If the 80's were considered the Golden Age of Gaming, then...

[ElectroJosh]

The Nineties (roughly) were the Golden age in the true sense of the term: an age of the greatest innovation and change. "Golden Age" doesn't mean the best age but the time of most obvious progression and the establishment of genres and styles.

Hence why the golden age of cinema is considered to be the 1920s to 1960s and the golden age of comics was late 1930s to early 1950s. Note that neither of these means "best" just the time they came into their own and were fully established.

I'll give you my arguments:

The 1990s (and I'll use this as a rough date) saw the 16 bit era of consoles come out at the start and the maturity of the 2D platformer along with popular arcade ports (Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 1 & 2).

With the PS1 and N64 we saw the establishment of 3D platformers, and 3D fighters. A move from sprite-based graphics to true 3D (even if it was ugly). Most innovations in these genres came in the 90s and the modern games tend to be different cosmetically.

Wolfenstien 3D to Doom to Quake to Half-Life saw the development of FPS games and they, pretty much, haven't changed much except in terms of graphics and realism.

RPGs and Adventure games went through a renaissance based on more advanced GUI systems (using the mouse over the keyboard on the PC) and took advantage of bigger hard-drives and CD-rom storage to bring larger worlds, lusher graphics and high-quality music/sound.

The changes I saw in the 90s were revolutionary while now they are just evolutionary. Not to say the games of the past were the best and now they are rubbish or that innovation is dead; but what we are getting is more refinement rather than massive change.

 

[Deshin]

If I had to pick a time frame I'd say it was 1995 with the PS1 launch and lasted til beginning of 2003 after the Xbox's launch. Here's why:

Now before I go into this let's be honest here, I mean REALLY honest, before the PS1 came along it was widely accepted that video games were for kids. It was a children's toy you plugged into the tv. Now sure there were some EPIC rpgs arounds but those were just media-bending from tabletop games of the era. They were good and for adults but never as a form of unique to the media entertainment. When the N64 came out there were some great games, no denying, but the big deal was when Sony entered the arena. Sony the big hardware giant was new on the scene and around that time video games hit their big innovation break. Computers were a "now" thing and not a "future" thing and more devs could code for games not limited to sprites.

Here's another thing: Nintendo was never THAT big in Europe... yes it's true, let that soak in a minute. Done? All the people whose earliest fondest memories of gaming who cite Nintendo are more often than not Americans. Yes sure there were Europeans who had Nintendos but they weren't the average Joe. Sweeping generalisations yada yada yada. Video games picked up earlier in Japan and America due to publishers. When Sony struck out the PS1 it brought an insurgance of interest in the media to an entire continent who were only now seeing games in their living room as being a "real" thing. More to the point however it brought interest into the 20-something demographic. I'm not saying this is ENTIRELY due to Sony but I do believe if Sony hadn't gone ahead with the project we'd probably have only seen consoles as a valid adult activity sometime in the last 7 year span.

This 8 year time span saw incredible innovation. Games people hadn't thought of were coming out and new genres were created almost every month. Japanese games being released gave people a new culture to break into and experience for the first time and there was no such thing as a "bad idea." Sadly like every golden age it had to come to a close and I believe it only lasted 8 years. By the start of 2003 MS had entered the scene and from there it slowly started to devolve into the publisher-driven monolith you see today. Companies closed, less innovation, all the best ideas had been done before and better, and sequels became the go to safe bet instead of bold new IPs. The goal was no longer bright eyed and bushy tailed developers out to make their mark in history by bringing what they wanted to the table but instead massive corporate interest and shareholders demanding their pounds of flesh. Basically, video games became stale.

1995 - 2003, that's the golden age my friends. When everyone with remote interest had a console and games of their choice. A time when gaming magazines piled the shelves of stationaries and demo discs were the best thing since sliced bread. A time when the big names on the scene were Sony, Nintendo, and Sega were rulers of the 3 kingdoms with Microsoft taking baby steps into the world.

