Poll: The decline of high quality games.

[The Epicosity]

I think I can say I am satisfied with current day prices, I usually rent for around 15$ a month, which might seem like a lot, but is not that much when I usually trade out for a new game within the month.

The major franchises might not be the greatest place to find non-ripoffs, though, I think that when you look at smaller indie/older games, you can find some great stuff, I will give you an example of some.
Minecraft; need I say more?
Metro 2033; got for 30 bucks what was an amazing experience.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway; I was already a well established fan due to their first game, and got this one for around 30 bucks, again, when it was released around the time when it probably would've ended up in the 15 buck games, which kind of disappointed my wallet, but it was way worth it.
Farcry 2; I can't really say that this is too great of a game, but I got it for 15 bucks seeing some pretty good reviews. I like it so far, but ZP says it will turn into shit eventually, and everyone knows Yahtzee knows everything.

These are all games released at least a year ago or still in development but playable, but I think are the great deals to look at. Even though I don't really bother looking too much at the latest releases, I do not currently own one other than CoD:BlOps, which I don't think I can argue for too easily.

Bleh. I am tired.

 

[Jay_The_Beast]

Not so much overcharged for the quality itself, but the easy gameplay not being worth full price. Polish does little good if you're already bored with the game.

Well isn't how long it takes to beat a game apart of quality as well? If you can beat a game in an hour but it was amazing, was it worth 60 dollars?

 

[veloper]

Not so much overcharged for the quality itself, but the easy gameplay not being worth full price. Polish does little good if you're already bored with the game.

Well isn't how long it takes to beat a game apart of quality as well? If you can beat a game in an hour but it was amazing, was it worth 60 dollars?

Hypothetically yes, if a videogame is so orgasmically great, it could still be worth 60 bucks even if it only lasts one hour.

You'd think such a great game would also have alot of replay value though and most modern games often bore me before I even finished them.

Pretty, shiny and made by huge teams of desingers working with artists, musicians, voice-actors is what we get. This has undeniable value. Cannot deny there is great quality, but it's just not fun.

The games I get the urge to play are often the basic ones like Super Meat Boy or Serious Sam.

The desire to load up a game for me seems almost inversely propertonal to the amount of effort that went into intros and cutscenes. I need to force myself to continue a game like Mass Effect or Bioshock (still haven't finished it) even when I get some enjoyment out of it when I'm finally playing it.

So typical AAA titles: pretty, expensive to make, kinda fun, prolly worth your cash, but lacking the focus on pure gameplay that makes gaming so appealing.

 

[Jay_The_Beast]

Not so much overcharged for the quality itself, but the easy gameplay not being worth full price. Polish does little good if you're already bored with the game.

Well isn't how long it takes to beat a game apart of quality as well? If you can beat a game in an hour but it was amazing, was it worth 60 dollars?

Hypothetically yes, if a videogame is so orgasmically great, it could still be worth 60 bucks even if it only lasts one hour.

You'd think such a great game would also have alot of replay value though and most modern games often bore me before I even finished them.

Pretty, shiny and made by huge teams of desingers working with artists, musicians, voice-actors is what we get. This has undeniable value. Cannot deny there is great quality, but it's just not fun.

The games I get the urge to play are often the basic ones like Super Meat Boy or Serious Sam.

The desire to load up a game for me seems almost inversely propertonal to the amount of effort that went into intros and cutscenes. I need to force myself to continue a game like Mass Effect or Bioshock (still haven't finished it) even when I get some enjoyment out of it when I'm finally playing it.

So typical AAA titles: pretty, expensive to make, kinda fun, prolly worth your cash, but lacking the focus on pure gameplay that makes gaming so appealing.

Well put. Super meat boys a great example, not expensive, not made to look amazing at all, and it focuses on the game, not the frill. They focus less on core gameplay then they used to for top notch games.. I myself couldnt finish mass effect or bioshock ether.

 

[Hyper-space]

If you think games are getting worse, stop playing them and stop talking about them please.
....
Games like Ultima: The Stygian Abyss were just as well marketed as any game at the same time, and cost the same amount. It came from a respected developer, and was awful and not worth it. That's a game from your supposed golden age. My point should thusly be proven.

