Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
Same thing for movies, music, etc. The people that piss and moan about their media being terrible are the ones that can’t be bothered to lift a finger to seek out something better. They only bother with media that falls into their lap, and that’s petty much all determined by studios that care more about profits than quality.
Exactly. It’s like when people complained that rock and roll died again at the end of the 90’s. Sure, if you don’t seek out better music and just take what’s handed to you by MTV and the radio (or what Spotify shows on its Home screen these days), then music is terrible now. If you go digging, you can find all kinds of amazing stuff. Same goes for gaming. Good studios get too big or bought out and ruined by people who only care about money, but if you dig around you can find all kinds of good stuff.
The stuff that “lands in your lap” was actually shoved there by a multi-million dollar marketing budget. That almost certainly means the product itself is meant for mass consumption and may not be that compelling or interesting. If you’re willing to spend the time and effort to look around and play some bad games along the way, you’ll find the good ones.
I think it’s still a bit of a fair critique.
There were always sequels and garbage 30 years ago but someone who maybe only saw a movie a year the chance that it would be a new IP were higher. Studios are allergic to risk so they would prefer a mediocre known quality.
That said you’re right there’s more media than ever and tones of interesting options in niche areas. That said discoverability is not free. You have to put in a decent amount of effort and even still you might end up watching a niche indie darling that was never for you and come out disappointed.
For someone who only periodically dips into a form of media I think the current landscape is undeniably worse than it was and I understand when they complain about it.
Streaming has changed films. With on-demand TV, and more affordable, higher-qualitt home theatres, the only films worh spending money on seeing in a cinema are the big eye-candy films.
However, those streaming films are often lower quality if they weren’t also released in cinemas.
On the topic of indie films, can people in-the-known share some suggestions for what’s worth watching?
Back in the day, I used to just look up the different indie film festivals, see what was nominated/won, go watch the trailer, and pirate the ones I was interested in.
Found a lot of films this way.
Grey Man, purely for Captain America in a pedostache hamming it up as a villain.
Brick, Moon, Sunshine, Seven psychopaths
I don’t know how many of those are actually indie but I feel like they all flew in under the radar.
That’s what folks don’t seem to realize, it’s always been about money and the entire industry has always been toxic and what we have now is it’s natural outcome. There’s always been non mainstream content and more recently it’s become more accessable which hurts the profits of the industry meaning they do less innovating because they worry about the ROI beyond anything. This drives more people to non mainstream which increases its quality. It just requires effort to find.