#gh2dx

[just-otter-thoughts]

A prime example of market oversaturation, and I've talked about this before, is the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. This is a bit different from what OP described, since the original companies themselves were the ones making clone after clone, but it's pretty much the same thing.

Guitar Hero comes out in 2005, as a collaboration between Harmonix Music Systems and RedOctane, a company that made different game controllers. They had the genius idea of basically marketing the already existing Guitar Freaks to the west, but appealing to the "rockstar" image that was popular then.

It was a huge success, and Guitar Hero II came out the following year with an improved hit engine, new features, an Xbox 360 version and, of course, new songs. It's at this point that I must state that the core experience of guitar games never, ever changed. It was just "new setlist, different characters, different venues", boom new game.

This wasn't a problem when there were just two games. Except Neversoft bought the franchise and Harmonix created their own, with possibly the wildest change ever to the genre: more instruments. And so Rock Band is born. There is a huge sense of competition here, because Harmonix will still release their Rock Band. So which will be better? Guitar Hero III or Rock Band? Up until this point, the fans were wildly benefitted, because all they got was more guitar games.

So GHIII dropped, followed by RB. Huge competition. Awesome games, awesome setlists, GHIII was made more accessible by simply having a more lenient system but with more accurate charts (then called "maps"), but with RB you could play not only guitar and bass, but drums and vocals as well.

The developers wanted more and more, so between 2007 and 2010 came NINE GH games. Once again, they were all literally the same thing, just different songs. For RB games I don't even know the amount. There were just so many goddamn plastic instrument games. And the plastic instruments themselves were the issue, seen as you only had to buy them once. At one point there were dumps full of plastic instruments, in the box, brand new, to take whatever you can carry, because the franchises had been canceled and sellers needed to get rid of the instruments ASAP.

All of this just because GH did kinda well and made a little money. They never innovated, always doing the exact same thing, until everyone was sick and tired of it. And just like OP said: it's not their faults for being sick of it, it's the developers' fault for releasing so many goddamn guitar games without a single new feature! They tried a little bit with GH Warriors of Rock, but it was too late.

The community have been bringing things back with their own games. What's different is: it's all in the hands of the community now. It's stable. They made the game, Clone Hero, they make the charts, they make different themes, etc. It's still the same thing as before, the fun and the innovation are all in how you play the game. Blindfolded runs, speedruns, modcharts, meme charts, bleep bloop songs, different challenges and setlists and etc. And now we're evolving from Clone Hero, a game with ACTUAL new features is being made, all by the community!

See the point is, when your focus is the audience having fun instead of turning a profit, you make an actual quality product. I'm not saying things are perfect, CH and the community are quite flawed (examples are the lenient engine and cheating scandals respectively). But when you care about it, it's good.

Hell, past World Tour the hit engine was copied and pasted from the previous game, making little changes to it every now and then, until certain aspects of it were broken! That's how much they didn't care.

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[nightlycalamity]

Hitting those grinds

[scottsackett]

Progress shot of the chair. (at Super Giant Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/B7Pr4-gh2DX/?igshid=bzx48m719uh2