The sad thing is these days I can name maybe 10 - 20 unique titles that stand out as great franchises of our generation, but back in the golden days? I could give you that same number for every single one of those 8 years and we'd all silently nod our heads in a moment of rememberance.

 

[Nazulu]

Pffft, late 90's and early 2000's were the golden age, before the graphics of AAA games became too expensive for developers to risk trying something different. I refer to this age as the mistake. Not all games but yeah.

 

[Squilookle]

Ohh man- editing your post to cover a mistake? Isn't that a bit petty and juvenile? Don't you realise that it will always be quoted and on display for all to see your mistake? Not that it really matters, of course, but since you bothered to change it, it must have at least troubled you in some way. Oh well, each to their own.

Okay, in this analogy, you have said you're the best fighter. This is you putting out your premise that gaming was superior then. I have shown several things that show it wasn't, by showing amazing games that weren't published then, and wouldn't happen in past periods of gaming. In this scenario, that is akin of proving a degree of fighting capability.

In response, you did not give counter-example, which would be giving a similar display of fighting capability. Instead, what you have done is called circular reasoning. You are starting with the premise that gaming used to be better. I gave examples that prove that idea is false. In order to argue against my exampled, you used your premise as fact, to say that if those games were made back then, they would be superior. So you used your argument as proof for your argument.

Your entire argument here rests on the assumption that I said gaming was superior then. All I said was that the likeliness of innovative games like Journey and Spec Ops were more common in the 90s, and both games would have felt right at home in such an environment and would in fact have enjoyed less publisher meddling. Contrary to your beliefs, developers today are more restricted by their publisher's demands than ever before.

Whatever else I have said, that one point alone is stone cold fact, and it's not hard to see that bigger titles in the 90s had far more creative freedom -and were fully funded to do so- compared to contemporary AAA games. It's not without reason that many have commented on the stagnation of creative expression in today's market, the constant recycling and cloning of similar games, the relegation of actual innovation to the low budget indie-game sector, the focus on graphics over gameplay, the mass market lowest common denominator marketing, the lack of game features, demos, balanced and tested multiplayer that was so often standard procedure in past eras, lack of polish pre-release etc combined with today's endless DLC packs and day one patches.

Does this make 90s games better? Not necessarily, but it certainly had a much better environment to prosper in. Your viewpoint of:

THATS why this is the Renaissance - artists are given free reign to do whatever they want with absolute minimal intervention - pursuing projects they never could have undertaken at any time before.

Applies less to today's industry than literally every other period of gaming in history. You may think Journey and Spec Ops signify the current industry, but in fact they are extremely rare exceptions, and as I said before, Spec Ops worried the publishers so much that they forced the team to include a completely redundant multiplayer- one the team had no interest in making. As the cost of game development skyrockets, publishers are less likely to take risks than ever, opting for safe, boring design decisions that cripple the dev team's vision. Perhaps if you spent less time coming up with these ridiculous and "clever" analogies, you'd actually see how much they utterly fail to fit the industry model.

Could you get away with publishing a pure stealth em up like Thief for the first time today? No.

Oh hai Dishonored.

I said for the first time. Dishonored is just doing again what has been done before.

....okay, I take back what I said about you being an idiot. It has to do the same thing, for the first time again....just, what the absolute peak fuck? Thats like some kind of a goddamn Koan.

Who said anything about 'again? You're assuming once more. Read the post instead of jumping to conclusions. I'm talking about bringing something new -like- a stealth em up into being; a new genre. Like I said, the only properly new genre brought out after the 90s was the sandbox, and even that had it's roots showing as far back as the early 80s. As for possessing rats, that may be a revelation to you, but it's far from an industry changing approach in my book...

Could you get away with publishing a flight sim with a dynamic campaign like Red Baron 3D today? No.

Oh hai Rise of Flight the First Great Air War

Thought you'd say that. Theirs was patched into the post release game, unlike Red Baron- specifically RB2, which had it straight out of the box.

