Why modern gaming sucks.

[Kaiser]

Well this topic is dedicated to WHY modern gaming fails as whole for all of us, old-timers. If you have something to rant about this, feel free to post. I'll begin with my rant. Just a word of warning, there is tons of swearing and it is not intended to offend anyone.

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Introduction
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Gaming, possibly our most favorite hobby we spent many years on and so our children will if they're interesed. Starting with Space Wars and Pong... up to whatever latest stuff gets released.

Every one of us started somewhere, whether it's Atari 2600, Commodore 64, NES or even PSX. We spent wonderful years playing various wonderful (or sometimes crappy) games but we did enjoy what we were doing.

I'll drop a bit of backstory on myself, many will laugh at me for that. But... I am a retro gamer, from bones & blood. Why laugh? Because I am 18. Yes, I am a younging who prefers retro games.

It's a long story but in my country, Poland. Famiclones were a popular business until 2003 when the law shut down all kinds of black markets selling those. I was born in 1992... my first console.. was none other than the NES in 1997 which I got for christmas... obviously a famiclone but hey it worked.

And so with start titles like Batman, Contra or Star Force. I got sucked into gaming being a 4-5 years old. Over time, I had over 30 titles, they were cheap as hell. 5 bucks each!

As time passed. I got a PSX... which I spent years on, same with PS2. I truly enjoyed all the generations I spent time with... until the 7th generation. Which I consider, extremely wrong and it's ass in quality... i'll explain in detail why current (as of now) generation of consoles sucks.

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Explanation
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As we know, 80s and 90s were the golden age of gaming. We had the best games, we had passionate developers who weren't all about money.

What made the said games best and timeless? The developers tried most of time to deliver a real quality game that would wow the players with the presentation, gameplay mechanics and music department.

To name some true classics which I love to today, it's contra series (anything past Shattered Soldier is bad for me, also forget the 3D contra games). Mario (everything after Yoshi's island I cannot enjoy for some reason) and Sonic (All games post genesis are horrendous, their gimmicks and presentation annoy. Add unnecessary stories and tons of furries)

There are countless classics I could name but i'll skip that part. You should get the idea by now what made them great.

When the PS2 generation was coming till it's end, another one was coming, the 7th generation of consoles. We saw many great things during the ps2 generation or previous ones... and as always, we expected even greater things from the next. We wanted more of the same but bigger, longer and improved. It was natural.

However when the 7th generation began, everyone was happy and stuff about it but... something went wrong in course of next years. Games began to be shorter, smaller and less ambitious. To make it worse... they started selling far better than the big games we were used to.

Gaming became a mainstream hobby... for worse. Developers got corrupted with money, they took a shit on us older audience. And so, games became less fun, more commercial, shorter and smaller. I bet you will call me a hypocrite, and ask me a question is there is a developer I still love? Yes, only one, Valve the masterminds behind masterpieces like Portal. Always passionate, always taking their time.

Another thing... many genres like run'n'guns died out as retail (boxed) titles. Or platformers like Ghouls n Ghosts. Even japanese rpgs died out on stationary consoles. They all went handheld.. which didn't exactly make me happy as a stationary console owner. I told my friend yesterday that I would like to see an another big contra title like shattered soldier on current consoles. He said those kinds of games don't have right to exist on modern market. Which I find bullshit.

I bet you will ask me "Is there any 7th gen game you enjoyed or are you just whining because you have no new console". I have a PS3 and I admit, there are some titles I enjoyed playing. Like Ratchet&Clank games or Battlefield Bad Company 2.

My biggest gripe this gen is that PC market fell apart, that games became shitty compared to their past in a lot of ways. And that it's all about graphics now. I'll say it out loud, fuck all graphic whores and fuck all people who buy shitty games like call of duty and claim them extremely good while they're same piece of shits since 2008. And yeah, fuck all modern gamers who think retro genres have no right to exist on retail market. All of them.

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Ending
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In conclusion, I hold no hope that next gen of consoles will be any better, it will be even shorter, even smaller and even suckier. Fucking commercialism. As we can see, money corrupts even game developers... fuck all those game devs who are all around making fast games because they will sell.

You can call me weird, an asshole, a whiner. But you can't deny that there are MANY of us, retro gamers, who can't stand this shit. Thus stick to old consoles they got, along with their games. You can't deny the fucking foundations of gaming either.

That's it, thanks for reading my pretty raging rant. Hope you enjoyed it.

