I’m prompted by the thread asking PC gamers if they’re losing interest in gaming. A recurring theme was people saying that given the poor quality of a lot of games that come out they’re not willing to invest the time in new ones to learn how to play, and I wanted to ask if that’s the general consensus.
All you need to do is read some of the independent critics to get a sense they think the games industry is simply cranking out clones of about 6 different games at the moment (Starcraft, Diablo, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto and Mass Effect/KOTOR, I think) and I’m kind of inclined to agree. It feels like you only really see fresh new ideas coming out of the independent sector now which, of course, puts a real limit on how big or well polished such a game is going to be. All the big studios just seem to churn out very samey games with the thinnest of stories and plots (or sometimes no plots at all). Sure they look great, but do you feel like you’ve had a good gaming experience? Did you get sucked in? Do you want to play it again?
I don’t think it was always this way, if nothing else because if I think back to the days when I started gaming when I was about 10 most games that came out then are considered classics now (X-com, the Sierra games, Lucasart games, Civ/Master of Orion etc). Now I’m pretty much stuck waiting for the sequels to games that I know I’m going to like or games by the same developer i.e. Civ 5 because I love all the Civ games, most stuff by Paradox as they’re a solid strategy producer.
I think it’s a combination of “I’m old, games were better when I was younger” and “I’m old and I don’t have a lot of time to play, so I’m not very good, so games suck now.”
In other words, made up drivel.
Games are no better or no worse than they were five, ten, fifteen or even twenty years ago. And there’s just as much variety today as there was back then. And anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t look beyond the top ten bestsellers of the month.
Again, the notion that games aren’t as good as they used to be is pure drivel.
It’s more of a matter of been-there done-that. You can only headshot so many nazi/zombie/whatevers, regardless of graphics, before it gets to be stale. If Modern Warfare 2 is the first FPS game you ever play, you’ll love it. If it is the 50th FPS you ever play, it probably isn’t quite as ‘new and shiny’ to you and you will get bored quickly. Change this analogy as necessary for whatever game type/concept tickles your fancy.
I’m sure someone more articulate than me will be along shortly to explain what the heck my above paragraph means that actually makes sense.
I’ll add to Captain_C’s comments that we’re currently undergoing a rather severe Genre Contraction-as certain genres prove to be unprofitable because the fan base is too small, nobody makes anything within them anymore. Can anyone name anything made in the last 10 years which truly breaks the old molds? [Not rhetorical necessarily-if something truly innovative exists name it] Yet each year (amongst PCs at least) things like golf games or submarine sims (SH V’s failure just porked that genre for a number of years at least) die off. So eventually we end up with a small number of game types, and a jaded gamer looking for a brand new fix pretty much won’t be able to find it.
We’re getting jaded. Show a young boy Foghorn Leghorn cartoons and he’ll prefer SpongeBob, while all sense of taste and a Universe of logic agree that the kid is flat out retarded.
Nonsense. Games are significantly different than they used to be. And for some people’s tastes that means they’re going to be worse. There are all sorts of trends that have developed in the last 10-15 years that make games much different. An obvious example is cutscenes. They barely existed 15 years ago but are nigh-ubiquitous now. Most games are 3d now which is a huge change that effects a great deal about how a game plays and how it is designed. Online multiplayer and or achievements changes the way many games are designed and played. Many genres that used to be common now barely exist. Like scrolling shooters and 2d platformers.
Yes. For me at least games are getting worse. You can hardly even play a game nowadays with out sitting through a 5-10 minute video. That’s usually enough to piss me off right there. Then most developers still don’t seem to have figured out how to make good controls for 3d games and yet continue to make nothing but 3d games. The writing is nearly always terrible and makes me long for the days when the story was little more than a few sentences here and there to tell you where to go next.
What’s the best game, then? Super Mario Brothers, for the SNES (example). Go back and play it – it’s shit. It’s nowhere near as fun as Super Mario Galaxy, for the Wii (example) – but, until you go back and play it, you don’t know it’s shit. And games today repeat the same mechanics, with minor improvements, going from COD1 to COD5 is a huge step, and you see loads of difference. But going from COD1, to COD2, to COD3, to COD4, etc you don’t see the difference, and you eventually get bored with the mechanics.
Nonsense. I do still go back and play those old games. They have some problems, but if the game was really fantastic, they are still fantastic now. Old FF, SMB, Zeldas - and that’s just the SNES!
Imho, console games killed the PC market. Back in the day, 100k sales was a bestselling video game. 1 million sales was unheard of, and the only way to do it was to publish 5+ successful games in a series (e.g. the King’s Quest series, Ultima series, Wizardry series, etc.) As you can imagine, selling 100k copies of something usually means you aren’t going to stay in business very long, especially when you take into account the years of development and advertising necessary to make even one game.
When consoles came out, 1 million in pre-order sales was the norm. Successful console games today sell 10, 20 or even 60 million copies. The video game makers were happy indeed.
The problem though is that console gamers aren’t very good gamers. Thumb controls are very hard to use and it’s impossible to have the fine movement like with a joystick or mouse. Therefore, games started getting more and more simplistic. A really good example of this was to compare Ultima 4 for the PC vs Ultima for the Nintendo. The Nintendo version is roughly 10% of the content of the PC version.
