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[WealthyRadish]

I agree with most of the thread here, that it's mostly FPS that's seen the listed negative changes. As someone who didn't play any of the old FPS games when they came out, but is rather picking them up now in the last few years, I can say that things have gotten worse without personal risk of nostalgia. Other genres have done well, and definitely improved, but there are so many things I see wrong in modern FPS that's only just now beginning to change back for the better. For instance, I played some Titanfall when they released that marketing demo (not calling it a beta), and hated every bit of it, but was goddamn THRILLED to see a faster movement system with things like double jump in it in what is otherwise a straight CoD clone. It gives me hope.

A huge part of it (again, specific to FPS) I would indeed say can be blamed on the dominance of consoles. The horrid accuracy of a controller compared to mouse/keyboard, restricted FOV (lucky to get 90, I always check for hacky ways to get up to 120), painfully slow movement, the existence of aim-down-sights, compromises to level design to squeeze 'good' graphics out of outdated hardware, and an all around casual audience has really worked over the genre, even if you don't blame it all on CoD4's success. But, as has already been mentioned, the prevalence of MMS is a fad, and hopefully we're near the end of it.

Also, to touch on indie games... the large number of platformers is largely due to how much easier it is for a small team (or one person) to make a platformer using the many existing engines than making a 3D or more complex game. The simple graphic styles are also typically a product of necessity, though many do like the pixel art style. I'd also say that's it's very possible for a game to be graphically unimpressive but still have a good aesthetic, and that games that try to look realistic typically appear dated in a few years (even as graphics advancement does slow down).

Good god, welcome to wall of textville, population every video game nerd ever. I think I managed to write 3 paragraphs without saying anything.

[Neonivek]

I remember playing Game developer or whatever it was. (you run a game development company)

And you could mix and match themes and genres... and some mixed badly...

But honestly? I ended up kind of wanting them.

Who here wouldn't want to play a UFO Business Tycoon game?

I honestly think the videogame industry is FAR from drying up the well of good ideas... but stepping into odd games is risky.

[Mech#4]

"Our Cow abduction quota hasn't been met this fiscal year. Step up your game or our shareholders will have YOU on the dissection table!"

[Darvi]

I remember playing Game developer or whatever it was. (you run a game development company).

Game Dev Tycoon iirc.

[The13thRonin]

For the people saying only FPS have gotten worse:

- Diablo 3 (RPG) Metacritics user score: 3.9
- Simcity 2013 (Simulator) Metacritics user score 2.1
- Rome Total War 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score 4.0
- Day One: Garry's Incident (Indie/RPG) Metacritics user score: 0.5
- Company of Heroes 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.9
- Legends of Pegasus (Indie/Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.6
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 2.1
- Star Trek The Video Game (Action) Metacritics user score: 2.2
- Jagged Alliance: Crossfire (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.7
- Postal 3 (3rd Person Shooter) Metacritics user score: 3.1
- Stronghold 3 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.0
- Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic (Simulator) Metacritics user score: 2.8
- FIFA Manager 13 (Sports) Metacritics user score: 4.3
- Dungeons (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 4.5

Keep in mind that I plucked these off Metacritic in five minutes. Give me an hour and I could have ten times this list. All the games on this list were released within the last 5 years and are not obscure or niche games... Most gamers should have heard of at least 90% of these. None of them are FPS games.

[Tally]

Perhaps I'll chip in with one thing and say that of recent years games have seen phenomenal improvements in other scales we haven't touched on. One of the greatest advancements is that the internet has allowed user feedback to actively change a game in the areas of game balance and bug fixes.

For that note, patching is possible now (yes I will acknowledge there has been a lot of abuse for developer shortcuts with this). In the days of yore, you couldn't simply patch a game to fix bugs. You could release a newer version of the game, of course, but you'd have to get stores to stock it for you, and anyone who already has the game likely wouldn't buy it again for bugfixes. This was especially true for consoles. Any game of olden days could be counted on to have more bugs than you could count.

To prove that point, a very popular game: Final Fantasy 1. Fantastic game that left an incredible legacy, but also fantastically buggy in subtle ways.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Roughly a third of the spells and class abilities didn't actually work as intended, if they even work. Ex. After a certain early level, thieves don't gain their intended bonus success rate for escaping battle. Intelligence doesn't actually work. TMPR (Temper) and SABR (Saber) don't work at all. There is a huge list of these things.

