Current Events > Did gaming get worse or did we get worse?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Did gaming get worse or did we just get older and more jaded? Or a little of both?

Some things got worse because all of the secrets and extras we dumped hours into obtaining for bragging rights is now available for $5 each

we've had too much of a good thing

I'll let you know after Elden Ring drops

You got older

Kids like different games than you do

Same thing happened with the previous generation who still are focused on classic arcade games.

Games you like and are familiar with got much worse. New games got drastically different, some bad, some just not for you. You lack the first experience value and youthful enthusiasm to enjoy them.

'Gaming' on the whole definitely got way worse though.

Gaming got worse. Honestly, people are better now than they used to be. We talk about what a disaster online interactions are, but they used to be so, so, so much worse...because there weren't really any rules. People could say anything they wanted, as offensively as they chose, without fear of consequences of any kind except maybe from a server admin on just the one specific server.

Games, on the other hand, have leaned so incredibly hard on profit and the "games as a service" model that it's almost impossible to buy a game from a major studio that's actually complete and is focused on the player experience rather than the nickels-and-dimes of the operation.

With the size of the package it got worse. With the fact that gamers aren't moving to Play....

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Gaming got worse. Honestly, people are better now than they used to be. We talk about what a disaster online interactions are, but they used to be so, so, so much worse...because there weren't really any rules. People could say anything they wanted, as offensively as they chose, without fear of consequences of any kind except maybe from a server admin on just the one specific server.

Games, on the other hand, have leaned so incredibly hard on profit and the "games as a service" model that it's almost impossible to buy a game from a major studio that's actually complete and is focused on the player experience rather than the nickels-and-dimes of the operation.

Xbox live chat and such used to be fucking amazing and hilarious lol

https://youtu.be/8rjo0WFzYxc

Look at the amount of games the ps2 had alone. The different kinds.

Now look at how little games there are today. And all very similar.

Rayman2943 posted...

Look at the amount of games the ps2 had alone. The different kinds.

Now look at how little games there are today. And all very similar.

There's plenty of indie stuff out there that's different. There's more games coming out than ever.

Gaming got worse.

The industry was much smaller, budgets were smaller too. A new game by a big publisher could sell less than a million copies, yet still considered to be a success. This shouldn't matter to a gamer who just want to have fun, but that detail meant that devs could afford to appeal to different tastes with specific products.

Now, it's design by a committee, appeal to the widest audience possible, which made games within the same genre feel similar.

I still see a lot of good games coming from relatively unknown devs, but upon the success of their games, they fall in the same traps as big ones, and start chasing the same tropes.

I think the best thing is not to get too attached to a franchise, and be ready to jump over to the new original thing, because it seems everything is destined to get bad after wide success in this industry nowadays.

Totalbiscuit said it best. Instead of inputting cheat codes, nowadays we input our credit card number. You have Pay To Win in most AAA games these days, and then you have bootlicker losers who say that its not pay to win because you can just play for 1000 hours to accomplish what someone can do in 1 minute and 20 dollars.

Jaded.

Because all of the types of games I loved growing up can still be found even if they arent AAA mainstream games.

We even have Pokmon clones being made intentionally to look like Gen1 such as Monster Crown.

If you just look you can find something like what you used to like.

Gaming got much worse. Creativity, games with actual interesting, actual vision? Significantly less of that going around. The industry is creatively bankrupt, and half of the reason it continues to be so is because of people who bend over backwards to just accept the lukewarm shit shoveled into their mouths and call it gold. Why actually try to make anything special if you can make millions appealing to the lowest common denominator?

moh82sy posted...

Gaming got worse.

The industry was much smaller, budgets were smaller too. A new game by a big publisher could sell less than a million copies, yet still considered to be a success. This shouldn't matter to a gamer who just want to have fun, but that detail meant that devs could afford to appeal to different tastes with specific products.

Now, it's design by a committee, appeal to the widest audience possible, which made games within the same genre feel similar.

I still see a lot of good games coming from relatively unknown devs, but upon the success of their games, they fall in the same traps as big ones, and start chasing the same tropes.

I think the best thing is not to get too attached to a franchise, and be ready to jump over to the new original thing, because it seems everything is destined to get bad after wide success in this industry nowadays.

Good summary.

Gaming is literally better than ever. Modern gamers are just whiny as fuck

YourDrunkFather posted...

Gaming is literally better than ever.

Depends on what you value.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Depends on what you value.

