Unfortunately, there's little answer to the real question: WHAT ARE
THESE NEW GAMES, and who is making them?

The answers are pretty clear of course; it's never been easier to make games, engines are 'free', sound/visual assets cheaply available, tools well-understood: Barriers to entry lower than they've ever been, not to mention platforms to both play and develop ubiquitous, and free time for
both at a greater level than any time in human history.

rms

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On 31/12/2024 16:03, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Of course, not all of them were worth playing. Just shy of 4000 games actually had enough popularity and uptake to get noticed by Valve and
allow them access to extended "Steam profile features" (e.g., trading
cards, emojis, other profile customisations). Likely less than a
hundred actually became popular enough to break into the public
attention. When it comes to new Steam releases, Sturgeon's law is
probably off by an order of magnitude.

I had to look that up as I thought what has the ex-leader of the
Scottish Nationalist Party (Nicola Sturgeon) got to do with things!

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On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:03:11 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

It's been a busy year for Video Games. How busy?

19,000 new games busy. That's how many were released on Steam in
2024.* That's busy. How many did you add to your library?

[In comparison, in 2023, there were 14000 new games]

[snip some good stuff]

True, but we are in a shovelware phase right now. Even Nintendo's store, despite their original rep for only licensing quality products, is
swamped with all sorts of crud. Much of it "Hentai" or "Ecchi" games with fully, but suggestively, clothed women that you can see after you solve
some kind of puzzle obscuring their anime hawtness.

These firehose times however, often lead to some new killer experience
that can be developed into a less experimental masterpiece, and there's
lots of small indy teams. Finding it amongst the tsunami is the problem.

And there are devs like Larian that just push against the headwinds with
a monumental effort and deliver an incredible product that _not everyone
will like_. I hope that made a ton of money, because this "it's a
survival roguelike FPS with RPG elements, robust crafting, and
basebuilding" stuff has got to go. I don't think anyone really likes "all
of the above." It's just that such games appeal to a wider audience with
their diluted mediocrity.

So, IMO, we are in a transition year for the industry. Time to massage
that with careful expenditure of our money, especially rewarding the good
with full-price spends.

I think even snapping up freebies might send a bad message. It's time to
be a discriminating consumer.

--
Zag

This is csipg.rpg - reality is off topic. ...G. Quinn ('08)

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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:39 this Wednesday (GMT):

On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:04:33 -0700, "rms"

[snip]

But there are probably a good number of legitimate games too. "My
first game" attempts by neophyte Indie devs, or "Hey bud, I made this
game for you" titles mostly made for a small in-group of friends

[Coming soon: CSIPGA: The Game!]

[snip]


Well, whens the release date?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

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