- 2 days ago
- #opinion
- #commentary
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My take on how gamers lowered their standards and the future issues that this particular mode of operating will bring to reality
#opinion #commentary #discussion
For more content check me out at https://www.youtube.com/@realcsomm
#opinion #commentary #discussion
For more content check me out at https://www.youtube.com/@realcsomm
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GamingTranscript
00:00There was a time when buying a video game meant buying a finished product.
00:04Maybe it had a few bugs here and there, maybe an expansion would come later, but when a game
00:10launched, players expected the core experience to actually be complete. The features were there,
00:15the systems worked, the content was ready. Developers knew they had one chance to make
00:21a strong first impression, because once the game shipped, there was no guarantee they could
00:25completely rebuild it later. But somewhere along the way, that standard started changing.
00:32Now games launch missing features, suffering from performance problems, lacking content,
00:37or feeling barely finished. And instead of outrage, the response is often patience.
00:43Players say things like, just wait for the patches, give it a few months, or the developers will fix it
00:49later. I don't know about you guys, but that might be the strangest part about modern gaming.
00:54We've become so used to unfinished releases that disappointment itself started feeling normal.
01:00Early access games stay unfinished for years, full releases feel more like paid beta tests,
01:06and roadmaps full of future fixes somehow generate excitement instead of concern.
01:11What used to be unacceptable, slowly become expected.
01:15That being said, one question comes to mind. How the hell this happened?
01:20Because this isn't just a story about greedy companies or rush development anymore. It's also
01:26a story about players lowering their standards little by little, until incomplete games stopped
01:32feeling shocking at all. Early access wasn't originally a bad idea. In fact, when it first became
01:39popular, it actually made a lot of sense. Small indie developers didn't have massive publishers backing
01:45them up. They didn't have hundreds of employees or endless budgets. So early access became this
01:50arrangement between players and developers. Support us early, help shape the game, and together we'll
01:56build something great. At least that was the initial narrative. And honestly, sometimes it worked
02:02incredibly well. Games like Minecraft and Hades used early access properly. Players could see the
02:08progress, updates were meaningful, feedback mattered, and there was visible momentum. The problem is that
02:15over time, the meaning of early access started changing. What used to mean unfinished but promising,
02:22transparent development and community collaboration, slowly became incomplete products sold at full price,
02:28vague roadmaps, years of uncertainty, and an excuse for almost everything wrong with the game.
02:34Now you'll see games staying in early access for three, five, sometimes even eight years. And at some
02:40point you have to ask, when does early access stop being development and start becoming permanent limbo?
02:46Because a lot of these games are no longer being treated like prototypes. They're being marketed like
02:52finished products. You have season passes, cosmetic shops, premium editions, influencer sponsorships,
02:58and huge launch campaigns. But the moment criticism appears, suddenly the defense becomes, well, it's early
03:05access. That's the shield. Performance issues? Early access. Missing features? Early access. Broken
03:12balance? Early access. Have the mechanics unfinished? Yes, you guessed it, early access. And because of that
03:20label, expectations immediately drop. What's strange is that players themselves started adapting to this
03:26mindset as well. People now buy games based on potential promises, roadmaps, future updates,
03:33stuff like that, instead of evaluating what's actually there right now. And that's a huge shift.
03:40Years ago, people judged games by the product they bought. Now they judge games by the fantasy of what
03:46they might become someday. And sometimes that future never even arrives. Roadmaps quietly disappear,
03:53updates slow down, developers move on, the community shrinks, and the game stays unfinished forever.
03:59But by then, the money's already been made. And my take on this is that this creates a dangerous
04:05industry precedent. Why finish a game before release at all, if players are willing to fund development
04:11indefinitely? And that's where the standards start slipping, because the more consumers normalize
04:17unfinished products, the less pressure there is to actually ship complete ones. And to be clear,
04:22this doesn't mean all early access is bad. On the contrary, some developers genuinely use it
04:28responsibly. But the label itself has become so normalized that people barely question it anymore.
04:34It seems we reached a point where launching unfinished is no longer surprising. It's actually expected.
