In the 30s there was a guy named Theodore Sturgeon, who once said when criticized against that 90% of science fiction at the time was crap, replied with 90% of everything is crap.

This is true of games, and always has been. What you think you're seeing now as a prejudice against new names is merely survival bias against the good old games versus the terrible old games that haven't survived.

Way back in the day when games were first getting off the ground, there were good games and crappy games. We still have the good games around, like Tetris, Pong, Asteroids, Missile Defense, Mario World, and so on and so forth until we get to the games on this site. However, lost among the ranks are thousands of crappy or outright terrible games that no one here would say they loved simply because they were old. The legendary failure of E.T. comes to mind, and The Angry Video Game Nerd has made a career out of showcasing such games on the NES. The Spoony One has done something similar with Full Motion Video PC games that were around for a while.

But who here is going to turn their nose against the great games of today? Portal, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, etc.

Great games are great games, no matter what year they're released.

I like games. Period.

The problem with the industry is that it grew to a massive size, so naturally, AAA games become more streamlined than ever, because they have this enormous development cost and have to achieve an equally enormous success.

This is not necessarily bad, some nice fun games come of this, but much of the experimentation of the industry simply vanished or became subject to small indie games.

Also, many of the concepts and ideas we loved in certain genres, simply died away... and there's no one to bring them back in new games.

i can understand that, i mean, when i actually have to look on the back of a games box to decide if my computer will work with the drm it uses, somethings gone wrong.

There are still amazing games out there, it's just that the ratio isn't any better than it used to be. People tend to forget about all the borderline games that used to be released.

Fallout: New Vegas was a pretty amazing game in most respects, and definitely worth the money. Borderlands was great once they fixed the pressing bugs. I'm looking forward to Duke Nukem Ifever, just because I haven't been trolled quite enough over that one yet.

Prototype, great game, excellent pace and actually drew me in long enough to more or less complete it. Would've too had it not been a rental.

Assassin's Creed 2, same thing, great plot and story interesting concept.

But, the big problem for newer games is that they're expensive, complicated and aren't really very well suited to those that don't have a huge amount of time to play. Even if you haven't hours to play, you can still complete Commander Keen, or Quake without having to invest a ridiculous amount of time doing so.

I'm just playing Witcher and LOVING it, and I'm really, really looking forward to Witcher 2. I have also enjoyed Portal 2 immensely. I was also playing Original War recently, not to mention Planescape: Torment. I just like good games really, as most people here said

I don't hate new games. I just like to enjoy a fun game. Doesn't matter to me if it's new or old.

I've seen a number of complaints about games showing up on GOG because they aren't 'old' enough, which I find bizarre. I frankly don't understand the attitude that games must be older than a particular age in order to be offered here on GOG. I say if they get it here and it's DRM free, who cares how old it is?

Anyway, yeah, as far as new games go, I just watch for new games that look interesting to me and I'll buy the ones that are looking like they'll be fun - unless they're saddled with piss-poor DRM.

This summed it up perfectly for me. I don't hate new games, in fact I love it when a good new game is released. If they can avoid the issues listed above then I'll gladly throw down $50-$60 for the game, even more if they offer a Collectors Edition with things like an Art Book or little statue.

The problem is most new games aren't worth the asking price. They aren't bad games per say, but they aren't worth full launch price. Now really impress us by telling us what game the first map was from. ;)

I don't hate new games, I hate DRM and I hate stripping out and charging for features that used to be considered standard/good customer service. Unfortunately that means a lot of new games don't make the cut for me. When they do, however, I'm just as happy to play them, time allowing.

You ever hear your grandparents talk about how much better things were way back when? Your parents? You'll do it, too. At fifteen you're probably not old enough to really have any nostalgia, but give it a decade or two.

Also, there's an evident change in video games: game play has changed, and the graphical requirements have steeply increased. With games becoming a big and costly venture, the decisions are now made by boards of directors. That means games aren't really made by gamers anymore - at least not the big titles. There's a joyous sort of silliness, or an entertaining kind of evilness, about a game made by gamers for gamers, and you don't get a lot of that with the recent titles. So what you're hearing is a little bit of "modern games suck", but also a little bit of "I'm used to a style of game that isn't much made anymore." Nostalgia. You'll get it when you're older ^_^

edit: Oh, and DRM. Screw DRM. Nobody likes that guy.

You forgot this....

I don't hate new games as much as I hate "modernisation" of old genres. In the good old days, an RPG meant micromanaging and dying a lot, and as a result feeling a sense of achievement whenever you actually managed to make progress after a challenging dungeon for example. Dragon Age 1 was great, gameplay elements and story and voice acting were all top notch. Graphics were intentionally left a bit behind the times so they could concentrate on what's important. Then came Dragon Age 2, and here we see the results of "modernisation" (I know its not a word). Dumbed down party-equipment mechanics, button-mashing combat for current ADHD generation and a character with big boobies and meager skill trees. What I don't understand is they market these games for people over 18 years of age, but treat us like we don't know our way around an inventory screen anymore :S

Sorry about the rant. Seriously though, many games are heading towards these trends, especially the "graphics over gameplay" approach mentioned earlier.

Actually i'd say that its quite the opposite, especially for genres like RPGs or Action/adventures.

Yeah, i played the dragon age 2 demo, and while it was fun, i didnt like the rpg aspect at all.

The demo for DA2 is absolute crap. I can't believe they managed to put that out. My friend put it best after playing the demo:
"what just happened? Who were those people? I don't get it".

But the full game itself is good, though maybe a bit "repetitive" :)

I guess it really depends on the game. I've found a lot of games have ridiculous learning curves and get hard slowly, until they all of a sudden make it nearly impossible to continue. And that's not really very fun, the thing about the other games I mentioned in the post, is that they're pretty reasonable in that respect.