7 Gaming Traits in 2025 That Are Quietly Killing Creativity

To paraphrase a sure critic, I don’t like video video games, I like them. It’s exactly as a result of I like them that it frustrates me to see the medium not dwelling as much as its potential as each consumable leisure and an artwork type. Video games are fantastic, inventive issues that offer you new methods to have enjoyable or problem your preconceptions with interactive narratives. Sadly, as with every trade that offers in enjoyable, many have sought shortcuts in tendencies that commerce real creativity for the promise of a simple payday.

I get it, okay? Gaming is a enterprise. Video games must generate profits, and all of the creativity on the planet gained’t put meals in your desk if no one’s shopping for in. However I believe we’ve seen sufficient proof this yr that real creativity can shine nicely sufficient by itself deserves, which is why it breaks my coronary heart that there are such a lot of tendencies and components within the trade at this time which are stifling that creativity, choking it with greed and laziness.

7

Rushed, Damaged Launches

Rush It Out, Repair It Later

Gaming is an especially aggressive market, with titles always climbing over one another within the hopes of getting at your pockets. As such, main publishers appear to be in a relentless state of speeding recklessly, determined to get their formidable new titles out on time. Desperation results in sloppiness, and that sloppiness will all the time be seen by the gaming public.

In each 2025 and up to date years, we’ve seen the launch of a number of high-profile titles in damaged, buggy, unoptimized states. Clearly, we on the skin don’t have any method of understanding what the developmental timeframes have been on these video games, however clearly, any person tousled a schedule someplace, leaving out important QA and bug testing and halfheartedly promising to “repair it later.” I didn’t pay for a recreation now to get a completed product later, I paid to get it now.

Even the indie sphere has proven shades of this, and I’m not speaking about Early Entry video games. Hades 2, which I like by the way in which, launched with a really unpopular ending, which was finally patched out and changed with a extra thematically acceptable ending. I’m glad the ending was fastened, however sadly, it was fastened after I already beat the sport, and I’m not tremendous into the thought of rolling again hours of my progress to see each final element that was modified.

6

Pointless Remasters

An Eight-Yr-Previous Recreation Doesn’t Want A Remaster

The follow of online game remasters technically began way back to the late 80s, although it actually started in earnest across the late 2000s, early 2010s with the discharge of assorted HD collections and trilogies. I’m not inherently against the follow of remasters, thoughts you; I believe it’s an effective way to rescue nice video games from out of date, inaccessible {hardware}, updating their graphics and gameplay to present requirements within the course of. The issue is one among oversaturation.

Take, for instance, Tales of Berseria Remastered, a remastered model of a recreation you may nonetheless readily buy and play on trendy platforms. It’s received touched-up graphics and a few quality-of-life stuff, however for essentially the most half, it’s the very same recreation with a reinflated price ticket, a ploy for making you pay full value for a recreation you have already got. It’s a cynical method to releases and recreation preservation, particularly when there are video games within the Tales sequence in far more dire want of consideration like Tales of the Abyss.

Focusing all this developmental cash and power into one thing so pointless can hamper growth on, y’know, new video games. It’s nice to protect genuinely good video games, however provided that the sport in query is definitely in want of preservation. I can nonetheless purchase Tales of Berseria, and for considerably much less cash.

5

On-line-Solely And Reside-Service

Turning Video games Into Jobs

I’ve by no means been a lot for on-line video games, largely simply because I desire to play at my very own tempo reasonably than have it dictated by the whims of randos. Sadly, even single-player video games are being invaded by always-online frameworks, forcing you to have a gradual connection and constantly subjecting you to random participant interference.

I suppose the purpose of always-online frameworks is to maintain you extra engaged and, subsequently, hold you enjoying, although I discover it extra distracting than something. In an identical vein, the continued prevalence of live-service video games stays annoying, requiring you to log in day-after-day to assert fifty completely different classes of currencies and spend your power on grindy quests. The recognition of those frameworks make video games really feel much less like experiences and extra like obligations.

I perceive gaming is a social exercise for lots of people, and wholeheartedly settle for the place of on-line gaming within the ecosystem. I don’t even hate live-service stuff; I play Honkai: Star Rail. However forcing me to play a recreation to the sport’s express schedule and/or the schedule of a bunch of different gamers I don’t need to work together with makes it really feel like a day job. I have already got a day job, thanks.

4

Overpriced, Predatory DLC And Microtransactions

If It’s Not All Your Cash, It’s Not Sufficient

Talking of obnoxious financial practices, the practices of DLC and microtransactions proceed to spiral delightfully uncontrolled. Alongside the overall value inflation everybody has been coping with recently, so too have the costs of each DLC expansions and one-time purchases been ballooning, and with none explicit enhance in precise worth.

