Video Games are Becoming Boring

Lately, video games feel boring as hell. Not because games are worse technically, but because so many of them feel like the same product with a different paint job.

I boot up a new “big” release and already know what I’m getting. Open world. Map icons. Skill trees. Crafting. Towers. A story that pretends to matter while pushing you back into the same gameplay loop. It’s all painfully familiar.

AAA Games Are Playing It Safe to Death

When a game costs hundreds of millions to make, nobody wants to be the person who approved a weird idea. So instead, studios copy whatever worked last time. Same mechanics. Same pacing. Same structure. It’s not innovation, it’s iteration dressed up as progress.

Watch Dogs, Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed. These franchises didn’t get worse. They got repetitive. They feel like templates. Once you’ve played one, you’ve basically played them all.

The industry consolidation makes this worse. A handful of massive companies control most big releases. Smaller studios get absorbed and forced into existing IPs. Creativity gets filtered through business goals, shareholder expectations, and safe quarterly projections.

That’s how you end up with games that look incredible, feel polished, and leave zero lasting impression.

Trend-Chasing Is Killing Variety

Whenever something hits big, the industry panics and copies it.

Battle royale. Live service. Seasonal content. Battle passes. Suddenly everything needs to be endless, monetized, and “engaging” in the most corporate sense possible.

Instead of asking “is this fun or interesting?”, the question becomes “can we stretch this for three years and sell skins?”. A lot of games stop feeling like experiences and start feeling like products designed to keep you logged in.

Players Enable This More Than They Admit

Here’s the uncomfortable part. Players are part of the problem.

If millions of people keep buying the same game every year, companies would be stupid not to keep making it. Complaining online while pre-ordering the next sequel doesn’t change anything.

Safe games sell. Weird games struggle. So publishers follow the money. That’s not actually evil, it’s really just predictable.

But it also means that if players don’t support different types of games, they slowly disappear.

Indie Games Are Carrying the Industry Right Now

Most of the games that actually excite me today are indie games.

Not because indie automatically means good, but because indie developers can take risks. They can be awkward, unpolished, strange, or niche. They don’t need to appeal to everyone. They just need to work.

That’s where you find games that try new mechanics, tell stories differently, or don’t care about trends at all. Steam, itch.io, and smaller console releases are full of stuff that feels alive, if you’re willing to look past big marketing budgets.

Where This Is Headed

I don’t think gaming is dying. But I do think the mainstream is stuck.

As long as massive budgets demand massive safety nets, AAA games will keep converging into the same few designs. Polished, impressive, and forgettable.

If games are going to feel exciting again, developers need permission to fail, and players need to stop treating familiar franchises as default purchases.

The good games still exist. They’re just not always the biggest ones anymore. And honestly, that says a lot about where the industry is right now.