Gamers are dying out. Gentlemen.
Sigh.
It's bad. I don't even know what the fuck he's talking about. I'm gonna be honest. I have no idea what he's talking about.
Sometimes things feel different, but you can't quite put your finger on why. Well, uh, today you're gonna find out why, because gaming has changed. We've got new data that suggests 93% of kids prefer playing games
on phones, not PC, not console phones. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just because they don't know what it's like to play on a PC. They don't understand the glory. They don't understand the level of experience. They can't, like, of course they don't know that they like it more because they can't afford it. That's the reason.
...Wyatt Cheng. Don't you guys have phones? He was right. Oh dear. Turns out he was a little bit prescient. But here's another aspect to it. It's how these kids engage with games. Here's a quote. They no longer identify as gamers. They identify as players of a specific game. That's like games are a medium that they like. It's that they play Roblox or they play Fortnite. So directionally based on the real
trends that we're seeing... That's kind of a pretty big difference. I mean, I guess for me and a lot of WoW players, probably also that were stuck inside the cave, this is something that, you know, isn't really that surprising. Because there's a lot of WoW players that are not gamers.
They just simply play WoW and that's it. True of gaming. Yeah. Looks like it's people who are fans of one game. That's right. Probably play it. Like a meta game. Which is a bit weird. I don't like it and it raises a big question. What does it mean for people who prefer what I'll just call traditional
gaming experiences? Maybe people like you and me. Okay, so in our last video, we looked at gaming's past
and compared it to now. And we talked about the 1983 game crash. Retarded kids that can't control their impulses that will spend money irresponsibly. That's who gaming's for. Everybody knows this.
Game crash that leveled the American games industry. It's at so many standards for where we are now, but there was a side effect that we didn't talk about, and it's one that's key to gaming's future. You see, when games were surged in America post-1980s Game Crash, they were sold as toys for children. And that decided the marketing for like the next 40 years. The medium literally grew up alongside its audience. You had Rob the Robot,
Mark Hamill to Young Boys. Then came G4, Tony Hawk, Call of Duty for the cool teenagers. I was a cool teenager.
Totally.
No I wasn't.
Now of course, well-
I was, and I had Halo, and we had Tony Hawk, and we had all the wrestling games. We had Dragon Ball Z. We had Soul Calibur we had Super Smash Brothers we had fucking everything and it was awesome bro it was so good have well we've got yeah cinematic sad dad games I'm so sick of the the last of
us has done irreparable damage to the gaming industry it made every fucking annoying pretentious theater kid that makes video games think that they can be a fucking Hollywood director. It's so annoying, you're not Kojima, pack it the fuck up, you annoying fat millennial, and just make a video game like Fall Guys and shut the fuck up.
Yeah, it's grown up with us. Absolutely. Gaming has always been for everyone. Anyone can pick up a game. A Nintendo grown up with us. I absolutely say gaming has always been for everyone. Anyone can pick up a game. A Nintendo game is an example. But the culture and the marketing, not so much. It has been targeted.
And I want you to think about Battlefield 6 and how it just got revealed because they unironically played Limp Bizkit. Yeah. Limp Bizkit. So, you know, go take your medicine. If you, if you've remembered this track
and it does kind of show us something. The culture and marketing around the game industry hasn't changed with technology. They haven't changed with demographics.
Well, they tried, they tried for a long time to market video games to quote everyone and to go after modern audiences. But what they realized is that there aren't any. And the real audiences of a military tactical shooter where you run around and kill other people with guns, in fact, turns out to be a majority men.
That's right. It's mostly guys.
Who could have guessed? They will not be impressed by Limp Bizkit selling a game in the way that maybe the target audience of Battlefield 6 will feel nostalgic, especially one that needs a $600 console. And why would they be? They have thousands of experiences on their phones, experiences that are, to them, just as entertaining.
Or, should I say, to their brain, chemistry and systems are just as engaging. Personally, I think there's something to be said for the depth of an experience. But basically, that's what they-
I think that little kids can't process a complex game because they're little kids. Like if you're eight years old, you're going to want to play Roblox because it's McDonald's content. There's nothing really to it, it's super simple, there's one button for everything, and it's really easy to understand. And the thing is that when I was a little kid, I had trouble figuring out like Final Fantasy 3 and 4, like I couldn't do that.
