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First post, by pingo.mister

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Just trying to continue what seemed to me a very interesting topic. People got angry and the topic was closed, but, please, this is an important subject. Games nowadays truly suck and are nothing compared to the way things were done 20 years ago. What´s sad an unfair is that the work that was done in that time laid the foundations and the ideas which allow the gaming industry to profit nowadays. But, since they´ve completely forgotten what makes great games, they´re just selling the same wasted formulas all over again, and indeed making a lot less profit than they could make. But, back on the old topic:

What an apparently complex and passionate discussion this was. Well, some things said were true, others were not. It is a fact that today´s video games are much worse and unimaginative than 20 years ago. That´s what happens when an industry massifies itself. They start treating consumers like cattle, and sell them the same winning formula over and over again. But is the formula really intented to win? No, just sell.

"Hardcore gamers" just want to buy and beat every game and don´t complain about the story the graphics or the game itself? Well if that is the case I would say that "hardcore gamers" aren´t even gamers at all. A game, fundamentally, is not made to be beat, or measured in terms of graphics, sound, features. It is meant to be enjoyed, to be an experience, something that creates a world of its own.

20 years ago, software "authors" created games trying to craft, from limited resources, something that was original, compelling, enjoyable and worthwhile. Something that was interesting, you know? How far we´ve come, how far we are from considering those horrendous "first person shooter" clones or "real time strategy" as something original and interesting. It´s the same game all over again. It´s like 2d plataformers. Always the same game. How can anyone seriously consider this an exciting time for video games, when despite all the graphics the industry is regretfully stuck to a formula which isn´t even winning anymore.

That´s what happened when the companies started worrying only about sales, and not about the creative aspect which is fundamental to their business. They´re just digging their own grave.

I blame it parcially on the advent of 3d. Let me get this straight, when we had only 2d, we had lots of different perspectives on how to look at the character, we had quite an ammount of different games with different ideas, many of them truly unique. With the advent of 3d we could have much more diversity, but, instead, we´re limited to "first person shooters" and "real time strategy" games? Does this sound right? Or does this sound like ultimate stupidy and waste of resources and imagination?

The software gaming industry is nowadays a laughing stock. They sell games to 14 year old braindeads which would buy any crap they would put in front of them. That´s their market. They made up some other small niches where to sell games, like idiots who play the sims like to simulate some kind of urban idiotic shallow life, as if their life wasn´t boring enough they have to simulate with a computer character going to parties, dating, buying furniture etc. Same for online social games or whatever that crap is. Truly gay and the ultimate boredom. Games that are life that is a game.
At least jones in the fast lane was a quick play.

Then they´ve got guitar hero and crap like that, which, i mean, if i was 12 years old with a computer and i had to choose between pretending to be a rock star or pretending to manage an oil rig, well, chances are strong that i would choose the oil rig just because it really sounds more interesting, you know? Ah but you´ll say "ah that´s just you, people aren´t like that", well, actually they are, it´s just they try so hard to forget it and just do what they´re told. But i know that people, 12 year olds and everything, deep down inside they know that simulating to be a rock star is just boring, stupid, unimaginative and exhausting.

So they came up with: first person shooters (not even third person or some other perspective? it´s dreadful), wolfenstein all over again. Real time strategy games, command and conquer all over again, exactly same game. Then they´ve got the sims and guitar hero and this is the state of video games today? A laughing stock. A truckload of wasted opportunities. They righfully deserve that every game they make is pirated over and over. This kind of crap and lazy thinking and treating consumers like mindless cattle deserves to be punished and ignored.

The gaming industry is a laughing stock for any serious person that knows the history of video games. For any person that knows what the classics are and why they were classics.

Next week the gaming industry is going to sit down and think again on what´s missing in their games. Some will say they need more graphics, more sound imersion, no, more depth of characters, no, more open worlds, no, let the player do what he wants, no, just bore the player to death with endless role playing storylines, based on some sort of tolkien medieval quest realm crap, no just put more gore in, no, make it first person of course, well, they´ll think all of this and eventually reach some kind of unlogical, restrained and mindless conclusion, only aimed at making much less than half the money they could make.

