The first game I ever bought with my own money was Metal Gear Solid 1. And the PS1 to play it on.
I wanted FF7 but they didn't have it. But MGS was a good second choice. It was also the first time ever buying anything from a second-hand store. I wish I could remember the name of the store; it wasn't Funcoland or EB. They had a logo that was an anthropomorphic SNES cart, tho.
That was just the first news link I grabbed about the topic. You want a different news site? There's plenty. Or maybe a link directly to the study that's also in this article?
Really? Because the data I've seen says the exact opposite and that Gen Z is the first generation of people dumber than the generation before them. These kids are already fucked and AI is going to make it even worse.
Ads to go along with some entertainment while I poop, right? Right?
A high speed chase, or a high speed chase?
Also: wtf was with the pit maneuver when oncoming traffic was like less than a 100 feet ahead? Dumbass shit.
Post game content? Like NG+? Other than NG+, I've seen maybe a cutscene after the credits roll, like a bonus scene in a movie. How many (and which ones) have playable content post-credits that isn't just NG+? 🤨
I rarely do NG+. It has to be significantly different to warrant it. The first ever game I played with NG+ cycles just turned me off to it. Oh sure, I could get a sick ass laser sword... After beating the game like 12 times already tho. At that point, it wasn't fun anymore. Especially when that laser sword made the game easy as shit since it one shot everything.
Nier Automata has been pretty much the only game I can think of that required playing NG+ to get the entire story, with each new cycle being almost totally different. Either playing as a different character and seeing new areas, or doing old areas in a new order with new enemy placement.
The numbers don't show that. Indies are finding success, yes. But very few of them are putting up the same numbers as AAA slop. Silksong is the only one of note recently that has huge numbers, and it still hasn't surpassed the latest iterations of Battlefield or Call of Duty. The current best selling game of this year is Resident Evil: Requiem.
And with the massive hype train for Silksong, I feel like the big boys are gonna take the wrong lesson and just spend more money on marketing than ever before to get those massive pre-order numbers while the actual products get worse.
How I would innovate within this confined space:
"What if it was actually a first person game, but your character is a little guy on the shoulder of a bigger guy and you're just whispering in their ear to control them?"
I think using AI for storyboarding is okay. They are already pretty shitty, quick af sketches used to figure out how to arrange the action and get animators on the same page. Now that can be done just a little quicker.
However, using them as placeholders that could end up in the final thing even accidentally, is dumb. A placeholder doesn't even need to be representative visually of what it's holding a place for. Textures could be text that says "texture of wood 1" and words can be normal ass Ipsum Lorem.