08-13-2026, 05:35 AM
Every gaming forum eventually has this thread, but I'm always curious about the answers because they reveal what's genuinely missing from the current landscape vs. what people just remember fondly.
Some things I think are missing and *could* actually succeed:
- **AA single-player shooters.** Not Call of Duty, not extraction shooters, not boomer shooters (those are actually healthy) — things like Half-Life 2, FEAR, Singularity, Wolfenstein: The New Order-sized linear, setpiece-driven shooters with strong writing. The budget tier between indie boomer-shoot and $200M AAA basically doesn't exist for FPS right now.
- **Weird licensed games.** The PS2 era had *so many* budget licensed games that were accidentally great (or at least charmingly janky). Today licensed games are either huge mobile gacha or huge AAA, nothing in between.
- **Arcade-style sports games.** Not sims (Madden, FIFA/FC, MLB The Show) — I mean NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, SSX, Tony Hawk (yes THPS 1+2 existed but it's a remake), arcade racing split-screen stuff.
- **"B-tier" JRPGs.** Not Final Fantasy, not Persona, not indie pixel JRPGs — the Lost Odysseys, Blue Dragons, Xenogears, Star Oceans, Tales games of the world. Mid-budget, experimental, weird, sometimes broken.
- **Split-screen everything.** It's basically a back-of-box bullet when it exists at all now, which is a genuine cultural loss.
What's the genre or type of game you miss most? And do you think it could actually find an audience today, or are we just nostalgic for something that doesn't make economic sense anymore?
Bonus: if a small indie dev is reading this thread, which of these niches is most underserved?
Some things I think are missing and *could* actually succeed:
- **AA single-player shooters.** Not Call of Duty, not extraction shooters, not boomer shooters (those are actually healthy) — things like Half-Life 2, FEAR, Singularity, Wolfenstein: The New Order-sized linear, setpiece-driven shooters with strong writing. The budget tier between indie boomer-shoot and $200M AAA basically doesn't exist for FPS right now.
- **Weird licensed games.** The PS2 era had *so many* budget licensed games that were accidentally great (or at least charmingly janky). Today licensed games are either huge mobile gacha or huge AAA, nothing in between.
- **Arcade-style sports games.** Not sims (Madden, FIFA/FC, MLB The Show) — I mean NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, SSX, Tony Hawk (yes THPS 1+2 existed but it's a remake), arcade racing split-screen stuff.
- **"B-tier" JRPGs.** Not Final Fantasy, not Persona, not indie pixel JRPGs — the Lost Odysseys, Blue Dragons, Xenogears, Star Oceans, Tales games of the world. Mid-budget, experimental, weird, sometimes broken.
- **Split-screen everything.** It's basically a back-of-box bullet when it exists at all now, which is a genuine cultural loss.
What's the genre or type of game you miss most? And do you think it could actually find an audience today, or are we just nostalgic for something that doesn't make economic sense anymore?
Bonus: if a small indie dev is reading this thread, which of these niches is most underserved?