I hold a strong belief that Half-Life 3 will appear only once all these fading gaming hype cycles will have been completely exhausted. And yet, even then, people still find stupid ideas to cling to and develop yet the next "best thing" that will register as a small blip of a few months on the gamer's attention radar.
In recent years it feels like the gaming cycles have become more and more compressed. It's like "what's the game of the season?", and feels like it's slowly migrating to bite-sized experiences.
But unfortunately that's what I'm experiencing in my bubble only, because statistics tell us a different story.. Fortnite, Overwatch, LoL etc. have playerbases in the millions or hundreds of millions. I sometimes see kids glued to their phone playing roblox while walking.
Naturally, every major gaming company wants a piece of that pie and then go with the flow: MOBA games (this, after MMMORPGS has been milked to death), Battle Royale (does anyone even remember PUBG?) and different FPSes.... Apex Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, lately there was a HellDivers 2 trend...
To me Deadlock is yet another game where I'd have to invest way too many resources to learn the style of each champion, strategies and skills. And for what? It's the same old shit and for me it's just a fleeting experience, something to play with my mates 2 or 3 times just to have a taste of it. There simply isn't enough time anymore if you want to have a life outside your house.
Some of us clearly are not in the audience of these companies anymore.