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General discussion (archive)Games Aren't Just Games Anymore...(45 posts)solved(45 posts)solved
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 09, 2010
Games aren't just games anymore... they've evolved into something better... they've evolved past Pac-Man and Mario, they've become epic journeys through detailed worlds, fun quests, missions, items, and much, much more! But as graphics went up.. content went down... and a good example is the elder scrolls series... as in arena's case, it was huge! then Daggerfall, bigger, but then Morrowind. it was smaller, and there was more graphics, but it was a twilight of graphics and content, the perfect game, with just a few flaws. then, oblivion. oblivion is extremely detailed compared to other elder scrolls.. but it is extremely small in content compared to the others, too.
Are games getting better, or worse?
This question / problem has been solved by StormHammerimage
Posted May 09, 2010
I think most games are going downhill. I haven't played a console game I've really enjoyed in years, and most PC games that I've played multi-player on are full of bugs and hackers. There are those games, like Lugaru and Cave Story, and even flash-based games such as Don't Look Back, that are impressive and just beautiful. I dare to say that Independent Developers are making better games compared to companies such as EA and THQ.
I'm mean seriously, Mount and Blade is a flawless diamond compared to Modern Warfare 2.
Posted May 09, 2010
As gaming becomes more and more mainstream it needs to accommodate more and more people, this in turn meaning that the content must be made increasingly accessible to the masses. This is the reason for the "degradation" you notice.
This is nothing new though: it has happened to books, to movies, to music, to every form of creative manifestation human kind has ever made and been part of. And just as in those cases, brilliant works emerge, part because of the need of a counter movement, part because of the increased funding that becomes available as the medium matures and gains traction.
From my perspective it's a win-win: I can now both enjoy a 'pick-up, play for 5 minutes then put it down' game as well as an epic adventure filled with content, story and atmosphere. Both are increasingly easy to appear and cater to different moods and time constraints I might have.
Posted May 09, 2010
Games are not getting better or worse. They become more varied, with lots more difference in philosophy and purpose. I reckon that as a good thing.
Posted May 09, 2010
The problem now is that completing a game is a given, not an achievement. The earliest RPGs were epic quests that took days of playtime to complete, now if a game is challenging and long enough to be able to be considered an achievement the company have somehow "alienated potential customers".
So, I don't really think games are getting "better" or "worse" just shorter, and it most likely isn't due to graphics, it is due to the fact that the games must appeal to a broader audience or the game is a failure.
Recent RPGs are decidedly more linear, fewer paths to victory, fewer ways to get lost, they have set progression based on what you do. Now, lets look at an older RPG like Might and Magic, it starts you off with little to no instruction, you're just a group searching for the "Secret of the Inner Sanctum" and you don't even know what that is. As you explore you unravel clues, you don't know what is and isn't important. You are given a "Map of the Land of Varn" which shows the general layout of the world, and a manual giving some very basic game-play advice, and a clue book, in case you need some hints(which you will, unless you are extremely patient) You can make your characters any alignment you want at creation (good/evil/neutral) and their alignment will shift based on your actions. It takes hundreds of hours to experience fully, but it is very difficult to complete, in fact when it first was out you could mail the score you got at the end of the game to New World Computing and they would mail you back a certificate of completion, however, though this difficulty is what makes the game entertaining for some, others just want to have the story told to them and play though quickly which means these types of games no longer get produced like they once did.
Posted May 09, 2010
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Orryyrro: The problem now is that completing a game is a given, not an achievement. The earliest RPGs were epic quests that took days of playtime to complete, now if a game is challenging and long enough to be able to be considered an achievement the company have somehow "alienated potential customers".
So, I don't really think games are getting "better" or "worse" just shorter, and it most likely isn't due to graphics, it is due to the fact that the games must appeal to a broader audience or the game is a failure.
Recent RPGs are decidedly more linear, fewer paths to victory, fewer ways to get lost, they have set progression based on what you do. Now, lets look at an older RPG like Might and Magic, it starts you off with little to no instruction, you're just a group searching for the "Secret of the Inner Sanctum" and you don't even know what that is. As you explore you unravel clues, you don't know what is and isn't important. You are given a "Map of the Land of Varn" which shows the general layout of the world, and a manual giving some very basic game-play advice, and a clue book, in case you need some hints(which you will, unless you are extremely patient) You can make your characters any alignment you want at creation (good/evil/neutral) and their alignment will shift based on your actions. It takes hundreds of hours to experience fully, but it is very difficult to complete, in fact when it first was out you could mail the score you got at the end of the game to New World Computing and they would mail you back a certificate of completion, however, though this difficulty is what makes the game entertaining for some, others just want to have the story told to them and play though quickly which means these types of games no longer get produced like they once did.