I'm quoting these two parts for a reason each:
First of all.. I said overall, its getting worse.

Nope, you just lack perspective.

Seriously, i have gone on so many rants about the lack of perspective and why games are of the same caliber as they were before that i have begun to feel tired by the same crap threads being made.

 

[Jay_The_Beast]

If you think games are getting worse, stop playing them and stop talking about them please.
....
Games like Ultima: The Stygian Abyss were just as well marketed as any game at the same time, and cost the same amount. It came from a respected developer, and was awful and not worth it. That's a game from your supposed golden age. My point should thusly be proven.

I'm quoting these two parts for a reason each:
First of all.. I said overall, its getting worse.

Nope, you just lack perspective.

Seriously, i have gone on so many rants about the lack of perspective and why games are of the same caliber as they were before that i have begun to feel tired by the same crap threads being made.

It's my opinion bro, rage more. As someone above stated there tends to be more focus on flashiness with cinematic's and what not then core game play. Sure, i love to play a good looking game, but that doesn't make it good itself. So yes, to me, the cost for the quality just is not there. Especially since almost every game, and it's uncle, has dlc (that's not free) now. Which is good, it becomes a lot to spend on one game.

All in all, its just my opinion, if your not a fan of it, then i really don't care..

 

[Hyper-space]

If you think games are getting worse, stop playing them and stop talking about them please.
....
Games like Ultima: The Stygian Abyss were just as well marketed as any game at the same time, and cost the same amount. It came from a respected developer, and was awful and not worth it. That's a game from your supposed golden age. My point should thusly be proven.

I'm quoting these two parts for a reason each:
First of all.. I said overall, its getting worse.

Nope, you just lack perspective.

Seriously, i have gone on so many rants about the lack of perspective and why games are of the same caliber as they were before that i have begun to feel tired by the same crap threads being made.

It's my opinion bro, rage more. As someone above stated there tends to be more focus on flashiness with cinematic's and what not then core game play. Sure, i love to play a good looking game, but that doesn't make it good itself. So yes, to me, the cost for the quality just is not there. Especially since almost every game, and it's uncle, has dlc (that's not free) now. Which is good, it becomes a lot to spend on one game.

All in all, its just my opinion, if your not a fan of it, then i really don't care..

Do you know how much money you had to fork out for a game back in the days? 60-70$ not adjusted for inflation and as there were no DLCs you had to buy the same fucking game to get a few sprite changes or 1 extra level. Nowadays you have F2P MMO's and stuff like the humble indie bundle where you can get great indie games for under 10$ or less.

Gaming is, despite the increase in development cost (which is a temporary issue), becoming cheaper as it has grown large enough to accommodate this low cost. Quality wise, gaming is rapidly approaching a plateau in terms of graphics, as for the first time facial-animation is incorporating the subtle facial expressions and changes, thus passing the uncanny valley when it comes to realistic graphics.

And for the first time i saw graphics that managed to impress me in terms of realism, so with computers becoming more and more powerful and graphics reaching its apex, high-end graphics technology will be much cheaper meaning that game-development costs will go down (maybe even reaching levels where indie developers could use it for next to no money or even free in cases such as the unreal engine) AND developers will put much more focus into gameplay, story and pretty much everything else.

Short Version: soon we will see gameplay and stories in video-games that will blow our minds and game-cost will go down even further.

 

[Jay_The_Beast]

Do you really believe the cost will go down? Overtime and with sales yes, but not at the ship date which is what im talking about

 

[Chibz]

Games in general are getting worse, but we're not paying enough for the genuine GEMS.

 

[Jay_The_Beast]

Games in general are getting worse, but we're not paying enough for the genuine GEMS.

I honestly am in love with this comment. Great example is minecraft for that.

 

[AdumbroDeus]

Nostalga filter, it's not that games are getting worse, as you get older you're forgetting about the bad to mediocre ones (even the horrible ones eventually disappear from memory). Also, your taste was worse then.

