Poll: Frokane's views on the current state of gaming (journalism included)

[BloatedGuppy]

Like a "Golden Age" requires good AAA games (though the issue there is overblown), and secondly Shovelware has always existed.

Just like with previous eras there have been plenty of notable landmark games that have caught the attention of people as truly great.

Absolutely this. "Golden Ages" tend to only be identified in hindsight, in large part because memories of classics stay with us, and stinkers and shovelware are often avoided and forgotten. The same dynamic can be seen in music, where we look back on the "classic era" of rock and roll and compare it to the vapid crap polluting the airways today, forgetting entirely that they had their own share of vapid crap, it just doesn't get played anymore because it was vapid crap.

As someone who has been gaming since the early 80's, I'd identify the last 4-5 years as one of if not the richest gaming periods I've ever had, both in terms of high end quality and variety. So it's pretty funny to come to these forums and read the opinions of people who have been gaming less than a quarter of that time raging about the death of the hobby and an industry in fiery decline. I think the nature of internet discourse appeals to outrage addicts, and you get rather extraordinary polarity of opinions. Nothing is ever "good" or "fair", it has to be the best ever, or an insidious cancer.

Games journalism has tons of problems but I think that Gamergate has made a botched job of addressing them.

A tangible vocal majority identifying with GamerGate never seemed interested in the subject of games journalism at all, or at the very least defined "ethics breaches" in journalism solely as left-leaning politics or being outspoken on social/gender issues. The pernicious and ongoing trend of certain review outlets appearing to be solely in the pocket of the publishers who funded them via advertising revenue has never been pushed to the front line as a talking point. Their points of controversy have always swirled around "social justice". In that respect, they've done a fantastic job of being laser focused on their objective.

AAA is more homogenized than ever, even within their "new IP" prospects. Feature complete games are virtually a myth outside of indie devs and even THEY are getting in on the added price-gouging now.

Gaming is cheaper now than it has ever been. Far cheaper. I don't want to go all "In my day I had to walk uphill to school both ways" on you, but it always boggles my mind to hear people carping about the high prices of present day gaming.

I remember getting Ultima V for my birthday. It was $79. That was in 1988 dollars too, and $79 went a hell of a lot further then than it does now. Prices upwards of $60-70 on newly released games was common. And they didn't go down after a month or two, either. If you were lucky you might find one on sale after a couple of YEARS. Alien Isolation was released in October and I bought it for my girlfriend for $29 in the recent sale. Endless Legend came out in September and cost me $19. Wait a few months to a year, and you can get games for pennies on the dollar. Do this enough, and you can get a backlog of games so deep you'd never pay anything close to full price for a game ever again. A full price that is considerably cheaper than it used to be.

I paid $2.50 for Mount and Blade Warband and played it for over 200 hours. I didn't pay anything for DOTA 2, but have played it for over 300. Civilization V was pricey at $50, but I've logged over 500 hours in it. XCOM was $50 and has accumulated over 200 hours. I pay $15 a month for WoW and probably pay less per hour than I'd have earned at my job in the time it took to write this sentence.

Outside of reading library books, find me a hobby cheaper than that.

 

[Dizchu]

A tangible vocal majority identifying with GamerGate never seemed interested in the subject of games journalism at all, or at the very least defined "ethics breaches" in journalism solely as left-leaning politics or being outspoken on social/gender issues. The pernicious and ongoing trend of certain review outlets appearing to be solely in the pocket of the publishers who funded them via advertising revenue has never been pushed to the front line as a talking point. Their points of controversy have always swirled around "social justice". In that respect, they've done a fantastic job of being laser focused on their objective.

I really don't know, my friend. It just looks like a big train wreck to me. Sincere critics of journalists were swept up in a maelstrom of conspiracy theories, MRA ranting, fundraisers, publicity stunts, trolling, internet sleuthing, etc. A while ago I said that Gamergate was a good thing because it gave a large group of people a voice where previously they had none. But I've come to realise that they're all shouting different things and instead of strong, unified voices we just have a cacophony.