Game publishers, mindless idiots focused on weak profits, bunch of cowards, how about this: just give the control of the project to a real game designer and let him do what he wants. See where he goes. Watch something original being created. You´ll make tons more money, believe it.
Who am i talking to. Of course you don´t believe it, you like it short, medium, low quality, low profit, low importance. You´re just a disgrace.
Why don´t you all just look for another job in butchering meat or counting sheets of a4 paper. You seem much more talented to do that.

Reply 1 of 35, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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pingo.mister wrote:

they´re just selling the same wasted formulas all over again,

This is the part where I agree. These days, games tend to be more generic and following the "safe" formula over and over again. Take a look at action games, for examples. In the past, we had platformers, fighting games, action-strategy hybrid (ala Pirates!), action-adventure hybrid, space shooters, and "fake" flightsims (ala Strike Commander). They were all action games, but they had varying basics of gameplay. Today, action games are based on the "safe" formula of first-person shooters, which gives the same basic of gameplay. No wonder people get bored, especially those who have experienced the past. Here's an example:

Chris Taylor wrote:

I find FPSes repetitive and boring, end of story. The best FPSes I had ever played were R6: Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon. And what made them special was not the stock single-player missions (again, boring and reptetitive)

pingo.mister wrote:

and indeed making a lot less profit than they could make.

And this is where I disagree with you. Unfortunately, it seems to be profitable for the game publishers to follow the same formula over and over again. I think DosFreak already has good answer regarding the question:

DosFreak wrote:

I think probably the biggest factor into "Why do modern video games suck so badly" is that people really don't care.

I see all the time on forums about how people come home from work and they want to play a game but they don't want it to be too "complicated" or "involved" or "too long". Basically they want the equivalent of a commercial/American Idol/other non-complicated TV shows. This accounts for the majority of the populace which is why those TV shows are so popular. Until you can change that then the majority of PC/Console games will always be like that and will never change.

So yes, unfortunately, generic FPS does sell to the majority.

pingo.mister wrote:

20 years ago,

Alright, I am the one who's guilty for nitpicking now: actually games were not that bad 10 years ago. Yes, we had Doom Clones and the likes, but at least there were still games like Grand Theft Auto. which took the risk of having top-down perspective instead of following the 3D FPS trend. There were also Hostile Waters: the Anteaus Rising, which was quite different and refreshing. Seems game publishers were more willing to take risk of giving something different than now. Alas, some of the concepts failed due to poor execution, and the rest is history.

pingo.mister wrote:

"Hardcore gamers" just want to buy and beat every game and don´t complain about the story the graphics or the game itself? Well if that is the case I would say that "hardcore gamers" aren´t even gamers at all. A game, fundamentally, is not made to be beat, or measured in terms of graphics, sound, features. It is meant to be enjoyed, to be an experience, something that creates a world of its own.

While I agree with you at this point, I'm not really inclined to see the discussion being dragged into red herring about terminology. The truth is: there ARE people who get bored with the same formula over and over again. Whether they should be called "hardcore gamers", "niche market", or "snobs" is irrelevant (although "snob" is an offensive term).

Things being said, it seems this discussion is already over, although it sprang to life again because of this article, which is, unfortunately, a flawed argument in criticizing new games (notably because of its examples). Of course, one can still always nitpick flawed arguments favoring old games. Take a look at your own post for example: if one really wants to, she/he can find holes in your argument to nitpick over, no matter how small and trivial the holes are.

On the other hand, there are flawed arguments defending new games as well. An example is "there were always fewer good games than bad games". However, the example above doesn't need to be nitpicked because it is a red herring. Why, of course there are always fewer good products than bad ones. In fact, such thing seems to happen in everything. Take a look at movies, for example; for every single King Kong there are probably hundred of B-movies like Anaconda. The real question is whether modern games are more generic than those in the past, and it seems the answer is "yes".

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 2 of 35, by valnar

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Like all things in the name of progress, necessity is the mother of invention. When you have limited or finite resources, creativity blossoms.

Some of the best arcade games were dreamed up and created due to constraints in memory or CPU. How truly unique were games like Space Invaders, Pac Man and Tempest. How unoriginal were games like Street Fighter, Tekken and other Capcom like clones.

And at the risk of getting flamed, music is the same way. We had very interesting, intricit, and creative music in the 60's, 70's and somewhat 80's without the use of computers. Now that we have synthesizers at our fingertips with the ability to create any kind of sound imaginable, the radio is flooded with power chord bashing garage bands or... um.... Rap. 😜 WTF?