Tbh other than big budget linear action games that are like 8-10 hours and Bioware style AAA RPG's I'm not really sure what people are missing?

between AAA games and indies, I feel like gaming is in the best place it has ever been.

there's so much variety, and general level of quality, all my tastes are met.

if there's any reason I don't feel like playing, it's because something unrelated to gaming, compared to the past (NES-PS3 eras), where it was because of a lack of options that felt unique from each other.

both

Gaming is better than it's ever been.

moh82sy posted...

The industry was much smaller, budgets were smaller too. A new game by a big publisher could sell less than a million copies, yet still considered to be a success. This shouldn't matter to a gamer who just want to have fun, but that detail meant that devs could afford to appeal to different tastes with specific products.

I agree with this part but not with the feeling of the post overall. it's entirely possible to find smaller games that still hit lots of weird niches lilke this. it's entirely possible to just ignore all the bigname games nowadays and still have plenty of fun unique stuff to play

A bit of both. The quality of games today has undoubtedly improved in most ways compared to that of like 2 decades ago, but because the gradual increase in quality we've come to expect more from game developers and a lot of them don't care as much about taking the time to put out a overall amazing game compared to just putting out a good but serviceable one more quickly, supplementing it with paid DLC if is popular and successful and hoping that keeps consumers mostly satisfied until the next product is ready to be revealed and eventually shipped out. It's frustrating for long time gamers because a lot of us aren't satisfied with the decline in quality in some aspects due to developers focusing on mostly superficial ones to win over the younger and casual markets or using the game like a promotion vehicle for profit instead of a finely crafted piece of interactive entertainment. That's why there are a lot of complaints, regardless if some are justified and some don't seem to be.

Punished_Blinx posted...

You got older

Kids like different games than you do

Same thing happened with the previous generation who still are focused on classic arcade games.

Mostly this
But games are sometimes genuinely worse in some ways now than before. Mostly just fundamentals and "soul" being compromised for the sake of "more" or "shinier". Look at Dead Rising. There was a video on how dumbed down the attention to detail in 4 is compared to 1. Same goes with that new Left 4 Dead knockoff (forget the title). Same goes with probably a lot more.

Games that are actually built with care and love are still every bit as good as their series' older entries though, like Nier Automata, DMC V, MH World, Doom Eternal, Mario 3D World, etc.

I think AAA originality has suffered greatly but established series are still going strong in many cases. AA gaming is on life support sadly

g0ldie posted...

between AAA games and indies, I feel like gaming is in the best place it has ever been.

there's so much variety, and general level of quality, all my tastes are met.

if there's any reason I don't feel like playing, it's because something unrelated to gaming, compared to the past (NES-PS3 eras), where it was because of a lack of options that felt unique from each other.

This, and those older great games continue to be accessible so if there's a lull there's the backlog

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Gaming got worse. Honestly, people are better now than they used to be. We talk about what a disaster online interactions are, but they used to be so, so, so much worse...because there weren't really any rules. People could say anything they wanted, as offensively as they chose, without fear of consequences of any kind except maybe from a server admin on just the one specific server.

Games, on the other hand, have leaned so incredibly hard on profit and the "games as a service" model that it's almost impossible to buy a game from a major studio that's actually complete and is focused on the player experience rather than the nickels-and-dimes of the operation.

I kind of disagree. Games more than ever have more content and value then they did before for the price you pay. Yes there a few console games that have microtransactions, but not to the level of mobile f2p. It's not that bad.

If anything, this is the best time to be a gamer. The videogame market is very volatile, and inflation has risen up quite a bit over the years. It's up 40% in the U.S. alone since 2006. And yet games are still priced around $60 ($70 is still not that bad, for PS5 and XsX/s) with many console services basically giving you games for free (notably STEAM, MS and PS) as well as accessibility to older games, and consoles are stll in the $300-500 range they were since the 90s. For developers, games are significantly more expensive and complex then they were generations before. A lot of software companies have been bought out or don't even exist anymore.. Yet we still see a lot of quality games every year.

I think I've heard the saying a few times now from game directors with notoriety. When your working for a corporation. A game is a product. There are things that HAVE to be in it.

When your working for yourself. A game is still a product. But you control ultimately what you want it to be.

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

Mostly this
But games are sometimes genuinely worse in some ways now than before. Mostly just fundamentals and "soul" being compromised for the sake of "more" or "shinier". Look at Dead Rising. There was a video on how dumbed down the attention to detail in 4 is compared to 1. Same goes with that new Left 4 Dead knockoff (forget the title). Same goes with probably a lot more.

