I personally guess yes, because companies started to get more greedy and careless about their games with time until now, where there are only a few games that are actually good or very good. The biggest part of games today are generic or totally crap, and some of them trying the maximum extort money from you. Good games and bad games always existed but at least gaming library were equilibrated. Companies always cared about money but at least they took money in a creative and not so abusive way from us. There are many companies that were awesome in the past but now are totally crap like EA, Bethesda, Activision, Konami, Ubisoft, Sega and now Blizzard. Even the best companies today make are making stupid decisions more frequently.
Do you guess the world of games get worse with time?
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There has always been shovelware, look at ET for the Atari
I think the biggest issue I have with modern games is too many of them are glorified tech demos - same with movie industry
Also about Bethesda, the guys who made Skyrim and Fallout 4 are not the same guys who made the MMOs - I think Starfield will stand on its own
I think the biggest issue I have with modern games is too many of them are glorified tech demos - same with movie industry
Also about Bethesda, the guys who made Skyrim and Fallout 4 are not the same guys who made the MMOs - I think Starfield will stand on its own
No idea wher you get tht glorified tech demo view from lol - games hav had the same amount of gameplay across all the playstations - res games FF games mgs games tomb raider games - all gameplay mate
For games it is twofold. Plus whatever psychology says (most people have their tastes set around about the time they are 19 and will go with that forever more).
I have a hard time with modern games as well, this despite still loving games (I was way past 19 when the 360 hit but I still enjoy many 360 games, gamecube as well) and can't think of what I am going to take away from this generation really, even for the playable enough versions -- I don't care so much for most driving games but got out need for speed underground 2 on my gamecube a while back and had a blast, don't think I will be grabbing a copy of need for speed paycheque or whatever to have as my arcadey driving game of choice for when I want to play such a thing.
1) Computer games are a new endeavour and radically changing quite a bit.
Books is books is books. Music is music is music. Even films is films is films for quite some years now.
Sure the state of the art has moved on a bit, and what can be accomplished on what budget has changed, and in academic settings you can find a bit more still*, but I can watch films from the 50s that are great, and books from far before then that are also great, music possibly further back still and paintings/sculpture still looks great however many thousands of years on we are from some of the great masters.
*while computer games have game theory to fall on as their academic base I can't ignore the story writing lessons around today (see Brandon Sanderson's lectures on writing), the lessons on film making/cinematography and the like, the level of music theory that people are going to now and so on and so on.
Games from the 70s... now that is a bigger ask, and they change radically every 5 or so years up until around the late 360 where it sort of stalled out in terms of level size, mechanics, number of things they ask you to handle, control quality and whatever else.
I don't think this stalling out is a technical limit (though we are probably within sight of something like one) but it might have contributed at some level.
2) Yeah computer game companies seem to have opted out of making games that might flop and instead just go for safe, widest market (which often means lowest common denominator) and thus bland, possibly while trying to reach into my wallet to ask me to pay for things that were previously always part of the game. Or indeed have what would have previously been incredibly thin games; perfect dark N64 had https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/198275-perfect-dark/faqs/8345 how many multiplayer maps, whole bunch of modes in each of those, bots to play with, challenges within the maps, and a fully fleshed out story (also co-op)... Now I am lucky to get 6 maps all of which will be "three lanes" because "that is what games are".
I would not care but they seem to spent ridiculous sums of money on development, way above any rate of inflation (all the while the hardware is getting faster and thus making their job theoretically even easier), and still get left wanting.
The age of the b tier game seems to have come to a close, now it was probably during the PS2 that it happened but there was enough life left in it to stagger on through the PS360. That is usually what gave us our monster titles, cult classics, or otherwise uncovered new developers for us (other than maybe PS4 Spiderman, and that is Spiderman during what has to be the biggest point for comic book films in decades, has there been a surprise hit outside of seriously indy games in recent years?). Even most of the interesting devs buggered off to android and IOS when they hit towards the end of the DS' lifetime which means Nintendo consoles have also been lacking for me.
I wish I could understand when DANTENDO says this is the best time in games ever (I think I am blocked by him because I am too negative or some such nonsense). I just don't see it. If someone has a list of games that I am missing out that blow away everything that came before on I am truly all ears.
I have a hard time with modern games as well, this despite still loving games (I was way past 19 when the 360 hit but I still enjoy many 360 games, gamecube as well) and can't think of what I am going to take away from this generation really, even for the playable enough versions -- I don't care so much for most driving games but got out need for speed underground 2 on my gamecube a while back and had a blast, don't think I will be grabbing a copy of need for speed paycheque or whatever to have as my arcadey driving game of choice for when I want to play such a thing.
1) Computer games are a new endeavour and radically changing quite a bit.
Books is books is books. Music is music is music. Even films is films is films for quite some years now.
Sure the state of the art has moved on a bit, and what can be accomplished on what budget has changed, and in academic settings you can find a bit more still*, but I can watch films from the 50s that are great, and books from far before then that are also great, music possibly further back still and paintings/sculpture still looks great however many thousands of years on we are from some of the great masters.