And so like over time as you get older, you kind of evolve and you play better games. And I think that's what happens with everything. I think games can and should be. And now we've got data, we've got stats to back it up. And well, take your Vicodin because this is kind of gonna hurt.
IGN state of gaming report frames this as a generational shift. And it does go along with a lot of other data that we've seen. Essentially Gen X and Millennials think of gaming in terms of platform loyalty. That's you know the 70s through to the 90s generations so basically most of the people watching this video at least per the demographics I see on YouTube. We're no strangers to tribalism in gaming that's's why we, you know,
have a console war or a PC master race. But distinctions between platforms are of course completely breaking down. We see that. I mean, the need for a- I think that the platform wars ended like four years ago. And I think that at this point they're basically dead Xbox threw in the towel and it's better for everyone. Hopefully Nintendo will eventually follow suit. That would be amazing I don't think they ever will but I do hope that one day it happens Cons, I feel like console wars are dead man. They've been dead Platform is kind of disappearing we see that there's like three fat 40 year old men that are on Twitter
That are continuing it. It's like, you know in like World War two there was like a soldier that didn't know that World War two was over until like 1970 something and so like they came and told him he like wait, bro, like it's a wait it's done and He's oh shit. They so like they came and told him, he like, wait, bro, like it's a wait, it's done. And he's, oh shit. They're like that guy.
For him games, but younger generations simply do not age in the same way whatsoever. Here's some stats to make that make sense. 93% of under 13s prefer playing games in their phone. So that's the 2000s.
Because they haven't they haven't experienced a PC they 93% of under 13s prefer playing games on their phone. So that's the 2000s to 2010s.
Because they haven't experienced a PC. They don't know what it's like. That's the reason why. They don't get it yet. And also they're under 13. Their brain can't understand a complex video game
because they're stupid. You have to understand that like kids nowadays, like their brains are probably smaller. And even if they're not physically smaller, they're, like, you know, like, functionally smaller. Like, kids nowadays, like, you gotta understand, like, they're really stupid. Like, it's bad. Like, they're really, really dumb.
And like, you think about it, right? They grew up on Cocomelon, they evolve into Roblox, they have, like, weirdos talking to them at Roblox, they're nine years old, oh they can't- they never move around so they can't even like walk up stairs. This is real, look it up. Uh, and then, you know, they're like ten years old, eleven years old, they start doing galaxy gas, they forget how to write their name that they learned at nine years old and then by the time they get into high school they can't even do math like no kids are like I don't think people understand how bad it is
like yeah then they're on TikTok trying to do dances and be a Fortnite influencer they've got TTV next to their name or YouTube next to their name trying to like stream snipe iShowSpeed and like be the next famous person and like this no I'm serious Like that's what's going on here It's really bad, bro. It's it's so bad. I don't even blame the kids that they don't know what they're missing That's the problem.
The cooked generation. Only 15% Prefer a core PC. Yes, of course. It's very sad sad. And by PC it's probably a laptop. Even 32% of millennials now prefer playing on phones. I have to wonder if it's because... Because they're just fat and old and they can't handle PC games anymore. That's not really a surprise.
Well, the torment nexus that has called the world has cooked all of our brains to the point where that's really all that we can, uh, we can latch onto, you know, convenience.
I think also another big reason is that millennials, and this is what happens with older people in general, is that complex video games, something like World of Warcraft or something like Expedition 33, for example, these are video games that require a tremendous amount of, like, mental, like, decision-making and awareness. And as a person gets older, or as a person is younger, both of these segments are just simply not interested in that. The young people can't process it, and the older people don't want to because they're busy. And so really you have this middle ground of like people from I would say ages like
12 to like 30 to like 40 right? And like they're the ones that are really you're making those like complex video games for. Those are the ones that really care about that. And I've realized this is myself because I think to myself like how did I myself, like, when I was 21, 22 years old, playing video games? Being good at video games was one of the most important things to me. Being able to accomplish goals
in video games mattered more than almost anything else. Like, I would sacrifice almost anything in order to get more time playing video games. But then, as I older and as my life changed and as I just did that over a period of time and I gained those achievements, uh, you know, in both real life achievements and also in game achievements, I simply lost that, that, that, that, that momentum. I, I don't care. I really, I don't care as much anymore. Like, oh, you're bad at the game. Yeah. Like it's not even something
I really think about. It's not a big deal. You know, tastes change over time. Yeah, it's just a game. At the end of the day, it really is just a game. You lost that dog in you?
