Briefly looked at the steam sale front page and am frustrated with how little has changed in gaming actually. Another Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Fall Out 4 (2015), GTA V (2015), Witcher (2015), Squad (2015/Early Access) , XCOM (2016). Some DLC for these. A bunch of Anime games. A whole lot of old school RPGs and indie games. A lot of streaming channels to watch.
Thoughts:
1. EA and other developers creating their own platforms killed Steam. Of all the games I mentioned, the top games of Steam, I only own Fallout 4 and am still disappointed with the line up. Battlefield 1 and V would have been cool to see but that is Origin. Fallout 76 is on Bethesda's platform. WoW and everything else by Blizzard is on Battenet. Microsoft owns Minecraft etc. The only thing Steam has going for it is your old friend's list and library but if you really cared about your online friends, you have them on Facebook or something else by now.
2. In terms of how the games actually look and operate, again not much change. There hasn't been any dramatic changes to the scale of games or style. 32 v 32 is still the usual for shooters. Where is the 64 v 64 or 128 v 128? All triple AAA games seem to be open world now but like I said before, open worlds still feel as dead and lifeless as they did when GTA IV came out.
3. Streaming is awful and I think that is the worst time sink imaginable. At least on Facebook, you see people you know and can talk to about stuff later. Listening to a podcast or reading a book is informative. There are some great television series and movies in the world and you can learn some stuff too if you pick your things right. But streaming is just watching someone play a game and perform in front of you. Playing games was a waste of time but at least you interfaced with it. Watching someone stream is like watching reality T.V. but worse.
