There's an awful lot of negativity in the gaming community right now. Some of it is justified, sure, but gaming is something we do to for entertainment. There's gotta be a reason you're still here, right?
There are a lot of things that I think are great about the industry right now. Things seem brighter now than when they did back when I was a wee one, to be honest.
Retro gaming!
Services like GoG and the Virtual Console let me buy some really fantastic games that I missed the first time around, without needing to hold on to ancient hardware/piss around with DOSBOX or whathaveyou. There's a good couple of decades worth of classics waiting to be played. Some titles are even easier to get now than they were at release! Phantasy Star IV, for example.
Cheapness!
OK, so new AAA games can be pretty expensive and then there's DLC if you're into that (I've only ever bought one DLC, m'self and that was for Magicka) so you're probably wondering what I'm talking about.
Well, as a PC Gamer, shit's never been cheaper for me. Relatively low end hardware can run the majority of games at an acceptable level (for now) and there's always a massive sale or two somewhere on the internet. Between the Humble Bundles, Steam Sales, Green Man Gaming, GoG sales and even deep retail discounts you can build a massive library entirely by accident.
I've bought over 200 games in this past year which... was really quite stupid on my part, but still! 200! 10 years ago someone with my kinda money wouldn't have been able to buy 200 games in a year without filing for bankruptcy at the end of it. Plus, I should have more than enough of a backlog to tide me over until I can afford to get some next-gen hardware, so yay future savings!
Indies!
A few people here aren't fans of indie games, but there have been a lot of indies this generation that I've really loved. Games like Gemini Rue and Lone Survivor have become some of my favourites of all time, and others such as Amnesia or Minecraft have almost become modern classics. Commercial indie games have always existed but it seems like they're given much more of a chance now. It's like the early '80s, where anybody could make a game, except with less unplayable shit.
Even the AAA industry doesn't suck, really!
There have been more fantastic games than I can even count this generation. A lot of people like to complain that all we get are CoD clones but I don't think that's true at all. We've gotten wonderfully unique puzzlers like Portal, open-ended stealth 'em ups like Human Revolution, Batman revolutionized the brawler and Darksiders may well be one of the best games in the whole Zelda franchise.
I think it's easy enough to ignore the bits that you don't like. I haven't played a single CoD-clone except Homefront (it came in a bundle so I thought "why not?") and Battlefield 3's single player, which I promptly ignored in favour of it's incredibly fun multi-player.
I'm not saying that there aren't problems and that they aren't worth discussing, but let's try to lighten up and talk about why we still care enough about gaming to yell at each other on the internet.
There are a lot of things that I think are great about the industry right now. Things seem brighter now than when they did back when I was a wee one, to be honest.
Retro gaming!
Services like GoG and the Virtual Console let me buy some really fantastic games that I missed the first time around, without needing to hold on to ancient hardware/piss around with DOSBOX or whathaveyou. There's a good couple of decades worth of classics waiting to be played. Some titles are even easier to get now than they were at release! Phantasy Star IV, for example.
Cheapness!
OK, so new AAA games can be pretty expensive and then there's DLC if you're into that (I've only ever bought one DLC, m'self and that was for Magicka) so you're probably wondering what I'm talking about.
Well, as a PC Gamer, shit's never been cheaper for me. Relatively low end hardware can run the majority of games at an acceptable level (for now) and there's always a massive sale or two somewhere on the internet. Between the Humble Bundles, Steam Sales, Green Man Gaming, GoG sales and even deep retail discounts you can build a massive library entirely by accident.
I've bought over 200 games in this past year which... was really quite stupid on my part, but still! 200! 10 years ago someone with my kinda money wouldn't have been able to buy 200 games in a year without filing for bankruptcy at the end of it. Plus, I should have more than enough of a backlog to tide me over until I can afford to get some next-gen hardware, so yay future savings!
Indies!
A few people here aren't fans of indie games, but there have been a lot of indies this generation that I've really loved. Games like Gemini Rue and Lone Survivor have become some of my favourites of all time, and others such as Amnesia or Minecraft have almost become modern classics. Commercial indie games have always existed but it seems like they're given much more of a chance now. It's like the early '80s, where anybody could make a game, except with less unplayable shit.
Even the AAA industry doesn't suck, really!
There have been more fantastic games than I can even count this generation. A lot of people like to complain that all we get are CoD clones but I don't think that's true at all. We've gotten wonderfully unique puzzlers like Portal, open-ended stealth 'em ups like Human Revolution, Batman revolutionized the brawler and Darksiders may well be one of the best games in the whole Zelda franchise.
I think it's easy enough to ignore the bits that you don't like. I haven't played a single CoD-clone except Homefront (it came in a bundle so I thought "why not?") and Battlefield 3's single player, which I promptly ignored in favour of it's incredibly fun multi-player.
I'm not saying that there aren't problems and that they aren't worth discussing, but let's try to lighten up and talk about why we still care enough about gaming to yell at each other on the internet.