That doesn't mean there aren't people in both disciplines creating great things, but it is fewer and far between. The drive to do "more with less" is not there any more. Since we are allowed to be lazy, we are.

Reply 3 of 35, by dh4rm4

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Seriously guys, do you even hear yourselves? Are you aware of what kind of glory period computer gaming is currently experiencing? More games, bigger projects, more press coverage and even moreso ACCEPTANCE of gaming as an adult past time than ever before.

How anyone who's a gamer can complain about and even generalise something so varied as the state of modern gaming defies logic. There's such a depth and breadth of games, genres and games systems these days that modern gaming can't be explained in the nomination of a single phrase, let alone a singular complaint.

valnar : We've had synthesizers for a lot longer than the 80s - think of the Theremin as only one example and that comes from the 1920s! Many bands of the 60s, including Deep Purple, Marillion, E L O and Tangerine Dream influenced so many other composers, musicians, groups and genres to come. Pink Floyd, Vangelis, Emmerson Lake and Palmer are just a few of the many successful and inventive artists who found such influence in their craft. The Beatles sound, especially that of Sgt. Peppers and The White Album , were indelibly tied to modern techniques of sound production such as Maximised Compression which in turn led to Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production technique which is in use in almost every published piece of music and film foley to this day. Music remains just as interesting as it's always been, the only thing is that you need to look harder and further afield than your general music store and commerical radio station, but with the internet that's neither an issue, nor a problem. We have so much more information in general made available to us the world over and music is very much a part of that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthpop

Don't listen to commerical radio dude, I never EVER do because everytime I'm forced to I cringe at the repeated tracks - multple times in an hour and worse still the ads.

You do know that this has pretty much always been the case with music; that the generally accepted 'pop' stuff is played and overplayed on radio and in the charts (which lie - artists have been bundling their albums with movie soundtracks - now game soundtracks from Crazy Taxi onwards - and concert tickets since the days of Elvis and have been marking those as sold album stats, tipping the scales in their favour). There are many live acts who use no synth and sampling at all and many who use a mix of all kinds of instrumentation, live and otherwise, to great effect; Pendulum is one such act who comes to mind and Radiohead is another. Please don't blame the synthesizer for your limited views on that state of modern music. I mean seriously dude, you're trying to tell people that Rap is a bad thing when I doubt you've even taken the time to listen to some of the greatest music in the history of music like De La Soul's "A Funky Rollerskating Jam Called Saturday"....

Anyway, music is like gaming : it comes down to personal taste. I personally hated Space Invaders and Pac Man and I'm old enough to remember when they came out. One of my favoured games of the arcade era is Star Trek TNG Pinball. I also own some arcade JAMMA boards and even had a DATEL JAMMA-based system a few years back.

I don't agree that there is a problem going on with the modern state of gaming but I do see a bunch of people who are generally younger than me complaining about specific genres having eclipsed other specific genres and they're not happy. Of course, they aren't really motivated enough to do anything about the situation either...

Reply 5 of 35, by valnar

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dh4rm4,
I am well aware of the progressive rock bands from the 60's and 70's. Yes and Rush are two of my favorites (and Floyd..... naturally). 😀

My point still stands. They had synthesizers, but they also had to know how to play them. The Moog didn't have 1000 different sounds. The way George Martin produced the Beatles albums did take a lot of creativity given the technological limitations of the time. And while I don't listen to the radio much myself, they did indeed play much better music ON the radio back then.

All this is important, because unlike you and me, our sheeple youth of America are listening to this crap and in turn are producing the next "musicians" to further degrade the music genre. We will end up with more crap, and less good stuff.

But we all digress.

Reply 6 of 35, by dh4rm4

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valnar : more digression but it raises the issue of creatvity and the so called sheep...

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=6fC65sy9tzY (Watch the Widescreen HD version for the full effect)

Basically it's indicative of proof that creativity is still very much in effect in the younger generation. Much like the emu, demoscene and homebrew scenes of the computer users...

I repeat, modern games do not suck, but people just can't deal with evolution. Survival of the fittest and all that. 😉

Reply 7 of 35, by valnar

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We are on different levels. I thought that was total crap and proved my point.
He can't sing, can't play an instrument (really), and would not be surprised if he had no musical training at all. I dread the day that becomes mainstream.