Games that are actually built with care and love are still every bit as good as their series' older entries though, like Nier Automata, DMC V, MH World, Doom Eternal, Mario 3D World, etc.

I think AAA originality has suffered greatly but established series are still going strong in many cases. AA gaming is on life support sadly

To be fair I think people forget about all of the shitty sequels of the old generations. Like Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness was an outright disaster.

Gaming. That's not to say that we aren't growing out of games, but when you were a kid, you probably didn't have to pay $10 for DLC content that was included on both the disc and the v1.0.0 digital version of the game. You didn't play live service games like Anthem or Avengers, where you're encouraged to grind for a pissweak stream of experience points and middling loot until the dopamine rush of playing the game runs dry. When you bought a dumb shitty anime game, you probably paid a premium because it was a limited release, but you didn't feel compelled to pay hundreds of dollars to purchase all the pointless and tacky DLC it shipped with.

And now game companies are trying to shoehorn NFTs into games as a way of inserting real-world stock market mechanics into games that could be perfectly playable without them, or which relies on a real-money market with items with fluctuating values to draw in crypto bros and people tempted to try their luck in making money, taking a percentage of every transaction in a volatile and speculative market that provides no additional advantages to gameplay.

We're getting older, we're getting worse at games. We're growing out of them at varying rates. But let's not kid ourselves, the advent of digital spending has fucked AAA gaming in the ass three ways from Sunday and affected the quality of them, because you will have some sick, stupid corporate fuckface preying on the sort of person who will spend their life savings on digital purchases and having the gall to call them "whales".

Definitely more jaded. I try asking myself, if I could have the perfect game right now what would that be? & then I realize, that nothing would really satisfy me, because it's not games that I desire, it's more RL stuff these days.

Although, I do also agree that gaming itself has gotten a lot worse. So, both I guess. However, I think a large part of that both on the creation & consumption end can be traced back to the whole "being jaded" thing. I think many people are just getting bored of games because they've been around for a while now & I think you either get bored of playing the same thing over & over again, or get frustrated that a new game doesn't have the same thrill as maybe your 1st encounter of it when you were younger & the graphics & technology was more impressive at that point. Now, it's just kind of like "been there done that" sort of thing. Also, I think there was some sort of societal or social urge that was fulfilled by playing games, like you were apart of some movement (which now doesn't seem to be moving anywhere) & you were somehow accomplishing something or gaining societal or social credibility by playing games.

I think things have gotten worst. I have played some old games on switch online. And some of those things are so funny. And many of them I have no played before. So it is not my old feelings coming back.

Some of them suck balls lol but over all really food stuff back in the day.

Idk man I watched my friend play fortnite yesterday and it looked pretty amazing. I could tell Id be terrible at it, but watching it was pretty cool.

MICHALECOLE posted...

Idk man I watched my friend play fortnite yesterday and it looked pretty amazing. I could tell Id be terrible at it, but watching it was pretty cool.

Like yeah I don't give a shit about Fortnite. I'm an old dude who likes old and traditional games.

But if I was a kid in school I would have fucking adored Fortnite. A game that you can play with your friends for free and it literally doesn't matter what platform they were on? That's amazing! Back when I was a kid we had to hope people had the same system for LAN parties and we had to go hunting through video rental shops to play the same games.

We think back to when we games as kids and teens and remember when things felt simple. You bought a game and were done with it. But kids these days don't really give a shit. They're playing games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Among Us with their friends and having a blast. Then they also play stuff like Mario and Spider-Man and still having good single player stuff if they feel like it. There's nothing I can really point to and say "You're really missing out" and expect them to take it seriously.

Most of the good old stuff is still available to purchase. But they mostly don't care. Just like a lot of us don't care about hanging out in the arcades of get over playing a game of Pacman after a few minutes. Everyone has a different pinnacle and their own peak. It's not a coincidence that gaming is most magical for people when they're kids and teens.

People got worse. The fact that "Should Dark Souls have an easy mode" is a popular debate proves it.

I think gaming is better than ever. You just need to know where to look. Plus all the old games we love weren't going anywhere.

Gaming is better than ever. The only reason to think otherwise is nostalgia.

AltyMcAltface posted...

both

this

Punished_Blinx posted...

Most of the good old stuff is still available to purchase. But they mostly don't care. Just like a lot of us don't care about hanging out in the arcades of get over playing a game of Pacman after a few minutes. Everyone has a different pinnacle and their own peak. It's not a coincidence that gaming is most magical for people when they're kids and teens.

for some reason this line reminded me of this (note the date)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/0/AAOx38AAC9eu.jpg