Maybe it's because it's all been done before. There are only so many things you can do with 3d modeled characters and we've pretty much done it all to death. None of us have as much time to sit down and play one as we used to either. The one big contributor to me is that story isn't considered important anymore. If it is, it has to bend to the wishes of the player, which is pretty much no story, so games all seem alike. The same little go-fetch sequences over and over. The obsessant upgrades. Being able to change the order or mixture of things for almost no pay back. Collecting tons of useless junk and selling it to buy more useless junk. We need less, but no one understands that, so they keep trying to give us more.

@fireside: I disagree. I see plenty of interesting games being made... but I also see copious amounts of... not shovelware, but more like MyFirstGameFor$9.99-ware.

I was looking at a screenshot earlier today, and I felt slightly bad that all these beautiful looking games were coming out, and my game is still in development. I felt I was "missing the boat", then I noticed that one of the buildings in the screenshot looked familiar, and recognized it as Unity Store stock-art, and then felt alot better. :P

Well, I guess this is another case of personal experience.

When I was that young, most of my games were plainly horrible. Maybe it was because I simply couldn't pay the price for the big ones... In the end, the only PC games that I played were Counter Strike and Warcraft3.

I did have a Paystation though, and there were simply an army of great games there, from Breath of Fire 3 to Castlevania SotN to Klonoa to Metal Gear, but oh did it take lots of tries to find these masterpieces. Lots of horrible games in my shelves. Today I can look up a gameplay video in a matter of minutes, it is much easier to see if the game is what I expect before I actually check in.

It is a fact though, there are more corporative titles, but that is just a reflection of how much the market has grown. Yes, there's thrash, yes there are soul-less 100bucks games, and there also are famous-game-like clones, but these are not the only ones, nor are these kinds of games a new phenomenon.

There are many many more by gamers for gamers titles coming out than there has ever been though. There are two titles 'made by game makers' that I am waiting for and that are actually being developed by people I know personally and that live in my city. Who'd have thought someone from the 3rd world would ever be able to put a game on sale to the whole world?

Also, I wouldn't say the big fishes only releases sequels. I loved some games that are actually new IPs from big publishers such as Sleeping Dogs. God I could rip a nail off a finger if it would make Dying Light come out instantly. But I must admit I would also love to burn another 200h on the next The Elder Scrolls, just as I have done since their 3rd instalment.

In my view, we had great games back then and we still have great games today. But now I am anxiously waiting for the release of several titles, even though I know I won't have the time to enjoy them as I'd like to and as I used to...

While I agree with many of your points, I think that on the other hand, what we've really been offered is much, much, much more variety. Sure, many of these games aren't reinventing the wheel, but that really isn't always necessary or even wanted. Back in the day (whichever day you want to imagine), independent development was magnitudes rarer than it is today. If you wanted a game, you were generally stuck with the major publishers and a few dozen games were released each year to choose from (I don't mean to discount those independent developers of whatever time you're imagining. There's always been independent developers, many of them quite good. But, their work was more difficult to access, and they were certainly fewer and further between).

Now that the tools are available for much smaller teams of people to release a game, and the general gaming population has exploded, there is a huge influx of titles released. And, again, while I agree with much of your post, I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. I'm not obligated in any way to buy a game that doesn't appeal to me, or one that doesn't seem particularly well done. Reviews of games are even easier to come by these days.

And, while yes, there is a lot of rehash (endless roguelikes, platformers, etc), many of these are actually quite good, and again, these days, the good ones tend to rise to the top, reputation-wise, and I've certainly spent my share of hours with them. Additionally, I think this huge influx of independent development while simultaneously releasing myriad genre games, there has also been, in my opinion, so, so much more creative reinventing of the game industry. Games that challenge our notion of what games are, games that push the boundaries within their respective genres, games that come out of nowhere with a radically new approach to things.

So, I guess in a nutshell, I agree there's a lot more "crap" these days, but along side it there is so, so so much more creativity, diversity, and just sheer volume to choose from. There are so many sides of the gaming industry that make me cringe, from cash-grab F2P, to major publishers using overpriced early-access, to the huge influx of MOBA games. I avoid these things like the plague, but the thing is, that I can avoid those, and it barely makes a dent in my range of choices. My backlog of games that I own and want to play just gets longer every day (and yes, I also have a huge backlog of games I've barely looked at, and those that were, truly, just not fun, but this is kind of my point ). Almost every day I read about a new game in development that piques my interest, or a game is released that I lament I don't have more time to dedicate to it.

