Is The Genre About To Peak? - The PC Elitist Show

I think that the survival genre pretty much peaked (for me specifically) with 'The Long Dark' and 'Green Hell'. Both put a lot of emphasis on really meshing the overall mechanical goal-set with the setting and situation you are in. They never really felt like they became "build a big fort simulators" or anything like that. They really narrowed in on actual survival in a more grounded, more plausible sense. 'The Long Dark' especially really stands out for me since it is almost impossible to truly get yourself in a permanently safe position. It isn't about unlocking a recipe for a wall segment that you use in your monster-sized fort and instead is about just not dying of exposure or starvation. It is about finding somewhat plausible solutions to problems using common sense. When I tried to get into 'The Forest', I liked the overall feel of it early on but once I had some resources built up and started to construct stuff, it stopped really feeling like an actual survival game. The focus shifted towards an almost building sim style experience where a lot of the threats were greatly minimized. 'Green Hell' has also started moving a bit more into the "building sim" category than I would like. It is still solid enough and still has more mundane threats that you can't effectively remove by building something but it does look like the survival game playerbase kinda wants it to be 'The Forest' even though we already have that game.

First off, I'm very happy that you started posting again! I would love to see the old "podcast" format return. Two, I pretty much agree with your points, but I feel the genre has stagnated the past few years. Hopefully a developer will step up and change our view of what a survival game is, soon.

Welcome back!