At this point I honestly feel like I mostly follow the AAA space and the summer games reveal season out of obligation.

I've been falling out of step with AAA for the past few years now. It's not that I really hate big budget games, I've been playing a lot of 7th gen games as of recent since I missed out on that generation mostly, but AAA today just doesn't appeal to me personally anymore. I don't feel like it feels 'gamey' enough, it's too far from the janky-but-earnest mix of storytelling and gameplay I've come to love from the medium. Luckily indies still provide that, so it's not like I've stopped playing games altogether.

So for the most part I've sat through the Not-E3 Season with a cocktail of preference in hand (this year it was coke and whiskey highballs, if you're curious), pointing at laughing at the fairly obvious mistakes. Even with E3's live stage cringe out of the picture with the boring modern-day directs, there's still some amusement in seeing money being lost on weird bets.

However, this year the vibe has been considerably different. While in the past I've felt like many AAA games have confidently headed into the wrong direction, now there's more of an air of desperation. I think the sentence that I'd summarize the publishers' attitude with is "what do you want from me".

It's been strange since this is the first time in a while that I've seen games that I could genuinely enjoy being announced again. There's a comeback of racing games for the casual audience which is kind of exciting, some games with interesting settings from developers whose previous work I enjoy.

But many of these announcements are permeated with just… strange decisions that make no sense. The new Stuntman game could be cool, but the announcement trailer was set up with lamer than lame 80s movie references, which are beyond passé at this point. A new Crazy Taxi should be right up my alley, but the game's visuals look entirely edgeless in a way that clashes with the game's contents, and the gameplay looks simplified to the point of boredom. The Ocarina of Time remake - while not something I care about because I'm not a 40-year-old Nintentuber - should still be an easy slam dunk, but the visual direction looks hauntingly similar to the shitty CryZENx Unreal videos that have been a laughing stock of the internet for years. The new RGG game has Tupac's soul trapped inside it for all eternity, like a wack ass liquid crystal prison.

We've all known that the Big Money Big Bling AAA publisher space has been on shaky ground for years, but this is the first year where I feel like I can actually see the sweat droplets on everyone's faces through the games that are being announced. The leadership is worried, the developers are being crushed, and it feels like less and less of the upcoming releases have any notable direction. I don't believe for a second that the industry has been overtaken by people with no vision and no direction skills, rather that there is an ongoing and constant clash between the money-havers and the game developers that's damaging the projects being made more visibly than ever before.

It remains to be seen how the game space develops, but I have a funny feeling that this might be one of a few pivotal years in the history of video games as an artistic medium.