sp3ctr4l

Thats true, I did not explicitly exclude those, but I think you can tell that ... I am trying to mean a game that... someone would actually pay for, a game that has at least some level of popularity, general cultural impact.

Some game jam games do kind of achieve this, some are later expanded into more fully fleshed out games that later release...

But generally speaking, a game jam is more or less a speedrun tech demo of you or your team's ability to whip up something fairly basic... and most of these do not usually go on to have any real impact or popular awareness or even a niche following that expands outside of other game devs.

Its like a training routine / job interview process for a game dev.

I am not trying to insinuate no zoomers are technically capable of making a game, of course many obviously are.

I am trying to match the context and language of the OP, referring to a much more generalized: 'what has been the effect of zoomer game devs on the kinds of games produced by game industry broadly?'

The Hoi4 'Ultimate Pack' is currently about 50% off on steam... and costs about $90.

Were it not on sale, it would be almost $170.

... Paradox reported a 57% profit margin in Q4 2024.

The whole year of 2024, they reported a profit margin of about 34%.

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/investors/financial-reports/year-end-report-january-december-2024

They could knock a quarter (25%) off of all their game/dlc base prices and still be quite profitable.

... And Hoi4 AI ... just recently, finally, 10 years later, got an actual overhaul to its actual strategic/tactical warfighting AI, that makes it almost as competent as an average player.

I dunno about you, but for me, every paradox game is ... you climb a vertical wall of understanding how all those complex systems interface with each other, and then after you get over the top of that wall, there is basically no challenege whatsoever beyond the pure tedium of micromanaging everything... because the AI fundamentally cannot strategize better than a human that actually understands the game it is playing.

It is true that general inflation over time and the tariffs increase the material costs of actual gaming hardware...

But uh, higher game prices?

The ballooning cost of game development?

Those things are almost entirely a result of the ossification of major publishers and studios into smaller and smaller numbers of bigger and bigger ultimate owners, who are all responsible to their investors... who are only interested in next quarter profit, which makes sensible long term strategy basically impossible.

And also the ... just generally absurdly incompetent internal management and strategic decision making within major game studios/publishers.

Just go look into basically any major AAA (or god forbid AAAA) game in the last 5 or 10 years, and you'll find that management is basically bipolar/schizophrenic, constantly making and then unmaking decisions, constantly laughably out of touch when it comes to estimating the market for or appeal of their games.

Also also, it doesn't help that the GPU market is basically a monopoly, and the new graphical paradigm (and development paradigm) is basically the equivalent of the entire US car market shifting to oversized luxury trucks and SUVs that most people can't actually afford... instead of offering a wider range of 'cars' for a wider range of 'drivers'...

Nor does it help that various IPs basically have a death grip on their fanbases, who will not stop giving them money no matter how many bugs are in their games, how many broken features they release with, no matter how much they cost.

...

The gaming scene is going to (and to a large extent arguably already has) bifrucate along the same wealth disparity lines that society is more broadly:

Huge numbers of people playing cheaper, older games, or indie releases...

And a smaller and smaller number of people playing absurdly overproduced, but very gameplay formulaic, 'safe', boring kinds of games... which cost more and more.

...

The 'games journalism' industry has largely been incapable of or unwilling to take the on the actual core problem: Capitalism.

Unrestrained, unregulated, unnacountable capitalism leads to monopolies/oligopolies that stop truly competing, and start extracting rent, and internally, culturally, they become more and more incompetent, inefficient, wasteful, and basically delusionally entitled.

...

To go back to the car metaphor:

Nissan is basically on the verge of collapsing.

Nissan was in talks to merge with Honda... but those talks fell through.

Why?

Because Nissan execs felt disrespected by the proposal that Nissan ... still maintain its brand, but ultimately be a subdivision of Honda.

... Because that would mean a bunch of Nissan management and C Suite would now be redundant, and thus either let go, or functionally demoted.

Nissan wanted a more equal partnership merger... despite themselves being objectively less competent at managing both its finances and general operations.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/inside-collapse-nissan-hondas-60-billion-mega-deal-2025-02-12/

So now Nissan is pretty much guaranteed to just collapse, unless METI just strongarms them into accepting some kind of deal, which will now almost certianly be on worse terms than the original Honda merger deal.

