I think there is an element of audience capture that sets up a self reinforcing feedback loop that drives out the normies and ends up rather cult like.
Is it not also possible that there are an overwhelming number of problems with the big AAA type studios in games right now? I feel right now we're in sort of tale of two cities, because AAA games have turned into barely functioning uninspired parasitically monetized crap, while smaller scale development is in an absolute golden age. And it's likely that LLMs will only add fuel onto this turd burning fire.
In fairness, AAA games are practically over. They have grown too bloated, take too long to develop, and, with the culture wars raging in the background, almost every AAA game steps on at least one landmine and loses a large fraction of its audience before it is even released. Sad, really.
I don't think saying they stepped on landmines is entirely accurate. They jumped into the culture wars headfirst, and simply landed on concrete, as is the typical outcome. Why they chose to do that is an interesting question though, because if they just asked basically any 'normal' person the impact it would have on their sales - the answers would not be ambiguous.
There are real problems, but Jonathan Blow doesn't limit his criticism to those problems. He just indiscriminately criticizes everything. He's turned into the type of critic that is a broken clock that happens to right twice a day.
His criticism isn't limited to AAA game studies. He's a vaccine skeptic and is pretty heavy into far-right influencer garbage. All very surprising if you only know him from his games.
That is what makes it cult like and not a full on cult, there is a lot of truth to what he says. The problems is when the conclusions are extrapolated out to absurdity - it’s hard for me to listen to it. I didn’t take sufficient notes to give a proper recount here and it’s a bit too much work for me to go through it again.