*while computer games have game theory to fall on as their academic base I can't ignore the story writing lessons around today (see Brandon Sanderson's lectures on writing), the lessons on film making/cinematography and the like, the level of music theory that people are going to now and so on and so on.
Games from the 70s... now that is a bigger ask, and they change radically every 5 or so years up until around the late 360 where it sort of stalled out in terms of level size, mechanics, number of things they ask you to handle, control quality and whatever else.
I don't think this stalling out is a technical limit (though we are probably within sight of something like one) but it might have contributed at some level.
2) Yeah computer game companies seem to have opted out of making games that might flop and instead just go for safe, widest market (which often means lowest common denominator) and thus bland, possibly while trying to reach into my wallet to ask me to pay for things that were previously always part of the game. Or indeed have what would have previously been incredibly thin games; perfect dark N64 had https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/198275-perfect-dark/faqs/8345 how many multiplayer maps, whole bunch of modes in each of those, bots to play with, challenges within the maps, and a fully fleshed out story (also co-op)... Now I am lucky to get 6 maps all of which will be "three lanes" because "that is what games are".
I would not care but they seem to spent ridiculous sums of money on development, way above any rate of inflation (all the while the hardware is getting faster and thus making their job theoretically even easier), and still get left wanting.
The age of the b tier game seems to have come to a close, now it was probably during the PS2 that it happened but there was enough life left in it to stagger on through the PS360. That is usually what gave us our monster titles, cult classics, or otherwise uncovered new developers for us (other than maybe PS4 Spiderman, and that is Spiderman during what has to be the biggest point for comic book films in decades, has there been a surprise hit outside of seriously indy games in recent years?). Even most of the interesting devs buggered off to android and IOS when they hit towards the end of the DS' lifetime which means Nintendo consoles have also been lacking for me.
I wish I could understand when DANTENDO says this is the best time in games ever (I think I am blocked by him because I am too negative or some such nonsense). I just don't see it. If someone has a list of games that I am missing out that blow away everything that came before on I am truly all ears.
It might feel that way, but I don't think it has anything to do with the games themselves.
As a kid, everything is new and exciting, games are just about the best thing ever and you could happily play games all day every day and never be bored. You could even play the same game all day. Kids are easily amused.
As you mature, that's no longer enough. You start getting more varied interests, and need more variety to avoid getting bored, just playing games is no longer enough.
At least that's how I feel and I think that's why I no longer play games as much as I used to and why they rarely get me hooked these days. It's a combination of my standards getting higher (not being as easily amused) and needing variety.
As a kid, everything is new and exciting, games are just about the best thing ever and you could happily play games all day every day and never be bored. You could even play the same game all day. Kids are easily amused.
As you mature, that's no longer enough. You start getting more varied interests, and need more variety to avoid getting bored, just playing games is no longer enough.
At least that's how I feel and I think that's why I no longer play games as much as I used to and why they rarely get me hooked these days. It's a combination of my standards getting higher (not being as easily amused) and needing variety.
Last edited by The Real Jdbye,
Current distribution: 4 - 4 - 3. I guess the opinions are divided. 
Ahem...I've ranted about this before (too lazy to look it up, but it's probably somewhere in my blogs), but I voted "no". As in: "it actually gets better with time".
The way I see it, the only problem the industry has is IMHO a relatively small one. Namely, precisely, that the largest companies give people what they ALREADY KNOW THEY WANT, and try to make money in...erm...sometimes questionable fashions. They act more like drug dealers that hand out their first samples for free in the hopes to hook you to the stuff that'll cost you more. And that comparison isn't unfair, because the aspects that make gambling addicting are showing up in more and more AAA-titles. And (in a way) also in maffia-practice, the industry beat the criticism of aspects by funding rating systems, which results in ratings that are mostly ignored (both by producers and clients) rather than enforced.
Those problems aren't unimportant, and certainly deserve to be mentioned and criticized. But what I've ranted out more than a few times is that this behavior is enforced by the audience. In every freaking one of these threads I can read between the lines that people don't like it but nonetheless choose to suck up to it. And I've sort of given up on pointing out the obvious: THERE ARE OTHER GAMES BEING MADE!
For the last five years, EA was mostly a snooze-fest for me ("hey, you like epic battles and explosions? Here's a trailer with 99% of it and 1% hint that YOU can be part of it"). Indie games presented are the highlight for me, but there as well they serve more as a "yup...we're doing that too" as an indication of what it is: that video games can be an expression that's artistic in all sorts they can be.
When compared to the zeroties, you can say that the race for the fanciest horsepower is coming to a close. But the companies that got big in that era have specialized into squeezing the best visuals into digital form. Meanwhile, the indies that gotten big in the late zeroties, early...tenties(1) are the ones who pioneered leaving the technical aspects on the sideline and focus much harder on aesthetics, puzzles and/or means of storytelling. And that's starting to show. It needs other means of getting the word out (fuck...have games like Baba is you, celeste or Untitled goose game even been MENTIONED at an E3 presentation?), but great games are being made as we speak.
