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Thread: Have games actually got worse over the years?

  1. #1
    jim
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    Have games actually got worse over the years?

    I recall even years ago, people were talking about how games were better in the "old days", usually back to the ZX Spectrum / Amiga / whatever they had when they were a kid. And I thought of them as old fuddy-duddies who just wanted to hate on the delight I took in my latest 3D game.

    And I'm inclined to think that for most of us, we'll remember some games from a certain period in our lives far more fondly than they empirically deserve - either because we had the time to play them back then, or because everything was magical and amazing to us, or because we just had far less to compare to.

    I think often it is rose-tinted spectacles - and going back and playing some old games that you didn't play contemporaneously can be really underwhelming and disappointing.

    Yet so many of the games I pick up these days I find utterly disappointing (e.g. Ubisoft paint-by-numbers shooters, sports games where online is everything), that I have to wonder whether the medium is hitting a high point of big-budget low-quality product, or whether I'm just getting older and judging things unfairly.

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    Super Moderator Jonj1611's Avatar
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Not sure on that, I remember looking back with fondness of some of the games I used to play, Kickstart II on the C64 for example but I think its just that, good memories.
    Jon

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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    No, you're just picking up rubbish games

    Be a bit more circumspect, know what you like and read reviews carefully, and you'll probably find games are better than ever.

    I like my RPGs and where we once bemoaned the loss of the Gold series (old DnD computer games) recent RPGs have completely trounced them - from action/story like The Witcher 3, to Ultima VII besting Divinity Origninal Sin games, to better than Baldurs Gate like Pillars of Eternity (and BG3 is coming from the Divinity studio!). And for those looking back to DnD, Pathfinder:Kingmaker is one of the best tabletop campaign representations I've seen.

    What about other genres? Elite on the BBC has been replaced with.. Elite on the PC (plus Eve/X for those that like)

    Revs on BBC/Geoff something or other Grand Prix now has a plethora of racing games. Test drive has been upgraded to the simply amazing Forza Horizon 4.

    These are good times
    Last edited by kalniel; 20-04-2020 at 10:51 AM.

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Quote Originally Posted by jim View Post
    ....we'll remember some games from a certain period in our lives far more fondly than they empirically deserve - either because we had the time to play them back then, or because everything was magical and amazing to us, or because we just had far less to compare to.
    you're right about time to play them!!

    I've got https://forums.hexus.net/pc/413513-k...mixed-bag.html that and it's blummin amazing but I don't have time to mess around with the tasks and run from one village to another while not starving to death and foraging and permantently being in jail for nicking food!

    It's a beautiful game but I don't have the time.. I just wanna get on with the story but I cant...it'll need hundre of hours, not just in playing, but research

    I believe, quite firmly that most games are now studiously studied on Youtube by people trying to play better, watching pro gamers do well..... My son does it. Sometimes before playing at all.

    And I don't have that time to spare either!

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    I think part of it all might be the boom in choice and various other distractions available these days, courtesy of the Internet.

    The way many games publishers do things these days with Day 1 DLC probably doesn't help things though either.

    Back before such widespread connectivity and choice, people would most likely power through the games anyway and give a more in-depth consideration of whether they liked the game or not as a result.

    If games have actually got worse as a whole, I suspect it's more because the connectivity and choice available now means many have less patience, and if they don't like it initially, they are less likely to try to power through it as they can choose to play something else instead (and also get a refund in various applicable cases).

    Not everyone will act that way of course, especially those who remember what things were like in the old days, but as time goes on it is likely harder and harder for many games to catch as much attention overall as they may have if they had been released at some point in the past.

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    AAA games in certain technical details have. For instance,look at some of the older games such as the earlier FarCry ones,Crysis,Red Faction,etc. The new games look prettier but many lack proper destructable physics,and even little things like fire responding to weather conditions. AI in games also at best not gone anywhere,or is even worse in newer ones. An example of this:
    https://www.eteknix.com/far-cry-2-ph...ter-far-cry-5/

    The physics is worse in the newer version of FarCry. Its not a console limitation(some games like Just Cause can do it perfectly well). So increasingly you have rather sterile large worlds.