Yeah.
For those numbers in the 80s? Yeah. I don't have that competitive drive. I don't have the reason like, oh, I want to farm this game 12 hours a day anymore. Like that's just, that's not, that's not an impulse that I feel anymore. And I think that there's a lot of people that are around my age that are the same way. Like, you know, a lot of my friends,
like they're already married and have kids and everything. And even if they wanted to get back into World of Warcraft, they just wouldn't really have the time to do it. So they stick to simpler games and things that they can still enjoy. They like gaming, but they just don't have the time to invest into a complex game. That's it. The payoff of farming games isn't there? Exactly, yeah. Like the payo- and this is what happens, right? Is that when you're a young man, especially, there are very
few things in your life that you can work towards and really get a genuine payoff that's tangible So I think video games for young men are that outlet where they can really work towards a goal and achieve that goal Systematically and as young men get older, they obviously achieve more prominence in the workplace. They achieve more prominence socially, they hopefully achieve more prominence with getting a girlfriend, etc. And the desire and the need to fulfill that desire through a video game diminishes because it's being fulfilled elsewhere. And I think that's a good thing. But that's I think the reason why a lot of people at least my
age and older are moving away from competitive gaming experiences and hardcore farming game experiences. That's the reason why.
In the 90s, well, I think that's what those people have grown up with. Now, this graph from Matthew Ball's State of Gaming Report does help to explain everything as well. Let's look at Roblox as a case study, which of course does mean content warning. Get ready for some real goddamn sheer horror. Roblox has existed since 2007.
That was the first full year of the Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii. But it didn't take off properly until 2016. It didn't really explode until an audience fluid in tablets began playing. And then the pandemic kind of changed everything.
Mobile play massively increased.
Here's the difference.
Unlike the rest of the industry post pandemic, Roblox kept growing. Yeah. So you know the way we talk about the games crash and all that stuff? Yeah. Well, maybe that happened in some places. Roblox, it's the one place where those trends actually helped. And it's outperforming everything.
This one's because Roblox won the metaverse race without even playing. transforming everything. Crazy. Grow a Garden has the highest concurrent user base ever, ever of a game with 21.3 million players. It was made by a 16 year old in three days.
Keep in mind, that's like if my red number right now, instead of saying 40,000 or whatever it said, said 22 million. Okay? That's concurrent. That's not followers. That's not subscribers, that's not people that watched it today, that's people that are online at that exact moment. That's the
red number.
So you know, compare your multi-hundred staff AAA studio to a 16 year old in three days. And, uh, it feels sad. You got got. And that might sound alarming. It is alarming. Is this where gaming is going? I mean,
we're already seeing Sega and Starbreeze licensing official games and Roblox.
Yep.
Like a Dragon, Payday, those are in Roblox. You could think the industry will coalesce into platform agnostic mega games that kids will grow up with them as basically second homes and that those will wipe out everything else and i get the fear and i know
why the fear mongering can work and there are some things to be afraid of i don't think it's going to happen honestly i mean kids like again like it's a game made for kids. I mean kids that grow up with Power Rangers don't want to watch Power Rangers for their whole life. I mean there's nostalgia for it for sure but you know interests evolve as kids grow older.
But the thing is that's already how the games industry works and I'd say we're already feeling some of the downsides. So what if I told you that Call of Duty and Counter-Strike are basically just Roblox but for boomers? I don't know why I'm saying Call of Duty and boomers, let's say Counter-Strike. Yeah, CS is is boomer Roblox. Now it literally isn't in many ways, but what it is, is a mono game because for many of those people that may as well be the only game that they play. Well, I mean World of Warcraft. Yeah, they're okay
For other channel I cover a lot of World of Warcraft because yeah It unfortunately got its claws into me when I was young and now I can't escape
Many people World of Warcraft is basically the only game they need the only thing they exactly that's like for a long time the only game i played was world of warcraft and i played it for over eight hours every single day and i did that for years thousands of hours
now every month yep we get a new report from circana right this is their engagement report and every month what do we see? We see the same 10 games report the highest player counts. Console and PC space. Now, sometimes a cool indie like Peak will punch through, especially on PC.
