Honestly? Gamers deserve all the shit they get, I'm all for consumer rights but I have no sympathy for the people that buys these games and then later complains about it. You're not part of the problem, you are the problem.
I blame it on "content creators" on YouTube. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching someone play and complain about a bad game, but there are so many tubers that use the same format, or even the same titles just reworked a little bit.
A lot of this could be blamed on The Algorithm, but after a certain point you have to start blaming the creators themselves for sticking with the format.
I don't. YouTubers just cover stuff people are interested in, they rarely create that interest.
It turns out people like whatever it is COD offers, so YouTubers make videos either about the good or bad things in the latest COD, and they attract the audiences that are looking for it. And that is where "The Algorithm" comes into play, if more people want to know what's bad about a popular game, those videos will get more popular and thus recommended more often.
The people to blame aren't the YouTubers, but the people who watch those videos.
They could of just mailed every one a turd instead of a game. People warned their friends and every one online, but they still bought it. So now Activision knows they can just put out shit, but the consumer will buy shit with that call of duty brand lable slapped on it.
I honestly am sure Activision doesn't see it that way. This further cements that it's a golden goose they need to protect. This level of a captive audience is incredibly valuable and I'd bet heads will roll for endangering it.
McDonald's is incredibly consistent in how they prepare food location to location. It turns out I just don't like their food and much prefer the fancier place down the street.
It’s the second best selling game of 2023 and it came out last month, though - that’s notable, particularly given the shitty reviews. Plenty of other games are also available on just as many consoles and storefronts. Zelda 20 was presumably mentioned because of name recognition and because it was previously second and is now third.
The people who care about quality will play real games, and the people who love the name brand will happily rebuy the same game again.
Either you love cod, or it doesnt exist. Its not like its a real franchise anymore, better shooters have met or surpassed it in spades. Anything you needed from this game you will get elsewhere.
The reason people care is that in capitalism anything that sells well will continue to be made. Resources are devoted to churning out worse and worse games and the large swath of people who don't notice or don't care continue to buy them, feeding the cycle.
Meanwhile good games, often indie titles, are overlooked by people who neither have the time or energy to look for these games which contributes to them being buried and lost to time. CoD now has confirmation they can churn out turboshit, charge beyond full price, and still outsell a game that is of higher quality.
Bad games doing well drags the entire market down with it. It shows companies they don't need to try that hard if they're popular. That's why people care.
I don't understand what you're getting at. What you're essentially saying is that the problem with capitalism is that popular stuff stays popular. That has nothing to do with capitalism and would exist in any economic system. Think back to your school days, there's no capitalism system saying "X is cool," that was just the majority opinion at the time (e.g. for something like local slang, not something advertising-driven).
What you seem to be really complaining about is a lack of exposure for smaller studios. That's a hard problem to solve because when a studio gets popular because of a good game, it quickly becomes a larger studio, and thus "part of the problem." Franchises have an incentive to change very little so they can maintain their customers. If your favorite restaurant drastically changed its menu every year, you'd probably stop going. The same is true for game studios, if the studio changes a lot from what sold well, there's no longer an expectation that it'll continue to sell well.
Finding good indie games is hard because there's so much inconsistency in the marketolace. Big studios offer consistency, and they're rewarded for it, yet they're not that interesting because they have an incentive to avoid risks. Indie studios live and die by the risks they take, which is what makes them interesting.
I expect them to take 1+ year to produce a piece of shot game, not 6 mo. I didn't buy it out of principal (aka my wife didn't buy it, she carries the stats)