While some gamers are getting older the number of players does keep increasing with newer generations like alpha picking up controllers. Many millenials and older zoomers may have more disposable income but also much less time to play, backlogs of hundreds if not thousands of games and bunch of good old games they just keep coming back to.

However gaming doesnt exist in a bubble. Social media platforms, streaming services are also competing for our attention. The whole entertainment market is so saturated that only ways to increase profits is to enshittify or win marketshare from competition.

Well diversity has received a ton more spotlight and discussion for past 10 years with many developers and games being “canceled” for their views, opinions and many games have been heavily criticized for not being diverse enough or containing elements that are offensive for group a, b or c.

Now the pendulum is swinging back with those canceled or holding more conservative or religious opinions banding together to crusade against whatever they consider woke.

Result is a minefield where your game can be attacked if its not woke enough or too woke resulting in bunch of bad press.

Probably most hours I’ve spend where with Conquer Online back in the days before mysteryboxes where introduced. After that probably puzzle and dragons.

Luckily after those games I learned to question my time spent in these games. (Basically just one day after grinding tower of gods for umpteenth time to spend my 1k stamina/energy, I asked myself wtf am I doing with my life, was I having fun?)

After that my most played games have been Grim dawn, Sacred2, Monster hunter world, No Man sky, Incredible adventures of van helsing then various 2d fighters like Blazblue, undernight inbirth and Granblue fantasy versus that I play on locals.

The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.

Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project’s profitability.
– TLDR by Microsoft copilot

While there’s still demand for “narrative-driven story-rich games” one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.

In Finnish language there are no gender specific pronouns only gender neutral one hän/hänen.

They/them still sounds weird to use even if I know it can be used to refer single person. When talking or writing fast I’ll still often accidentally default to using he/him even for females which I then have to correct.