And looking at Matthew Ball's work, he has found the same pattern since 2021. Where on PC, five games make up 30% of total playtime.
Those games- This is true with everything. Like it is, it's true with everything. Like it's the same with revenue. It's the same with economy size, with countries. Generally, almost everything trends towards extremes
where the largest amount of something is consolidated around a very small percentage of whatever is holding on to it. Movies, books, shows, stocks, the 80- yeah, the Pareto Principle, I think it's even- this is something- it's like, uh, what's that thing that golden fuckin', uh, like, I think it was like Michelangelo or Da Vinci that like the the spiral thing. I unironically think that that is the numerical version of the golden ratio. Yeah yeah for most yeah exactly. This is the numerical version because it manifests in almost every single
type of data and information. Games are called Counter-Strike, Fortnite, League, and Minecraft. The top 10 games? Those eat up 50% of playtime on average. What that essentially means is massive concentration. But on consoles, things are even more concentrated. It takes just the top 5 games to hit 50% of total playtime. Those are COD, FIFA, slash EAFC, Fortnite, GTA, and NBA 2K.
The top 10 reach 60% of playtime. So where does everyone else live? The answer is in the margins. 6.5%. They're in the slums. What is that number? This'll shock you. That is the total playtime-
By the way, you want to know another place this is very similar to is Twitch. Twitch is like this as well. Think about it. Like you go and you look at the viewership on Twitch, almost everybody is watching the big streams, and then meanwhile you have just a handful of people that are getting all of the views.
...for newly released games in 2023.
Oh yeah.
It was a good year. Just four games took half of that 6.5%. Wowee.
Baldur's Gate, Starfield, Diablo 4, and
What the fuck?
Hogwarts Legacy Okay There's strong games in there
Yet only 6.5%
Ahhhh
6.5%
Why?
Well it's because only so many people are willing to play those new games Because much like the kid who only plays roblox or maybe the teen who only plays fortnite yeah a lot of people they only play god they only play again this is i bet boomers probably said or gen xers said this about millennials with wow that this is just their version of World of Warcraft. Or Halo. Like there were mono games 20 years ago too. Like CS.
Hey, they only play CS. And Newsies 2025 report shows something that's also interesting. The number of people playing just 1-3 games per year has actually increased consistently.
Do you want to know why? It's number one because video games, like what a lot of games try to do, is they try to have different reasons for you to log on and play. And so like, for example, like, you know, WoW has pet battles, they have PVP,
they're going to have housing in the new expansion, they have raiding, dungeons, mount farming. And so even if you don't want to play the core game loop, there are other things that you can do inside of the game that keep you engaged inside of the general ecosystem. Gotcha games have this as well. Like if you've played Honkai Star Rail, if you've played Genshin Impact, if you've played Wuthering Waves, you'd know this, or Zenless on Zero, there's always these
little puzzle games, these little bullshit events that you do, and the reason why they do that is they want to keep you inside of the ecosystem of the game. Unum Asumae? Yeah, exactly, right? And so they keep them, yeah, talking about adults or kids or who, with everybody, with everybody. And also, here's another reason is that more and more video games are becoming more complex and more metagamed. And like, for example, it's very hard for a person to maintain consistency, playing multiple competitive games,
unless that's all they do, or they're just really talented, or, you know, for whatever reason, they used to be a pro player, but now they're not they have like a you know a proclivity for it. In general keeping up with metagames has become harder and harder and harder over time and so what's happened is that people have just consolidated around playing a handful of games or just one game because that way they can just keep up with that one singular game and they don't feel like they're behind.
