Well, now the games take up huge amounts of the computer''s reasources, alot of memory, a killer graphics card, etc. I know you had to have a hella sweet system when those games were new, but everything is so expensive for a 15 year old with no job.

It's been said once and I'll say it again, there have ALWAYS been an abundance of crappy games. I don't know of this "golden age of gaming where every game r0x0red your b0x0rz" that many of you speak of, but it never happened. Look at the early 80's and the big market crash back then. Why did it happen? Crappy games. Think back to the NES. Think back to Gilligans Island, Chip and Dale, and all those other cash-in titles, just like today. The only reason you think games used to be 100% peachy was because your brain never cared enough to remember the uglier titles

Yes, most games suck now, and yes, most games sucked back then. Live with it

[edited by - Johnny_W on April 11, 2002 3:57:44 PM]

The market didn''t crash because games sucked. It crashed because Atari overestimated how much it could sell and ended up with huge excess inventory of game cartridges, which sent shockwaves through the entire industry and created quite a setback. At least, that was the big trigger.

Back then, there was no measure. And licensing doesn''t mean a game has to suck -- you need content in games, a framework for characters and storyline. Sometimes people think they can make more money if they use a license. Sometimes people are lazy and don''t have what it takes to create some truly compelling IP.

quote: Original post by Johnny_W
Yes, most games suck now, and yes, most games sucked back then. Live with it

Ok, I''ll note that you think things are the same. But what I''m interested in is why do you think most games suck now? True many people romanticize classic games, but I really think that back then there were more interesting ideas floatin around then there are now. Maybe they made for some crappy games, but at least people had some imagination I think. Ehhh thats beside the point...I''m interested in why games suck now though? I mean we have games with awesome graphics, huge levels, etc. What is it in general that games are lacking today?

-=Lohrno

The ones that could benefit from stronger storylines, do not have them. Developers do not invest the time and resources required to produce a truly compelling and immersive experience for the player. Most games today are like most movies today...all style and no substance. THAT''s what''s wrong with games today.

You guys just aren''t playing the right games. Think Homeworld, The Longest Journey, Baldur''s Gate, Half-Life, Myth, etc. These are all incredibly innovative with great stories and gameplay. Just because there are 30 shitty games for each of these doesn''t make every game today suck.

I think some of you are being way too pesimestic about games. Why would you want to make games if you dont like them? Sure there are a lot of games that plain out suck on the shelves today, but there were un-original piss poor games back in the day also. There are some great games. And just because they dont invent a genre doesnt mean they''re not great.

What I dont like with current games now, is how they all try to be very epic, or dramatic, and they end up being all too cliche. I wouldnt like to see more comedic games(Worms was a clone, but it was great), or games like Sim City, where you can just screw with stuff without being presented with another "you are the last hope for the earth/universe/good guys" stories. Saving the world is boring. I would like to play games with more personal stories. But requires deeper characters in the game (which I wont get into).

Certainly dont have any complaints about the technolgy not being good enough. Besides the fact that Im still waiting for my neural interface.

As for gameplay, I think we have everything classified into genres, which really isnt a bad thing. And I hate when people condem the games industry for not coming up with new obscure abstract genres. I would just like to see them take diffferent aproaches at an existing genre. Homeworld was a great game, it still used all the standard rts features, like building units, attacking, researching, collecting recources. But it did it in 3d space which has never been tried. Or TFC was great, even though it was a FPS whick is common, and it had shotguns and rocket launchers, whick everyone had, but it had players supporting eachother on the battlefield, which was pretty new.
The only real problem with gameplay these days is not that it isnt fun, its that the industry doesnt take enough risks to find out what would be mroe fun. Thats why mods keeping getting snatched up and published. Tons of mods are made, most suck, but there are a few that are really good. They would loose too much money if they just did whatever they had a hunch might be cool, they would go bankrupt.