    There also seems to be an increasing dumbing down of certain combat mechanics in newer games,especially since they are console ports,or need to accommodate controllers. You see a lot of the rolling around type combat with autoaiming mechanics,as these work well with controllers,but seem weird on PC with keyboard and mouse. A lot of games have hardcoded controls,or lack things like proper FOV adjustments,etc. These are primarily down to consoles being the target for more games.

    Map design is also lazier in a number of the newer AAA games - older devs had to think carefully of how to do things due to limitations,but now you can just a bland map and expect "emergent gameplay". People like the new Doom games right? Well those hark back to some of the older games in how arenas were designed.

    Then there is the big problems of DLCs and microtransactions. In the past expansions were sold as "mission packs" which were substantial in size,now we have little things being sold for lots of money. Its also started to affect the modding community,ie,companies and modders will be increasingly in conflict over time. You can see that with Bethesda slowly wanting paid mods,which eventually I think will be the end of the free modding community.

    The final part is "early access". PC games always have had bugs - but now games are being intentionally sold in an even buggier,and less optimised way from the start. This for me,is where things have gotten the worse. Instead of bothering to fix bugs,devs just keep having the game in "early access" for years,and in instance like Ark,it was shocking how badly it ran.

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    RIP Peterb ik9000's Avatar
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    I grew up with CPC games. A few were good, most were a bit pants by modern comparison. They were fine for the time, but once the megadrive/SNES came out they were dated and dull. PC games improved over the years, and some still are good but the push for online, DRM-infested, monetised loot-box BS has meant I haven't bought a game in 5+ years. Give me a decent single player without horrific DRM and mandatory platform launcher bloatware and I'll listen. Ditto the option to have local LAN servers independent of some global behemothic laggy, latency and troll-infested lobby and clientele.

    So for me games peaked around 2010-2012 just before that trend kicked off. Far Cry, BF2, Crysis, that kind of generation and a few years beyond it. By the time BF3 came out and ubisoft consumed the Far Cry franchise the rot had set in.

    The one thing I have never really seen replicated recently is the sheer head-scratching and puzzling problem-solving requirements of the old GAK style adventure games and things like Dizzy etc - those old platform games. I guess Monkey Island was the closest thing I saw for PC, and that was a long long time ago (and pitched young).

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    Senior Member spacein_vader's Avatar
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Quote Originally Posted by ik9000 View Post
    Give me a decent single player without horrific DRM and mandatory platform launcher bloatware and I'll listen.
    The Witcher 3, brilliant single player RPG with no DRM if you buy on GOG. You're welcome.

    AAA games have reached the stage with DLC and season passes and all that nonsense but there is more choice than ever. Games like Stardew Valley, FTL, Star Traders, The long Dark, Firewatch, Papers Please would never exist 20 years ago, let alone become hits. The games are there if you know what you want and where to look. Niches can survive and thrive in ways they didn't before.

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Some games have gotten good, while others have not...

    Steam has allowed for the publishing of many thousands of little indie games that, frankly, are utter dross. Trite, insipid, pale imitations of previous greats, churned out as readily as the latest trilogy (because it's always a trilogy) of Vampire-Zombie-Werewolf teen-audience faux-erotic fantasy novels starring Anita Blake.
    A lot of games get pretty boring pretty quick, or take so long to get going that you start to wonder if you wasted your money...

    I still assert that Assassins Creed isn't worth playing after the Ezio story. Even then, it was starting to attract criticism for adding new things, because they thought a new game needed to have new things, for the sake of having new things, because it's a new game... and it just got boring, really. Then they went on a massive campaign to churn out product and it was just a mess.

    Tomb Raider, I hear, is finally moving back toward puzzles, although still a Far Cry (pun intended) from back when the series was a proper action-platformer-puzzler.
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Half Life Alyx is a stunning game.

    OTOH I have been playing Classic WoW recently, the modern versions bore me. I like levelling and questing, and crafting stuff for the auction house all of which got broken some years back in the main retail game.