You add that together with the amount of daily quests and retention mechanics that every video game seemingly has now, at least every online live service game, and you have people that are just constantly playing the same exact thing. And like you see this also, like with Twitch, how many of you guys know like a League streamer or a wow streamer or a cs streamer? That if they play any other game their viewership goes down by like 90% it's into the shitter
absolute garbage You guys have seen this yep, yep, there you go, and that's what happens Yep, overwatch 2 yep. That's another one. Of course. Over four years, it's hard. That's across steam, playstation and xbox and the times where people do play more games. Those are just when triple A's have a bad year. And that is the closest correlation they've found of that one to three game group in steam the majority play Counter-Strike 37% or Dota 10% so even then it's
still very much a case of mega games and what we see here is it's not just the kids yeah no it's
actually the way and this is also like i'm going to talk about a second order effect of this this is why people are so tribalistic about their gacha games. This is why there's so many fights over Genshin Impact being better than Wuthering Waves or whether this or that gacha game is dying. It's because people invest all of their time into these games and they don't want to have their waifus dissipate into the void. That's the reason why. they're terrified of that.
And that could also happen to World of Warcraft because eventually World of Warcraft will probably go into a maintenance
mode.
I don't think they're ever going to shut down the servers realistically in our timeline. They're probably never going to shut down the servers. They're going to keep them up forever. But the point is that even that being said, wow, players are hating wow, the assess below.
Yeah, yeah, of course, right? But they don't wanna lose that and all that time and all that investment. And that's why people are so tribalistic about video games. It's because they've invested so much into them.
Multiple industries within the games industry have went. Most players have their game, they might try something else, but they very often don't and the numbers back it up. Now think about kids playing games on their phones or teens playing games on their phones. What does that mean for the next generation? What does that mean for people who, according to this research, do play a lot of games and are responsible for, well, at least in Roblox, one of the things that's holding up game industry growth,
like literally pretty much the only thing that has continued the COVID trends that all the investor types hope for. Well, those people don't think of themselves as gamers. So what does that mean for the next generation of games? You may have heard of the now departed investing legend Charlie Munger. One of his good lines is, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. And what these reports show us
is that the incentives are changing because the audiences are changing. Companies that need a larger audience will need to meet people where they are. We're seeing that games like Genshin and Infinity Nikki look like Ubisoft style mega games, but they're launching across console, PC, and phone. Where wins me?
Most games have to be phone compatible now, and I think you're going to see this happen more and more. I also don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, as long as the gameplay isn't diminished. If you keep in mind that a lot of the games that we grew up playing, things like Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, you know, like I've recently was playing Hollow Knight, like many of the games that we played growing up could be played on mobile easily. So let's not act like, oh, you have to have a PC to play a good game. There's plenty
of simplistic games that were playable back then. So you said this, I have, I've been saying this for a while, it's very obvious. And then the other big reason why is that, and this is something that I'm sure Bellew will probably discuss, maybe he won't, is that this is also a very regional trend. So for example, in China, mobile gaming is much more prevalent than PC gaming comparatively to the West here.
And it's also true in South America, because over there, a lot of them have phones, but few of them have gaming PCs. And because of that, and also like, and then it cuts into like, for example, um, like, uh, work, uh, work transit culture. Like, for example, like in China, it's much more common for people to use public, uh, public transportation. And when they're using public transportation, they're able to sit there on their phone and play a video game. That doesn't
really work culturally here in America because most people have cars. So over there, you're going to have a totally different subset of people and a different set of desires, right? And so what's happening now is that you're seeing a convergence of phone games and also pc games and i think this is a good thing by the way it is a good thing because i feel like a lot of pc games are getting into this like graphical oh yeah look if you look at the hair on this guy's head and you can see that like oh well like three of them are gray And this is the reason why you need to buy a new $4,000 computer
Yeah, I don't think so guys. I don't think so so you're basically hitting a We've hit I think a graphical like kind of diminishing return. And you're seeing that now with Where Wins Meat. This game's gonna be playable on phone,
and it looks pretty fucking good, but same goal. These audiences expect instant access to huge libraries of games, not individual purchases. And this trickles down into design decisions. Take a look at EA's releases this year. Battlefield and Skate are effectively franchise revivals. They are legacy games coming back for an aging audience who loved them, along with some limp biscuit to handle the marketing. But they're different, and honestly in an exciting way, because they are both launching with user generated content tools. Often I think of UGC and I think of some bizarre skibbity situation with a lot of very vibrant
colors that makes me feel old and confused happening in Roblox. I did that. What does UGC mean for something like Battlefield? I'll tell you what it means. Extremely impressive shit, at least based on what we've seen from
BF6. I think user generated content is super important. And like, I mean, really you can go back as far as Halo 2 custom lobbies. I mean, at least for me, right. I mean, I think that that's an obvious no brainer that people would want to play that. Of course.
