What's The Next Big Pop Cultural Push?

[Metroido]

It is beginning to look like the age of the MCU is over, and Star Wars is equally unsteady. Zombies died out (ha!) years ago and I don't think pirates of any sort are especially likely to regain popularity. So, what do you think is going to be the next pop culture trend to take over our televisions and movie theaters?

I think we are about due for a few years of jingoistic military entertainment. it has been a while, and it usually happens when things feel uncertain and upended. i think we are due for movies about mercenaries, SEAL teams, and CIA spec ops. I recently finished the second season of The Lioness and it definitely had the vibe.

People at Rockstar had trouble pitching Red Dead Redemption because other people thought Westerns weren't that hot and wouldn't sell. Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the biggest games of all time. It has since sold over 50 million units and made over 3.3 billion dollars. Pretty good for a genre that's not "in." The genre is actually irrelevant. The quality of the work is what matters.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What’s “in” or “out” isn’t a guarantee, it’s an advantage or disadvantage, one factor among many.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What’s “in” or “out” isn’t a guarantee, it’s an advantage or disadvantage, one factor among many.

Sure. “Good” is always in.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I'm personally down for pushing for stop-motion animation historical pieces - I'd love to see the Sharpe's Rifles movies redone in Celebrity Death Match style.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The genre is actually irrelevant. The quality of the work is what matters.

I'd like to believe that, but I don't think it's quite as simple as that.

Red Dead Redemption didn't do GTA numbers - it sold well and met (and arguably slightly exceeded) expectations, but that was far less than 50% of the sales of GTA 4, even when it was hot, and it dropped further behind as time went on. I wish it had - I'd argue it's actually a more important and braver game than RDR2. I would strongly suggest that had the general elements of the game remained the same quality, and the setting/genre been say, "modern spy", rather than Western, RDR1 would probably have sold more copies. (Interestingly that modern spy-based game is precisely what R* were working on, but despite spending years on it, they couldn't make it feel good, so dropped it.)

RDR2 did well in part because of sheer quality, but let's be real - insane budget, huge marketing, being the sequel to a game that had sold only as expected (or so) but had a legendary reputation, and very importantly, having good timing and being pretty accessible gameplay-wise. I think that latter point is often overlooked as part of why RDR2 and the GTA games succeed - fundamentally all they are not challenging or tricky or demanding games* (at least on the critical path), nor particularly fast-paced, despite their settings. They're games someone who doesn't play games can get through.

Also, and I think this is overlooked too, I think the Western genre helped it on the sales front too, because I know some people who shy away from games with "fantastical" settings who bought RDR2. Like people who normally only play sports games, maybe CoD, and other like... "normie" games - they felt safe buying a game that was a normie genre (i.e. not SF/F). I think that generation of people is kind of slowly aging out and that younger people, raised on Minecraft and Fortnite and so on don't have the same line between between "normal people stuff" and SF/F but I definitely think it was a factor here. That being a science-fiction game of the same quality and otherwise similar, it would actually have sold fewer copies (fantasy it might have sold as many or even more, but to a slightly different if significantly overlapping audience).

This thread is all about zeitgeist and the reality is, genre or at least vibes do matter to whether something has the wind behind it, or against it.

* = (the very few missions in GTA3, VC and SA which are an exception to this stand out as a result, but 4 and 5 managed to largely avoid such exceptions.)

 

[payn]

I think folks are off on a tangent here. Nobody is saying westerns/spy/historical reenactments etc.. movies cant/dont make money. What they are saying is you are not going to have a series of summers that has 4-5 of those movies coming out. That attracts all the hottest talent to star and create them. That fills all the t-shirt racks at Target. etc..

 

[Zardnaar]

I'd like to believe that, but I don't think it's quite as simple as that.

Red Dead Redemption didn't do GTA numbers - it sold well and met (and arguably slightly exceeded) expectations, but that was far less than 50% of the sales of GTA 4, even when it was hot, and it dropped further behind as time went on. I wish it had - I'd argue it's actually a more important and braver game than RDR2. I would strongly suggest that had the general elements of the game remained the same quality, and the setting/genre been say, "modern spy", rather than Western, RDR1 would probably have sold more copies. (Interestingly that modern spy-based game is precisely what R* were working on, but despite spending years on it, they couldn't make it feel good, so dropped it.)