The most frustrating thing is that there's legitimate issues raised here and there. It's just once someone points it out, someone else uses it as ammo for their particular agenda. Something I find particularly ironic seeing as they were rallying against "agenda-pushing" in the first place. I swear to god if someone mentions "Cultural Marxism" one more time...

 

[major_chaos]

I'm sympathetic to GG even if I don't think much is going to get accomplished simply because the other side, wether its snide venomous pricks on GAF and gamergahzi or smug preening "journalists", is immensely easy to hate.

Sarkeesian isn't nearly the devil she is made out to be by some. I mean her videos are terrible, full of poor research, cherrypicked examples, bone dry presentation, and banal points raised in the most confrontational manner imaginable, but for all that she is just another hack Youtuber. All of the limited power she has gained is courtesy of the people who claim to hate her and yet can't stop ensuring her success.

Now where I really dissagree with you is about the "state of gaming". Its fine, could better, but people need to stop panicking. I have found a ton of enjoyable releases this year alone spread across AAA and indie and virtually every type of game I enjoy. The whole "gaming sux nao" idea seems to me to be born of a reactionary contempt for the mainstream and massive rose tinted goggles magnifying old glories and making people forget that shit games have existed en mass since the dawn of the medium. I have played SNES games that may very well be worse than Ride to Hell, but in those days every terrible game didn't get catapulted into long lived infamy.

The part of gaming that decays on a yearly basis isn't the games, its the community. I swear its not about liking or discussing games anymore, its all has to be about whinging about how terrible games are. Threads about great boss fights or new build ideas for a RPG pop up rarely, get 20-30 replies then die, while threads about how "X new game that its popular to hate is racist/misogynist/casual filth/not a good enough PC port/dumbed down/rabble rabble rabble, and if you like it you are literally the worst" burn for weeks and consume the entire forum. I actually dialed back my posting when Destiny came out just because I didn't think it was worth the abuse to go against the riled hive mind after it passed judgement, ditto on the ME3 ending debacle. There is also a growing trend towards "fun" becoming a dirty word, the idea being that fun games are "toys" and to "evolve" they must stop being enjoyable and instead become "ART". People recommending the TLOU to me on the grounds that "its not fun at any point and therefor one of the best games ever made" worries me more than everything EA Ubisoft and Activison did in the last decade put together.

Also you say that "Meta community in competitive games are still as anal and salty as ever" but that sounds like someone passing judgement on a competitive community from the outside, simply for not aligning with your (totally legitimate but also incompatible with the way competitive games work) desire for more freeform entertainment. If you want butthurt look no farther than the increasingly radical factionizing going on in the community. The "PC master race" becomes less of a joke and more of a genuine statement of perceived superiority with every day, which makes the console gamers, understandably miffed withing being called trash for daring to chose a different entertainment device lash out with just as much hostility. Meanwhile "praise Gaben" has become a rallying cry for a vocal cult with a creepy level of near religious devotion to Steam and a fervent desire to see the Valve monopoly realized and a willingness to harass, insult, and browbeat and heretics who would threaten the dream by using other DD platforms. And this hasn't stopped the good old fandom wars (WoW vs. every other MMO, LoL vs. DOTA, Nintendo fans Vs. every other fandom, ect.) from continuing with with ever increasing hostility. And all that is just off the top of my head.

TL;DR: The issue with gaming isn't the games, its the gamers splitting off into arbitrary teams and throwing poo at eachother instead of enjoying the games.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

As for the state of gaming, it doesn't take much to say why it is in fact great.

Forgive my confrontational tone (it's not what I intend) but that's not "fact", that's "opinion".

Why? Old-guard business practices are crumbling, AAA publishers are getting called out for manipulating audiences,

Depends on the "old-guard" business practices in question.
Some of those that were beneficial, like selling feature complete games are crumbling.

Though I won't contest placing AAA under further scrutiny.
In my opinion, they had it FAR too easy for most of the last console generation, making them complacent and dull.

we have enough games now to suit every palate out there,

I honestly wish that was true.