I'd also like to point out the often forgotten aspect of games: board games. They really started to boom in this century, and the quality seems still to improve. Granted, it branches out back into video games for at least a part (which will certainly be accelerated by the current crisis), but there as well: technology is at best a gimmick rather than the center stage. What I perceive there more than in the video game world is cross-contamination. Gone are the straight divisions between genres. Engine builders can be worker placementg games as well. Kid's games can have an audience with adults as well. Heck...even abstract games have a theme these days.
So all in all: I think it just gets better. Perhaps at the cost of the "dinosaurs" of yesteryear (remember when EA had actual great games under their belt?), but that won't stop the industry.
(1): yeah, I don't know how to address 2010-2019. You know what I'm talking about, right?
Ahem...I've ranted about this before (too lazy to look it up, but it's probably somewhere in my blogs), but I voted "no". As in: "it actually gets better with time".
The way I see it, the only problem the industry has is IMHO a relatively small one. Namely, precisely, that the largest companies give people what they ALREADY KNOW THEY WANT, and try to make money in...erm...sometimes questionable fashions. They act more like drug dealers that hand out their first samples for free in the hopes to hook you to the stuff that'll cost you more. And that comparison isn't unfair, because the aspects that make gambling addicting are showing up in more and more AAA-titles. And (in a way) also in maffia-practice, the industry beat the criticism of aspects by funding rating systems, which results in ratings that are mostly ignored (both by producers and clients) rather than enforced.
Those problems aren't unimportant, and certainly deserve to be mentioned and criticized. But what I've ranted out more than a few times is that this behavior is enforced by the audience. In every freaking one of these threads I can read between the lines that people don't like it but nonetheless choose to suck up to it. And I've sort of given up on pointing out the obvious: THERE ARE OTHER GAMES BEING MADE!
For the last five years, EA was mostly a snooze-fest for me ("hey, you like epic battles and explosions? Here's a trailer with 99% of it and 1% hint that YOU can be part of it
"). Indie games presented are the highlight for me, but there as well they serve more as a "yup...we're doing that too" as an indication of what it is: that video games can be an expression that's artistic in all sorts they can be.When compared to the zeroties, you can say that the race for the fanciest horsepower is coming to a close. But the companies that got big in that era have specialized into squeezing the best visuals into digital form. Meanwhile, the indies that gotten big in the late zeroties, early...tenties(1) are the ones who pioneered leaving the technical aspects on the sideline and focus much harder on aesthetics, puzzles and/or means of storytelling. And that's starting to show. It needs other means of getting the word out (fuck...have games like Baba is you, celeste or Untitled goose game even been MENTIONED at an E3 presentation?), but great games are being made as we speak.
I'd also like to point out the often forgotten aspect of games: board games. They really started to boom in this century, and the quality seems still to improve. Granted, it branches out back into video games for at least a part (which will certainly be accelerated by the current crisis), but there as well: technology is at best a gimmick rather than the center stage. What I perceive there more than in the video game world is cross-contamination. Gone are the straight divisions between genres. Engine builders can be worker placementg games as well. Kid's games can have an audience with adults as well. Heck...even abstract games have a theme these days.
So all in all: I think it just gets better. Perhaps at the cost of the "dinosaurs" of yesteryear (remember when EA had actual great games under their belt?), but that won't stop the industry.
(1): yeah, I don't know how to address 2010-2019. You know what I'm talking about, right?
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That's really a matter of opinion and perspective... if you're talking indie's and niché titles I mostly agree, but if you're talking about triple-A offerings from major publishers it's hard to be impressed. At best they're playing it safe with cookie-cutter games by commitee, and at worst they've just become incredibly stale. Obviously I'm generalizing, and there have obviously been a handful of standout gaming experiences from the triple-A releases... but they're the exception and not the rule.
Hardware getting more powerful hasn't equated to games getting better. Imo the best games of this generation can/could run on last gen hardware and not be considered 'worse' for the drop in horse-power.
I wouldn't blame the games themselves.
I'd blame the fan base behind that game.
I'd try Minecraft or Fortnite or that shit ONLY and ONLY IF they weren't such a trend among autistic people.
Is the same with TV, dumb people watches dumb shows, then, more dumb shows appears to appeal more dumb people.
Dumb people > normal people.
I'd blame the fan base behind that game.
I'd try Minecraft or Fortnite or that shit ONLY and ONLY IF they weren't such a trend among autistic people.
Is the same with TV, dumb people watches dumb shows, then, more dumb shows appears to appeal more dumb people.
Dumb people > normal people.
There is a line of thought that says the game makes the community that surrounds it.
For instance DOTA/MOBA.
The only thing you have is your stats, one bad player can easily tank a match, play can't be learned by play (or at least not seriously experimental and analytical) and thus hidden skills and unintuitive play... this breeds elitism and nastiness.
If the games are dumbed down pap to have the broadest possible appeal you get dumbed down pap for a playerbase.
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