[wariomona]

While I don't agree with some of your words (games getting shorter? like what?), it's definitely true that modern gaming is going down hill.
To me it has a lot to do with that Japanese influences are dying in the consoles. Western games are what's in now, and many Japanese developers are changing because of that.
The other addition this generation is the casual gaming, but it's easy to ignore that.
I don't even understand what any next-gen console after the current lot are going to do. Both 2D and 3D graphics have pretty much reached their peak now. The only changes might be another set of gimmicky motion controls no one really wants or integration with some new 4-dimensional television.

[Krimzon Kitzune]

Some of us still cling to that 8-bit dinosaur. I'm definitely one of them.

[neorichieb1971]

If I were making a game i'd try something not done before, or go back to retro roots and give it the 5 star pollish. The reason I hate this gen is because almost everything is cut and pasted from another game. "oh, another FPS thats exciting, NOT!"

[Wonderbanana]

Games are not going downhill imo at all.

There are good games and bad games these days. There was in the old days too.

It's just over time you only tend to (mostly) remember the good stuff and forget how much junk there really was.

[Kaiser]

Games are not going downhill imo at all.

There are good games and bad games these days. There was in the old days too.

It's just over time you only tend to (mostly) remember the good stuff and forget how much junk there really was.

You can't deny that the creativity in games has WENT downhill due western market taking over. I agree with your point that there were bad games in old days, I never denied that. But honestly, when comparing today's games to older ones, ESPECIALLY when comparing Dragon Age to Baldur's Gate II. They stick out like shit in your bed.

[Wonderbanana]

You can't deny that the creativity in games has WENT downhill due western market taking over. I agree with your point that there were bad games in old days, I never denied that. But honestly, when comparing today's games to older ones, ESPECIALLY when comparing Dragon Age to Baldur's Gate II. They stick out like shit in your bed.

Comparing one title to another isn't really relevant to a sweeping statement about games as a whole.

I think in many ways creativity is better because designers have to try and think outside the box. In every game? No of course not but there are plenty of innovative titles around if you look.

And evolution is ok too, nothing wrong with refining a good idea.

[Krimzon Kitzune]

Well, who knows, maybe Duke Nukem Forever will be the savior of all video games, or at least just those of the FPS genre.

[Wonderbanana]

Well, who knows, maybe Duke Nukem Forever will be the savior of all video games, or at least just those of the FPS genre.

I doubt it! But hopefully it'll be a good laugh

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

The only games I've noticed taking a hit in quality is the fighting genre. Everything is so painfully watered down and boring. I don't even want to get into doujin fighters.

[Drum]

I should not be posting in this thread as I think virtually everything in the OP is poorly thought-out nonsense, but I am too tired of this argument to back up what I am saying and I don't want to appear as if I am defending the stuff it is targeting, because I have plenty of my own criticisms. So here is a shitty post, hope you like it!

[Drachenherz]

I cannot agree with the original post, not at all.

I've been a gamer since I've been a wee child, I will be 35 this july, and I've been gaming since the beginning of the 80ies...

As if money has never been an issue in the past... Anybody remembers the E.T. debacle? Producers were smelling the big $$$ and were producing a very shitty game. Hell, the whole gaming industry went downhill in the mid 80ies when so many $$$-smelling cocktards were shoving so much shit on the market, there was an oversaturation back then, too many good titles, too many shitty titles, too little people buying and everything went downhill.

Personally, I think gaming in general has changed, yes, but it's not that genres have completely died out. You still find your perfectly balanced, joy-to-play modern shoot em up, you still find your perfectly balanced, joy to play plattformer. You pretty much got still all the "old" genres, alive and thriving, but (sometimes) on other plattforms and other ways of publication. In my opinion, there are more games, more genres than ever before! There are still people who produce good old "retro-style" games.

And modern games... There ARE games that are beautifully designed, well conceived and technically awesome and that take you into another worlds for countless hours... An example? Personally, I think Mass Effect is such a game. It has kick-ass graphics, interaction with well conceived characters and a story that sucks you in and doesn't let you stop until you've finished the game. And then come back to play as another character and see the relations of the characters in the game unfold in a completely different way...

tl;dr:
It boils down to this: Gaming didn't go downhill, on the contrary. We're living in a new golden age of gaming. There are more games than ever. This means, there are more shitty games than ever, but also more good games than ever. There are the big players who don't dare to experiment, there are small indepedent programmers who surprise you with creativity and bring you the games for example by online distribution.