Yes, how dare they actually improve it and make it better? Clearly, the fact that I can buy that game today and get the great campaign today means nothing because if I had a time machine, I wouldn't have had it at some point. Damn my unique case of constantly being flung around in time.

You're still not paying attention. I'm talking, as simply and clear as day, about a publisher allowing a development team to release a flight sim with a dynamic campaign. Rise of Flight may have one now, but it didn't when it released, and took over a year to get it running. Thus, it doesn't count. Whether it improves over a previous type or not is completely irrelevant.

Could you get away with publishing FPS series that actually brought something new to the table with each iteration today? Not really.

Oh hai Portal.

Fail again- Portal's sequel's most significant change was merely co-op. Hardly a groundbreaking leap.

Wow, look at those goalposts move. Thats amazing how you managed to move the goalposts like that, without ever once bringing up a qualifier as to what this series that innovated every time before was. Now, I know you wouldn't be stupid enough to say Doom, Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem, so what was it?

Look again- the goalposts are still right where they were. Innovation across sequels in a FPS series are at an all time low. As it is, for that matter, in sporting titles. More than ever games are seeing yearly releases with an absolute bare minimum of change. This doesn't apply to everything, of course, but certainly is more so now than ever before.

I'm clearly talking to the wrong person about adventure games here:

This isn't about artistic merit. Myst and Ecco don't fucking have artistic merit, or any merit beyond that of a handy instrument to measure a persons resistance to complete despair-inducing boredom

Tell you what, you have fun in your basement with your PS3 holy grail of gaming or whatever you worship it by, and go on believing that Heavy Rain is in any way an actual puzzle game. You'll save us both a world of trouble, since you seem to completely misunderstand the basic concept.

And I said successor. Try checking.

See top of post. And with that, I'm done. Any further questions you may have can be answered by reading the above again. Yes, reading may be requred. Give it a go, yeah?

 

[CityofTreez]

I would consider the last 10 years to be the "Golden Age" over the 80's.

 

[Squilookle]

just about tearing his hair out

I was wondering if you were going to remain as civil as you've been in the rest of this thread, and my goodness, you certainly did not disappoint! I had no idea you were so afraid of being seen with a typo. Like I said, it's really no big deal, but the fact you hid it, then pretended you hadn't made the mistake at all, and then completely blew your top over being called on it just shows up some truly massive insecurity issues. Out of respect for whoever lives with you, I'm just going to drop the subject before you run off and hurt someone.

The rest of your post will not be so lucky. You've provided so much to go on here I just can't resist.

Okay, here it is - arguably the most important innovations mankind has ever had - the inclined plane (no, not the aeroplane, an inclined surface. Try to keep up and don't get confused), the wheel, fire, cudgels and tools - the massive innovations - those didn't come about during the renaissance. Yes, mr. Silly, those were around before the Renaissance. Do you see the point yet, or would you like me to go a little slower for you? I'll try using flashcards if you think you can't understand me. Do you get how the period in question is not tied to somethings pointless innovation or reinventing of the wheel, but in fact to a heightening and perfecting of a craft and using said craft to create works of greatness? Do you get that? Or is there still something so absolutely wrong with your brain that you still haven't managed to grasp a simple concept?

So you haven't changed tack at all- not reading properly, making massive assumptions again, clinging to your precious analogies that have nothing to do with what you're talking about... you've got it all here.

Let's see:

See, you're one of those people who thinks redundant re-innovation is a sign of a mediums progression and strength.

I would love you to show me a point in my posts- anywhere in my posts- that gave you that impression. Makes me wonder how much of them you even read at all, before coming to such a ludicrous assumption. Wrong again, by the way. I lamented the lack of new genres of gameplay post 90s excluding the sandbox. Yeah, that's praising small scale re-innovation, right? I talked of how Portal 2's improvements over the first game weren't all that big. Clearly I'm not a fan of big paradigm shifts, right?. I describe any improvement of Rise of Flight's dynamic campaign over previous ones as 'irrelevant' to the discussion- Clearly I just salivate at the mouth over such small scale improvements, right?. Honestly, the level of ignorance you've put on display here is absolutely staggering.

