I just finished watching the SGF 2025 showcase and while I really enjoyed the production value (and Lucy James as cohost, she is great). I was a bit disappointed with the games selected (or who paid…) for the showcase. Furthermore, I consider myself a pretty traditional single player story driven action RPG enjoyer, and this showcase didn’t feel like it had a lot for me. It felt like a bulk of this showcase were multiplayer focused games, then souls-likes, then anime gambling games and the creepy horror games.
I feel like games I’d be interested in were 20% of the games max, but honestly that feels high to me. It felt like this was 30% multiplayer focused games, 20% souls likes and 20% anime gambling games and maybe 15% creepy games. To see if my sense is on point or if I’m off my rocker, I decided to do some analysis based on a Gamespot article covering the showcase. Ironically, they didn’t tabulate the gambling games. I don’t blame them.
Breakdown by Game Type
- 30% = Multiplayer focused
- 18% = Action Single Player
- 11% = Creepy Single Player
- 9% = Souls Like
Some notes – multiplayer focus paints these games with a broad brush, which is why it’s such a high percentage. In general, I’m not interested in multiplayer games of any stripe, so the categorization is honest. If a game description starts with ‘co-op’ or ‘multiplayer’ I’m lumping it in the multiplayer focused category.
I was wrong, there were quite a few more single player action titles than it felt like, but still weren’t as many as I’d have liked! Based on projected release dates, I’m thinking the back half of the year will be pretty sparse, but I’m hoping it fills out more than it is right now.
