Modern gaming, what happened?

[Snakenator1]

So I would like to start a discussion where I can share my opinion with others and here yours as well without a discussion war about a very serious topic. That being what has happened to video games?

I've noticed every year now that the trend of bad/disappointing video games is constantly increasing and shows no sign of stopping, games like Star wars battlefront and Destiny are just IMO the biggest let downs I have ever seen. When did the quality of video games become so abysmal lately and the copious amount of DLC scams suddenly become common place such as locked away content on the game disc itself. When did developers suddenly think micro-transactions become a good idea to put in AAA titles? When did day 1 patches that are absolutely huge in size (I've seen some at 10GB!!) become okay to do? When did QC and bug testing go down the drain? I think you all get my point :P

But this is what really gets me, what happened to the universal gaming community?

Console wars, brand/game wars, swatting, abusive language, discrimination, threats, bullying. What the hell happened? when did this become okay.
Now granted I understand things like the console war has been around forever, I mean I remember the Nintendo vs SEGA war but it never stopped anyone in the gaming community getting along. SEGA and Nintendo fans still coexisted with one another without getting abusive all the time. But these days if I say "Oh I love Nintendo games" I am now suddenly a "loser who is not a true gamer and should stick to playing baby games". That was an actual comment I got a while ago from an anonymous user on my now defunct tumblr.

Perhaps I'm wanting to live in the past but I yearn for the days where everyone in gaming were friends, when games were of higher quality than they're today and I could enjoy games with everyone regardless of personal choice. I'm gonna be honest but once StarFox Zero is released (because childhood franchise) I will not be buying video games anymore without good reason. The notion of being " a gamer" is now one that is toxic.

Wipeout Zone is now what I regard as "one of the last safe havens of a real gaming community", where mostly everyone is friends, we can share our ideas and thoughts without being bullied for it, where we all share our love for a great franchise and respect each other. I hope it remains that way for the foreseeable future :)

Perhaps I am old fashioned because I still love retro games more than modern games (SNES FTW) or maybe I'm taking this whole thing to heart too much but to be honest, modern gaming sucks.
I want to hear everyone else's opinion, do you agree or disagree with me? What do you think?

[AGgamer]

I think you may be looking in the wrong places.

I used to be a purely Playstation guy, but now Nintendo seems to be winning me over. Don't listen to people who say "Nintendo is for losers" or that Nintendo is not "real gaming." In the last couple of years, Nintendo has released some of their best games ever on the Wii U and 3DS, and they have even more planned for this year. I seriously recommend giving Nintendo a chance.

If you watch some certain gamers on youtube, you will pick up the notion of "graphics over gameplay is an illusion." Undertale and Splatoon are good examples of games that can hardly be considered AAA games. Their graphics are poor, very cartoon-y, and not realistic in the slightest. Yet it is Undertale that reigns supreme with 10/10 across the internet, and Splatoon that captures my love. You mentioned SW battlefront, a AAA game with next-gen graphics. It's expensive, has piss poor content, super simple and unbalanced gameplay, and the DLC costs as much as the game itself. Splatoon is cheap, has FREE DLC that actually triples the game's size, complex, innovative and competitive shooter gameplay. What is the difference? Splatoon is putting gameplay and customer satisfaction first, SW battlefront puts graphics and money money money first. Why can EA do this and get away with it? Because they know people will buy it, even if the people know it will suck... but hey, the graphics are nice! That alone is enough to encourage people to buy it. Undertale is an even greater example. To quote it's creator, Undertale has "dorky music and MS paint graphics" ... aaaaand what game is the internet obsessed over? Is it Battlefront? Or Undertale?

My point is, AAA means nothing at all. And AAA games are not representative of the quality of games in modern times. All AAA means is that a lot of money went into making the game, so the developers expect a lot of money to come out of it. So they put all the money into graphics and pump up the price of DLC so they can get their money's worth. If you want good games, avoid AAA games. You said it yourself, SNES was an excellent console, and it is still boatloads of fun to play with. HOW CAN THIS BE WITH SUCH OLD CRAP GRAPHICS?? Because graphics don't make a game good.

