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]

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.

Unfortunately, there's little answer to the real question: WHAT ARE
THESE NEW GAMES, and who is making them? Are they earnest attempts by
Indie developers aiming at very niche markets, or (more likely) quick
asset-flip cash-grabs by the unscrupulous? And equally important, why
isn't Steam doing more to limit the flood of garbage onto their
platform? More isn't always better (and I say this as an ordained
member of the Church of The Number!)

Because do we really NEED 19,000 new games each year?

* or so reports this article. Think they're wrong? Take it up with
them!
https://www.vg247.com/steam-new-game-releases-2024-massive-jump

>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

On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:04:33 -0700, "rms"
<rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net> wrote:

>>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.

That's very much the how, but does nothing for the who and why.

I suspect the majority are scam-games; hacked-together asset-flips
that convince just enough people into thinking that they're getting
something of value to make a profit. Or games that eat up spare CPU
cycles to chug on crypto-shit. Or are involved in online gambling. Or
are just outright malware that steal your credentials. None of them
have to be good, and once you've a pipeline you can probably knock out
dozens of the games a month for a pittance. All you need is a handful
of people to fall victim for your scam and you're probably making a
profit.

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!]

And then there are titles made for larger groups that generally don't
get much attention: the latest FPS designed for East Malysian Atheists
Who Also Like Parrots. Or even shit-post troll games made for the
lolz. All legitimate games, just made for relatively small and
targeted audiences.

Then there are the games that fall in-between: legitimate games that
are intended to sell but are slightly sleazy. Porn-games or games that
blatantly rip-off somebody else's game.

A lot of the former two groups are the equivalent of the flood of
flash games that once filled the web; short, crappy and only really
worth playing if you're into the community its targeted towards.

The article stated there are less than 4000 games that actually
reached any sort of traction: that is, gained enough audience outside
their niche. And I wouldn't be surprised that even amongst those
games, the bulk of them are still crappy 'joke titles' that were never
really expected to sell. I suspect the number of actual 'legitimate'
games, where real effort was put into them, probably is less than a
quarter of that.

Unfortunately, at this point, speculation is all we have. But I think
it does Valve -and gamers in general- no favor to have 19000 new games
dumped on them each year. It clutters the store-front and makes it
impossible to find stuff actually worth playing. Some moderation or
curation by Valve would be welcome, I think.

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!

On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 10:56:30 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>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!

No, I'm pretty sure sturgeon's law has to do with fish. You know; 90%
of everything is carp. ;-)
..
..
..
..
..
..
(crickets)
..
..
Yeah, I'll see myself out. Don't forget to tip the waitress!

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)

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

On 1/2/2025 12:04 PM, Zaghadka wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:03:11 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
> Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

> 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.

https://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/1086940/baldur's-gate-3
"...estimate that Baldur's Gate 3 made $1,721,077,585.92in gross revenue
since its release. Out of this, the developer had an estimated net
revenue of $507,717,887.85."

There's other places besides Steam it's on though, so some more than
that, but how much who knows, so I'll ignore that.

That doesn't cover Hasbro's cut, which drops it to a bit more than $400m

Then there's other costs like payroll, employment taxes etc. which I've
seen estimated at $160m.

So they probably actually have more than $240m in profit from it, but
those last two estimates are pretty sketchy.

> 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.

I'm a bit more wary of just going for the Number this year, it's making
it a bit hard to find the games I want to play in all the cruft. Steam
at least lets me organize them into folders, so it's not as big a
problem there. Even if there's few giveaways for Steam games, I have
bought tons of cheap games in past years (not this one) that I've lost
interest in even trying. I have a folder called "zGarbage" (z so it's on
the bottom) of 75 games I've actually tried that I've found were
absolute garbage.

I don't see a way to do that on the other clients, while I have looked,
I haven't looked very hard.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

On Tue, 7 Jan 2025 12:02:42 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On 1/2/2025 12:04 PM, Zaghadka wrote:
>> On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:03:11 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
>> Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
Hey now, careful with your attributions. I didn't write that. ;-)

(although I write so much I actually had to go back and check to make
sure I didn't ;-)

>I'm a bit more wary of just going for the Number this year, it's making
>it a bit hard to find the games I want to play in all the cruft. Steam
>at least lets me organize them into folders, so it's not as big a
>problem there. Even if there's few giveaways for Steam games, I have
>bought tons of cheap games in past years (not this one) that I've lost
>interest in even trying. I have a folder called "zGarbage" (z so it's on
>the bottom) of 75 games I've actually tried that I've found were
>absolute garbage.
>

I hesitate to do that, just because I've too often found gems in games
I'd otherwise never consider, and if I consigned games that don't
immediately look appealing to me in a 'Bin Of Unplayability', I might
miss out on something worthwhile.

I like how The Number has become a recognized meme here. Can we spread
it to other forums, you think? Let's show the world that Usenet still
has something to offer! ;-P

On 1/8/2025 7:34 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jan 2025 12:02:42 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>> I'm a bit more wary of just going for the Number this year, it's making
>> it a bit hard to find the games I want to play in all the cruft. Steam
>> at least lets me organize them into folders, so it's not as big a
>> problem there. Even if there's few giveaways for Steam games, I have
>> bought tons of cheap games in past years (not this one) that I've lost
>> interest in even trying. I have a folder called "zGarbage" (z so it's on
>> the bottom) of 75 games I've actually tried that I've found were
>> absolute garbage.
>>
>
> I hesitate to do that, just because I've too often found gems in games
> I'd otherwise never consider, and if I consigned games that don't
> immediately look appealing to me in a 'Bin Of Unplayability', I might
> miss out on something worthwhile.

That folder is only the one's I've actually tried that were so bad I
never want to give them another chance. Although I did throw Marvel
Heroes in there because I assumed it was dead forever after it shut
down. Looking through it, about half I might actually give another
chance now that some years passed.

I've got 121 games in my default uncategorized folder, which I haven't
found the interest to play yet.

I've also got another 77 each in a 'Second Try' folder I intend to get
around to giving a second chance as I felt I just wasn't in the mood for
the type of game when I gave them my first try. there's and 77 more in
my favorites folder probably half of which I put in there to try next
but when I finished whatever I was playing wasn't in the mood for that game.

I've got a couple other folders that have games that may also be in
others, one for my son's games (29) and one for games I've finished (81)
a good number of those are in my favorites though.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'