I find it hard to complain about quality considering games are thousands of times more complex than they were 20 years ago. But do wish they would not even mention release dates until they are sure it will be released on time. So they arent tempted to push the game out when it still has serius bugs.

Thats what can think of off the top of my head. But overall, there are enough good games to keep me busy, and I like playing games. Sorry if I offended anyone by loving games =)

PHRICTION

Game quality hasnt gone down so to speak. We just dont see a lot of the really good games being sold in stores. Games that had in depth plots, storylines, and didn't focus mearly on graphics now are often not "marketable". Such games are often made by dedicated lovers of the genre, and can be found throughout the internet. The unmarketablitiy of such games is due to the fact that so many gamers that don't mind the senseless mind-numbingness of action games. Games like Diablo where you run around and click on bad guys. I use the term action lightly, refering to any game fps or hack and slash type of game. Games like that of course aren't necessarily bad, but the market has been flooded with such games, making really good, and often more difficult games not as appealing (heaven knows why). Also games have stopped focusing so much on storylines because more and more games are being made solely for the internet markets. Look at Ultima, which has used to make have the Ultima series then stopped to make Ultima Online. Asheron's Call, Everquest, great games made solell for online. Diablo 2 was mostly played online. This I believe is another contributing factor. Many great old games that used to keep spawning more of the same great old kind of games now have started to focus too much on graphics, again lowering the bar on quality. I was a very big fan of Sierra's King's Quest series, but unfortunately their latest installment; King's Quest 8 is the first in the series where you just have a sword and run around killing monsters . well thats just a little tidbit of my opinion

[edited by - lord of ishar on April 11, 2002 7:43:01 PM]

Games are a way lot better now.

Perhaps you should check the quality of your grammar.

I have to agree that ~shitty~ games have always been around. Browse through old C64 game archive, and out of the 1000 or so available online, there are perhaps 100 who were really great at the time (Archon 1 and 2, Impossible Mission, Castle of Dr.Creep, MULE and the unmatched Elite to name a few), and out of these 100, you perhaps have 20 who have survived the aging process and are still fun to play. Those were the ones that didn't rely heavily on grafics and sounds, but on gameplay and content.
The problem with newer games is that they often try to hide their lack of content behind flashy effects, but at the rate grafic card technology progresses (not much progress done sound-wise anymore as far as I can tell), most are grafically outdated a few month (weeks?) after they are released. I should perhaps point out that this is also due to the massive amount of work needed to create the grafical content for a game. Whereas you only needed a few sprites and background artworks for a full game a few years back, you now need detailed 3D models, textures and animations just for a working beta.
Additionally, many concepts which were innovative years ago have now been so overused that you really need some very good ideas for your game to be noticed. When Elite came out it was the first 3D space shooter/trade game ever. You won't attract much crowd these days just with a 3D space shooter, so it's back to effects, flashy visuals and a strong marketing (the last one probably eating a good part of your budget)

Nevertheless, great and innovative games still come out from time to time. ~Recent~ past ones that haven't been named yet : the 'Thief' and the 'Tribes' series, SWAT3, all of which didn't boast the best grafics ever (for their time), but which put a certain twist on an otherwise common theme and filled it with content. Thief put a completely new twist on FPS, Tribes achievement was to give the player in- AND outdoor areas, ´combined with, for the time, massively multiplayer battles, and Swat3, although visually an FPS, was mostly a tactical micro-management game.
It's late, and the only game I can think of which is coming out soon and seems to be able to achieve the same kind of innovation is Morrowind. I'm sure there are more, and I'm sure that there are 10 times that many games which can be classified as 'just another [fill in]-Clone' coming out at the same time.

I guess i lost what I was wanting to say somewhere around the 4rth sentence, but I'll post this anyway, as, as I said, it's late and I have this feeling that somehow it was something important I was trying to express

Sammy


[edited by - sammy70 on April 11, 2002 6:56:51 PM]