euro truck simulator 2 and the gaming industry
Lately I've been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 quite a lot, some people don't find it fun because it's a simulator at the end of the day, but I disgress, I find it relaxing with how simple it is at the end of the day, "just deliver this package for me, I don't care what happens to you as long as the delivery is intact."
But for some reason, whenever I play it, I can't stop thinking about the gaming industry nowadays, if you go to the AAA side no game will ever be simple like this, you need to keep playing to see this collab with Taylor Swift where they'll charge $40 per skin. The Indie scene on the other side is blooming, there's games for every kind of person, but at times there may be too many games, and it gets to the dilemma of having infinite games, but no games.
It doesn't help that there's a feeling of missing out nowadays with every single new game that comes out. Preorder now to play the campaign a week early, or buy this game to play with us, your friends, but buy it now because we won't play it ever again past release week.
I personally experienced the latter, with how many "Friendslops" (or how I'd prefer to call them, party games) there are, I had many friend groups wanting to jump in for them, but the situation on my country, one where the USD value is very overpriced, it makes it hard to keep justifying these new games every week, even if they may be on the cheaper side of the price spectrum. It can be hard to keep justifying it every single time to pay for new games, only to play them twice, maybe if lucky thrice.
Nowadays I changed my stance on this, if it doesn't have a nice community to play by yourself (like Deep Rock Galactic or Far Far West) or a singleplayer mode that's more than just "Multiplayer mode but less grindy", I'll skip it. It will hurt to miss on those games with friends, I won't deny that, but this is a truck delivery that many other people can take, I need to focus on my own deliveries and time sometimes.
I've been playing singleplayer games instead, like the aforementioned Euro Truck, I also return to other games from time to time, like Tetris, which is one of my favorite games of all time.
That's from the Indie side at least, but the AAA side of the industry is so rotten from the core, it's disgusting. Predatory microtransactions (that sometimes feel macro), constant layoffs, shift to AI in many of these corpos, lack of integrity, the list goes on.
Yet, at the same time this is like a Truck Delivery arriving for you.
You ordered 5 tons of Potted Flowers, but you're far away so I'll arrive there eventually. A normal Truck Driver would try their best to get the delivery there in perfect conditions, but sometimes they may suffer damages to the Truck and Trailer on the way, damages that linger on past your Delivery, but you don't care at the end of the day about the state of a trucker's tools, as long as your delivery is in good conditions.
Many people preorder or buy games Day 1 from many AAA studios, and they don't care about the damages the company took along the way that they never decide to repair. Damage that hurt their reputation, Damage that some people may never forget, yet the average gamer doesn't care. As long as the game itself ain't so broken, then who cares about how the employees were treated to get this delivery to you?
I experienced this realization with the upcoming Crazy Taxi game, I love the aesthethic of the original games, and the gameplay loop is something that interests me quite a lot, but uh oh, it has an AI disclosure on the Steam page.
I remember seeing drama about this before, so maybe people are more judgemental of this game now in their community? Oh no no no, they just don't care, because "every single game is made with AI now, this is to be expected now", and if you disagree with them, they might call you out on Twitter while farming engagement.
Like this, there are many other cases, maybe in some of your favorite franchises or games too, yet the average gamer doesn't care, because they just wanna look at Lucia's butt in GTA 6.
I'm not trying to defend Euro Truck Simulator 2 here, by the way, the way they handle DLCs very much reminds me of Paradox, and American Truck Simulator's map is as small as all hell if you don't buy some of them expansions. But at least they seem to treat their employees and community well, which is something many studios (may it be AAA or sometimes, even Indie) can't really say.
I don't think there's an easy solution to this, other than stop preordering/buying games day 1 and to beat that FOMO, but that's very hard for many people, the average gamer couldn't care any less.
So what are you really gonna do at the end of the day? I'll see you when they release more GTA 6 merch.
- AnubiArts, an average gamer.