To say that the majority of games on the market in present day are awful is... correct. But it was also correct of the 'golden age' as well. And this will always be true. There were some great games, but it doesn't allow you to overlook the terrible ones. There will always be terrible fads that flood the market with awful crap too. Just look at FMV games (the genre). It is a hallmark of shame from an otherwise monumental achievement in video game technology.




The point of the post is that wearing nostalgia glasses can damage your hindsight as much as your foresight if you aren't mindful of them. There is, however, a visible difference between then and now; The internet has allowed bad games, abusive marketing strategies, etc. to be more visible, so you do see more bad going on, but that doesn't mean there's more bad things happening now than before.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is comparable to another effect of higher visibility: People believing the world to be more violent than it is because of violence given more attention in the news than other issues.

[werty892]

For the people saying only FPS have gotten worse:

- Diablo 3 (RPG) Metacritics user score: 3.9
- Simcity 2013 (Simulator) Metacritics user score 2.1
- Rome Total War 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score 4.0
- Day One: Garry's Incident (Indie/RPG) Metacritics user score: 0.5
- Company of Heroes 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.9
- Legends of Pegasus (Indie/Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.6
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 2.1
- Star Trek The Video Game (Action) Metacritics user score: 2.2
- Jagged Alliance: Crossfire (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.7
- Postal 3 (3rd Person Shooter) Metacritics user score: 3.1
- Stronghold 3 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.0
- Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic (Simulator) Metacritics user score: 2.8
- FIFA Manager 13 (Sports) Metacritics user score: 4.3
- Dungeons (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 4.5

Keep in mind that I plucked these off Metacritic in five minutes. Give me an hour and I could have ten times this list. All the games on this list were released within the last 5 years and are not obscure or niche games... Most gamers should have heard of at least 90% of these. None of them are FPS games.

I don't see how this proves anything. All I see is a list of shit games that you plucked off metacritic, and everyone knows these are shit.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I like the effort put into nonsensical lists.

[miauw62]

For the people saying only FPS have gotten worse:

- Diablo 3 (RPG) Metacritics user score: 3.9
- Simcity 2013 (Simulator) Metacritics user score 2.1
- Rome Total War 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score 4.0
- Day One: Garry's Incident (Indie/RPG) Metacritics user score: 0.5
- Company of Heroes 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.9
- Legends of Pegasus (Indie/Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.6
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 2.1
- Star Trek The Video Game (Action) Metacritics user score: 2.2
- Jagged Alliance: Crossfire (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.7
- Postal 3 (3rd Person Shooter) Metacritics user score: 3.1
- Stronghold 3 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.0
- Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic (Simulator) Metacritics user score: 2.8
- FIFA Manager 13 (Sports) Metacritics user score: 4.3
- Dungeons (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 4.5

Keep in mind that I plucked these off Metacritic in five minutes. Give me an hour and I could have ten times this list. All the games on this list were released within the last 5 years and are not obscure or niche games... Most gamers should have heard of at least 90% of these. None of them are FPS games.

Sturgeon's law. I bet you could find a fuckton of shitty games from the 80's. Bad games are released in every genre. Also, I'm fairly sure that Day One: Garry's Incident is an FPS. "indie" isn't a genre. Also note that most of these are AAA sequels, and at least three of them by EA.

[alexandertnt]

I can make a whole long list of garbage games from the 90's. A very long list. A very, very long list (oh dear god some of the crap that was shoveled out back then). And I can make a long list of great, well recieved games from this era. I dont exactly know what that proves. Plus metacritic user scores are a terrable way to try to prove your point.

I feel like copying and pasting "Sturgeon's law" over and over again, because it's something that people just seem to forget about.

[Sonlirain]

Back in the day people could make a game and shovel it yto stores hoping for a quick buck because there were barely any reviewers and people would never know if "insert a game from AVGN" was good or trash. Nowdays with the internet it's far harder to sell a shiny box full of manute to people because i can just google "Legend of Pegasus" and i instantly know what;s wrong with it.

However look at that list again and note that most of those games are sequels of well known series.
Diablo 3 - A sequel of one of hte best hack and slashers out there... dumbed down and armed with one of them ost annoying DRMs ever devised by mankind.
SimCity - Same as above.
Rome Total War 2 - A GLITCH FEST full of stupid mechanics and bugs while being the nevews instalment of a WELL KNOWN and LIKED series.

What we see here is murdering of franchises.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Back in the day people could make a game and shovel it yto stores hoping for a quick buck because there were barely any reviewers and people would never know if "insert a game from AVGN" was good or trash. Nowdays with the internet it's far harder to sell a shiny box full of manute to people because i can just google "Legend of Pegasus" and i instantly know what;s wrong with it.