That's not even my favourite part though- in seeking refuge in your beloved analogies, you've completely derailed yourself. Nobody is or ever has denied what you say about Mankind's greatest innovations arriving before the Renaissance. The trouble is, this analogy, much like every analogy you've equated gaming to so far and probably ever will, has nothing to do with what you're getting at.

See, I thought you were talking about today's games being made in a much more open, creatively free and opportune time than previous decades. Do you still want to pretend that's your contention? Because if it is, the gaming 'Renaissance' as you refer to it falls, just as it always had, into the 90s, where that creative environment actually existed. Compared to then, today is positively Orwellian by comparison.

Now, if instead you wish to say your analogy now means something entirely different- that being such a prosperous time is built on the advances of previous times, then... well... you're right. Congratulations. Still doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with today's gaming.

You know, if I were you, I'd lay the analogies to rest for a little while. If one can't speak sense in plain language, they haven't a snowball's chance in hell of constructing their reasoning through metaphor. It's a basic rule of life.

 

[perkl]

Golden age of gaming was roughly 1985-1996. It started with the proliferation of 8-bit home computers and ended when PlayStation 1 killed video gaming.

The most revolutionary games and concepts were invented during this period. Ultima IV, Pool of Radiance, Steel Panthers and its precursors, SSI in general, all the good stuff. UFO: Enemy Unknown, Dungeon Master & Chaos Strikes Back, Doom, Quake. There's too many great games to list. Even arcades were still alive with all sorts of fantastic games. Remember Bubble Bobble, Empire Strikes Back, Skate or Die, Speed Rumbler or Rampart?

I would title the current days the "console turd" era. They're more polished turds than ever before, I'll give you that. Only the indie games still bring me hope of a better tomorrow. Those, and with any luck both Sony and Microsoft will change their consoles into furniture.

 

[IndieForever]

Is there anyone here who can make a decent argument for the '80s then?

Not as a 'Golden Age' of gaming - that's stretching it a bit too far but it was the birth of the games industry as we know it. Prior to around '82/83, gaming was the domain of university mainframes and the bedroom coder advertising '3D Maze' or 'Magical Adventure 2!' in the classified section of the magazine devoted to his or her particular home computer.

In Europe we see the first big studios appear - Imagine, Activision, Ultimate, Ocean, Codemasters, US Gold to name but a few - as well as the first publishers who didn't create anything but bought up software for a low price and well.. distributed it. Codemasters started as peddlers of really awful, cheap ZX Spectrum software, believe it or not, and some of those listed above straddled the line.

It was a boom/bust industry with developers disappearing overnight, promising the earth and not delivering. Millionaires were made of 20-something programmers who lost it all when the bubble burst. Distributors drove development studios into the ground. Sound familiar ?!

Some of those 80s home computer games are still very playable today, but with 1, 8, 16, 48 or 64k to play with, there's never going to be anything like the depth you can get from even an average mid-90s title, let alone today. It was essentially a low-fi arcade experience brought into the home and with some wonderfully weird experimentation on the side. You only have to play a Jeff Minter game once to know that he wasn't exactly connected to the planet when he made them...

And.. it's turning full circle. The 90s and early 2000s pushed game development out of the reach of the amateur or part-time enthusiast. It was too difficult, the maths too complex and the market wouldn't bear an indie team.

With the development of game engines, SDKs and the like, a committed team or individual can have a shot again. You need to be better at music composition, at cut-scene directing, at art.. at everything, than you did in the 80s, but it's back to where it was -

*You* can make a game in your bedroom and if it captures the imagination, say like Minecraft, you'll reap the rewards. You have the mobile market and the PC to play with - console development is beyond the reach of most through costs, rather than talent, but we're not that far removed from the 1980s now in terms of possibilities for small teams.