So it could very much be that those dynamics work for the audience of those games. And that if done right, those games could see growth in a similar-ish way. And there is some precedent as well. It's a little thing that we call the modern culture of PC gaming. Right? Pretty big.
This is one thing that's kept Elden Ring alive. One of the big reasons is that a lot, and also Baldur's Gate 3, is that a lot of people just play mods of the game. And so that way it keeps the game relevant. It keeps people playing it because they're playing different versions of it. Skyrim, I think Skyrim is a better example than either of the ones that I gave, actually. You're right. That's a great example.
This time it's framed through Roblox's horrifically predatory ecosystem. One that uses kids to generate infinite revenue. Yeah, moral issues very much exist.
I mean, child labor, there's a reason why they had to make it against the law. It's because people were doing it and it worked. It worked really well.
God damn, what a business model. Turns out just child labor, that's where it was at. All the time, child labor, parents money.
I was trying to tell you guys this.
Could go wrong. Now this demographic change opens audiences up to new sorts of experiences. These kids find new modes daily, they play new games daily within their Roblox. Maybe to them, they have an incredibly diverse gaming library and are playing new things absolutely all of the time in a way that you or I maybe don't because firing up a new indie
game, learning a bunch of new systems and all of that legit just takes brain effort. I mean for a simple-
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's another thing is that a lot of people, like there's a systems fatigue and a complexity fatigue that I think a lot of people have. And there's always going to be video games that are enjoyed for their complexity, but there's also a lot of people that don't enjoy them for that reason. Like whenever I play a game and I open up a menu or I loot an item and it says 1 out of 500, I'm like, oh fuck, right, it's gonna be one of these.
And like that definitely fucking tires me out, just the brain capacity going down. Yeah, exactly. Like I, like I don't want to deal with that. Like, I don't want to learn all this new stuff to play a video game I'm gonna beat in 10 hours. Like, it's just... And I think that people, like, right now especially, as, like, you know, the way that people do jobs has changed, the way that people interface with making money changes. Like, there's so much complexity in life nowadays that video games that have that complexity built into them, I think do, they're working against themselves.
For example, it's no wonder that systemic experience driven games like Peak or Lethal
Company take off and then get microtransaction filled clones in Roblox.
That's right.
To get that parrot money. But certain games simply don't matter to this changing audience. Because so far in this video, we've not talked about linear single-player narrative games, which so far do seem to be limited to sad dad games. They just aren't in the equation here. Even though I wager-
Well, I think that the problem with linear single- player games is that a lot of them are trash like so expedition 33 proves any sort of idea that linear single-player games are dying out it just immediately deletes that argument right the problem is that a lot of these linear single-player video games are just. They're written by theater kids that couldn't get a job anywhere legitimate. So they're making a shitty video game. A lot of them have like weird politics in them that doesn't really resonate with any audience except for the people writing it.
And also the gameplay is below average and the story is expected to make up for it but the story is also below average so you just end up with a game that's not very good. That's really what the problem is with a lot of these story based games. That's it.
Those are the games that most people watching this channel care about quite a bit indeed. That might be a shocking thing but it might be the best thing for the games that you love. Okay, think of this. The highest rated network broadcast of 2024 was Tracker. It got 11.34 million views. High potential and Matlock revival followed.
All exceeded 15 million viewers. Massive successes, but the market is so big that you may not know about them. I literally did not know about any of those things until I came upon doing this video. Now those shows massively outperformed
Emmy winning things like Shogun, The Bear, The Traders, Hax.
And all of those were outperformed
by Squid Game and Netflix, which itself was outperformed by Squid Game and Netflix, which itself was outperformed by TikTok and social media. But it doesn't mean those experiences are being wiped out. And I think that's where we're getting to in games. When great games release, they aren't trying to appeal to everyone. They are absolutely maxing what they should be as a game for their people. And if that is so good, it can expand
its audience, then we see these games grow and very often grow massively. Yeah, you saw this
with Elden Ring, you saw it with Baldur's Gate 3, and you saw it recently with Expedition 33. Really good AAA games will succeed and will have transcendent success and cultural relevance, but the reality is that the majority of these AAA games are horrible. Like you know a great example of this is Assassin's Creed Shadows. It's just a shitty game. That's really all it comes down to, it's just a shitty game.
