimited options, many free or free enough. Meanwhile, everyone churning out titles expects full attention and wishlist and dropping $50 on them for simply existing.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
There are also some games with active modding communities that can be played basically forever without getting boring.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Even without modding I have in the last couple of years found myself mainly in a cycle of playing the same emergent gameplay (were the game-space and/or game characters are random) games, one game at a time until I get bored then the next and the next until eventually I’m not bored of the earlier played games anymore and start it again.
These are mostly Indie titles like Factorio, Rimworld and even The Lone Dark in free mode.
The curated experience - which is what most of the AAA stuff is - just doesn’t have this infinite replayability.
chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Feels a bit like the 80s market crash. Too many low quality games flooding market.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t really follow current games. Is there actually a huge increase of AI games?
Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As a millennial, the games today are mostly shit. I’m currently playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and it’s amazing. I had a blast with DK Bananza as well. Deltarune was nice too. But before that? AstroBot. And before that? I don’t know. Usually I play a demo of a game, if that’s not available I pirate it and play for half an hour or so. If I like it, I buy it. If I don’t like it, I won’t buy it and won’t play any further. And on top of that, a lot of games released today are just remakes of games that themselves released on PS3/Xbox360/PC. I mean “The Last of us remastered”??? That game was released on PS4, so I can just pop it in my PS5 and play it. But now the devs want me to pay $70 to have it a tiny bit better looking?
“Lost Soul Aside” will release later this month. I remember years ago when I first heard of this game, made by a single person (who now got a team of developers from Sony). And I will definitely get that. No demo required.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The games today are not mostly shit. There’s so much great stuff that comes out every year that it’s difficult to keep up with it all. It’s just not usually the stuff that gets the most marketing. As a bonus, the best games of the year rarely ask for that $70 price point. What are you looking for?
Potatar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As a person who doesn’t care about graphics: New games are mostly shit. I’m allowed to do less (need animation for each action you know?), I’m allowed to have fewer monsters on the screen (polygon count you know?) takes 35+ GB and it makes my laptop fans go wrooom?
Nikls94@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What good games did come out this year, that’s
• not stated in my comment
• not a remake/remaster
drmoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What a crazy statement. My bottle neck is time not lack of game - there are just too many incredible games there!
Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I feel like the big name titles are all headed in a similar direction (realism, large open world, story-driven), because they need to differentiate themselves from the indie titles that cover the other bases for cheaper.
So, if that direction isn’t your jam, I can certainly see that you’d feel that way, because you need to inform yourself more actively to learn about those indies.
Shayeta@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
If you want a medival semi-sim with amazing Monty-pythonesque writing, check Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I’m honestly split between it and 33 for my GOTY.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Playing it now, while it does have its comedic moments, it feels like a huge misrepresentation to call it Monty Python-esque.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Its not that we cant afford them necessarily, its that we cant justify them. The main reason you needed to get the new game was because all your friends were getting it. Only nerds and dweebs and losers play single player games. CoD is where its at bro. When everyone moves to the new game you can lose social time with friends or you can spend another £50. Now that everyone is poor, enough people aren’t migrating to the newest shiniest edition immediately and people are playing games they already have.
Couple that with desperately working every opportunity you can every hour and adults just don’t game together any more.
Tl;dr they are not feeling the social pressure to buy any more.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Well, gee, I wonder why. Not like their money isn’t going more for necessities after all
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I think SOME of it has to do with AAA being dogshit, but I think a lot of it is actually that they just play roblox. I have been told “why would I buy peak when roblox has this mountain climbing game for free?”
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
The whole world is cutting back on everything everywhere as no one wants to be left short if this global economic craziness gets even more out of hand.
t_berium@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Games were once created by gamers, who had a clear vision. It since became a soulless business and people notice. I think twice before opening my wallet now. I don’t pre-order, don’t spend more on digital gimmick editions and wait for reviews, first. Usually I can wait for sales. The industry’s problems are homemade. But once in a while I find rare gems like Forgive me Father. And I’m happy with that.
kepix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
and indie games are cheaper and better
SuperSpecialNickname@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Did industry try to raise prices even more? Maybe higher prices is what’s missing for gaming industry to blossom /s
Snowclone@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, I remember being in my 20s too. Too bad they are going through the same shit we did. are we getting another “this is a trauma response” generation?
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Everyone is.
I don’t buy new releases anymore.
Why?
Cause the prices are getting stupid. Cause its all digital downloads with no physical product. Cause my “ownership” can be revoked at any time by the platforms whims or the platforms shutdown.
What happened to digital downloads being cheaper, anyway? Thats the promise we were sold 10+ years ago. That by sacrificing physical products, Publishers/Devs wouldnt have to pay for printing, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc, so they’d be able to sell AAA new releases for 30 dollars, and Pub/Dev would still make more money.
And now we’re supposed to be paying 60, 70, 80 dollars or more, for these digital download games… that we don’t even own?
Fuck that. Amazing how the only promise fulfilled on moving to digital download was that pubs/devs would get more money… and they get that by skyrocketing the costs, not because of the sacrifices we made to give up boxes, disks, manuals, and ownership/
JiminaMann@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe on bad triple A games
Steam’s indie games tho, gen Z are spending a shit ton there
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
even milleneals arnt paying it, like myself. not paying for things like switch, or swsh, because they decided to enshittify the console or games, and gouge prices.
Asparagus0098@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I do buy games from time to time, but 2 of my most played games on Steam are just free games. OpenTTD and vivid/stasis.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gen X, can’t actually remember the last time I bought a game.
Suikoden 1 & 2 on PS5? I think that was it.
I used to buy games all the time, but I won’t pay for a digital release I don’t own. Avowed? Digital only. Looked for Expedition 33, couldn’t find it on physical.
I’m not leaving gaming, gaming is leaving me.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Oh gee! I wonder why is this happening?!
I guess we’ll never know!
Anyway, let’s release another copy-paste game at 90€/$ with 50€/$ in dlcs and another collector edition with some plastic toy for 300!
C4551E@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Don’t forget to delete last year’s version from all your customers’ hard drives!
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You don’t have to, we can do it for you. Look: we just removed the game from your account so you can purchase the new one without regrets!
The_Helmet_Stays_On@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
A collectors edition that doesn’t include the game either.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
It’s for your own good. This way you can purchase the game separately and we keep the collector edition reasonable price tag.
frongt@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
But it does have a moldy nylon bag!
Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
90€ + 50€ • DLC? Isn’t that too little for the poor record-profit industry titans with budgets in the billions and nonsensical brand loyalty all over the world?
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
We need to keep the games affordable so they can spend some money in the microtransaction hell that is our store and that is basically mandatory if you want tr keep up the pace with the other games in the pvp mode of the game (the only one available, because we removed local modes since we believe that playing with friends
doesn’t make you want to spend on lootboxesis not as fun as playing with randosTollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
originally i was going to get the first swsh in the generation plus a switch at the time, no thank you, based on how the game came out and what the company, gamefreak said will happen to the future games. 300-400$ switch, +60+15 dlc+ nintendo related services, and storage.(im underestimating some of the costs)
NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com 3 weeks ago
Collectors editions don’t even include physical items anymore. At least you got something cool to keep. Now it’s some worthless download your item once and never again.
I still have those cheap night vision goggles from one of the Call of Duty editions. They’re subpar quality but still pretty cool.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
This criticism is genuinely like 10-13 years out of date, gramps.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
And yet here we are, with games more expensive than 10 years ago and people spending less than 10 years ago. Seems strange, right?