Are games today really that bad?

[Raven's Nest]

In my experience the only way to move forward and continue innovation and game design is to acknowledge the roots but always think out side the box. That's how new genre's are born after-all.

Yeah, I agree with that. I also think that there isn't enough acknowledgement of innovations that work. Take Halo: you'd think that more people would be making FPS games with good AI, big open fight areas, and awesome shotguns. Instead, they took away only the two weapon limit, and here we are in linear corridors plinking away with enemies that are too dumb to flank us. And, our shotguns are useless.

No-one wants to be accused of copying completely after all. It's always one step forward and eight to the side with each generation. I also think the ability to induce nostalgia in gamers is reward and recognition for innovation itself.

Wouldn't it be great to be one of the lead developers in charge of Final Fantasy VII or someone who did the level design in Sonic 2. Hell, even Peter Molyneux or Sid Meier has to feel a bit smug sometimes...

 

[Lunar Templar]

which leads us to the core of the problem, the publishers. they don't care about art, only profits, hell some don't even care if you like them, only that they get paid. and they pretty much dictate what the devs under them do, regardless of what the devs them selves say

Isnt that a good thing though. Publishers care about money and so they dont give a fuck about games are art arguments and instead about making games we want to buy. Duno about you but I would rather have somebody trying to make games I would like then somebody trying to make a game so it can be called art.

not really. mostly because they're idea of making money is cloning, which i suppose if fine if you REALLY like that one popular game and want more of it, but slightly different, but it kills creativity, which gaming NEEDS just as much as the game to do well.

what gaming really needs is balance, between the creative process and the business end, risks NEED to be taken, and boundary pushed, its the only way we're going to have truly great games that sell millions again.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Well to be fair, games were much more expensive then than now.

Doing a bit of quick research (I played NES games but was too young to buy them myself so I don't know the pricings off hand), games were around $45 to $60. SNES got up $80, and N64 up to $100.

Looking at the N64, you can basically double that in modern terms (5% inflation for 15 years) so that's a game at $200.

For NES, you can over triple the cost. 25 years is a long, long time.

There's a lot more that goes into it than just this very brief glance - development costs were much lower, but the market was a great deal smaller, and cartridge costs much higher - but $ for $ we get games far cheaper than ever before.

While expensive, it comes at the expense of what the gamer wants to see. I can't remember when I've seen a thread or even had a conversation with a friend who said "You know what I want more of in my games? Cutscenes. Overblown dramatic features that has the character I'm supposed to be identifying with act in ways I don't really agree with".

To fit in more of the stuff that a good few of us can do without, we have game play and depth taken out.

That actually goes to my thoughts on the topic.

Games today are really that bad. For me. And for you. But not for all of us. Because game design is now looking for all of us. Games have broken from just the hand of the outcast in the 90's, and designers really weren't sure where to go next. Oddly, they went to our nemesis, the frat bro with fps and sports games. That market did well, so they went for others.

Think about something as small as achievements. Do you remember back in the day when to actually get an easter egg or small sign saying 'you found a secret', you had to have split second timing, sight beyond sight, and the luck of the Irish? Now, you just press forward and not die... you unlocked an achievement.

To makes games more accessible to the public, they've been taken out of the hands of the Nintendo Hard worshipers and were now instead designed for little Billy and his grandma who want to slaughter massive amounts of enemies just by pressing x a lot.

Now, this goes back to what I said. This isn't bad for the public, because we lifelong gamers are still a small percentage of the population. There are people who picked it up in the last few years, so the games seem normal to comparison to them. Sit those people down to Battletoads. Tell them how you had to use memory, split second timing, horde every life you could get just to get past that snake pit. Tell them there was no regenning health. Laugh at them when they ask about continues. Let them know that we craved that challenge.

And they'll think you're mad.