04:42The bigger change in modern gaming is that a full release no longer necessarily means a game is
04:48actually finished. Years ago, when a game launched, players expected the core experience to be complete,
04:54functional, and polished enough to stand on its own. Today, however, many games release with missing
04:59features, shallow systems, poor optimization, limited endgame content, or simply quality of life features
05:06that only arrive months later through patches and seasonal updates. What's even more surprising is
05:12how normal this has become. Instead of judging games based on the product that exists at launch,
05:17players are increasingly judging them based on what the game might become after updates, expansions,
05:23and future support. You can see this clearly in cases like Cyberpunk 2077, which launched with severe
05:29bugs, broken AI systems, and missing features despite years of ambition marketing, only for the conversation to
05:36later shift towards how much better the game became after years of patches and the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom
05:43Liberty expansion. The same pattern appears with Diablo 4, where many players enjoyed the early experience
05:49but later criticized the repetitive endgame, shallow itemization, and lack of long-term depth,
05:55while others insisted the game would improve in future seasons. Even games like Starfield showed how
06:01players now accept unfinished feeling systems as long as there's potential, with many people talking
06:08about mods and future updates almost immediately after the launch. Meanwhile, titles like Battlefield
06:142042 launched missing features that older entries in the franchise already had years earlier, including
06:20scoreboards, voice chat, and proper class systems, yet much of the discussion still focused on future
06:26improvements rather than questioning why the fuck those features were absent in the first place.
06:32These are only couple examples on top of my head, but that's the real shift that has happened in gaming
06:38culture. I suppose that the issue is no longer just that games improve after launch. That part is actually
06:44positive. The issue is that consumers have slowly accepted the idea that launches themselves no longer need
06:50to feel complete, polished, or fully realized, because there's now an expectation that patches, roadmaps,
06:57seasons, and expansions will eventually finish the product later. One way to explain why gaming standards
07:03have changed over time is psychological, because players themselves gradually adapted to disappointment
07:09instead of rejecting it. When people spend 70 bucks on a game, buy deluxe editions, grind for hundreds of hours,
07:16or spend years hyping themselves up for a release, it becomes emotionally difficult to admit that the
07:21product may have serious flaws. This is where things like sunk cost fallacy and cognitive dissonance
07:28start playing a huge role in modern gaming culture. Instead of accepting that a game launched
07:33unfinished, shallow, or disappointing, many players subconsciously begin defending it because
07:38admitting the problems would also mean admitting they wasted time, money, or emotional investment. You can
07:45actually see this happening constantly online, whenever criticism appears. Instead of discussing
07:50the flaws themselves, people immediately respond with things like, you expect too much, or it gets
07:56good after 40 hours, or mods will fix it, or my favorite, all games launch rough nowadays. Over time,
08:04people stopped comparing launches to what games should be, and instead started comparing them to other
08:09broken launches which slowly lowered expectations across the industry. Brand loyalty and fanboyism
08:16made this even worse. Many people now build identities around franchises, publishers, or studios,
08:22so criticism of a game starts feeling personal, almost like someone attacking their favorite sports
08:28team. Discussions around games like Starfield or Diablo 4 often became less about whether the criticism
08:35was valid and more about defending the game's reputation at all costs. Social media amplified
08:41this behavior further because online communities reward hype, tribalism, and emotional reactions more
08:47than nuanced discussion. And as a result, criticism itself sometimes gets treated as toxicity rather than
08:54normal consumer feedback. The danger in all of this is normalization. You see, humans adapt quickly,
09:00and when enough games launch unfinished, missing features, or relying on future patches, people
09:06slowly stop seeing those things as unacceptable. Eventually, the mindset becomes, they'll fix it
09:11later. And once consumers normalize lower standards long enough, companies begin designing around these
09:18lowered expectations. To be fair, modern game development really is harder than it used to be. Games today are
09:25larger, more detailed, more cinematic, and significantly more complex than titles from
09:3015 or 20 years ago. Developers now have to support massive open worlds, online infrastructure,
09:37cross-platform play, advanced graphics, live service systems, constant updates, accessibility features,
09:44and many other things. And communities around games expect non-stop content. The pressure is enormous,
09:50I get it, and there's no denying that creating modern AAA games is an incredibly difficult process. And honestly,
09:57some early access games have proven that this model can work when it's used responsibly. Games like
10:03Hades, Baldur's Gate 3, and Valheim show that involving the community during development can lead to