This same kind of dynamic of delusionally entitled yet also objectively incompetent management/c suite is also whats driving nearly all the bullshit in the video game industry generally.

Gather round, map painting addicts!

Your new and improved quarterly/monthly DLC payment plan is almost ready!

Ah.

She's using RIAA 'piracy costs us more than the GDP of the world' style logic/math to determine that ~75% of America would have OD'd on fentanyl if not for the claimed fentanyl interception amounts.

Like by this logic, I've personally saved thousands, even tens of thousands of lives by isolating when I had Covid.

No more libraries, scientific research grants, or hurricane tracking... military parades instead!

... You could easily make an entire 'you might be a redneck / here's your sign' style set out of insane things Trump and MAGA do that are just laughably over the top signs they are a moronic fascist cult, and you wouldn't even have to hyperbolize...

But of course, the audience for such a set would boo and hiss and probably threaten the life of anyone who did that Netflix special, demand they be cancelled...

No, that would be like uh... Ms. Hawk Tuah.

Greta is what you call an activist: Someone who actually believes things and advocates for change based on her beliefs.

When I was in school, this kind of behavior was referred to as a politically involved/informed, active citizen, the kind of people without which a democratic society cannot survive or function.

Hey there ya go!

I didn't know Lethal Company was made by a Zoomer.

Apparently he has been modding/making Roblox gamemodes/doing itch.io releases since he was 10!

LC isn't exactly my cup of tea personally, but that is definitely a good example, LC has been quite popular.

Thank you for informing me =D

MBA = Megalomaniacsl Bastard Accountant

(with the fun bonus of almost no actual math required!)

Serious, genuine question:

Has a team of, or single Zoomer game dev(s) ... made... any... game?

I am not gonna pretend that I somehow know all games and all game dev teams by age, but uh...

Yeah, are there any notable games made by a team that is majority composed of people born after '96 ish?

Like... I am a millenial, and I am well aware of the ludicrous greed and mismanagement of AAA studios, how even most AA studios end up getting fucked by some kind of IP rights/funding issue, if they live long enough... I'm still pissed that EA killed Maxis... and I am also well aware of many games with primarily millenial dev teams... very often devolve into, or revolve around 'millenial speak' / 'millenial writing' ...

Most of us millenials, outside of the tiny number of mod teams that actually stuck together long enough to form a game studio, or just outright form an indie dev studio... yeah most of us just jumped into the megacorp game dev meat grinder and then acted both entitled and surprised to find out that 'corporation bad, actually.'..

But I seriously cannot think of a mainly zoomer game dev team that's made anything other than pretty much shitty asset flips and/or outright scams, enternal alpha/early access type bullshit.... or maybe mobile, gacha type games?

I would love to be informed that I am an idiot and there are some really good zoomer made games, but I am ignorant of their existence.

Hell, even a seriously good mod by zoomers would count, I know I was modding many games before I even got out of highschool.

The reflectactles?

Well, thats good to know.

Maybe augment them with IR lamps?

Hrm, it just now occurs to me, if you were to do a jerry rigged IR lamp setup, it might make sense to have something like a dimmer switch, or alternate modes of flashing in various timed or random sequences... may be more or less effective depending on the distance to the kind of camera(s) you're trying to fuck with, balanced with overall battery life.

I think Titanfall 2 is still on sale on steam for uh... 5 dollars.

Its got Northstar, a custom client that allows for private multiplayer servers... also works on linux, literally has its own custom proton version.

Oh and there are mods as well, guided installers, mod managers, etc, for windows and linux.

Runs great on a steam deck!

... and looks ... basically the same as a shooter from 10 years later, at least at 1280 x 800?

(its built on a custom forked version of the portal 2 source engine, so it actually runs efficiently and looks good =D)

Doesn't have a huge playerbase, but it is decent enough that you can probably find a few well populated servers, at least in NA region.

... looks like titanfall 3 got turned into an extraction shooter and then cancelled.

So anyway yeah, hilariously its time to return to tradition for enthusiasts of many old school competetive games from before the bullshit of endless battlepasses and MTX kicked into high gear... and as others have pointed out, the indie scene is full of gems.