Just look at the review scores for the recent Ninja Gaiden. Do you remember the cred you got for even BEATING the revamp of Ninja Gaiden? Hell, any Ninja Gaiden before that time. It was cheap, it was hard, and you felt like you could don a real ninja sword and whup some ass if you beat a level. That was exciting.

Today? Hand Held. The fact that we used to understand how to play a game in the past by just failing and trying things differently is lost on modern game designers. EVERYTHING must be spelled out for you. Game designers now treat us like idiots. You remember the fun of Silent Hill? How did you know something was even pick up-able? James looked at that direction. And you needed to go over and find out what. This new Silent Hill? Notes, prompts, suggestions... It's like game designers feel you need special helmets not to hurt yourself.

I go to indie games now. They remember I want to be challenged. There are exceptions to the rule, but not many.

 

[tautologico]

Gamer forums tend to be very negative, the people posting tend to express rage or discontent more often than not. Of course, it's the internet, but I think not every "community" is as negative as gamers. Reading a collection of threads you'd really think there's nothing good right now, and only old games are good.

The game industry is changing, but it was changing before. We get some cool new stuff in games, but we also lose some good stuff. Publishers have been ever more risk-adverse, and this tends to create some homogeneity in games, but even then there are lots of AAA games that are good experiences. And we also tend to get some of the older experiences back in the indie scene or with the new crowdfunded games.

If newer games are "better" or "worse" than games from the past is often a subjective matter, as you noted there is a lot of nostalgia around. Nostalgia refers not only to liking the past, but trying to recapture another time in the past. Someone that played Doom as their first FPS often associate Doom and similar shooters to the discovery of the genre, and with a time when there was less responsibility and more joy. On the other hand, people who have been playing a lot of games for a lot of time become somewhat jaded, so it is ever harder to recapture the same joy we experienced when we still didn't know many games.

Of course, we can compare the quality of newer games in relation to older games in a more "objective" fashion, but this rarely occurs. Emotion is almost always an important part of the equation.

So yes, there's plenty of excellent games today, both AAA and indie, to cater to many different tastes. There are genres that are MIA, but there are also new genres that are interesting. Most long-time players will tend to identify themselves with a specific time point in the history of games and proclaim it to be THE "golden age" of gaming, but this is quite subjective and tied to expectations and emotions.

I tend to take the changes as they come, trying to enjoy what's good now, and replaying my favorite games from the past once in a while, if I have the chance, but not ignoring new games.

 

[DarthFennec]

I agree that most of us have our rosy retrospecs on about this whole thing, but I don't think it's just that we're "too nostalgic" for the old games. I'm pretty sure we've just forgotten about all the terrible games that actually did come out back then.

Lots of people tell me that the PS2 was the best system because it had all the best games ... and that's true, there were a lot of amazing PS2 games, including most of my favorite games ever. But people don't remember that there were a hell of a lot of terrible PS2 games as well. You just don't think about that kind of stuff when you look back and remember things, at least not as much as you do while it's all over the shelves. If a game is good, it leaves a lasting impression, but if it's bad you forget about it pretty quickly. Soon, we'll have forgotten about all the terrible games that have been coming out, and we'll remember only the good ones ... and we'll look back on these days and think "gaming was so much better back then ..."

I'm not saying that's all there is to it, because even without that there has certainly been a decrease in quality recently. But the nostalgia is still a big factor.

 

[Lunar Templar]

But if you actually look around we dont have all that much cloning for on. Sure if you only look at one specific genre then ya but there is tons of other games coming out. There are developers out there still taking risks and trying to push boundaries but in order to be able to do that and not go bankrupt they also need those reliable games.

aren't nearly enough of them trying, far as I'm concerned. getting harder and harder for me to find what i want to play, but that's getting into nitpicking, i've all ways been more a niche gamer.

 

[teisjm]

I think it has more to do with people beeing whiny today, than games beeing bad...
Maybe if... or...
Nah, fuck it, not even gonan try to argue further about this, the first line states my opinnion pretty well by itself.