Everything about it is shitty. Like I guess the graphics are good, but besides that it's just bad And so why would somebody go and play that why would a kid want to play that game? That's slow, and this is another big issue is that video games are And this is a big problem that I have a lot of video games aren't video games anymore They're like this weird life simulator story thing and you're not actively doing anything. It's one of the reasons why I really appreciate
games like Dark Souls or games like, um, like I've been playing Hollow Knight or Blasphemous. Like it's, yeah, they're interactive films. I don't want to see if I want to just, I'm a, I grew up playing Super Nintendo. Like I just want to see if I want to just I'm a I grew up playing Super Nintendo like I just want to start up Okay. Alright, so I'm right here and then I got okay, so I gotta go over there. I got a kill Okay, so yeah the dry I get all right. We'll go get him and that's it It's that simple. I love simulators. Yeah, I love Sekiro for not drowning in story. Exactly. Yeah story
I think is good but you need to have a good balance between the two. And I think that some games, and this is especially true with the beginning of games, like this is true with like Genshin or Star Rail or like gacha games all have this,
where it's like the first two hours of this video game is an exposition where you're expected to learn 30 new proper nouns, 10 different terms, 3 different functionalities, and the history of this world that you just learned about 30 minutes ago, 3 generations of it. And it's like, what the fuck is this?
What are we doing here? I don't understand any of this. What's going on? It's it's it's over overwhelming. You know, 6% of 5X is more simple. Maybe right.
Let me play. Yeah, let me play the game. And I think that there's a lot of single player games that do not let you just play the game. It's a huge problem. Viral network effects dynamics, like say with the company. And thinking of critical and public consensus, Expedition 33 is incredible.
It is a top runner for game of the year.
But if you know it's not, it's the game of the year. It's nothing else is even remotely close.
It's what are we doing?
Selling games of the year and top engagement charts, you won't see Expedition 33. It is in there. 1 in 20 players on Steam or Xbox played Expedition 33 at launch, according to Circana, slightly fewer in PlayStation. But what we've learned is the market may be expanding and changing, but even now, in an industry that rewards big games and entrenched audiences, those games can still be made. They can still be enjoyed.
And that is what matters. And I think the biggest lesson of all of these is that execution matters and that focus matters. Expedition 33 is everything you would want with nothing that you would not want for a game like that.
It is not a bloated sh- This is, so Bellewer always had one of my favorite metaphors of all time when he was explaining World of Warcraft. It was the dick in the salad metaphor. Every single time Blizzard would add in a system, it would be great, but there would be some glaring, obvious problem with it. And that's the dick in the salad. And everybody would be saying to Blizzard, just get the dick out of the salad. Stop giving us salads with dicks in it.
And Blizzard would say, well you can eat around the dick. Well it tastes, it doesn't taste that bad. Or, oh well, just don't look at it if you don't have to. Or, well, you know, that's okay, you can just not eat the salad. But everybody was always just asking, no dick in the salad. And I think that so many video games, and this is especially true with live service video games, have these engagement mechanisms that are designed almost, like, antagonistically
against the player. They're designed to just waste your fucking time. Like, it's, oh my god, like there's something, like I'm trying to think of a good example like the corruption vendor and battle for Azeroth the rotation of selling the items like what else the amount of things that you can do per day in a gacha game stamina in every gacha game this is a dick in the salad situation adding in new relic sets and Honkai Star Rail that are effectively
the same thing as the old ones but the stats are slightly better so now you have to refarm the same stuff. More dicks in the salad like island grinding. Yes always dicks in the salad. Dicks, dicks, dicks. People don't want dicks in their salad and that's the reason why Expedition 33 was so successful. Is that a lot of video games put dicks in the salad, and people don't want it. That's it. That- no, I'm serious.