I believe it was reasonably cynical, for instance, for Nintendo to announce that Pokémon Legends Z-A can be receiving a DLC pack earlier than the sport even got here out. Even when corporations don’t do this, they’ll nonetheless dump a canyon of varied nonsense on us proper at launch. One in all my favourite video games of the yr, Digimon Story Time Stranger, launched with a surplus of costumes, BGM, and further dungeons, with extra DLC nonetheless to come back. Yeah, it’s incidental stuff, but when it’s unimportant sufficient to be incidental, why nickel and dime us for it?

There’s additionally the persistent scourge of gacha mechanics, notably in mobile-to-PC ports like Persona 5 X and Uma Musume. My explicit thoughts goblins make me resistant to gacha FOMO, fortunately, but it surely’s nonetheless a really predatory system, and the tales of those that’ve had their lives ruined by gacha are everywhere in the web.

3

Graphical Realism Over Stylization

“Realism” Tends To Age Poorly

You realize what’s humorous? Nearly each recreation technology, some recreation or recreation engine purports to have essentially the most real looking graphics potential, however by the following technology, there’s all the time one thing newer (and costlier) that appears much more real looking, if solely considerably. Frankly, I don’t perceive the pursuit of “realism” in video games. Granted, I desire video games with extra fantastical settings, however even placing that apart, “real looking” graphics simply don’t age very nicely.

Video games that go for extra colourful, angular, or in any other case stylized depictions of worlds and characters usually age higher as a result of they nonetheless look good regardless of how superior the engines behind them are. Against this, real looking graphics are outdated in only a few years, creating an uncanny valley impact that severely hampers a recreation’s visible attraction. After all, I’m certain main publishers would like we solely play new video games as an alternative of going again and enjoying outdated stuff, however that’s a separate downside.

The pursuit of realism looks like a reasonably pointless one when lots of the greatest video games launched this yr aren’t even remotely real looking. That’s not even mentioning how the fixed pursuit of realism jacks up the value of recreation growth, the top value of which can invariably be handed onto customers.

2

Development-Chasing

Cease Attempting To Make “Fetch” Occur

I bear in mind again when Fortnite actually hit it huge, third-person shooter battle royale video games instantly beginning pouring out of the woodwork. It’s not exhausting to see why; Fortnite was making money hand over fist, and everybody else wished a chunk of that motion. It’s textbook trend-chasing, and it’s nonetheless received a stranglehold on the trade to today.

At any time when a very cool, well-received new recreation comes out, there’s all the time some schmuck someplace who asks themselves, “how can I do this, however make more cash off it whereas spending much less cash?” The result’s a deluge of half-baked knock-offs, clearly cribbing design sensibilities from profitable video games with out giving any thought to what made these sensibilities really work. Even when the ensuing recreation is ostensibly enjoyable, like Elden Ring Nightreign, it feels much less prefer it was made as a result of somebody wished to make one thing cool and extra that somebody simply thought it will be worthwhile.

This isn’t one thing solely the large studios are responsible of, both. Even within the indie sphere, you may have no-name builders making an attempt to ape the success of video games like Balatro and PowerWash Simulator. Heck, we’ve gotten a wholly new style of Friendslop video games chasing the coattails of video games like Phasmophobia.

1

The Darkish Temptation Of AI

Clankers Can’t Make Video games

As each a inventive myself and knowledgeable author, I say the next with no supposed hyperbole: GenAI is nugatory trash with no place in any inventive sphere, full cease. Video games are expensive and time-consuming to make, I get that, but it surely’s the act of creation by a human thoughts that offers these experiences their benefit. When publishers mandate that everybody use GenAI within the growth course of, they’re principally forcing everybody to scale back the standard of their very own work.

That’s not even mentioning the truth that the usage of GenAI we’ve seen in video games huge and small this previous yr has been, by and huge, spotty at greatest and offensive at worst, with one standout instance being these terrible Ghibli-knockoff calling playing cards in Black Ops 7. GenAI can’t make authentic experiences, it might probably solely copy what it’s seen, and in an inferior capability at that. You possibly can’t make one thing really enjoyable and novel with the developmental equal of Xeroxing a Xerox.

Oh, and for anybody in any a part of the trade who says, “nicely, I’ll simply use slightly little bit of GenAI on some small artwork property, absolutely no one will discover?” Information flash: somebody will discover. Somebody will all the time discover, and as quickly as somebody notices, everybody will discover.