would you rather buy a 60$ game with 2 hours of gameplay.... or 200?
Posted May 09, 2010
"Blockbuster" games have been around for a long time, of course - just like with movies, music and anything else, there's always going to be a segment that's calculated solely to provide a return on somebody's investment - but gaming as a business is bigger now than it's ever been, and so that "blockbuster" segment has become more visible and more important in recent years. It can sometimes be hard to see past the glare, whether it's to pick out the quality blockbusters from the lousy ones, or just to get a handle on the quieter releases.
At the same time this is going on, though, we're also seeing a resurgence of small and independant PC development houses, aided by the rise of digital distribution. The PC's status as an open platform also means that it hosts a broad range of experiences - some of the cleverest, most affecting games I've played were freeware games that took a few minutes to an hour to finish.
Obviously, not everything that comes out of the underground is quality stuff, just like not everything expensive is a travesty, but keep an eye on what goes on behind all the industry noise; it's worth watching.
Posted May 09, 2010
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Orryyrro: The problem now is that completing a game is a given, not an achievement. The earliest RPGs were epic quests that took days of playtime to complete, now if a game is challenging and long enough to be able to be considered an achievement the company have somehow "alienated potential customers".
So, I don't really think games are getting "better" or "worse" just shorter, and it most likely isn't due to graphics, it is due to the fact that the games must appeal to a broader audience or the game is a failure.
Recent RPGs are decidedly more linear, fewer paths to victory, fewer ways to get lost, they have set progression based on what you do. Now, lets look at an older RPG like Might and Magic, it starts you off with little to no instruction, you're just a group searching for the "Secret of the Inner Sanctum" and you don't even know what that is. As you explore you unravel clues, you don't know what is and isn't important. You are given a "Map of the Land of Varn" which shows the general layout of the world, and a manual giving some very basic game-play advice, and a clue book, in case you need some hints(which you will, unless you are extremely patient) You can make your characters any alignment you want at creation (good/evil/neutral) and their alignment will shift based on your actions. It takes hundreds of hours to experience fully, but it is very difficult to complete, in fact when it first was out you could mail the score you got at the end of the game to New World Computing and they would mail you back a certificate of completion, however, though this difficulty is what makes the game entertaining for some, others just want to have the story told to them and play though quickly which means these types of games no longer get produced like they once did.
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Gam0rdude: would you rather buy a 60$ game with 2 hours of gameplay.... or 200?

