The state of gaming.

I ll tell you this.Probably what Ryu said but kind of simplified and a bit different.
Many years ago people grew up with technology and comforts that are simply lower than todays standards.But back then we grew to accept them becuase they were the best available.

Videogames didnt need huge labor force,money nor the greatest mind skills.Developers wanted so much to do but they didnt have the technology.WE as gamers were easier to accept what was available to us because that was the best we could get.
2D simplistic gameplay that was fan and the best thing available.
We grew with them.We now miss them.
We are nostalgic.We that have experienced gaming since commodore and atari.Simple, cheap made gaming.

But as time passes technology evolves, tastes evolve, possibilities evolve.These are the changes.Developers need higher labor force, more money and more skills.They have the technology to achieve more but not the time,ease and money to produce them just as they would 20 years ago.
Gamers changed.Old gamers want something different.New gamers also appeared who have grown in a life with better technology available.They demand different experience.These gamers cannot accept the simple, and cheap gaming we have grown with 10 plus more years ago.There are things available that werent for us before
Gaming became expensive made, more complicated.

You belong to the people who miss the good old days but its illogical to expect that to happen now.It can not.What you call better gaming is nostalgy.Old ideas(gameplay of the old years) can not be brought back.They wont work.Proof?Although you miss the good old days, rehashes of old games and sequels dont suit you.They dont offer anything new.They are just old games camouflaged in new form.
If they bring a sequel of an old game with many alterations then you wont be satisfied just like before.They killed the good old gameplay you will say.
Whatever they offer you is not enough unless they bring a time machine and get you back in time
Thats probably the example of FFVI fans Ryu has mentioned.

New gamers are probably enjoying todays gaming just as much as we have enjoyied the simpler games years ago.The difference is that they are enjoying a gaming that is costy and more complicated and its illogical to expect them to accept and love the old gaming we have met

everything has changed
as a society, we\'re lazy
we\'re programmed to pay for and expect less. this cannot be denied

Wrong.  Games are still the same.  We expect MORE for paying LESS now.  Don\'t even try to deny that.  Carts were ALWAYS more expensive on the SNES and Genesis.  I paid 60 bucks for the first Street Figher II on SNES and then 54.99 and tax on top of that for Super Street Fighter II and those are just two games.  Mortal Kombat, the very first one, sure didn\'t brush the 49.99 mark at its release, that\'s for sure.  Were you asleep during those times?  Was someone else buying your games for you?  I don\'t pretend like someone wasn\'t buying my games for me, but I was always conscious of the amount that went into each cart.

Lets look at today.  I bought Gradius V for less then 30, Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for less then 30, Sims 2 for less then 40, Call of Duty United Offensive for less then 20.  Not one of those games broke 50 dollars and those are just purchases in the past month.  I can go further back and find even better deals.  Never did Nintendo or Sega have budget lines like Player\'s Choice or Greatest Hits like companies have today.  That crap NEVER occurred.  Plus, each of those games offers more or the same amount of gameplay as games did of yesteryear.  Since when were RPG\'s given paramount attention to the amount of hours it took to complete them -- that\'s right, this generation and as far back as the PSOne days to be fair as that\'s when it\'s universally accepted that the decline of videogames began.  

For example, you yourself consider it a drawback that Fable can be played out in ten hours, but how many games broke the ten hour mark way back when?  Not many.  Hardly any in fact.  Mario Bros can be beaten in 11 minutes by the hardcore and a few hours by someone who\'s a bit more casual.  What about Punch-out?  Sonic?  These are beloved games of my youth and I never remember getting so pithy as to leverage out its hours to the dollar value invested in them.  Only we, the jaded, do that today.  The games never did that.  You rarely, if ever, see game companies marking on the box "Over 90 hours of gameplay!"  We do that in reviews and previews and live by it when we make the purchase.  You think the game company had anything to do with that?  Please.

oh, and princess bride is great everytime i see it.

Of course, but never as good as the first time.  You know this.  The secrets, what happens next, the unfolding of a tale -- that feeling is forever lost.  The first time you played Mario, the first time you controlled Sonic, the first time you beat someone in a Street Fighter game -- that feeling is remembered, but never relived.  Nothing can ever compare to the vitality I\'m sure you felt the first time.  They can come close, but it\'ll never be as good.

sure they can

1st time i played GTA3 > 1st time i played RE, or mario 64, or [insert previous random console game here for most part]

sometimes, the effect works in reverse, but it\'s getting farther and farther between these episodes

i look at your post uni and this is what i see

Yeah the same things you see in everyone\'s post that is disagreeing with you.

no, just yours (like i said)

oh, and where\'s shenmue 3 btw?