And, to the points regarding questionable ethics (early access scams, or pretty much how most of the major publishers behave), I guess I just feel that that's relatively easy to avoid. Sure, it's irritating, but playing/buying those games isn't mandatory. But, I join you in the scorn. There are some truly terrible practices in the industry now, but I think they're more illustrative of capitalistic practices that plague all industries in our society. I'll decry them with you, for sure, but while they're new(ish) to the gaming industry, I don't think they're unique to it.

So, yeah, my apologies for the rambling, I just think that any time you expand something as much as we've expanded the game industry, both the good and the bad are expanded with it. I think that despite the things you, I, or anyone else dislikes, that the accessibility, ease of distribution, wide range of development tools, and just general increase in the gaming industry is a net positive for everyone. I try to view it the same way I do the music, movie, or book industries. I certainly think there are tons of terrible unreadable books out there, but I'm in no way obligated to read them (there's usually someone who will love 'em ). But, the fact that there are so goddamn many books out there means I'll always be able to find one that I'll enjoy, and I'll never run out of options

While I agree with many of your points, I think that on the other hand, what we've really been offered is much, much, much more variety.

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I just think that any time you expand something as much as we've expanded the game industry, both the good and the bad are expanded with it. I think that despite the things you, I, or anyone else dislikes, that the accessibility, ease of distribution, wide range of development tools, and just general increase in the gaming industry is a net positive for everyone.

Very true. I just wish "discoverability" of quality games was a solved problem! And by "quality games", I mean, consumer discoverability of my games once they are released. :D

Netflix recommendations still are terrible. Amazon suggestions are a bit better but often miss the mark.

Different people have different tastes, and trying to figure out what makes a game "quality" is subjective, but I enjoyed Steam's "walled garden" of curated games - they are increasingly allowing almost anything into their store, and I personally feel soon they'll take a website-widget like approach, and allow *everything* into their store. This means Steam will transition from, "Here's a store where we stock quality games", to "Here's a payment platform and centralized library of your own games", making it harder for me as a consumer to find games that'll interest me, and harder for me as a developer to get possible customers to look at my game.

Steam was a benefit. It's not now a liability, but still, the benefit has been reduced. When you come to rely on walking with a cane, and now your cane is gone, it takes some getting used to and causes some frustration. :)

Getting on Steam used to mean an almost guaranteed 10,000 sales. It meant, if you made a good enough game, and if Steam accepted it into the store, then your game was a success. It was almost an answer to the indie problem of "How do we get public attention for our game?". Getting on Steam was the attention. Now it's back to the scramble of the regular internet distribution and mobile game mosh-pit of street-hawking your games louding than the person next to you - in a crowded room of fifty thousand other developers doing the same thing. :(

The crowded market means we just, as consumers and as developers, have to work a little harder. It was never a free lunch, but the lunch used to be a little cheaper.

@ Servant of the Lord

Very true. Though, if I recall, it used to be incredibly difficult to get your game on Steam. I could be mistaken, but I believe you had to either be under a major publisher, or at least "recommended" by a publisher (or something to that effect).

But, yeah, Steam...has certainly changed. Like you mentioned, it used to be a sort of curator for games, where, if a game made it on to Steam, you could be at least sort of assured that it hit a certain level of polish. While, now, Steam is closer to just a repository of pretty much anyone who wants their game on Steam (i'm being a little hyperbolic here :P).

You might have better insight into this than I (I've never commercially released a game), but do you really feel that things have changed all that much? I only have experience of Steam as a consumer, rather than a game developer. I would imagine that previously, it was just incredibly difficult to get your independently created game picked up by a major publisher, and if you weren't on a major publisher, you had few to no options to gain any significant exposure or sales. Now, I imagine it's just as difficult to be published, but you have a lot more options for marketing/releasing outside of the major outlets. The downside being that there is so much competition(so, so much competition).

I just imagine that games of a certain level of quality still rise to the top eventually. Not through any sort of "free hand of the market" or anything, but just through word of mouth, exposure in the gaming media, and yeah, even steam sales, humble bundles, or whathaveyou.

I just figure any game that struggles in the current gaming industry environment would probably have the same struggles, if not worse ones, in the past. I could totally be wrong here, but I just imagine that games that struggle now, probably wouldn't have even have been able to exist at all 5 or 10 years ago. Perhaps there was a short-lived age where everything was balanced nicely though. There certainly was for independent music, before its current environment.

Anyhow, I'm curious about your thoughts on this, but I imagine that a game that would have made it onto Steam a few years back, would be of the quality that they'll still be rather successful even in the current climate. Or, do you thing it is much more difficult to generate any profits in the current climate even if your game is of great quality? Does all the "fluff" competition just flood the potential sales?