Today, best-selling video games require only the basest of hand-eye coordination. Tournament gamers never, ever use the thumbpad. When PC games were ported to the consoles, the quality and content dropped immensely.
Now, games are made for the consoles first, and some no longer come out in PC versions (e.g. Madden series.) The money just isn’t there, and quality of the game keeps getting worse and worse because people continue to buy them.
I’m a PC gamer and games just keep getting better and better. I’m 33 years old and my reflexes are a little slower and I have less time to devote to the games I do buy but grading on that curve games today blow away the ones from the past. I’ve seen (most) games go from non-existent threadbare plots to even the most vapid shooter having some type of ongoing story. I’ve seen clunky obscure interfaces get more and more intuitive and sensible. Graphics needless to say have improved. Genres have gotten deeper and more complex and though people complain about ‘fewer’ new genres what did you expect? I don’t see many new genres of novels and movies appearing once the main basic outlines were set down there’s only so much more you can do.
The problem is that as you get older your standards go up as your skills go down. You start to remember the best games of the past that stood the test of time and comparing to the average game of today forgetting all the crap you had to wade through to find those games. There are disappointments of course I do think the console ports and co-developed games have been crippled a little compared to what they could be but if those same ports had come out five years ago on old hardware nobody would think they were crippled due to their limitations (once again showing how standards steadily rise).
P.S. I always find it hilarious how much better everything was in the past. Music, movies, games somehow all hit their peak when the speaker was 13-20. Quite a coincidence that.
Wow. I’ve never heard that games are getting worse. But then, I guess old people complain about everything. I’m constantly excited by the new games that are coming out. It seems to me like the stuff is getting better every year. I also saw Superhal’s “console gamers aren’t very good” so I’m going to just file all these complaints under ‘elitism’ and be on my way.
Well sure, because it’s a very formative time for us and it has a bit impact on our subject view of things in the future. No doubt the same debate will be had in 15 years time by the current 15 year olds who will say that WOW, COD4 and GTA4 were the pinacle of gaming and it has all been downhill since.
Well if you stand on our lawn you’ll hear the bitter sound of complaining, won’t you?
I’d like to agree with you on this but I just can’t, not because I think games are getting worse in absolute terms necessarily, but because they don’t offer me anything that I haven’t experienced before, or they’re presented in a way that seems to appeal to everyone and thus not be particularly specialised. I’ll read a preview of a game and there’s a huge amount of coverage about how amazing the graphics are and how the physics engine is great but virtually nothing about the story is tells or the overall game experience - what about the game’s soul?
I do agree that statements like console games just aren’t any good aren’t well supported, though.
I’ve been playing them for more than 25 years, and they most certainly were better fifteen and twenty years ago. They were challenging. There were puzzles to be figured out - and you weren’t handed the answers on a silver platter. They made you think. Today’s games pale in comparison - they’ve been dumbed down beyond belief, it’s all about the eye candy now.
That’s what came to my mind, too, but Portal is basically a well-done and clever jumping puzzle game. I enjoyed it, but it’s not quite as genre-breaking as some people made it out to be. Plus, it’s really short- I think I got through it in four hours, and even at that length it was clear that there wasn’t much else to do with the concept.
Can I take a little from Column A, a little from Column B?
There’s no doubt that a lot of this is nostalgia. People remember the great games from 10-20 years ago and forget the duds, and also forget that even in the great games the storyline was often absurd, the graphics clunky, the controls limited and the physics laughable. Plus as time goes on it gets harder and harder for developers to come up with something that hasn’t been done before, and as gamers get older reflexes slow down, learning curves become tougher and real life starts to interfere with devoting hundreds of hours to a game.
On the other hand, I think it’s true that the games industry has a problem. Like Hollywood, its main strategy is to repeat what sold last time, and thanks to Moore’s Law that means the new version is usually the same basic game with more options, better powerups and snazzier graphics. The trouble is that this approach is beginning to hit human limits. Hundreds of skills/weapons/whatever to choose from? No time to try them all out, so either guess or buy the strategy guide and create the same min-maxed character as all the other powergamers. Dozens of moves? Most gamers don’t have even one dozen fingers, so they wind up key-binding the half-dozen controls they actually use and searching desperately when they need something else. Photo-realistic graphics? Often end up making it harder to see what’s actually going on, and even more often make the inevitable departures from reality more jarring. You don’t expect an 8-bit sprite to act like a person, but you do notice when a well-animated 3D character is floating two inches off the ground, or walking in straight lines and right angles, or doesn’t notice that you’ve just shot the guy standing next to him with a BFG.
Games are definitely better in terms of graphics and story-telling, but still the same old when it comes to mechanics and themes. I think way too much effort have been spent on graphics; I mean, I do appreciate good graphics but do all games have to have Crysis’ details and realism?
Again, 25, and play games for a living. So again, nope.
Much like this statement.
This is not an objective truth, no matter how hard you wish it to be. People have different opinions and because you feel differently doesn’t invalidate their feelings.
There is no way to really quantify this. With that said, I find today’s games to largely be much more repetitive and uninspired.
Can you please stop making shit up for a second? Anyone? Really? Did you talk to everyone who has proclaimed such? I play several dozens of games a year, including practically all of the biggest ones, because it’s my job too.