The 1980s were a Golden Age in that anyone could participate - the Sinclair machines, the Commodores, the Vic 20s, the Amigas.. you could have a go if you wanted. For a long time after that we were shut out. Now the small team, the indie devs and the SDKs are here.

That, my friends, is the Golden Age coming back. Not the games per se. The ability - to make them.

 

[veloper]

Is there anyone here who can make a decent argument for the '80s then?

It's the PS2 era for some and the late '90s for long time PC gamers like me, but games from before 1990 rarely even induce nostalgia over here.

The original Final Fantasy was pretty memorable as a kid. As was Super Mario Bros. Another gem not many know about is a Metroidvania style game before the style was even a genre really. It was called Clash at Demonhead and it was one of the most unique,complex, and awesome games ever made for the NES. I loved it.

Would you consider the early FFs, SMB and Clash at demonhead, superior to later iterations?

 

[veloper]

Is there anyone here who can make a decent argument for the '80s then?

Not as a 'Golden Age' of gaming - that's stretching it a bit too far but it was the birth of the games industry as we know it. Prior to around '82/83, gaming was the domain of university mainframes and the bedroom coder advertising '3D Maze' or 'Magical Adventure 2!' in the classified section of the magazine devoted to his or her particular home computer.

In Europe we see the first big studios appear - Imagine, Activision, Ultimate, Ocean, Codemasters, US Gold to name but a few - as well as the first publishers who didn't create anything but bought up software for a low price and well.. distributed it. Codemasters started as peddlers of really awful, cheap ZX Spectrum software, believe it or not, and some of those listed above straddled the line.

It was a boom/bust industry with developers disappearing overnight, promising the earth and not delivering. Millionaires were made of 20-something programmers who lost it all when the bubble burst. Distributors drove development studios into the ground. Sound familiar ?!

Some of those 80s home computer games are still very playable today, but with 1, 8, 16, 48 or 64k to play with, there's never going to be anything like the depth you can get from even an average mid-90s title, let alone today. It was essentially a low-fi arcade experience brought into the home and with some wonderfully weird experimentation on the side. You only have to play a Jeff Minter game once to know that he wasn't exactly connected to the planet when he made them...

And.. it's turning full circle. The 90s and early 2000s pushed game development out of the reach of the amateur or part-time enthusiast. It was too difficult, the maths too complex and the market wouldn't bear an indie team.

With the development of game engines, SDKs and the like, a committed team or individual can have a shot again. You need to be better at music composition, at cut-scene directing, at art.. at everything, than you did in the 80s, but it's back to where it was -

*You* can make a game in your bedroom and if it captures the imagination, say like Minecraft, you'll reap the rewards. You have the mobile market and the PC to play with - console development is beyond the reach of most through costs, rather than talent, but we're not that far removed from the 1980s now in terms of possibilities for small teams.

The 1980s were a Golden Age in that anyone could participate - the Sinclair machines, the Commodores, the Vic 20s, the Amigas.. you could have a go if you wanted. For a long time after that we were shut out. Now the small team, the indie devs and the SDKs are here.

That, my friends, is the Golden Age coming back. Not the games per se. The ability - to make them.

That's an interesting POV. It's always been possible to code on the PC ofcourse as well as on the homecomputers of the 80s, but it was simpler back then.

You'd still need to be a good coder to make anything decent on the limited hardware of that time, but you could get away without hiring artists.

 

[IndieForever]

You'd still need to be a good coder to make anything decent on the limited hardware of that time, but you could get away without hiring artists.

Absolutely, but the 'net makes some of those limitations from the '90s redundant now. If you are committed and have something to show, you can get a composer, an artist, voice actors et.al on board, for no salary. During the '90s, and the era of FMV and the birth of proper 3D games, it was too expensive, the maths too difficult unless you were a professional.

Real-time lighting, shadows.. with models... in 3D.. argghhh! Green screen acting? Modellers? These days most people can do this if they invest the time and effort.