10:09genuinely fantastic results. But acknowledging all that still doesn't raise the larger issue. Yes, we can
10:15say that complexity explains certain problems, but it does not excuse regression. People aren't frustrated
10:21simply because games have bugs. They are frustrated because modern games sometimes launch missing
10:27features that existed perfectly fine in older titles years ago. Things like stable performance,
10:33meaningful progression systems, proper AI behavior, complete multiplayer features, or basic quality of
10:39life options are not revolutionary expectations. In some cases, newer games actually feel less complete
10:45than their predecessors despite having bigger budgets and longer development cycles. And that's where
10:51the conversation changes. Because the issue isn't that the game development became more difficult. The
10:57issue is that consumers slowly became willing to accept less while paying more as long as promises about
11:03future updates continue to exist. At the end of the day, the biggest reason these practices continue is
11:10because players keep proving that they work. Companies don't need to fully earn trust anymore when pre-orders
11:16alone can generate millions before anyone has even touched the final product. People buy deluxe editions
11:23months in advance, based entirely on trailers, cinematic reveals, and hype cycles, and then act surprised when
11:30the launch version feels unfinished. And when problems do appear, the conversation often shifts away from the
11:37actual flaws and towards defending the game instead. You constantly see players saying things like
11:43just wait for patches, or the developers are listening, or it'll be good in the year or so, as if
11:48consumers
11:49are expected to pay now for the possibility of quality later. Even worse, criticism itself sometimes gets
11:55treated like negativity or hate, especially online where communities form around defending franchises and
12:00studios almost unconditionally. Instead of asking whether complaints are valid, parts of the community
12:06immediately attack the people pointing them out. Someone criticizing performance issues, missing features,
12:12shallow mechanics, or aggressive monetization gets labeled impatient, toxic, or entitled. And the
12:17industry notices these behaviors, they're not stupid. If consumers continue buying unfinished products,
12:23continue pre-ordering regardless of track record, continue defending disappointing launches, and continue
12:29lowering expectations every single year, then companies have very little reason to change course.
12:34Businesses respond to what consumers tolerate, and modern gaming has showed again and again that players
12:40are willing to tolerate far more than they used to. And that's the uncomfortable reality behind all this.
12:46The industry didn't lower standards alone, players helped normalize it, and as long as people keep
12:52accepting less, they'll keep getting less. It's as simple as that. For years, gamers loved to talk about how
12:59publishers changed, how corporations became greedier, how monetization got worse, or how modern releases
13:05started feeling less polished and less complete than they used to. And a lot of those criticisms are
13:11absolutely valid. The industry has changed dramatically, especially as budgets grew larger, live service models
13:17became dominant, and companies realized they could continue selling games long after launch through
13:23expansions, battle passes, cosmetic stores, and seasonal content. But at some point the conversation
13:29has to become a little more uncomfortable, because the question is no longer just about what happened
13:34to games. It's also about what happened to us, the gamers. Somewhere along the way, gamers slowly
13:40stopped demanding complete products and started accepting promises instead. We began treating unfinished
13:46launches as normal, roadmaps as reinsurance, and future patches as substitutes for quality at release.
13:52Instead of rejecting broken systems, missing features, or shallow mechanics outright,
13:57many people adapted to them, defended them, or convinced themselves that things would improve
14:02later. Criticism became harder to have because online communities increasingly turned gaming into
14:08tribalism, where defending a franchise or studio mattered more than honestly discussing the state of
14:13the product itself. Players started buying games based on hype, nostalgia, trailers, brand loyalty,
14:20or future potential rather than what was actually being delivered at launch. And because consumers
14:25continued rewarding these practices financially, companies learned that they could get away with
14:30more. That's the real reason this conversation matters. The issue isn't simply that modern games
14:36launch unfinished or that standards feel lower than they once were. The issue is that consumers slowly
14:42adapted to these lower standards over time until disappointment itself became normalized. So in the end,
14:49maybe the biggest change in gaming wasn't tech, financial, or corporate at all. Maybe, just maybe,
14:56the biggest change was that players gradually stopped expecting better. But at the end of the day,
15:02that's just my take on this. Let me know in the comments what you think about this whole situation
15:07and whether or not I am right or wrong. And if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like,
15:12subscribe, and all that good stuff. And that's it from me, until the next one.
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