 

[Hyper-space]

Do you really believe the cost will go down? Overtime and with sales yes, but not at the ship date which is what im talking about

(dunno if you are responding to my post, but whatever)
Yes, once we reach the apex of realistic graphics and computers become more powerful the cost of using these high-end engines goes down as it gets older and becomes easier to use. If you look at many indie games, they have graphics that were considered high-end and costly many years ago but now they can easily make an entire game with said graphics for next to no money/time. This will soon apply to the most realistic graphics-engine there is, meaning that graphics (which took up a huge chunk of the developer's budget and time) will no longer become a concern, smaller budget = lower cost of game.

Due to the aforementioned reasons (and the points from my previous post) i want the industry to try as much as possible to reach a plateau in terms of graphics, as the sooner we get there the sooner we will get more games that focus on things like story and gameplay.

 

[Blackpapa]

Nostalga filter, it's not that games are getting worse, as you get older you're forgetting about the bad to mediocre ones (even the horrible ones eventually disappear from memory). Also, your taste was worse then.

Nostalgia filter my ass.

I'll give you three examples and ask you three questions.

First example being Jagged Alliance 2. You're saying nostalgia is blurring my perception of games. I find that a pretty weak argument, because I played JA2 1.13 last thursday. Maybe I'm just an incompetent fool who can't find the AAA successor to this 1999 classic. After all, it's been over a decade, hardware and software has advanced considerably. I'm sure there's a modern game that has similar gameplay, as much quality and even more depth than this aging JA2. Point it out please.

I don't restrict myself to one particular genre. I remember enjoying a lot of different games. Remember Capitalism 2? I still play it on my EEE, the fool I am I'm unable to find a worthy successor. I also throughly enjoyed the Dungeon Keeper series, but the last game that was more or less similar was Evil Genius. Or Populous-like games, look for Black and White if you can't remember those days. Or the various tycoon titles. Or Battlezone-like titles. If you can, please point me to a title running on modern generation consoles that's somewhat like the mentioned and obviously doesn't lose any of the depth of those games. Or a similar modern mainstream PC title. Because I get the feeling that ever since console gamedev took the lead the number of different genres dropped rapidly.

Now let's talk about game depth as is. Up to, say, 2002 game depth and complexity grew along with computer power. Even though there are a few titles that go against this trend (Dwarf Fortress) I noticed a regression industry-wide. Can you give examples of mainstream games that actually go against the trend? Note that game difficulty, while welcome ('ala Witcher 2 or Demon's Souls, both very good titles) isn't the same as gameplay depth.

tl;dr:

Worse or not, games are getting dumber.

 

[Jay_The_Beast]

Do you really believe the cost will go down? Overtime and with sales yes, but not at the ship date which is what im talking about

(dunno if you are responding to my post, but whatever)
Yes, once we reach the apex of realistic graphics and computers become more powerful the cost of using these high-end engines goes down as it gets older and becomes easier to use. If you look at many indie games, they have graphics that were considered high-end and costly many years ago but now they can easily make an entire game with said graphics for next to no money/time. This will soon apply to the most realistic graphics-engine there is, meaning that graphics (which took up a huge chunk of the developer's budget and time) will no longer become a concern, smaller budget = lower cost of game.

Due to the aforementioned reasons (and the points from my previous post) i want the industry to try as much as possible to reach a plateau in terms of graphics, as the sooner we get there the sooner we will get more games that focus on things like story and gameplay.

You want them to focus on graphics rather then story and gameplay? Man, i hope you realize those are different departments and are focused on by different people for each game. One area should not lack, and if it does, it should be graphics rather then the gameplay. It's a game, it's also art, but your playing it, not just watching it.

 

[Stormz]

I still think that there are good games, what I'm concerned about is the increasing amount of DLC devs are pushing out. Day one being the worst. In the case of bioware some of the DLC is even important to the storyline so you miss out on important plot points. Which is annoying because I don't like DLC. I'm a firm believer that DLC should have always been a part of the game.

 

[Uber Evil]

I wouldn't say so. I mean the most recent game I've played, Alice: Madness Returns, was very fun, and one of the few games to make me feel something about the character, and it looks like this fall will be very good game wise.

 

[AdumbroDeus]

Nostalga filter, it's not that games are getting worse, as you get older you're forgetting about the bad to mediocre ones (even the horrible ones eventually disappear from memory). Also, your taste was worse then.

