content to me is a dirty word, it's one that makes me annoyed just seeing it, it reeks of anti-art sentiment and a disregard for a mediums real meaningful aspects and relegates it to being disposable and meaningless, it's not art it's content. it's a disgusting word and it's one that has sadly became all too common now as the industry moves towards contentification and it's rare to see people fully notice it, i had this thought when i saw a video by patrick H williams, someone who i wasn't super familiar before but i thought his sentiment on it with regards specifically to movies was very spot on to what i had myself noticed, but in that video, games were never brought up. i imagine this is just down to the fact they aren't his forte but i would argue, and i will, that games have been hit just as much by this idea as movies, and in some ways it may be even worse. this isn't really me being all "modern games bad!" at all, while there are worrying trends and i do dislike many games that have them, i love many modern games and every week there are wonderful new pieces of art coming out, small creatives making amazing games with real meaning and heart and companies like square are in a new golden age in terms of just how good the games they're coming out, but i am still worried none the less.

first what even is contentification, it's a bullshit term originally coined by marketing shills that is still handy for this use case, it's when art is made into content, stripped of meaning and merely there to get attention, screentime and to keep people subscribed/paying for a thing, it's a netflix sub, a month of gamepass or a new skin drop in fortnite, it's when a game becomes a delivery method for content rather than a work of art with a message and people behind it that really care, it's a lot of things, really, but it's 4 in particular for me and it's a few different ways that i'm worried about the direction the medium is going in. the main way in which this presents to me is in the way i believe we even got to the point of contentification in all mediums, the delivery method. patrick argued in his that netflix was this for movies, streaming in general really, that it turned all art on a platform into just meaningless content in a void, something to keep people subbed rather than to make them feel something. for games i don't think we're quite there yet, at least for two of the big platforms, for the other i believe we may be there already. you've probably guessed that i mean twofold things, the rise of digital games and the gamepass model (which is also the ps plus model but i dont believe it's quite there yet). i'll talk about gamepass first because i find it's the more eggregious of the two. gamepass *is* the contentification of video games, it takes after netflx and it's monthly "content drops" of new games turn games into something to keep people subbed rather than giving them any meaning pushing them from one game to another and choosing what games they have access to, and while right now gamepass is good for variety i don't think it always will be especially as =, and i'll go more in depth into this later, but GAAS and content delivery games become *the* major form of video games i believe gamepass will always prioritise these as it aims to above all else keep people subbed and paying above actually giving them a meaningful connection with the medium and it makes these games disposable in the eyes of many, which before they may not have been, it's much more common now, especially in my foree's onto forums like resetera to see people almost proudly boasting about how little these games mean to them, especially when physical games come up, how with gamepass they just play and forget about games and at best pick up a long-running GAAS content delivery system to play alongside those disposable games, these games are so disposable they may as well be staring at a brick wall for 10 hours, and while i won't shame people for how they engage with media, but that feels kind of sad to me, devoid of any real passion and gamepass absolutely pushes this way of thinking, this sticks when you do think of the kinds of games microsoft makes, sure you have some exceptions like pentament and hi-fi rush, but mostly its games like halo infinite, redfall, bleeding edge, forza and even starfield.

starfield maybe not fitting the traditional mold of a gaas game, but with its randomly generated planets devoid of any real human touch or meaning in a game about exploration, it sure as hell fits the feel of one, i know GAAS when i see it, even a game like hi-fi rush feels like it's designed more for contents sake than actual artistry, coming across like a quirky checklist rather than a bunch of genuine ideas a passionate person had. microsoft very clearly see games as content and it worries me that more studios likely will too. i find also that services like gamepass also engage more with FOMO of new releases moreso than a traditional release, gamepass games feel more like a zeitgeisty netflix release rather than a normal boxed product, even when that game is a normal boxed product and i find that the discussion on these games is very different than for a game that's not on any of these services, but i could be overthinking it. of course there is always the worry that games on these services expire and delist and this, well, does happen, they become lost after that bit of content fame they had is over, when it's not a big thing everyone has to play and is instead something people more will seek out, it's happened before, take for example omori, which was delisted right after it dissappeared from gamepass and is essentially now lost for people that didnt buy it in the brief time it was on there, a game that, whatever issues you may have had with it, was not disposable content, became it and now it's gone, and this is a fear that could become more real as more games become exclusive to services like gamepass.

i could also easily argue that digital games themselves play into this, that the way sales are presented on places like steam and the intangability of it all makes things feel more disposable, that the endless stream of sludge games on places like the eshop devalue the buying experiance versus going into a physical store, that by not going out of your way to go to a place to get it irl that that piece of art will be inherently less meaningful to most people and that it's all not the same, but thats just a me thing and i don't think it plays as much of a role as the other aspects, and in a way i may only think about it this way because of how services like gamepass have made them feel that way, but i do still think that a physical boxed product, one with a start and an end has more meaning than a digital one that's maybe constantly being updated and added to, the way digital games are delivered though, especially with the rise of free to play did add to this however, i think if the industry was physical only i do think that we would still have issues with GAAS games but i don't think they would have been as bad and it would have still been relegated to things like MMO's as opposed to being the primary method for a lot of AAA games.