Ok then.You see other things other than what is presented at you

no, i just see



when u try and post constructively, really

Sorry but my English arent my first language.And when I said "You see other things other than what is presented at you" I was refering to what you see in others people\'s posts (excluding me)

sure they can

1st time i played GTA3 > 1st time i played RE, or mario 64, or [insert previous random console game here for most part]

sometimes, the effect works in reverse, but it\'s getting farther and farther between these episodes

It\'s interesting you phrased it that way.  You said gaming is declining but you regarded the most current game in your list as the best of the previous games.  Interesting.  With that being illustrated in your post, then you would agree that gaming isn\'t exactly declining, but instead you yourself are just far more picky when it comes to spending your time playing anything?  Doesn\'t that just mean you\'re jaded and the state of gaming is in fact, as I said, simply something that differs based on each person?

If you disagree and assert that gaming is declining as a point of fact, then why?  Why do you think so?

Gaming hasn\'t declined, but you can\'t recapture the first time you booted up Doom.. or played Pong.. or kicked Bowser\'s ass in Super Mario Bros.

You can come close, maybe even better it.. but the first time is the last time it\'ll be new to you.

Gaming hasn\'t declined, but you can\'t recapture the first time you booted up Doom.. or played Pong.. or kicked Bowser\'s ass in Super Mario Bros.

You can come close, maybe even better it.. but the first time is the last time it\'ll be new to you.

Once again, your brevity speaks volumes.  

[Living-In-Clip]

In my humble opinion, the state of gaming has been in a decline since the 32bit era. When gaming went mainstream, there was something special lost. Yes, there has been some shining stars in all this (CastleVania: SoTn!) but they are few and far in bewteen.

What do I think is wrong with the industry? Where do I start...

(1) Story focused games. It works for RPG\'s, but when cinema\'s became a mainstay in games, you start to see a lot of unnessarcy fluff and that fluff adds to extra development cost and development time. A lot of times it seems like the gameplay came after the story / cinema\'s.

(2) The 3D realm has never been truly mastered. When gaming was done with 2D there was no camera issues. Now\'a\'days in almost every game there is some kind of camera issue that only hinders the gameplay in the long run. Not only that, these 3D enviroments take so long to build that most the time  the developers have to find a way to make the game longer. What do they do? They add pointless things like go fetch a coin. A ten hour game is quickly made into a tedious 30 hour game.

(3) While developers strive for the perfect balance of the gameplay and cinema, quality control seems to be going down. Maybe you can contribute this to the fact machines are more complex and there is so many lines of code in a game now\'a\'days, but no matter what, bugs are being let through that would of never made it back in the day. And I am not talking no-name developers with no-name games, I am talking big name games. One example is Metriod Prime , which has a freezing bug in it.  These bugs have been left on the PC front but now are making their way to the Console market.

(4) Sony and MS both lost focus on what a console should do. It should play games. Instead you see both companies wanting to make hybrid machines that the consumer really does not need. I don\'t need a machine that does everything expect take out the trash. I need a console that plays games and works. Since the launch of both the PS2 and Xbox we have seem tons of people having problems with lasers (PS2) and DVD-drives (Xbox). TYhis is stuff that can be avoided if companies do through testing and show some foresight, but why bother when the company knows it can sell millions upon millions of units?

(5)Unnessarcy complex games. Back in \'the day\', there was two action buttons. Shoot and jump. Guess what? The game often required the player to have skill. In today\'s games you see games with upwards of twenty different actions, most of which are not all that useful. When you add all these functions you will also note that most of today\'s games are nothing more than trial and error. They don\'t challenge the player (once again, most games). Instead, you are playing what some companies like to deem an "interactive experience".

Then again, maybe I am just a bitter person who thinks gaming lost its forbidden spirit when Sony entered the arena. I remember a day when gaming was something of a geek hobby, but now\'a\'days the jocks that made fun of us geeks are playing games. Maybe I resent them for that, for taking my hobby and making it theirs. All I know is gaming for the most part does not appeal to me like it us to, every once in awhile a certain game will come around to spike my interest, but it is very seldom.

Good points, LiC.

I\'d like to add that I also hate it when production values and cinema qualities override gameplay quality. It\'s especially evident in licensed games where they\'ll pull together a movie\'s actors, writers, composers, and stunt coordinators to work on the game. They try to create the feeling of playing the movie, but many times the gameplay is paper-thin or too often interrupted by FMV.

In the case of Rogue Leader on the \'Cube, it was a near-perfect realization of Star Wars\' space battles aesthetically but very uninspiring gameplay-wise IMO..

Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
(1) Story focused games. It works for RPG\'s, but when cinema\'s became a mainstay in games, you start to see a lot of unnessarcy fluff and that fluff adds to extra development cost and development time. A lot of times it seems like the gameplay came after the story / cinema\'s.