RDR2 did well in part because of sheer quality, but let's be real - insane budget, huge marketing, being the sequel to a game that had sold only as expected (or so) but had a legendary reputation, and very importantly, having good timing and being pretty accessible gameplay-wise. I think that latter point is often overlooked as part of why RDR2 and the GTA games succeed - fundamentally all they are not challenging or tricky or demanding games* (at least on the critical path), nor particularly fast-paced, despite their settings. They're games someone who doesn't play games can get through.

Also, and I think this is overlooked too, I think the Western genre helped it on the sales front too, because I know some people who shy away from games with "fantastical" settings who bought RDR2. Like people who normally only play sports games, maybe CoD, and other like... "normie" games - they felt safe buying a game that was a normie genre (i.e. not SF/F). I think that generation of people is kind of slowly aging out and that younger people, raised on Minecraft and Fortnite and so on don't have the same line between between "normal people stuff" and SF/F but I definitely think it was a factor here. That being a science-fiction game of the same quality and otherwise similar, it would actually have sold fewer copies (fantasy it might have sold as many or even more, but to a slightly different if significantly overlapping audience).

This thread is all about zeitgeist and the reality is, genre or at least vibes do matter to whether something has the wind behind it, or against it.

* = (the very few missions in GTA3, VC and SA which are an exception to this stand out as a result, but 4 and 5 managed to largely avoid such exceptions.)

I would argue that Rockstar is more or less the last studio with a reputation of quality left. Nintendo maybe with Zelda or Mario.

 

[Reynard]

Man this thread makes me sad.

 

[trappedslider]

Man this thread makes me sad.

watch some bluey then

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I would argue that Rockstar is more or less the last studio with a reputation of quality left. Nintendo maybe with Zelda or Mario.

Nah.

R* abandoned their reputation with GTA Online turning into a money-printing factory and a fairly manipulative rip-off it kid-targeting one at that. Them dumping all GTA V story expansions in order to print more money via GTA Online really was them leaving that rep behind.

Further, RDR2's online mode attempted to be even exploitative that GTA Online, but because it was so gross and awful, it was actually too gross for most gamers to engage with (which is a very low bar) and so flopped.

Add in that their remasters of GTA3/VC/AD were insultingly bad and featured very lazy and incompetent use of AI upscaling (famously destroying a joke by turning what was intentionally a nut - as in nut and bolt - into a perfect toroid) and that they've been too cheap to pay for even the most important songs to get renewed with them, and instead just dumped most of them, and we can't say they're a company with a reputation of quality anymore. (They've sorta-fixed the remasters, but like, it's real minimum possible effort stuff, not "company of quality who cares" stuff)

Everyone expects GTA 6 to be pretty great but also people live in fear of just how exploitative the online will be, and fully expect R* to have made the main game kind of shorter and to try and funnel you into playing online (something GTA V didn't actually do), and people are skeptical that GTA 6, no matter how good, will get any non-online expansions or the like.

Now, R* could claw some of their reputation back if they don't do those things. If GTA 6 has a truly epic single-player story like RDR2 did, and if GTA 6 doesn't funnel you into online, and if GTA 6 has at least one single-player expansion, suddenly I think that would make a lot of people re-assess R*. If R* then came out with, say Bully 2 or a similarly actually daring game, then we might see their reputation climb a lot.

I don't think there are any big Western studios who really have any rep left. Bungie, Bethesda, BioWare, Blizzard, all the Bs have dented or worse their reps in various ways.

There are Japanese AAA studios who have never meaningfully screwed up - FromSoft comes to mind. Capcom weirdly are one of the few companies whose reputations is improving rather than getting worse, too.

There are still a lot of indie or AA or very small AAA studios who have at least solid reps. Like, SuperGiant have never made a bad game (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, Hades, Hades 2). Obsidian have never made a bad game. They've made a lot of kind of 8/10 ones, but that's kind of their brand.