 

[scorptatious]

Not necessarily. Every game generation has had their fair share of mediocre and bad games. People just tend to look back on them and remember them as classics. I'm not saying that none of them were classics. Some of the games in my childhood I feel still hold well by today's standards, like Oddworld Abe's Oddysee. And heck, I've played Final Fantasy IX about a year and a half ago through the PSN store and I now consider it one of my most favorite games of all time.

Other games, like say, Spyro the Dragon or Crash Bandicoot, not so much. I'm not saying they are bad. In fact they are still pretty good. It's just that my tastes have changed and I feel that they are too simplistic and not very engaging. Meanwhile, games like Dark Souls provided me with a deep lore and a wide variety of styles of play.

People look around and see that 90% of games are mediocre or crap and that there are Call of Duty imitations everywhere. But that's how it's always been. Twenty years ago 90% of games were mediocre or crap. The only difference was that we were knee-deep in 2D platformers instead of FPSs.

This. Exactly this.

 

[Korten12]

Coming from a person who has probably spent hundreds of hours on doom over his life, I would rather play Halo Reach now.

Although Halo is actually pretty good - the levels are on rails, but many of the actual fight areas are big, nonlinear, and populated by enemies with good AI. It's miles ahead of the brown modern shooter scripted whack-a-mole stuff.

Yeah, in Halo you do move from Point A to Point B, what what happens at Point B can happenly differently then someone elses point B since you can handle the situation sort of sandboxy as the developers describe it.

 

[ABLb0y]

There's always been bad, but at the same time, there's always good. The bad accentuates the good. I mean, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Silent Hill 2 wouldn't look anywhere near as good if it wasn't for such shit as Damnation and Silent Hill 0rigins.

Without a 0, a perfect 10 would have little meaning.

 

[ResonanceGames]

The exclusively story-driven direction RPGs have taken is disheartening, and FPSes have kind of settled into linear mediocrity -- especially compared to how much great, original stuff has happened with 3rd person action games over the last 10 years.

I also feel like last year and the coming years will be great for immersive sims, with Skyrim, Human Revolution, Dishonored, Thief 4, etc. Plus, we have several legitimately old-school indie RPGs on the horizon for the first time in forever, and there's no sign of the indie boom slowing down any time soon.

So overall, I think gaming is definitely better than it's ever been, but I do miss the big, inventive FPS and RPGs of yore.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Coming from a person who has probably spent hundreds of hours on doom over his life, I would rather play Halo Reach now.

Although Halo is actually pretty good - the levels are on rails, but many of the actual fight areas are big, nonlinear, and populated by enemies with good AI. It's miles ahead of the brown modern shooter scripted whack-a-mole stuff.

Yeah, in Halo you do move from Point A to Point B, what what happens at Point B can happenly differently then someone elses point B since you can handle the situation sort of sandboxy as the developers describe it.

My thoughts exactly. It's also why Halo's firefight mode works so well - you can throw together some really off-the-wall strategies and the AI is smart enough to handle it. No idea why so many devs are obsessed with throwing money at graphics when they should be throwing money at AI. Unlike graphics, AI actually makes games fun.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

I hate how short they are now, the wall hugging, and the cut scenes action scenes that they had in Deus Ex.

 

[Bostur]

@ Raven's Nest and Kahunaburger

I think your discussion about genres and their evolution is interesting and ironic somehow. It is true that the FPS has evolved a lot since Doom. About as much as the evolution between Civilization 1 and Alpha Centauri, or the evolution between Maniac Mansion and Grim Fandango, or Populous to StarCraft. But the examples I mention are mostly considered to be the same genre, or even clones. The difference now is that many of those genres don't exist anymore, and to the best of my perception the variance between genres were far greater just 10 years ago.

Try comparing modern games like CoD, Skyrim, Mass Effect and DE:HR. Many would think of them as different genres, and to some extent they are. But they all have the basic gameplay in common, line up sights on an enemy and press the trigger. If we went back 10-15 years in a time machine a lot of people would probably consider them Doom clones. I think it illustrates just how similar mainstream games have become.