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Three things come to mind.

    1 - Wider choice. The more games are produced the more bad games we'll be exposed to.
    2 - Market forces - As games become more popular and attract more money, they'll become more expensive to produce on the top end, and investors will take less risk, so less innovation and more repetition of what works or the continuation of known titles.
    3 - Market forces - Similarly, people will seek to produce based on popularity or chance of return of investment, rather than pure passion. This too will mean that in some ways we see less creativity and quality in certain ways.

    We are still seeing some great games, but by necessity, these will always be few and far between.
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    on a slight tangent, what i'm not so happy with is the tendency towards online social gaming. it has its place, but its really not for me & isn't why i got into gaming

    i got into gaming around the time of Quake, so single player first-person shooters are my favourite of the game genres. games like Doom, the Quake series, the Half-life series. games you could literally lose yourself in for days & you didn't have to be part of a clan, or be online at a certain time with a headset on, you could dip in & out and play it your way, at your pace. any achievements were your achievements etc

    tl;dr - online multi-player FPS's really leave me cold. i dislike having some teen from sacramento yelling at me & i find the whole concept of "here's some maps, go make your own fun" a bit lazy
    if it ain't broke...fix it till it is


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    jim
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    No, you're just picking up rubbish games

    Be a bit more circumspect, know what you like and read reviews carefully, and you'll probably find games are better than ever.

    I like my RPGs and where we once bemoaned the loss of the Gold series (old DnD computer games) recent RPGs have completely trounced them - from action/story like The Witcher 3, to Ultima VII besting Divinity Origninal Sin games, to better than Baldurs Gate like Pillars of Eternity (and BG3 is coming from the Divinity studio!). And for those looking back to DnD, Pathfinder:Kingmaker is one of the best tabletop campaign representations I've seen.

    What about other genres? Elite on the BBC has been replaced with.. Elite on the PC (plus Eve/X for those that like)

    Revs on BBC/Geoff something or other Grand Prix now has a plethora of racing games. Test drive has been upgraded to the simply amazing Forza Horizon 4.

    These are good times
    In all honesty, my base assumption is that I'm the problem - I don't doubt that I'm buying some utter rubbish! I'm just wondering why. Actually, at this point, I'm not even sure what I like any more!

    I think Zak might have hit the nail on the head, in that it's a time issue. I end up going back to older games because I can pick them up for 15 minutes, play, and happily pause if I need to. And possibly that's tilting me towards sim / builder-type games, e.g. Tropico / Jurassic World / Civ etc.

    I like the concept of TW3 (I completed TW1 on the second attempt, never managed to finish TW2), but by the time I get back to it, I've completely forgotten the storyline and can't remember what I was doing. By the time I've remembered again, I've had to stop playing. And there are a couple of online games I enjoy playing, but then I come up against people who assume that I've spent hours reading gameplay discussions and am completely up to date with how a certain thing was nerfed last week in Patch 7.2.1812 and of course I know that there's a certain weakness to this character / item / craft on the other team that I should be exploiting. No thanks! So they're OK in co-op or multiplayer with friends, but not online.

    Elite is on my list to try, but I haven't jumped in yet partly because of time concerns.

  15. #14
    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    So it's possibly about style of game too - in which case keep an eye out for games away from the mainstream which aren't trying to hit a larger market category. spacein_vader
    lists several examples of great games which don't require much investment either in time or computer specs. There a many others to add to the list, just trying to think what I rate that might come close to builder types - Civ is still going strong, Endless Legends is extremely well reviewed and a bargain. Going a bit more towards strategy and you've got games like Defence Grid 1/2 and XCOM 1/2 which are naturally suited to short play sessions.

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    shorter game sold at full price = more profits

    most of titles being released half baked or full of empty promises just look at Battlefield 5 and Anthem

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    Re: Have games actually got worse over the years?

    Sad to see the lack of original ideas nowdays. Most AAA games are part 2-3-4-x of good aging games.
    There are some though that I'd love to see, even if part 3 ... it is Half Life

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