So: Stop whining, enjoy the game(s). Nobody forces you to play games you don't want to.

Edit: Some typos and stuff...

[Skykid]

Well, props to the OP for being born in 1992 and being able to appreciate the qualities of classic gaming.

90% of what's produced today is vastly throwaway and meant to be disposable, the remainder are worthy of representing their generation and should be given fair dues.

Part of the phenomenon is the way games are made. In the era's preceding 32-bit, dev teams were small and focussed, probably co-existing in a single room. This kind of environment breeds the best produce, just like the 5 dudes who slaved away during Pixar's genesis, because everyone is on the same page. When the game was good, it was because of a united vision built by a passionate few.

Now game's require 150+ staff to produce, it's more like Hollywood. The passion is compartmentalised, so this guy does a great job on a road texture, this guy a great job on lamp post modelling. Ultimately, you get a slick finish, but no soul.

Personally, I think the best work is produced by the smallest teams because of a concentrated vision rather than one spread thinly between too many cooks, and this rings true in most things.

[dcharlie]

You can't deny that the creativity in games has WENT downhill due western market taking over

of course you can, it's a hollow bullshit statement!

[Wonderbanana]

Personally, I think the best work is produced by the smallest teams because of a concentrated vision rather than one spread thinly between too many cooks, and this rings true in most things.

It's only an opinion of course but I tend to agree.

Of course I suspect there are now more of these small teams around than say 6 or 7 years back because they have far more routes to market than ever before. And that is a wonderful thing that is essentially unique to this current cycle.

[Ex-Cyber]

I don't really believe in a "golden age" of the 80s/90s. Many of my favorite games come from that period, but there was a massive amount of shit too. AVGN-level stuff was really more the rule than the exception in the NES days.

It doesn't follow, though, that newer is better. HD is nice, but I still don't think the current generation is on track to surpass the overall quality and variety of the PS2 library anytime soon. I'm also really put off by the prominence of DRM in the online distribution world. I don't like the DRM on physical media either, but at least that DRM allows me to be a dirty communist and lend games to friends, and I don't have to worry about whether some Sony or Microsoft or Apple server will still be around if I feel like digging something up in 5 or 10 years. I suspect a lot of these low-budget online-only games will end up going down the memory hole when e.g. licenses expire or old platforms are abandoned (it's already happened to a few because of copyright/trademark disputes).

[Obiwanshinobi]

In this day and age I can get the likes of Cave Story for free and World of Goo for peanuts. Gaming has never been in a better shape.
I have not read the OP wall of text, but if you ask me, gaming only sucks for those who want to constantly live through the thrill of every new generation, every platform being another Discovery of America. Funny how some people remember, say, the PSX as the Holy Grail of gaming with heart and soul, whereas other people consider it the point when things went south.
Although both PS3 and 360 turn me on about as much as N64 (not the most disastrous console in known history, but a bit of a failure no matter how you look at it) and I don't like the visual style, the framerates, the input lag prelevant these days and - last but not least - first person shooters compromised for people who play them with joypads (heck, the only thing I really like about this gen is sheer size of the screen you can have at home; not even the resolutions as those have been higher on PCs since the late nineghties), the very fact PC has not died off is enough to counterbalance the sucking on console front.

[Ex-Cyber]

In this day and age I can get the likes of Cave Story for free and World of Goo for peanuts. Gaming has never been in a better shape.

Can it be a coincidence that both of your examples were produced by extremely small self-funded teams? Braid would be comfortable on that list as well. Gaming may be doing okay, but it's mostly doing so by outright defying "the game industry". Something is rotten here.

Funny how some people remember, say, the PSX as the Holy Grail of gaming with heart and soul, whereas other people consider it the point when things went south.

I see both of those elements in PSX, mostly because it improved so much over its life. The early PSX library was pretty sketchy, but things had improved dramatically by 1998 or so. NES is somewhat similar in that respect, actually (at least in the US market, where almost all of the iconic classics came out 1987 and later vs. the system coming out in 1985).

[dcharlie]

You can't deny that the creativity in games has WENT downhill due western market taking over

want to examine this some more - you aren't saying that GLOBAL creativity went down after the take over are you?

I mean... really? seriously???

[Skykid]

Personally, I think the best work is produced by the smallest teams because of a concentrated vision rather than one spread thinly between too many cooks, and this rings true in most things.