Now you can download Unity, the Unreal SDK, DarkBasic, three CryEngine variants as well as a huge variety of other game development tools that bypass those restrictions. Now all you need is imagination and the ability to code. Just like the 1980s.

As the standard for games has gone up, so has the access to resources. I do believe we are now at parity with the early 1980s when games-making was open to anyone who put in the time and had the vision. You don't need millions of dollars (it helps, sure!) to make your game anymore, but you do need skills in marketing and perhaps persuading other people to come on board. That hasn't changed.

If the 80s showed us anything, it was the spirit of the entrepeneur, the visionary and the plain weird. It was not the era of the copycat sequels to big game franchises and it can come back. That's why I view it as a little bit 'Golden' - not because Jet Set Willy is better than Dishonoured, but because it represented a time when any one of us could create the next blockbuster.

We can do this today, and that ability hasn't been with us for much over a few years. So how about the Golden Age of gaming is then.. and now ?!

 

[perkl]

Some of those 80s home computer games are still very playable today, but with 1, 8, 16, 48 or 64k to play with, there's never going to be anything like the depth you can get from even an average mid-90s title, let alone today.

This is not quite true, because there were games like Airborne Ranger back in those days. The content was procedural which meant every time you played it'd make you a new playing field with new enemy patrol routes. Only the ultimate objectives stayed the same. Level editors in general were more common and many games included one for you to make more levels with. Only Valve has really done anything like that in modern times.

Another 8-bit classic with depth you rarely see anymore is Zoids. You had to multitask constantly, and the world was genuinely alive. When you attacked a city it would send runners and radio for help. You could jam the radio waves by matching the pattern and take out the runners via clever placement of mines and good shooting. Then you'd only have to contend with the powerful city shields. You could neutralize those by destroying a separate power plant, but then the cities would send cargo zoids to repair the damage done...

 

[Denamic]

The gaming industry is bigger than it has ever been, and it's still growing. High profile games have higher production values than ever before. Even small studio products and indie games are made far more often than ever before.
When is the golden age if not now?

 

[veloper]

You'd still need to be a good coder to make anything decent on the limited hardware of that time, but you could get away without hiring artists.

Absolutely, but the 'net makes some of those limitations from the '90s redundant now. If you are committed and have something to show, you can get a composer, an artist, voice actors et.al on board, for no salary. During the '90s, and the era of FMV and the birth of proper 3D games, it was too expensive, the maths too difficult unless you were a professional.

Real-time lighting, shadows.. with models... in 3D.. argghhh! Green screen acting? Modellers? These days most people can do this if they invest the time and effort.

Now you can download Unity, the Unreal SDK, DarkBasic, three CryEngine variants as well as a huge variety of other game development tools that bypass those restrictions. Now all you need is imagination and the ability to code. Just like the 1980s.

As the standard for games has gone up, so has the access to resources. I do believe we are now at parity with the early 1980s when games-making was open to anyone who put in the time and had the vision. You don't need millions of dollars (it helps, sure!) to make your game anymore, but you do need skills in marketing and perhaps persuading other people to come on board. That hasn't changed.

If the 80s showed us anything, it was the spirit of the entrepeneur, the visionary and the plain weird. It was not the era of the copycat sequels to big game franchises and it can come back. That's why I view it as a little bit 'Golden' - not because Jet Set Willy is better than Dishonoured, but because it represented a time when any one of us could create the next blockbuster.

We can do this today, and that ability hasn't been with us for much over a few years. So how about the Golden Age of gaming is then.. and now ?!

I reckon even artists and composers have bills to pay. So Kickstarter and crowdfunding in general, that's where I think the opportunities lie.
Now small indie teams can dedictate their work to their project and get things done.

In the early days to me it looks like many top games on the C64 were still made as the programmers put those sprites and blocks together themselves.
One man projects won't be making a succesful comeback for sure.

Still we may now be at the dawn of a new great period where niche interest projects can be realised again.