I'm punching out of this conversation.

Reply 8 of 35, by dh4rm4

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Wow. Just wow.

The video was posted as an example of the creativity of youth, but sure, ignore the validity of the work and just slam it because you don't like the music. There's a lot more going on there than just his beatboxing, the clever use of the KAOS PAD and the hats. Like the incredible vision mixing for a start.

Seriously that kind of response just proves my point about snobs, no matter how offensive it may seem.

Reply 9 of 35, by temptingthelure

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OK, maybe this is a not-feasable idea, but, since there so much enthusiasm and rhetoric on what makes a game truly a "game", why dont the dosbox (or the whole vogons community) try to make a game of their own? A classic, dos-era, microprose-like resource constrained game? Some of the posters here have the technical and content creation skills, oh well, just an idea. 😀

Rise of the Triad modding site!
http://rott.s4.bizhat.com

Reply 12 of 35, by valnar

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dh4rm4 wrote:

The video was posted as an example of the creativity of youth, but sure, ignore the validity of the work and just slam it because you don't like the music.

I wasn't going to come back to this thread, but I have to answer this.

I didn't say it wasn't creative. As a video or performance-art form, it might be very good. I don't claim to be knowledgeable enough to judge that. Yes, it was entertaining on one view. But I assume you used that as an example to retort my music statement. As good music, it fails - quite miserably. It's a pretty basic song.

Or are you claiming that composition is up there with Pink Floyd and The Beatles?

Reply 13 of 35, by dh4rm4

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I think I already stated quite clearly what the video was posted pertaining to. You did say that it was crap and then proceeded to lament the state of music should the example piece become mainstream (mainstream repetitive pop and "Rap" that you already defined as the problem which the peice isn't). Nowhere in your immediate response was there even a glimmer of recognition for the work's entertainment value, nor any other aspect. When one is presented with the word 'crap' it becomes nigh on impossible to determine a positive point of view on a subject, regardless how slim.

All other questions you might have with regards to the song's complexity, The Beatles et al are irrelevant because I was not comparing anything with anything else as I already stated.

Your dismissive type of response is what I see as being wrong with discussions like this because the people who engender these threads/discussions do so in the same vein and with ill intent, often with blithe ignorance of the work involved in creating a game and the actual history of computer gaming in general.

Look at the OP in this thread for easily placed examples of ill will and blind ignorance of the history of computer gaming (even KAN sets the poster straight on a few of these). Look at how dismissive the entirety of the post is the industry as a whole, which is a ridiculous claim because the games industry is incredibly diversified.

Basically, the whole thing comes across as if someone is having a whine and shitting on anyone who happens to disagree with said whine. It's negativity and it's not even good at that.

However if you maintain that the OP's points are valid and the post isn't an idiotic bitch fest, then yes were are on different levels. Entirely so.

Reply 14 of 35, by valnar

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Geez. My first post in this thread was fairly insightful, if I do say so myself. The analogy may not have been to your liking, but oh well. It was you who chose to start ripping me a new one with a disagreeing statement. If anyone is at fault for starting the negativity, it is you.

And my analogy was indeed about music. You chose to strawman the argument and change the subject to creativity in general. Forgive me for not following your train of thought.

Reply 15 of 35, by WolverineDK

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dh4rm4: What about Kraftwerk ? you didn´t mention them, since they deserve a lot of credit in the electronic music genre . Heck if it wasn´t for KW there wouldn´t have been any Depeche Mode (well that is not exactly true) but hey KW deserves a lot of credit.

Reply 16 of 35, by dh4rm4

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Wolverine : Without a doubt. Kraftwerk are responsible for directly influencing House, Bristol Sound, Trip Hop and almost every other kind of Techno genre, not to mention all the New Romantics like A B C, A Flock of Seagulls and of course, Spandau Ballet. They also had an influence on Duran Duran and Depeche Mode but it was somewhat limited as both of those groups' sound changed quite a lot from where it started with Duran heading more towards rock and Depeche more towards lyrical content.

valnar : You might think so but really it's actually like your peer review of Beardyman's Monkey Jazz. It's just dismissive and ignores any talent and hard work that the synthpop and later genres might have imbued in their music. There are quite a few techno acts whose lead composers and performers were classicaly trained such as Guru Josh (Josh Abrahams) and Cosmic Baby (who still plays Harpsichord for audiences) while some of the world's greatest rock guitarists were completely UNTRAINED in terms of music theory, many of these were Prog Rockers and direct influencers thereof. There is no direct relationship between musical training and the end product because creativity and talent are almost entirely unquantifiable aspects. Basically all I'm trying to point out is that even though certain things don't excite your pallate don't dismiss them of their validity. Why not, instead, try to broaden your tastes a little?

