Gaming is one of the largest industries in the world these days, with gaming not only being one of the most profitable markets, but also one of the most popular for the public. Many enjoy getting home from a long day and tuning out from the noise to fully immerse themselves into many different games. 

The releases of games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, World at War, Halo and Gears of War set in motion an extraordinary demand for games and instantly gamers wanted more. More variation, more customization, more features, modes to get them stuck into hours on end of multi and single player action. 

However, over the last decade, many game developers have been providing less in terms of content with an ever-increasing price tag to their games. This lack of attention to what matters most to gamers has led to decreased player counts in some of the biggest games. Yet, due to the publicity of many streamers, there’s been a recent surge in interest in thrilling casino slot games, such as Leprechaun Legends, Tiger Temple, and Ten Times Wins. With simple yet exciting gameplays, the innovation in online casino gaming has provided a far more entertaining experience, as compared to classic video games. 

Old is the New Gold

With the insane amount of bad publicity games get these days on social media, it’s difficult to understand why gaming developers have continued to provide less content and maintenance on big name titles that now cost nearly a hundred dollars per copy. Over the last decade there have been many overhyped games that completely fail on release, with developers not providing enough content and releasing the games with far too many bugs still prominent.

Cyberpunk 2077 is by far the most scrutinised game that we know within gaming history, due to the insane marketing techniques, celebrity endorsers and promises made, just to release an incredibly broken game that’s had to be taken out of circulation for almost a year, before releasing it once again. The developers, CD Projekt Red came under heavy fire from the gaming community and were hit with class-action lawsuits for downplaying the seriousness of the issue with the game.

Further to this, the gaming community has recently started turning to ‘old but gold’ games and games such as Fortnite, DayZ, Rocket League, Apex Legends and many more has seen the return of many players as the public’s frustrations with new releases grow further. 

Call of Duty – A Saving Grace? 

The most recent edition of the Call of Duty game has not been a stranger to heavy criticism and despite being an incredibly slow and tough start, recent additions and patches on the game seems to have restored some faith in the game, with the season 3 reloaded update, the return of many fan-favourite features turned the heads of many that had attempted to move on from the game. 

The largest amount of criticism surrounds the content and the lack of understanding of what the community actually wanted. Content creators that span across the globe were in unison claiming that Warzone 1 was close to perfect and it seems that the franchise strayed too far from what they had mastered in the first instalment of the game. 

The return of some extremely familiar weapons to those who have played the franchises games for decades certainly lit up the eyes of the gaming community and although it may have been long overdue, the community were willing to return given that the changes they wanted in terms of movement, features, weapons and game-maps were beginning to roll out.

A Tough Period Upcoming for Gaming

Compared to 20 years ago, gaming developers are faced with far more challenges and scrutiny than ever before and over more recent years, games have received more backlash than has been seen before and this could be a very bad omen for gaming. The unfortunate truth is that development teams are faced with a massive issue today, bow down to the community or don’t bother creating new games. 

What is for sure is that games now require a massive amount of depth in terms of storylines, game-play and online content in order to succeed. Fortnite is a title that many developers should take note of, after releasing their game as free-to-play, Epic games’ turnover was all generated through advertising and microtransactions for cosmetic skins in-game, which was alien to many.

Free-to-Play Games Are the Future

As widely publicised throughout the year, EA sports were unable to agree a deal with FIFA, the world football federation, meaning that over 2 decades of yearly released games were coming to an end. However, EA were quick to announce that they were making their own title and ears spiked up when they mentioned it would be free-to-play.

EA have never been shy to allow a play-to-win meta within a game, as packs have been purchasable from their store for many years, however, they’ve recently ramped up the packs available in the store and they continue to bring in billions each year from pack purchases alone, which creates a mass amount of doubt around the quality of their own game title.