Its true that they best fit for RPG.But I dont see it such a huge issue yet.Few games over do it with FMVs.MGS and MGS2 are one of the the few rare occasions that overdid it.They are the games that need them but also the only games that should have them.
Other games just have it where it snecessary.
Few examples
Resident Evil wouldnt have been the same without the few cut scenes.
DMC just have a few here and there.Wether you skip them or not neither add or take out from the gameplay.
R&C or J/K and daxter just have short funny ones every time you finish a mission.
I dont think they would have been any different if they didnt have them.

(2) The 3D realm has never been truly mastered. When gaming was done with 2D there was no camera issues. Now\'a\'days in almost every game there is some kind of camera issue that only hinders the gameplay in the long run. Not only that, these 3D enviroments take so long to build that most the time  the developers have to find a way to make the game longer. What do they do? They add pointless things like go fetch a coin. A ten hour game is quickly made into a tedious 30 hour game.

Again I dont think thats always a huge issue.Some games have them at a major degree.Some dont have any.What does mastering of 3D realm mean?Managing a 3D game to feel like a 2D one?
The reason why they last more is not because they let you do pointless things.Its because they have become more complicated.There are rare games that arent 3D but are complicated too.Oddworld is one of these games.No camera issues, no 3D graphics.How much does it need to finish?More than the casual 2D game.
Its just that,They are 3D games and its easier to add complex gameplay when its 3D.So what if they last longer??Why is it a bad thing?
It would have been a bad thing if they were 2D and lasted so much.If a 3D game lasts less then the enviroments are way to small.
2D games last less becuase it would have been stupid if you had a stage where you move to one direction for more than half an hour.
Unlike 2D in 3D you can move to different directions.So that shouldnt be a problem
3D is just not your type of gaming.Its a matter of tastes.
I like both for what they are

(3) While developers strive for the perfect balance of the gameplay and cinema, quality control seems to be going down. Maybe you can contribute this to the fact machines are more complex and there is so many lines of code in a game now\'a\'days, but no matter what, bugs are being let through that would of never made it back in the day. And I am not talking no-name developers with no-name games, I am talking big name games. One example is Metriod Prime , which has a freezing bug in it.  These bugs have been left on the PC front but now are making their way to the Console market.

I agree.I still find many cliches and bugs too.But again not necessarilly a decline in gaming.Because as technology evolved we got new gameplay ideas as well.It was bound to happen.
We got the bad and the good

(4) Sony and MS both lost focus on what a console should do. It should play games. Instead you see both companies wanting to make hybrid machines that the consumer really does not need. I don\'t need a machine that does everything expect take out the trash. I need a console that plays games and works. Since the launch of both the PS2 and Xbox we have seem tons of people having problems with lasers (PS2) and DVD-drives (Xbox). TYhis is stuff that can be avoided if companies do through testing and show some foresight, but why bother when the company knows it can sell millions upon millions of units?

Wether Sony or MS are offering low quality hardware or not I dont think it has much to do with gaming becoming better or not.We still play as much as we should have and we still buy the same amount of games.And this doesnt affect what developers are offering

(5)Unnessarcy complex games. Back in \'the day\', there was two action buttons. Shoot and jump. Guess what? The game often required the player to have skill. In today\'s games you see games with upwards of twenty different actions, most of which are not all that useful. When you add all these functions you will also note that most of today\'s games are nothing more than trial and error. They don\'t challenge the player (once again, most games). Instead, you are playing what some companies like to deem an "interactive experience".

Once again I agree.But how many 2D games have been must haves years ago?Not all 2D games were as good as you describe.And the same happens with 3D games.There are 2D games that are top notch and exploit well the simple button pressing scheme but there are also the bad 2D games that dont.There are 3D games that exploit well their more complex gameplay but also 3D games that are like the ones you describe.
 

I agree with all your points but I disagree that these reasons are reasons that gaming has declined.You mostly described bad 3D games and good 2D games.
2D hasnt always been perfect either.There were many trash games back then as well.
3D gaming was bound to happen.It would be illogical to believe that gaming should have remained to the 2D era.

Wipeout was one of my best experiences ever back in 1996.Virtua Fighter is also one of these 3D games that show the great possibilities of quality complex gameplay.And who can deny DMCs superb gameplay?A few camera problems didnt take anything away from it.
Also what about Tomb Raider1?(forget how it ended later)This is one of the examples of 3D games that offer great experience that cannot be offered by 2D games.

I am not saying 3D are better than 2D.But they are both 2 different experiences of gaming and neither should be trashed.They both have their good moments.