Reply 17 of 35, by FeedingDragon

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Yes there are a great many games coming out today. However, very few of them are inspired. Just because you can go to the game store and find 1000 or more games (instead of the 50 or so back in the day,) does not mean any of them are any good. It just means that if a good game just happens to come out that year, it will be much more difficult to find.

Again, awesome graphics doesn't mean a game is good. A fantastic musical score doesn't mean a game is good. They are great to have, and it is preferred that they are as good as they can be, but they do not make the game good. What makes the game good is it's ability to make one forget the world while they are playing it. If people are going to insist on a single judging point, I'd say that was it. Does the story reach out and GRIP you so that you just cannot stop? Does the world around you fade so that you forget to eat dinner and have to get by with just a few hours sleep?

dh4 is correct, games have gained a lot of acceptance recently. They are no longer considered just for kids who should really be doing their homework. But taking this into account, I find the lack of inspiration a great disappointment. Now that they are accepted, there should be a renaissance of grand design, not the cookie cutter games that pack the shelves. I go to the game store, and pull 2 random games (of the same genre,) off the shelves. They will be virtually identical. A few minor name changes here, a couple of extra options there, but mainly the same. One may have much better graphics. The other may have better musical scores. But again, the mechanics aren't what make the game good.

Feeding Dragon

Reply 18 of 35, by rumbadumba

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Only problem I see with modern games is the same as with other media - keeping up to date and abreast of developments and filtering out what meets my tastes, without letting it become a full-time job and/or having a severe impact on my enjoyment of games I do buy.

Other than that, I somewhat futilely think it's a pity so many games are long-winded and massively time consuming to do them justice, oh and they cost more than I want to pay. Of course it wouldn't make sense for this to change on my account, but it does mean that because I play most Blizzard games [including WoW which often seems a full time job *oops*], still need to play Dawn of War, finish Duke Nukem 3D and replay Quake 1... oh and there's LucasArts stuff too... hmmm... plus I wanna try The Sims [omg yes I can't believe it either] ... I really shall never get beyond the opening scenes of Half-Life, Far Cry, Quake 2, any Unreal game, or even Neverwinter Nights, and I shall probably never even install Prince of Persia.

This problem of filtering and prioritisation faces us in music, books, film/tv and so on. It's easy to translate this into negative language eg. "there is so much crap now", but in my mind that's little more than expressing one's frustration and annoyance at needing to spend some time foraging.

It also seems to be the case [thinking on the fly here, often a mistake] that as technology advances, as a consumer you need a deeper and deeper knowledge to understand the significance of the incremental chnages that take place with successive product releases. This is as true of cars and tv's as games. One solution is just to leave it longer: if you wait a while the incremental changes will build up and you will find it easier to find something you consider an improvement.

Just my tuppence ha'penny worth.

Reply 19 of 35, by rumbadumba

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pingo.mister wrote:

if i was 12 years old with a computer and i had to choose between pretending to be a rock star or pretending to manage an oil rig, well, chances are strong that i would choose the oil rig just because it really sounds more interesting, you know?

I laughed out loud when I saw this.

In fact I wonder if pingo.mister's post isn't just meant as a massive joke anyway. It sounds awfully like something from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe... this is the funniest thing I've seen in ages:

pingo.mister wrote:

Next week the gaming industry is going to sit down and think again on what´s missing in their games. Some will say they need more graphics, more sound imersion, no, more depth of characters, no, more open worlds, no, let the player do what he wants, no, just bore the player to death with endless role playing storylines, based on some sort of tolkien medieval quest realm crap, no just put more gore in, no, make it first person of course, well, they´ll think all of this and eventually reach some kind of unlogical, restrained and mindless conclusion, only aimed at making much less than half the money they could make.