I don’t game much anymore, but Canadian devs shouldn’t be ignored.
On mobile, Rebuild 3 is developed in Canada. Of course, Death Road to Canada was dreamed up by abguy from Kitchener Ontario and it kicks ass!
On all major platforms Ubisoft has some awesome games from their Canadian studios like the Farcry series (Ubisoft Montreal & Ubisoft Toronto), Rainbow Six Seige, For Honor, and Watch Dogs.
Dead by Daylight is also developed by a Canadian game studio.
Share your favourite Canadian developers and game studios!
If they’re too shitty to enjoy, why are you playing them?
If you’re not playing them, how do you know they’re shitty?
And regardless, how would you know that it’s not you who changed?
Well, I don’t. And if I do, it’s like 98% less time spent playing them because it’s a frustratingly annoying experience.
I’ve played them enough to know that I’m not a fan of the dark patterns they are based on.
Because I still enjoy games that predate enshittification.
It may seem strange, but there was a time when you could load a game, not see ads, pop ups, loot drop screens, “seasons”, various coin and other casino-style minigames, and within a click or two, you’d be in multiplayer match or a single player (offline) experience.
When a match was done, you could click “play again” and not have to go through anything else.
Weapons or items were either given to you without endless grinding, or they were there to discover through natural, organic gameplay… Not programmed “carrot on a stick” gimmicks.
I’m serious when I say I feel lucky to have experienced gaming before the industry turned to crap.
That’s not to say that 100% of current games are awful, but they genuinely feel more like a waste of time and not something you can enjoy finishing at your leisure.
Man, honestly, you sound like you should disconnect and spend less time on the internet.
You’re writing off literally thousands of games and painting them all with the same brush, because of broad complaints about general trends in AAA gaming.
Let me go through my recently played games, and just find a small sampling of games that fit your bill that have come out post enshittification:
Do I need to go on?
Nice list! While I don’t play those genres, I’ll re-confirm that this problem doesn’t affect all games.
That said, find me an FPS on mobile that isn’t enshittified, or compare any modern FPS to something like Modern Combat 3 or old school Call of Duty, then you’ll understand where I’m coming from.
Look at the top 25 games on any mobile platform, and they are nearly all using dark patterns and have been enshittified.
You don’t play first person shooters, first person melee games, third person shooters, third person action games, survival games, factory games, beat em up games, puzzle games, stealth games, or story driven adventures?
It sounds like your issue is that console calibre mobiles games are shitty, to which I’ll point out, they always have been. There was never a golden era of Modern Warfare 2 on mobile.
Maybe if your issue is with mobile games, the problem might be with trying to game on mobile?
I don’t want this to become about me, since I’m no longer a dedicated gamer.
But if you look at the gaming industry as a whole, mobile gaming overshadows both console and PC, and collectively, free-to-play games make up the bulk of all games played across any platform.
Those “free-to-play” games rely on dark patterns as a business model, and that’s pretty toxic.
Much of what I played on PC were from indie developers, early access, etc. Those games weren’t enshittified (at least, no while I was playing them), but other games became enshittified, so I no longer play them. Rocket League is one example. Once it went free-to-play, it went downhill in the experience.
Then you get a game franchise like GTA, where it was totally cool. You start it up, you play. Now, it’s pretty much only about keeping you grinding, data collection, “prizes”, microtransactions, and other garbage to manipulate gamers into staying in the game as if it was a social media platform. And that’s a PAID game. The free-to-play games are much worse, because the incentive to make money in these “free” games becomes over the top.
Again, this isn’t all games, and I’m glad that there are devs out there who still play by old-school rules. I became tired of where the industry was going, so I moved on.