If you've ever wondered why, every few years, lots of games start having similar mechanics, ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Starfield'sā lead designer, Willą“ Shen, has some answers for you.
Like any artistic medium, video games have trends. They're slower to catch on to new ideas than films or paintings because development takes half a dozen years, but the trends are easy to spoź¦t once you start looking.
In an interview with Kiwi Talkz, Shen explains: "All of a sudden, games like Skyrim and other open-world games really hit their stride with enough content to get past the tipping point where you can almost play it forever. That became the big trend that hit the games industry. You can see ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Dark Souls and ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Elden Ring being a secondary trend: š¦©let's make third-person action combat really hard."
The ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Soulslike boom has been big, with games like ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Stellar Blade, ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Nine Sols, and ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Lies of P tšaking inspiration from the tough combat. These games can also get away with being shorter because we'll all spend hours facing the same strong foes over and over again.
Shen mentions another trend: "Everything became survival crafting because ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Minecraft became super popular." I think of games like ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Horizon Zero Dawn, ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Dragon's Dogma 2, and even Elden Ring, which allź¦ŗ have gathering and crafting mechanics. Horizon's was far more necessary and felt baked into the plot, but Elden Ring's you can take or leave.
ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:Crimson Desert looks like it'll combine tough Soulslike combat with crafting mechanics, and I'm very excited for it to come outš. So even though trends can make games seem similar, if done well, they can elevate the open-world genre.
While you wait for the next big trend to emerge (my money's on couch co-op making a comeback), check out all the ę¾³ę“²å¹øčæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„čÆ¢:video game release dates for 2025 and beyond.
I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the stušdent paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing š¶my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.