Tell you what: Let me know when a legitimately good mech game comes out; one that isn't attached to some cancerous online-only model, and maybe I'll grant you that.

we are growing as a community,

Really? How?
Frankly, I see an awful lot more bickering now than ever before.

great games get released every year,

By sheer volume, yes, though that's just Sturgeon's Law at work.

and game prices are getting more and more competitive across platforms.

Not quite, or at least, not across ALL platforms (if that's what you meant; as it stands, it's nebulous)

Prices are going up on next gen consoles, either directly or via even higher proportions of price gouging DLC.
The only "platform" that's actually competing is PC.

More games are getting ported to PC, and a lot of Japanese ports are done really well.

That is true.

VR is on the horizon, more and more people are getting into gaming due to how abundant and accessible it has become,

True enough. I don't really consider the spike in say, mobile garbage to be a positive indicator of people getting into gaming like some industry watchers do. But I will grant that it is actually easier to get into gaming now than ever before.

As for VR, it remains to be seen if it will turn into the true new frontier of gaming, or if it will just become another gimmick like motion controls.

and now we have entire games funded by community donations.

We do, and I want to believe in its potential.

But the system is faulty, since many of those games end up being scams, stuck in perpetual betas (incomplete), or finish as outright garbage. It needs refinement.

Gaming's great. I don't know why people say otherwise.

I do, and it's because gaming isn't great. It's OK. Mediocre. Mostly just treading water.

There are a tiny handful of great games amidst a sea of clones and half-baked garbage, as always.

AAA is more homogenized than ever, even within their "new IP" prospects. Feature complete games are virtually a myth outside of indie devs and even THEY are getting in on the added price-gouging now.

If anything (especially indicated by this year's GDC), the main innovations seem to be more about how to offer gamers less for more than in tech, concept or genre.

It's fair to say that gaming is "Great in spite of those things", and there are individual efforts worth of praise.
But I don't think gaming is "great" on the whole; quite the opposite: I think gaming has some serious demons to excise before it can truly be "great".

Fair enough.

(Also sorry for the "in fact great" thing, euphemisms such as "literally" prove themselves infectious >.>)

I still think that people are getting complacent though. What I meant by AAA's getting scolded more often is that they're not getting away with releasing shit anymore.

Watch_Dogs did okay, but got a lot of scrutiny for it's technical aspects. Assassin's Creed Unity was so bad and so reviled, that it dropped Ubi's stock prices on release.

Last year, CoD: Ghosts tanked like hell because everyone recognised how shit it was, even mainstream audiences. It led Activision to try and shake up the CoD formula, which is what happened this year with Advanced Warfare.

Rome II was a total mess on launch, and it got rightly scolded for it. Due to that, Creative Assembly are doing a Napoleon Total War and releasing a story-based title to alleviate some of the damage from Rome II. In addition, everyone who bought the game, got a lot of DLC for free. Sure, it's not great, but they got shit for it too.

Companies aren't getting away with things as easily anymore. I see it as a sign that they are being rendered obsolete, and if budgets keep rising, then they may well be on their way to a sudden cataclysm.

The result of all that in-house bickering is due to house-keeping. As much as I think shit like GamerGate is a curse perpetuated by absolute idiots, at least things are getting brought out into the open and confronted(to some, however minimal, degree at least).

As with the variety of games, there are games, not necessarily that they're being actively made.

For the mediocre games...I don't see it as an industry standard. This year in particular, is a year of transition, but despite that, we've had some really good games such as:
-The Wolf Among Us
-The Banner Saga
-Transistor
-Wolfenstein The New Order
-Super Smash Bros.
-Dragon Age Inquisition
-Sunset Overdrive
-Dark Souls II
-Ziggurat
-Gauntlet
etc.

I mean, last year was a fantastic year for games. We had Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us and The Stanley Parable all of which are amazing in their own right. There was also GTA V, lest not we forget.

Hedonic treadmill and the like makes things seem stand-still I believe. Every time I take a step back from it all, it always goes like "Hey, it's not so bad, it's pretty great".