It's only an opinion of course but I tend to agree.

Of course I suspect there are now more of these small teams around than say 6 or 7 years back because they have far more routes to market than ever before. And that is a wonderful thing that is essentially unique to this current cycle.

True, & a lot of ios stuff really impresses me with its creativity. Apple might be responsible for restarting a new age of bedroom coder because it provides a marketplace that actually generates profit. The big console manufacturers are bound to take note of this.

[EinhanderZwei]

And here I am...

I'm a gamer since 4 yrs old (1992) - first it was a PC at Mom's workplace, then my Speccy, and a Famiclone. Now I have PSP, PS2, PS3 and X360, and which of them do I turn on more often? PSP, because it's THE device for retro game(r)s IMO

As for the historical part, I think that 1998 was the richest year for amazing games. Half-Life, Unreal, Sin, MGS, Resident Evil 2 (the best in the series), and the list can go on and on and on and on...

My main complaint for current generation is what the fuck happened to the FPS?! When everybody was ripping off Doom in the 90s, it was awesome, because MEGATONS of great games were made (Marathon, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, PowerSlave, Disruptor, everything on Build engilne), but now, when everybody rips off Call Of Dookie (including Infinity Ward themselves), we have a line of mediocre uninspired stereotyped war-themed shooters about bland characters boringly shooting bland villains! This is insulting. I mean, there're countless things about FPS that we, the retro-gamers, will never forget: E1M9 from Doom, E1M1 from Blood, any one-liner from Duke 3D, any fortune cookie from Shadow Warrior, the night levels in Nam, Durandal's monologues from Marathon, the graveyard from Hexen - these are the moments you cannot forget after stumbling upon them. But what do we have now? Since when a fairytale about bland good soldiers fighting bland bad terrorists is considered an awesome FPS plot? Why nobody uses the circle strafe anymore? What happened to the fast pace and an extreme arsenal of weapons? Hell, when I saw the 'Always try aiming while shooting' in Call Of Blandness: Boring Warfare, I thought I'm gonna throw the controller at the TV screen and shove the disc up the owner's anus (it was not mine, thank God). There was no precise aiming key in Doom! THERE WAS NONE!!!

[Acid King]

Modern gaming sucks cause they don't make the style of games I like anymore.

[Wonderbanana]

Modern gaming sucks cause they don't make the style of games I like anymore.

What style is that?

[Domino]

Repost from another forum. Here's one of my big issues of modern gaming:



That guy in the middle is a guy. WTF, long ass RPG with bunch of sillyness. I had my roommates playing this and I laugh at the game and the character design so hard. If that's what the modern man looks like then god help us all. Plus the artwork is computer generated.

Now to Crude Buster:

Big flyer can incoming:

http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/flyers_ ... 482501.jpg


Look at that. Two beefy guys and one of them is puting out his muscles with a fucking cigar in his mouth! Have you ever play the game? Bunch of one-liners and throwing just about everything. Guy in elevator shoes with a snake as a boss, and a mini-boss with a psychogun like Cobra's in his left arm? Fucking sign me up.

And the hand-draw artwork just looks better and more real than the artwork in games nowadays.

It does help that I like simple but hard games. That's why I'm big on the arcade stuff from the 80s to the mid-90s.

To me the biggest problem of modern gaming is that it's all the same. More sequels and stuff that just doesn't interest me that much at all.

[evil_ash_xero]

I definitely think games have taken a hit creatively. Far less games have come out in the new generation that have interested me, than in previous gens.

There are some gems though. Not a lot, sadly.

[louisg]

I dunno, people complain that casual gaming is ruining games, but a lot of smaller-scale games are much closer to pure-gameplay experiences than something like Bioshock. I remember when I was growing up, I would dismiss Tetris and Monkey Island as "oh, those are just lame games people who don't really like games play"-- and then I'd go back to my violent games for teenagers. It wasn't until a lot later that I realized how excellent they really were.

Regarding PC gaming, I think it really hurt it that it basically became a glorified console-- and an expensive one which had severe performance/target hardware/standardized control issues at that. I remember in the 80s, an awful lot of games were very clever, and mostly aimed at older players. Not that they were all good. But, as computers became more capable of good graphics and sound, people first started ripping off NES style games, and then eventually everything turned into fairly mindless action, and with so many gameplay and design flaws too. If you were playing computer games in the 80s and then stuck around for the "PC Gamer" revolution, it was a pretty drastic departure. You went from really clever strategy games like MULE or Archon to RTS click-em-ups which all followed the same rigid formula. Every month was a new hot graphics card, and a lot of the games existed solely to blow your friends away by demoing the hardware; Many games were merely a delivery device for the technology like what tortilla chips are to salsa.