You might have better insight into this than I (I've never commercially released a game),

Very true. Though, if I recall, it used to be incredibly difficult to get your game on Steam. I could be mistaken, but I believe you had to either be under a major publisher, or at least "recommended" by a publisher (or something to that effect).

But, yeah, Steam...has certainly changed. Like you mentioned, it used to be a sort of curator for games, where, if a game made it on to Steam, you could be at least sort of assured that it hit a certain level of polish. While, now, Steam is closer to just a repository of pretty much anyone who wants their game on Steam (i'm being a little hyperbolic here ).

I just imagine that games of a certain level of quality still rise to the top eventually. Not through any sort of "free hand of the market" or anything, but just through word of mouth, exposure in the gaming media, and yeah, even steam sales, humble bundles, or whathaveyou.

I just figure any game that struggles in the current gaming industry environment would probably have the same struggles, if not worse ones, in the past. I could totally be wrong here, but I just imagine that games that struggle now, probably wouldn't have even have been able to exist at all 5 or 10 years ago.

Perhaps there was a short-lived age where everything was balanced nicely though.

Anyhow, I'm curious about your thoughts on this, but I imagine that a game that would have made it onto Steam a few years back, would be of the quality that they'll still be rather successful even in the current climate.

Or, do you thing it is much more difficult to generate any profits in the current climate even if your game is of great quality? Does all the "fluff" competition just flood the potential sales?

I would like to see a few more concrete examples in this article, especially since the article proper is expressing an opinion.

You touched on this: new games can be rehashes of dead genres ad infinitum. Looking just at first person shooters, I wrote:

I am somewhat aghast at how many there are. The Bioshock series, the Halo series, the Resident Evil series, the Crysis series, the Battlefield series, the Half Life series, the Counter-Strike, Medal of Honor, Code of Honor, Brothers in Arms, Rainbow Six, F.E.A.R., S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Killzone, Doom, Quake, Call of Duty, Heavy Gear, Delta Force, Far Cry, Left 4 Dead, series-es. . . . I frequent a lot of technical forums, and it's disturbingly frequent how often some novice programmer solicits advice on making "their own" FPS. It's everyone and his uncle wanting to make one. Even al-Qaeda released one.

In my opinion, one of the major reasons for stagnation in the gaming industry is that it (both companies producing and gamers consuming) has collectively forgotten the new-frontier sort of brazen exploration that was its hallmark twenty, thirty years ago.

Reading this piece almost made me want to break out my Gran Torino "you kids get the hell off my lawn" stare. Commandos? Honestly, I HATED that game! The vision cones that dictated vector-based avoidance gameplay, the boring set-piece solutions laid out beforehand on carefully designed maps seemingly hinting at "guess what the game designer was thinking" solutions. It was yet another in a long line of story heavy, mission-based titles defiling my gaming holy trinity of freedom, player creativity and open-ended exploration.

My golden age were games like Ultima V and Starflight. Massive, sprawling worlds. Entrepreneurial "carve your own path" survival-- no handholding! Non-linear problem solving. All with now obtuse, near-impenetrable interfaces and all but forgotten.

In other words.... "back in my day!"

This, of course, just probably proves that every golden age is likely heavily tinged with the fog of nostalgia (or Oblivion-style bloom if you like). While it may be true that technology has changed some of the characteristic phenomena of game development and distribution, I have a strong feeling that it's the same melody in a different key.

Take paid reviews, for instance. This is an area that keeps experiencing scandal after scandal. I remember the scandal of big-name game reviewers being given expensively arranged rides in a real life US attack helicopter to bolster favorable reviews for a new combat sim (Comanche 3 I think). Or a major gaming site allowing a hint book writer to give a patently broken game a glowing review on a major gaming website (for Ascendancy).

Or take fretting over technology that democratizes game creation (Unity etc.): Can you imagine that the same was said of gaming libraries like Allegro or Fastgraph? That they, along with game development books, would unleash a flood of low-quality games onto the market (which I guess they did, in the form of the little shareware revolution of the late-80s and early 90s).

Or even deeper still if you want a comparison to apps and the race to the bottom / bundling, look at coin-op arcades and how we started getting 4-in-1 cabinets with multiple, usually crap games before arcades pretty much disappeared.

And sadly, I can't think of any time when the suits didn't rule the roost, and maybe for good reason. Take Looking Glass Studios, which gave us gorgeous gems like Thief, System Shock, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and Ultima Underworld--innovative all. Their reward? To watch their furniture being sold off right up to the water cooler while desperately trying to crank out their next game.