 

[IndieForever]

This is not quite true, because there were games like Airborne Ranger back in those days. The content was procedural which meant every time you played it'd make you a new playing field with new enemy patrol routes. Only the ultimate objectives stayed the same. Level editors in general were more common and many games included one for you to make more levels with. Only Valve has really done anything like that in modern times.

I can't really argue with this as a standalone viewpoint and a lot of modern games are horribly wasteful in terms of coding practice and resource storage. However, as good as Elite was for the BBC B, I'm sure you'd agree that procedural content on a modern PC for a similar game is going to be superior, at least in terms of eye candy and production values. Elite for the Beeb or one of the X-games? (Actually not the best example, because the X-series aren't procedural, but you know where I'm coming from.) Is the 8-bit procedural content better than the x86 coded content?

Whether the game *content* is superior is as much subjective as me asking the forums what the best band is. A pointless question, with no right answer. I do get where you're coming from but at the moment there is such a diverse range of software to choose from that to pick an individual example is a little bit disingenuous.

There were great 8-bit games and awful 8-bit games. There are great PC/Console titles and awful ones. That distinction, however, is purely personal.

The gaming industry is bigger than it has ever been, and it's still growing. High profile games have higher production values than ever before. Even small studio products and indie games are made far more often than ever before.
When is the golden age if not now?

I agree - the field has been opened up to anyone who wants to commit the effort to be involved. That's how it was in the 1980s and why I tried to make an argument that it, too, was actually a 'Golden Age', albeit not in the way envisaged by the OP.

 

[perkl]

However, as good as Elite was for the BBC B, I'm sure you'd agree that procedural content on a modern PC for a similar game is going to be superior, at least in terms of eye candy and production values.

It could be, if anyone actually did it. That's the point, really. When you play Modern Warfare the levels will always be the same. When you play Airborne Ranger they're always going to be different. The focus has moved towards carefully crafted "experiences" and competitive multiplayer. As a result, a great many old games are simply better games than their modern counterparts. Modern stuff may be prettier or have more touching stories but I still don't find most of modern games to be all that fun to actually play.

There were great 8-bit games and awful 8-bit games. There are great PC/Console titles and awful ones. That distinction, however, is purely personal.

That's a funny thing to say, considering there's a widespread belief you can review games objectively and AAA games that receive less than 5 in Metacritic are believed to be misjudged out of spite. Your claim is controversial at the very least.

 

[IndieForever]

It could be, if anyone actually did it. That's the point, really. When you play Modern Warfare the levels will always be the same. When you play Airborne Ranger they're always going to be different. The focus has moved towards carefully crafted "experiences" and competitive multiplayer. As a result, a great many old games are simply better games than their modern counterparts. Modern stuff may be prettier or have more touching stories but I still don't find most of modern games to be all that fun to actually play.

We're not disagreeing here. However, there are a lot of procedural, recently released, games available for you to play. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of FTL which has won praise, love, hatred, confusion and good/bad reviews in equal amounts.

I stand by my comments that what you get from a game is personal to you, in much the same way that what you get from an album is personal to you. You can look at a Pollock and see paint splashes, or you can look at it and derive meaning. There is always going to be a general consensus but it doesn't have to apply to you, obviously.

Older games took more risks - if anyone disagrees, both me and you have a library we can trot out to prove it but that doesn't make someone who enjoys the latest brown shooter 'wrong' and it doesn't make those games that tried to break the mould 'great'. Unless you think they did, in which case.. heh.

What you are able to do now is make your own game - break the boundaries, get rid of the things you don't like about modern AAA gaming but you have to invest the time, the effort and the resources to get people on board. That's what you could do in the 80s, what you couldn't do in the 90s and early 2000s, and is now possible again for you today.

You can be a consumer, a critic or a developer. All three if you want. That hasn't been possible since the 1980s unless you were a professional. That's why I think it was a Golden Age - not the content, the possibilities to be part of it and it's come back.