I have to agree with Obiwan that gaming has never been better. Want to play your old games? There are lots of options for that--which is a huge contrast from the 90s where your favorite oldies were nowhere to be found. There is an overwhelming number of good games on download services for a couple bucks each. And hey, there are also huge freaking games with bad plots and overdone voice acting that take several million dollars to make, if you want to go all 90s retro on us

Anyway, I think there are a LOT of rose-tinted memories here. I'm enjoying this generation a lot more than the (horrible) mid-90s 32-bit gen, but less than the previous gen. I think as time goes on, we'll probably look at the last generation as on par with the 16-bitters in terms of the sheer number overwhelmingly excellent games and wide selection of gaming hardware.

[Evilmaxwar]

Well, props to the OP for being born in 1992 and being able to appreciate the qualities of classic gaming.

90% of what's produced today is vastly throwaway and meant to be disposable, the remainder are worthy of representing their generation and should be given fair dues.

Part of the phenomenon is the way games are made. In the era's preceding 32-bit, dev teams were small and focussed, probably co-existing in a single room. This kind of environment breeds the best produce, just like the 5 dudes who slaved away during Pixar's genesis, because everyone is on the same page. When the game was good, it was because of a united vision built by a passionate few.

Now game's require 150+ staff to produce, it's more like Hollywood. The passion is compartmentalised, so this guy does a great job on a road texture, this guy a great job on lamp post modelling. Ultimately, you get a slick finish, but no soul.

Personally, I think the best work is produced by the smallest teams because of a concentrated vision rather than one spread thinly between too many cooks, and this rings true in most things.

Great, you just summarized the whole line of thinking i had on the subject.

Of course there was crap games back then and there are great games being made now as some mentioned. However, for me, one thing that i miss very much from the old days are the classic video game chip-tune sound tracks. I see it as a music genre, seems to me the golden age was late 80s early 90s.

[Udderdude]

Developers who really care about games/gaming and know their shit, 3-4 person teams, focus on developing interesting/challenging game rules, long timeline so the game can be as polished as possible.

Problem solved. :p

[Ex-Cyber]

Developers who really care about games/gaming and know their shit, 3-4 person teams, focus on developing interesting/challenging game rules, long timeline so the game can be as polished as possible.

Problem solved. :p

The larger problem is that such projects are scraping at the margins of an industry that will throw $100 million at marketing for a single game. We don't have a serious mechanism to pay people to do this; the model is basically that a few guys quit their jobs to work on a game and hope for enough App Store or XBLA or whatever sales to not go bankrupt.

[TodayIsForgotten]

I think the problem is (at least for me) as a kid you absorb and are enamored by most everything. Most important being the environment you grow in/up around. I can't say there has been any game in the last 15 years of my life where I was so stoked or excited to play like those days in the arcade. I think that's just life. Eventually the candle burns out on things we were so crazed about and just becomes ho-hum, but we still do them anyhow. Much like, going to a bar every week, or work, or life...

I would assume if you described an arcade to 12-16 year olds today they would look at you funny. Those in the 70/80s would be open to staying in playing a system or console, but going to an arcade would be like going to a playground - there's no question.

If you were born in the 70s and 80s and maybe even 90s you got a glimpse or experience with Arcades. Walking in, hearing all the noises, seeing all the colorful cabinets and screens. People socializing, having a good time or laugh. Fast-forward to today and what do you have? Everything is behind 4-walls and online. No one has to leave the house to get their fix or experience something. Most people would agree you get more out of life by going out vs staying in.

I do miss that 2d isn't the main form of gaming anymore, but there are some fantastic games of today that have been churning out(deadspace, fallout, divinity, diablo). And the same can be said about the golden age. There were some great games and there were some horrible games.

Going back to the older games of yester is just not the same feeling I got as a kid. Playing x-men, TMNT, final fight, street fighter, nba jam again on a PC or xbox was just, eh. The feel of the buttons when mashing them, the atmosphere is just not there. The nostalgia was just a facade. Maybe the same will be said about modern gaming in another 10 years.