All this is to say that while you certainly have great points, I'd ask for a bit more historical perspective. There's something going on in this industry-- with this artform, if you can call it that-- that seems to have some endemic characteristics embodied both by those that create the games and those that consume them. Whatever it is, it keeps the same stuff happening over and over again.

(Sorry for the counter-essay, by the way. I imagine someone who originally played Colossal Caves is smirking at my supposed long-view retrospective and breaking out his Dirty Harry stare to get me the hell of HIS lawn! :D)

"Why games don't have to be good anymore".... For the record, games never had to be good in the first place. There have been bad games since games have been made (Custer's Revenge always springs to mind). This article is just a rant that seems to place the blame on everyone except the developers as it is ultimately the developers who have to make it good.

The problem with services like Steam having the ability to police quality is, simply: What determines the level of quality allowed and how do you determine when games meet it or not?

That being said, I find roughly 90% of games on Steam or bundles have zero interest to me.

To me, that line sums up the whole article. The whole article, again to me, comes across as the author has zero interest in games coming out so therefore they aren't good anymore. I find it odd that the author seems to expect everyone except the developer to make 'better' games as he thinks Steam should police the quality of the game (which would be kicking a lot of indie teams out).

The problem with services like Steam having the ability to police quality is, simply: What determines the level of quality allowed and how do you determine when games meet it or not?

Erm... number of bugs reported by users going unfixed even after the umpteenth patch, and the level of stress in players' (or should I say lab rats') posts on game's forums?

Keeping track of this could be simplified by adding a "bugs" section where users can report bugs instead of the forums, and from there it's just adding a progress bar somewhere, showing the number of fixed bugs vs. non-fixed ones, also possibly showing the quality of a game in the game's page, as a simple (number of reported unfixed bugs)/(time since game was released) ratio - this has been done before (see github for example). Also, a thumbs up/down system wouldn't hurt (see sourceforge)...

Erm... number of bugs reported by users going unfixed even after the umpteenth patch, and the level of stress in players' (or should I say lab rats') posts on game's forums?

In order to fix a bug you have to be able to reproduce it otherwise you run the risk of adding more bugs trying to guess what is causing their bugs. If they are patching a game and haven't fixed a bug, it likely means they can't reproduce the bug to fix it or is system specific (as I had tons of bugs in games that turned out to be outdated drivers or crappy hardware).

Keeping track of this could be simplified by adding a "bugs" section where users can report bugs instead of the forums, and from there it's just adding a progress bar somewhere, showing the number of fixed bugs vs. non-fixed ones, also possibly showing the quality of a game in the game's page, as a simple (number of reported unfixed bugs)/(time since game was released) ratio - this has been done before (see github for example). Also, a thumbs up/down system wouldn't hurt (see sourceforge)...

That would be great assuming there are measures in place to prevent trolling (as users could just downvote it because they don't like the graphics or creator). I've been part of SF since 2001 and don't recall there ever being a thumbs up/down system, but it uses stars (1 - 5) and reviews. It could have 100% bug fixes and still be poor quality though, which is my point, who determines the level of quality without alienating other developers because I think quality is more than just bugs in the game.

... not shovelware, but more like MyFirstGameFor$9.99-ware.

Yeah, I agree with whoever said Ultima V above. Good games = things on the Apple II. (I have been wondering when all you kids were finally going to get tired playing that same 3D game over and over again -- the one where there is a cut scene that you skip through and then you run around and shoot stuff and then there is a cut scene that you skip through...)

When looking at the game industry here in Finland, you quite understand why there are no more good games => You can make millions with no creativity.

Rovio is just putting birds and piggies in all classics, Supercell makes million a day with three iterations of the same game, that same concept used by Next games just using far west style.

Then Seriously comes up with a Candy Crush mechanic including battle like it has been done already.

At a lower level, Boomlagoon gets 3.5M for a downhill cart game (did you say Bad Piggies? No, I said they are former Rovio employees) then they come up with an endless runner, so much for originality. Not sure they're making the big buck though.

Even Remedy?!, think about it 10 years ago, they came up with a game that allows to slow down time, now they are to release a game where you can...stop time...right.

Cities Skyline, isn't that Sim City somehow?

Only Playraven got out of it with a spy game and it did not do so well I heard. Too original?

So, why would you bother trying to be creative when using a well driven idea will make more money and faster than a new mechanic that users are not used to.

One thing for sure, it is also more difficult to join after 30 years. Cinema industry is in the same wagon, taking oldies out of the boxes.

Microsoft is even making it its next big move for xBox, new releases of old classics.