GAAS games are the primary sufferers of contentification i feel, they exist not as art, but of course as a content delivery service, you can even see this in the way companies advertise and talk about these games, new maps and mode releases are called content drops, new skin updates in fornite are called content drops, people refer to any new thing in these games as content in a very different way to how, say, an expansion pack for an older product might have been, it makes this all feel less meaningful, because it kind of is. very few GAAS games have any kind of heart or soul, and while i think judging games on soul is kind of dumb and meaningless and it's basically became a chud buzzword now, i think it fits for many of these, they didn't exist as something to enrich lives and make people feel something, some might, i'd argue babylons fall sure did for me and that that was a game made with passion that was unfairly lumped in with the less meaningful examples of the genre. while these may not be bad games at all, many i'm sure are great and i've had fun with a few myself, they do stand as kind of a testiment to this contentification, the stories don't usually have any real emotion, the aesthetics can be bland, real player customisation is muted in favour of paid content drops and innovation just kind of doesnt exist, you won't find anything on the same level as a flower, sun and rain or a moon remix rpg here, for as much as i'm sure many of the people working on these products may want to work on more interesting games like those mentioned as i'm sure a workspace like this, with their deadlines and crunch does not facilitate the kinds of creativity that many of the people working on it may have, content is king for these games and much like the netflix reality tv they remind me of they need to be constant.

it's not just multiplayer GAAS games that i think are fuelling this trend, there was another that started, i believe with ubisoft that i think is almost as bad. someone into older games hating on ubisoft feels almost like low-hanging fruit at this point, it's a cliche, but i think it ties into my point. more modern ubisoft games are single player focused GAAS content delivery systems, while there are some exceptions here and there like the fantastic looking immortals (whos sequel got cancelled because they couldnt make it a GAAS game), most follow the ubisoft trend, while the ubisoft template started all the way back with the likes of AC and far cry 3, this newer trend i would argue started with the likes of far cry 5 and assassins creed origins, when the games went from simply slightly bloated open worlds that'd take you maybe a few dozen hours to finish with some dlc, to single player GAAS games with MTX, endless content and new additions to keep people playing all year round, taking one look at just the absolute length of assassins creed valhalla, a game that at minimum will take you over 60 hours to finish and almost 150 hours to 100% with expansions and content patches even beyond that and it starts to make more sense, though not traditionally GAAS they carry its spirit an they make me just as worried, bloated open worlds have became a trend, though ones like this ubisoft style have not quite caught on with their MTX and focus on content above all else, but it makes me afraid we may get there, the aformentioned starfield feels like the beginning of this for me. these games also are helped by the aformentioned gamepass model, constant engagement and sheer length make sense to be prioritised under this model even for singleplayer, content and engagement over meaning.

the last kind i feel is one that's a little harder to really, discuss, because while the rest can easily be looked at and agreed on as being the way they are, this is one i believe isn't as considered. the podcast game, or the second screen game, think the likes of roguelikes and vampire survivors, these are above all else games you simply, do, you don't think as much beyond making builds and some moment to moment decisions, the randomised nature makes content delivery king as it keeps them fresh and well, you see where i'm going with this, the lack of handcrafted content and meaningful story in these cases makes for games, much like a netflix show you can watch while scrolling through your phone, disposable and easily just, consumed without thinking or considering, not all of these games are bad of course, stuff like hades bucks the trend by having meaningful characters and there's for sure ones out there that have a lot of cool artistic stuff, but its something that i believe can lead to, as mentioned before, making media feel disposable and making games feel like content, these also are, of course, prioritised by services like gamepass. this content driven model will likely also be added to with the worst trend we've seen yet, AI. companies will use AI to pad out content delivery, weather through skins made with it, concept art and designs or even just the games code itself, which on top of putting people out of a job is just going to result in a derivitive, lame piece of non-art, endless easily churned out content with no meaning, engines like unity already support it and games like paladins and high on life have been using aspects of it, it will arrive and probably sooner rather than later.

in the long run this kind of trend is worrying, scary even, but there'll always be cool things to find and inspire, new and old, sure after a while you may need to give up mainstream art if you wish to not deal with these things, i know i'm prepped for that, i probably won't get a ps6, i don't intend to sub to any real service and i mostly stick to corners of the net like this, far away from most of the issues i dislike, and it's okay to do that, it doesn't make you lesser or some kind of "trying not to be mainstream hipster" as i myself have been labeled, it's okay to just leave it all behind and live in the past, but i also don't believe it's all hopeless because as long as cool people exist, cool art will always exist and should be supported! find cool creatives, cool spaces and cool things and cherish them, spread the word and spread the love for them regardless of how small and niche they might be, so that they don't get swallowed up in an endless sea of "content".