It's not a question of what I would rather do, but of what the crowd getting into gaming recently wants. People want to win at the games they play, they don't want to spend all their time doing it. The new games show you a story, the old games you're in the story. I would rather companies decided to make games that catered to both groups, but really the only games that have a significant amount of play-time in them are MMOs nowadays, and that is largely due to the social interaction.
I would love if Ubisoft decided to make a Might and Magic X, as opposed to just spin-off titles like Dark Messiah and Clash of Heroes, or better yet make Might and Magic IX as it should have been made, as opposed to what it was 3DO gave us, a "pre-alpha at best" title. If they don't put any really dumb DRM on it I'm sure a lot of people would buy it.
Also I would pay companies to remake old games with better graphics and improved game play.
Oh, and if you can't tell I like Might and Magic(and am playing it a lot currently from the gog release) my avatar is Lord Xeen from the 4th game.
Posted May 09, 2010
Games have become profitable. Just like movies and comic books, they're no longer the work of some passionate people who got together to do this thing because they loved it and made a few bucks on the way. They're all about the money nowadays and things like deadlines, marketing and the whole business side of it are meddling with the creative decisions.
Games are rarely original nowadays because publishers are afraid of trying out new ideas instead of formulas and having the new idea blowing up in their faces or alienating customers who're used to playing their games in a specific way or genre.
Games getting better or worse is subjective. Old people will tell you they're getting worse, while young people will tell you they're getting better, with some exceptions on both sides.
There are games that, while not original in cpncept, happen to be so well polished that they're very fun and worthwhile, but when you compare the list of said games with the list of crappy games that come out to make a quick buck (movie based games anyone?) the difference is rather obvious.
Posted May 09, 2010
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Gam0rdude: would you rather buy a 60$ game with 2 hours of gameplay.... or 200?
2 hours of gameplay is far too little. 200 hours of gameplay is more than I have patience for (NOTHING has ever held my attention for that long. Not even TVTropes.com). I think a good criteria should be that every dollar you spend earns you 0.5-1 hours, such that a $60 dollar game has 30-60 hours of play in it. Fortunately, that's right about where most modern RPGs are falling these days.
Anyway, I'm casting my vote with the posters above who say that the game industry is just broadening its horizons. Games in the old "style" are still being produced, if you know where you look, and such things have some appeal among certain gaming demographics. At the same time, games made to appeal to wider audiences are also being produced in large numbers, and as the industry grows in strength I think that games as a medium are also growing in width and depth.
Posted May 09, 2010
I think games are just as shitty as they were in the days of the atari 2600 & c64, its just that they're all more high profile and advertised nowdays. In the 'golden era', only the best and the very worst got any real attention from magazines, the rest had to rely on word of mouth.
These days anyone with a bit of webspace and accounts on facebook & twitter can make almost as much noise as EA so once more we begin to drown in shit. Its 1983 all over again...
Posted May 10, 2010
Crap filters out with time.
It's just like how music and films were better in the past. Our views are tainted by nostalgia and everyone forgets about the bad stuff and remembers the old.
Posted May 10, 2010
I honestly don't know where I stand on this anymore.There is an argument for quality vs. quantity. Is it better to play a 30+hour game, where, no matter how inventive or original or great the game is, it does become a slog to get it finished (DA:O, M&M Series, most JRPG's etc), or is it better for a tighter, more streamlined experience? To use the OP's example, having never played Redguard myself, is it better for being such a large game? For me, it can work both ways: quantity is not inherantly better than quality, but nor is it inherently worse. Nor are they nesesserily mutualy exclusive.
Another reason that games are, on the whole, shorter, smaller, is simply to do with development cycles and art assets. Mainstream games almost always have strict deadlines, and a large amount of development time is eaten up creating the in game graphics, made all the harder and longer a process by the progress of tech. So if you want to create a nice looking game, the less time you have to work on the other aspects of the game. Also, if you don't want people to think the game looks repetitive, you either need to make it shorter, or spend more time working on different graphics.
As for the whole mainstream vs. indie thing, I enjoy both aspects, both have something to contribute to modern gaming. What turns me off indie games are not the games themselves, but some of those who advocate them: those who believe indie games are inherently better than mainstream games because they are out there, different, genre-breaking etc. Primary offender for this in my eyes is that pillock on Destructoid (just the one?).
Posted May 10, 2010
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PoSSeSSeDCoW: Crap filters out with time.
It's just like how music and films were better in the past. Our views are tainted by nostalgia and everyone forgets about the bad stuff and remembers the old.

Doesn't always work though, people remember Citizen Kane which was rather dull but have forgotten the marvel that is Plan 9 From Outer Space!
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Al1: As for the whole mainstream vs. indie thing, I enjoy both aspects, both have something to contribute to modern gaming. What turns me off indie games are not the games themselves, but some of those who advocate them: those who believe indie games are inherently better than mainstream games because they are out there, different, genre-breaking etc.

Same thing happens with music, bands are good as long as they're obscure and make you feel special for knowing about them but the minute other people begin to like them, they become sellouts
Post edited May 10, 2010 by Aliasalpha
Posted May 10, 2010
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Rohan15: I think most games are going downhill. I haven't played a console game I've really enjoyed in years, and most PC games that I've played multi-player on are full of bugs and hackers. There are those games, like Lugaru and Cave Story, and even flash-based games such as Don't Look Back, that are impressive and just beautiful. I dare to say that Independent Developers are making better games compared to companies such as EA and THQ.
I'm mean seriously, Mount and Blade is a flawless diamond compared to Modern Warfare 2.

OK seriously I just can't grasp how Don't Look Back is worthy of being mentioned as being a beautiful game, but some of the big publisher games aren;t.. Is there a polite way to say that I think you're completely crazy? Because that's what I want to say
Edit- eh screw the polite way. I just wanna say shut the fuck up, you're talking out your ass and frankly you make me sick to my diseased liver
edit 2- I am drunk and belliegerent due to being an alcoholic. . You can't give me hard time for being rude I HAVE A DISEASE.
Post edited May 10, 2010 by CaptainGyro
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)Games Aren't Just Games Anymore...(45 posts)solved(45 posts)solved
(45 posts)solved