Console wars are happening because nobody wants to take any risks. Playstation and Xbox are both very similar consoles, with very similar games, with very similar demographics. Because they are so similar, it is confusing as to which is better, so people have to fight over it. They don't want to think that they bought the inferior $400 console. Meanwhile, Nintendo sits off to the side, continuing to make great stuff, and nobody takes them seriously because their games don't have brown, muscles, or fine hairs on their characters graphics. Competition will always push people to do these sorts of things.

From what I can tell, your definition of "Modern gaming" only includes high budget, high graphics, shooter games. Wrong.

Quality is out there, but you won't find it in graphics. Take a chance and try a low budget, non AAA game for once.

[AdHoc]

The Internet happened is what happened.

Also, there was a time when there were no big developers. When the video game industry wasn't yet what it is now.
"Indie developers" today are more or less what those big developers used to be. And they should be the norm if you're looking for quality titles.

Basically what AGamer just said ;)

[Light Buster]

I feel you man. I've got the same feeling. A lot of people expected SFV to be a great hit, but not so much when it released. A lot of people expect too much out of game these days and it can be really annoying.

[ThoughtfulSystem_95]

I think it's because of the "Good Graphics = Good Game" mind set.

Like Undertale, Shovel Knight had, compared to modern games, not-so-good graphics. But, people considered that one of the best games they ever played. And personally, I really like Nintendo and wished I had a Wii U. They have always preferred fun over profit, in my opinion.

But, there are some games that have good graphics and fun gameplay. WipEout is one of those examples, of course. Personally, I haven't played any modern games that much anymore. I kinda stopped at Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. So, I can't rant about it too much.

Also, AGgamer the words right out of my mouth. :clap

[Xpand]

The console wars always existed and they were always pretty violent. Especially Nintendo vs Sega. Sony vs MS is like kids throwing sand at each other, Nintendo vs Sega could almost be called a full on corporate war when you consider how direct and edgy the commercials were. I don't know where you got the idea that gamers got along with each other in the 90's, there was actually a distinct rift between Sega players and Nintendo players, whereas today you find many many people owning both an Xbox and Playstation, and even a Nintendo console.

[Snakenator1]

I think you may be looking in the wrong places.

I think you misunderstood my point but then again I also did not clarify, AAA titles are not my choice of video game. I'm using AAA titles as an example of the poor industry standard we're seeing these days from lazy-ass developers now. In reality I've been a retro gamer since I was 12 years old. What I am trying to get at is where did this attitude come from that just because they have a huge budget, when does this mean they can screw gamers over? *cough* EA* cough*

Quality over quantity has always been my view of gaming (and life overall), so developers such as Naughty dog, Shin'en, Nintendo to name a few are the rare cases where this is still practised.

But thank you AG for a big contribution to this discussion with your thoughts, I'm glad you shared it with everyone as it is literally what I think but put in a way better than I could say :)

@Light Buster - Another fine point, basically over-hype is a big problem these days and it is the fault of the fans in some regards. But again it draws back to my point of the Developers being at fault to, why promise so much if you can't deliver, that is a big problem to.

@Ad-hoc yes Indie developers rock when they produce quality titles, and you raise a good point about them being in essence the modern day incarnation of gamings adolescence.

If we had more developers with the right attitude of quality over quantity, then this problem wouldn't be as bad as it is. But then we have the problem of the community still being in most regards a shithole these days.
Like I said am I the only one who yearns for gaming to go back to the way it was in it's early days? When the SNES, Megadrive, N64, PS1 etc were the best things ever and games on them rocked?

-EDIT-
@Xpand Really? I must of been lucky then as everyone I knew were decent people regardless if they were Nintendo or SEGA. I do remember all the adverts of the wars but being my young self I thought it was just like any other advert, perhaps that is because everyone I knew got along. I must've been lucky then :P
Tbh though I find the modern day console wars spiralling out of control, not necessarily on the corporate side but between everyone. I mean seriously the idea of a master race is absurd (looking at you pc gamers who take this idea to the extreme) and the abuse you can find is just showing my point in action.

I'm not denying the idea that another crash could happen, but I do think that is not likely to happen either.