Nostalgia filter my ass.

I'll give you three examples and ask you three questions.

First example being Jagged Alliance 2. You're saying nostalgia is blurring my perception of games. I find that a pretty weak argument, because I played JA2 1.13 last thursday. Maybe I'm just an incompetent fool who can't find the AAA successor to this 1999 classic. After all, it's been over a decade, hardware and software has advanced considerably. I'm sure there's a modern game that has similar gameplay, as much quality and even more depth than this aging JA2. Point it out please.

I don't restrict myself to one particular genre. I remember enjoying a lot of different games. Remember Capitalism 2? I still play it on my EEE, the fool I am I'm unable to find a worthy successor. I also throughly enjoyed the Dungeon Keeper series, but the last game that was more or less similar was Evil Genius. Or Populous-like games, look for Black and White if you can't remember those days. Or the various tycoon titles. Or Battlezone-like titles. If you can, please point me to a title running on modern generation consoles that's somewhat like the mentioned and obviously doesn't lose any of the depth of those games. Or a similar modern mainstream PC title. Because I get the feeling that ever since console gamedev took the lead the number of different genres dropped rapidly.

Now let's talk about game depth as is. Up to, say, 2002 game depth and complexity grew along with computer power. Even though there are a few titles that go against this trend (Dwarf Fortress) I noticed a regression industry-wide. Can you give examples of mainstream games that actually go against the trend? Note that game difficulty, while welcome ('ala Witcher 2 or Demon's Souls, both very good titles) isn't the same as gameplay depth.

tl;dr:

Worse or not, games are getting dumber.

Non Sequitar

Just because a game that's almost exactly like Jagged Alliance but around that level of quality hasn't come out recently doesn't mean that games are getting dumber. It just means that that particular style of game isn't being being developed by the majority of developers at the time. Considering it's a very specific game style, it's not surprising at all. Jagged Alliance wasn't even amazing, sure it was good, but not amazing. Ditto for the other games you mentioned.

You know what was much better and within the current console generation? European Universalis 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Grand Theft Auto 4, Dragon Age, Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect, Starcraft 2 and The World Ends with You.

I could go on for a while but I think you get the point, these are all true gems of the gaming world, and some FAR surpass of the Jagged Alliance series. Of course some of them don't have the complexity, that's not the point, which is ok. Different genres can and will have different concentrations, and when an FPS has as much depth as a RTS for example, something is usually wrong.

The only thing you can say for certain is games are being made more approachable these days, which is a good thing unless depth is sacrificed for it. This isn't true of the games I mentioned and many more quality games out there.


TL;DR: There are plenty of interesting intelligent games out there, the fact that they're not similar styles to any of the games you mentioned does not give them less depth or intelligence then those games. It just means different genres are being developed.

 

[tigermilk]

The production costs of PS360 games are greater than they have been the previous few generations and factoring in inflation my answer is no. The consumer cost has remained pretty stable at the £40/$60 mark.

Of course DLC can be seen as artifically inflating the cost of a game especially as it comes out of a singular budget for a game. It depends whether the money put in to the production of a game would have factored in the DLC into the main game if DLC didn't exist.

I should clarify though I don't feel sorry for Activision, EA etc with the amount of revenue they produce.

 

[Dr. Win]

I live in Australia. 'Nuff said.

Although now that I think about it all of my favourite steam games I payed less than $20 for (I got Portal 2 for free). So I'm not sure.

As for the issue of declining quality, I don't really think so, I just think that the shitty knock offs are getting more publicity and sales because of what they are knocking off, and are getting more attention. Think of some (relatively) recent fun games;

Portal 1 & 2
Just Cause 2
Team Fortress 2
Minecraft
Starcraft 2
Gears of War 2
Fallout 3
CoD: MW
Mass Effect 1 & 2
LoZ: Twilight Princess

Just to name a few.

 

[pyrosaw]

It might be because I'm young, and I was born into the glorious PS2 era, but no. It's not declining. In fact, gamings future looks pretty bright. I'm also sick of people saying the FPS genre is nothing but sameyness. Bulltetstorm, Brink, FEAR 3(arguebly), and a lot of good-looking FPS's coming down the line. Lay off the FPS's for once.