We don't have Adventure games, Economic sims, Flight Sims, Mech Sims, Space Sims anymore. The platformer is almost dead, the RTS genre consists of SC2 and nothing else. Fighting games live on as a niche genre when it used to be one of the most dominant genres. Old style tactical RPGs are dead except for one kickstarter project and some tiny indy developers. There used to be a wealth of strategy game variations that was mainstream and strong, now we only have very few developers making them.

It ended up as a bit of a rant, but I can't help seeing so much wasted potential. Is the Doom genre really the only worthwhile one?

 

[ElPatron]

What is wrong with today's gaming:

- We basically give pretentious writers the illusion that their work is a great
- Challenge today seems to be more related to the number of enemies and their health bars, instead of actual challenging mechanics (how many games as challenging/demanding as STALKER come out every year?)
- Games which are too short. Argh, shooters take millions of dollars and at least 2 years to develop, and only 5-6 hours of gaming?
- We think that every game must have multiplayer
- Business practices that restrict consumer freedom

Are you serious? Even the most generic CoD spinoff takes probably more effort from the team it makes it as any old game.

Lies.

Carmack and his team reproduced a Mario game almost pixel by pixel on computers. Computers did not have the power to render side-scrolling games but Carmack had the simple yet ingenious idea of using a permanently fixed blue sky instead of forcing the computer to render the same blue every time.

iD software had no computers when they started. They "borrowed" their company's computers during the weekends and worked in secret.

They basically pumped out game engines that have features that today we took for granted.

Let me tell you. Now that great engineers like Carmack did their job, making an engine today is much easier.

 

[KRAKENDIE]

Games today are THAT bad. But you're high if you don't think there were just as many shitty games. The difference is that back then there were plenty more heartfelt, all-in games to make our memories.

 

[Savagezion]

I can't even take the other guy serious trying to compare the writing of Bioshock, Mass Effect and Half Life: Episode 2, basically a bunch of shooters where you shoot stuff and watch some Cutscenes to the likes of Planescape or Fallout 1 and I'm just hoping he never played them before

That would be me, and yes, apart from Arcanum, I have played those old games you're referring to.

Can't say I particularly like your implication that I cannot possibly have formed my opinion after having played them. 'Cause anyone who disagrees with you is clearly operating on incomplete information. Oh, the arrogance.

Also, "bunch of shooters where you shoot some stuff and watch some cutscenes"? Right. Unlike those "RPGs where you stab some stuff and read some dialogue". Deep.

...

Also, Planescape Torment has more cutscenes than Bioshock and HL2 Ep2 put together. Just thought I'd mention that.

Well, I agree with you and I have played Arcanum too. It's actually my favorite game. The Fallout example is bad. Fallout 1 is not stellar writing. It is "good enough" writing. There is nothing particularly gripping about it. Overall, I agree, the writing has gotten better. In another 10 years people will see a new influx of gamers and games being made today will be the "golden greats" and the new stuff will be considered lower quality.

Games being quoted like Arcanum, Planescape, and Baldur's Gate that came out back in the day were rare gems. For each one there were 10 crappy RPGs with a lame story that faded into obscurity over time. Most of the big titles being brought up were made by a handful of companies. There were many more out there shovel garbage into the market. Garbage that makes today's garbage seem good. (At least it is coherent most of the time now days.

 

[Kahunaburger]

@Bostur: yeah, there definitely does seem like an issue re: what sort of products big studios will fund. On one level, you can't really blame them for being risk-averse in this economy (especially when review sites will crack down on games for being slightly difficult or inaccessible).

That's why, IMO, the rapidly growing indie scene we have right now is so awesome. Technology has lowered the barrier to entry for video game development to the extent that it's possible to make, for instance, a voxel-based procedurally generated exploration / building game.