[Xpand]

Yeah but the PC is the master race... objectively speaking...
<.<
>.>

[Meg.A.Byte]

Shots fired, hehe.
Well, my small contribution is that I think the really good games are a very small proportion of whole gaming industry. You have these big studios like EA, Ubisoft etc. and you have a buttload of small developers, tiny little studios or even individuals (wink wink bigsnake) who produce enormous amount of games. From this you have extremely expensive games (in terms of funding) - the AAA games and you have a also ton of games you've never heard of and great majority of people who never will - from these small developers. My point of all of this is the best games are often somewhere in the middle. Again I said often. Yes, really good games can be found from individual developers (wink wink again bigsnake) and also at the side of big AAA developers. The thing is that you need a really good mixture of this fun-to-play-good-lookin-whatever-you-need game cocktail.

And as for the console wars - I don't know much about it. I'm not that old to really judge the situation in the good ol' days. I'm 21 and even if I've played games for majority of my life, I've never felt an urge to rate types of gaming or I don't know. Some like consoles, some like PC and some like sitting in pub drinking and yelling at the screen. Everything has it's own advantages. What I don't understand much is console wars like PS vs Xbox. They're both consoles, so what are they arguing about?
Some may see me as a PC master race gamer... yes, but I also get why the consoles are so popular, even when I think it's better to play on PC. If someone wants to know, just post a comment, I'll try to answer it. But beware, I'm allergic to blind console worshipers who don't accept the opinions of others.

[mdhay]

Money talks, Snake.


When did developers suddenly think micro-transactions become a good idea to put in AAA titles? When did day 1 patches that are absolutely huge in size (I've seen some at 10GB!!) become okay to do? When did QC and bug testing go down the drain? I think you all get my point

Several things on this;


Developers do not have control over how a game is marketed before and after launch, this is the publisher. The smaller publishers in the 1980s like Acornsoft and Firebird were less malicious out of necessity- a smaller market is harder to exploit, as Atari found to their cost. David Braben had to crowdfund ELITE: Dangerous because aside from those who played the original the market doesn't care for this kind of game - no publisher would finance it despite Braben having a storied reputation. Retailers are also responsible as well - they got greedy and demanded that Deep Silver give them some sort of incentive for pre-ordering Metro Last Light. They didn't want to.

Day one patches happen because there is an assessment process where bugs called Known Shippables are noted and left in to be fixed after a game has been sent to distribution. A game like Destiny will have a lot of them, and the amount of variables and constants at play means that a lot of time is required. Sometimes, developers don't have enough from the publisher to get them.

Sony and (presumably) microsoft charge developers for patches per region, and it isn't cheap. Developers can only get so many in the limited number of patches publishers are willing to pay for. DLC, season passes and pre-orders, if managed right, help games get more patches.

DLC is so commonplace because games are now a service, and developers need a revenue stream. Artists are given cosmetic DLC to work on so they aren't thrown aside, for example. That's a natural consequence of games becoming popular.



It's important to consider the Video Game Crash of 1983. The industry, fledgling as it was, suffered a massive loss in the American market when Atari created more copies of christmas release games than were in demand. Interests waned due to games like ET, which are the predecessors to modern shovelware. When that is your only choice, you will lose market power, and when you have the monopoly on the platform, you have no market at all.

This did not happen anywhere near as much in Europe and Asia, because of the 8-bit home computer. Models like the BBC Micro Model B, Acorn Archimedes and the MSX in Japan allowed anyone to make any kind of game they could. Asia also had Nintendo and SEGA. The rivalry manufactured by SEGA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nsBoqJ6s8) manifested as good market share for both companies, and allowed them to prosper.

The lesson to take away is that publishers are holding the strings on the most popular platforms, now moreso than ever. Customers don't vote with their wallets because there's little consequence to getting something wrong, and Internet interaction leads to confirmation bias.

If people saw that EA were going to ruin Battlefront and get over franchise loyalty, that game might have come out better.


[...]That was an actual comment I got a while ago from an anonymous user on my now defunct tumblr.

I'm rather famous for my hatred of Tumblr, but there's a reason why I highlight this. Tumblr is a hugbox - a gated community afraid of a larger forum that contains conflicting opinions. Reddit, 4/8chan, SomethingAwful, NeoGAF are exactly the same in this regard. Hideo Kojima warned that this was going to happen in Metal Gear Solid 2, if you listen, but the playerbase obsessed over the protagonist not being Solid Snake. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_W4EV-ikJY)

To close this because it's verbose enough, the current climate in the industry is how it is because enough people wanted it this way. That's what happens.