However look at that list again and note that most of those games are sequels of well known series.
Diablo 3 - A sequel of one of hte best hack and slashers out there... dumbed down and armed with one of them ost annoying DRMs ever devised by mankind.
SimCity - Same as above.
Rome Total War 2 - A GLITCH FEST full of stupid mechanics and bugs while being the nevews instalment of a WELL KNOWN and LIKED series.

What we see here is murdering of franchises.

I'll chime in and say, that's true! Shitty games don't just appear out of thin air, they either come in the form of sequels (Which most AAA companies have trouble producing at quality) or as games intended just to make a few quick bucks. Indeed, most of the hate originates from shitty sequels, there are plenty of great games out there.

[Glloyd]

For the people saying only FPS have gotten worse:

- Diablo 3 (RPG) Metacritics user score: 3.9
- Simcity 2013 (Simulator) Metacritics user score 2.1
- Rome Total War 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score 4.0
- Day One: Garry's Incident (Indie/RPG) Metacritics user score: 0.5
- Company of Heroes 2 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.9
- Legends of Pegasus (Indie/Strategy) Metacritics user score: 1.6
- Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 2.1
- Star Trek The Video Game (Action) Metacritics user score: 2.2
- Jagged Alliance: Crossfire (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.7
- Postal 3 (3rd Person Shooter) Metacritics user score: 3.1
- Stronghold 3 (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 3.0
- Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic (Simulator) Metacritics user score: 2.8
- FIFA Manager 13 (Sports) Metacritics user score: 4.3
- Dungeons (Strategy) Metacritics user score: 4.5

Keep in mind that I plucked these off Metacritic in five minutes. Give me an hour and I could have ten times this list. All the games on this list were released within the last 5 years and are not obscure or niche games... Most gamers should have heard of at least 90% of these. None of them are FPS games.

This is a logical fallacy. I just found a list of 257 reviews from the 90's for NES games. More than half were under C+, and many of the games under C+ I had heard of, or even played.

I could probably do the same for any console through history, and I know I could do the same for PC in the 2000's and 1990's. It's hard to find review data from the 80's, but trust me, there were still shitty games that came out then.

[GlyphGryph]

So this thread seems, to be, an equal mix between

Nostalgia Goggles: "Everything was better back in the day, because I've forgotten everything that sucks!"
Entitlement: "I don't understand why every game being made doesn't appeal to me, anymore! Damn these... these OTHER people getting games made for them!"
Blinders: "All the games today suck! What? Counter-examples? I've never played any of those, they don't count!"
Experience: "I've already *seen* this. I've already *done* this. Why isn't everything new and exciting any more?"
Changing Tastes: "I used to like this stuff - the fact that I don't any more clearly indicates something has changed about the games, not me! And no, I don't want to go back and play more of the retro stuff, I don't enjoy that anymore either, why does that matter?"

In my opinion, while there were some rough spots in the aughts, we're currently in a second golden age of gaming - I haven't seen this many awesome games coming out this quickly since the 90s. For all of the problems the game "industry" might be experiencing, there's a lot of good stuff coming out of it for anyone who cares to look, and doesn't approach things with the assumption they are going to be terrible.

[nenjin]

I will say this:

2d platformer puzzlers are getting beaten to death. Every single indie dev of note is making one, or has made one. I swear Incredipede has like 12 clones. When I see that as a game pitch, I am immediately turned off. Short of a theme I absolutely adore, there's very little that will get me to try them. If you don't believe what I'm saying, just go read the last 2 months of RPS articles and see how many 2d puzzle platformers you spot.

It's ironic that prior to the big indie rebirth, all we did was complain that games were a lot of visuals tied together with weak gameplay.

Now look at the indie scene. What do you see? A lot of "visually atmospheric/touchy-feely/emotional" games. Underpinned by........weak gameplay ideas. "Oh look, another 2d game about jumping and an ambiguous storyline. What sets it apart? Why, you can walk on the ceiling!!!11111" Developers that say violence and conflict are bad m'kay try to convince me that watching a girl use a mechanic (gravity, state switches) to get across a 2d level with accompanying sad violin music is supposedly better.

I really feel like we've come full circle on this, only now it's ok because instead of big evil corps making them, they're individuals with artistic license. So suddenly what was a cheap attempt at our money is now some spiritual experience because it's a guy making it and not a studio. Nevermind you're paying about $10 for a 2 hour experience at best. Most of your time will probably be spent trying to convince your friends this is an experience they should have rather than actually playing the game.