I think people just need to evolve a healthy idea of what crowdfunding and early-access really are. They are investment platforms, just like the stock market. There's not guarantee you're going to get what you want out of it, you're not buying a product. Kickstarter isn't a store. If you buy anything early-access, there's no guarantee the entity responsible for it will always exist and always be able to follow through, most especially when it's a small team/indie. When you put your money towards these things you are gambling, that's just the way it is. There are not a lot of economically viable solutions to remedy this, in terms of manhours, and the platforms that allow this make money whether or not you get what you want, so there's that.

Back in my days (oh god, here it comes) when a game shipped it was working, and any bugs/exploits made the game even better. There were no such things as "Day 1" bug fixes, and this is exactly what happens when you try to make bigger budget games. These days what it costs to produce a 'AAA' rated video game is starting to look just like a feature film is being developed, and the quality of games being released these days is usually nothing to gloat over. I am however quite happy that the indie movement is still going strong, however I think Kickstarter and "Early Alpha Access" crap are two things that are being more and more abused. "Give us your monies so we can do our best, at least until Facebook buys us out (not to point fingers at anyone in particular".

Make Games. Get Money.

The market has/will boom and bust; do quality work; work hard to create and keep real fans and charge a reasonable amount for your sweat.

I am going to be flamewared for this, but in my mind the death of the great video game came with the popularity of the console. When the PC industry found out they could release games like the console and make just as much money they started ditching the old methods and went for the ones that provided the most money. DLC on a pc game? Are you kidding me? I remember when they first started that and I thought to myself "Did my PC just become a console?". Before the era of DLC and paying for the content you had modders who would mod a game and push it out for the PC people to download for free! Hell, most PC games during that time could easily be modified if you knew what you were doing.

I was 13 years old and modifying the code of Dark Reign so my troops could run super fast. I learned how to do this by simply right clicking the game files and opening them with notepad. Come to find out they were in plain text and easy to modify!!

Those joys went away when the console games started to make big bucks and slowly more and more developers moved to a 60$ per game model.

An even more recent blow to the concept of games is the F2P method. Developers found that if you put the right things up for sale anybody will buy it. I know this and I still do it!! (i have spent like $300 on dota2 gear/tickets) The F2P is a great way to make a quick buck so long as the content you are offering is worthy to the player. Some games make crucial gameplay mechanics part of the F2P market. More time in game, double XP, more damage, more treasures.... the methods for making the quick dollar are easy! Most mobile games run off of this same exact setup.

Which brings me to the very last portion of this rant. Combine all these factors with the bursting indie scene and you get the recipe for the shit we have now. You get somebody who is making a game out of their garage (which is cool) who wants to make a quick buck and see's AAA companies doing it from a F2P setup... so they do the same thing! The market now gets enriched with horrible models for video game development and the process for finding a good game is near impossible.

The answer? A filter method of some type that filters out the trash and highlights the good games. The problem with this is that the news medium is suppose to do this already but are more commonly bought/paid off to give good reviews. WIth the bursting indie community thriving the news medium has found it impossible to keep up and thus only cover a game once it has reached popular status. This leaves the jewel finding up to most of us gamers!

Do i see a fix for this anytime soon? Nope, right now I just make games and buy the ones that have high ratings after 3-5 months of release.

I've noticed on youtube there seems to be a huge mob of increasingly pessimistic gamers forming with respect to the the idea of "publisher greed" and milking repeats(and genre styles) and some disregard for cool fun new games - even fans are noticing publisher behavior and feel disrespected(ie Konami lately) - just demographics/statistics, sales, microtrans - lotsa complaints about stuff like that -- although some sequels do have strong support too - but many are saying there's a lack of desirable game options on consoles - one example I see gathering a lot of flames recently was Metroid Prime Federation Force as it bears no resemblance to Metroid style of game experience ppl like - but it has the title. It's a tricky situation since publishers have to try to stay competitive too but sometimes that backfires.

To me it seems like a lot of extremely interesting games get little or no attention - they go virtually unnoticed. .. kinda looks like in stores you see few options of different games to chose from - so resorting to buying closest desirable sequel or popularized clone(which sometimes ppl like but options would be nice). I've seen so many awesome and intriguing looking pc games that never seen the light of day - possibly public awareness of these new types of new treasures has a lot to do with the problem.

Normally I'd say let ppl vote with their wallets - but from what I've heard, it seems like manipulation of what is noticed by the public stifles a lot of potential.

That being said though - I have seen a lot of promising games being developed lately - and even certain sequels I admit I look forward to (Tomb Raider, FF, etc)

I feel the title of this article should be, why games aren't good anymore, not why they don't have to be.