...rambling mess, saddled by having to find meaningful work for a production crew of 300 people. And funnily enough, that might mean that it's well executed and that there is strong focus. That's right. I think that that is going to be the way forward for the sorts of games that many of us would be afraid we're going to stop seeing.
Yeah, it's not. It's never going to happen.
Now in this video, you've learned how the gaming market is changing, the demographics have completely shifted, even how people identify within games has completely changed, and combined with the layoffs may have you thinking there's a big old game crash around
the corner. If you want to learn about that, watch this video. I don't think there's a game crash. I don't think so. I could be wrong. Yeah mean maybe maybe there is yeah Wow yeah maybe maybe there's gonna be a big game crash this is good video from Billy or yeah I think this is a good video too I I'm sad to see all the video gamers and you know the kids nowadays that are going to mobile games but I'm also not surprised like I remember whenever I was a little kid I had no intention of playing a game like EverQuest
because it just seemed slow complicated and boring like I would much rather play Halo because it was direct it's fast it's kinetic you can easily understand what's going on and things are happening quickly and so really kids being involved and being interested in more simplistic games like Roblox, I don't really think should come as a surprise to anyone. And I think that if you go back and you look at a lot
of the games that you probably played as a kid, especially like under 13, the majority of them probably were simplistic. And even games that have like a perception of complexity, like Legend of Zelda, are not really complex, right? Halo is not really complex. Like many games are pretty simple, right? You'd like Diablo 2, like Diablo 2 is a simplistic game. If
you want to play it that way, you just run around and you just hit things and that's it. And that's the way that a lot of kids play games for sure. And so because video games and Roblox are designed for a nine year old, then big surprise, they're going to appeal to nine year olds. That's really it. So yeah, and let's go back if I find a few, the illusion of complexity is what they did best. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Mario 64 was so pure. Exactly. You didn't need to know a bunch of systems for Mario 64.
You just had to jump around and get the stars. Just go get the stars, idiot. That's it. And I think that's the main reason why you have a lot of people nowadays that aren't really able to, uh, what do you call it? They're not really able to understand that. And I think that many of them, uh, you know, they're not really able to understand that. And I think that many of them, you know, they're not really interested
in learning 50 new systems. They don't want to do that. They just want to play a simple game that doesn't have a lot of complexity and just relax and chill out. And that's all there is to it.
How do you feel about Rested XP in terms of Classic WoW? I mean, any paid add-on is bad. I mean, it's against the TOS to have paid add-ons. I think paid add-ons are bad. Uh, but I mean, like in terms of like the functionality of the add-on, it's totally fine. Like people should be able to play video games the way they want.
Like, this is the way I view things, right? Is that whenever you're playing like a game like Elden Ring, if you want to mod in having a tank and then blowing up every boss in one hit with the tank, you should be able to do that because it's your game, you should do what you want. Now I don't think that you should play a game that way and I don't think it's really conducive to having like a good experience enjoying a game, but at the same time I think that
there's a lot of people that do that and there's nothing wrong with it. It's totally fine. So yeah, that's my speed. Yeah, exactly. And so it depends on what people wanna do. And for me personally, like I generally prefer simplistic games. The reasons why is because I just don't wanna think. I don't wanna think whenever I'm playing video games. I'm gonna be honest.
I don't wanna think. I just wanna sit there. I just wanna play the game, I don't want to worry about anything, I don't want to have to plan anything, I don't want to have to use a lot of mental energy for this, I just want to fucking go and just pop off, right? I just want to play the game, no think gaming, it's Elden Ring, so you look at the dragon, go fucking hit him in the head, All right, let's go get them done. That's it. And so it's simple. And that's it. That's why you can't play RuneScape. Well, I don't know. But replaying Armachor 6 has been fun. Yeah,
Causeless Switch is coming. He's got hella casual games. Yeah. I already have so many. The thing is for me, like just this morning, right? I had to make two or three pretty important decisions this morning. So, I have like a degree of like decision fatigue that happens where I don't want to make decisions by the time it's like fucking the evening and the sun's down. I don't want to make any more fucking decisions. I just want to sit back and fucking play a game. And I think there's a lot of guys that feel that way.
And I know it sounds kind of like oh I just want to be retarded
Yeah Yeah
Yeah, pretty much for sure absolutely
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