Fallout 76, Anthem, Avengers, Battlefield 2042, every time a big game releases in either an unfinished state or buggy as fuck the same phrase always crops up.
"Modern Gaming Sucks".
And in looking at high profile releases that haven't come out of the box in great shape, it's easy to see why people would say that. However for me, I feel like that statement is a rather ignorant statement to make, because generally speaking the Youtubers and people who make those statements on forums are fairly young comparitively with some suggestions. Yet people who really knew gaming like the late TotalBiscuit, Jesse Cox, and several others, never would make that statement. People on the older end like me (I'm pushing fucking 40 oh fuck) who've seen gaming since the Atari 2600 days.....well we know better.
Back on the NES especially games were often broken buggy and everything Fallout 76 was at launch on a much smaller scale simply because of limitations of tech. The problems that plague the industry now, plagued the industry then (less rape though), games released that were simply shovelware and the NES was the king of that. Because NES games were small and easy to make they could be shit out like candy without any real effort. Just watch some Angry Video Game Nerd videos and you'll see several examples of shit that just didn't work. Hell even games that are regarded as classics like Final Fantasy 1 didn't fucking work, stats didn't work, spells didn't work, a lot of that game was broken.
Modern gaming has one advantage over the NES days and that is The Internet. With the internet games can now be fixed post launch, either because something is discovered that was missed during development, or simply to add new content to the game in the form of DLC. So now when something like No Man's Sky comes out and everyone hates it, the developers can buckle down and fix it, rebuilding the game to make it better.
Of course the obvious argument to that is that the games shouldn't come out fucked up to begin with, and that point does have merits. In the case of No Man's Sky it wasn't a broken game, it just wasn't the game people thought it would be, and credit to Hello Games for going back to the drawing board and putting in all the cool shit the players expected. In the case of Fallout 76, well yes nothing should release that fucked up. But the release of a buggy game isn't new, it's just exaggerated by modern tech.
What i mean by that is that games feel more buggy now, because with modern graphics those bugs are more noticeable. Better AI systems mean that it is a lot easier for the player to notice when something in that AI breaks. Graphics are so realistic now that when pop-in textures are a problem it's extremely obvious. No longer are the bugs able to hide themselves by the imaginary requirements and suspension of disbelief that makes things less obvious to the player.
Games are bigger and clearly better than they ever were. So I really have a problem when people say "Modern Gaming Sucks" because it doesn't. For every Anthem, there is a Jedi Fallen Order. For every Fallout 76 there is a Doom Eternal. For every Final Fantasy 14 there is a Realm Reborn.
There are pockets of games that seem to always have issues, but these games are usually very obviously bad well before release and they usually come from EA and Bethesda, who are basically the modern LJN (again look at old NES games).
I know it is frustrating to get a new game and have it be broken. But if the last four Battlefields have been shit, maybe your dumbass should stop buying them, just saying. There are pockets of gaming that are shit, bad business practices, broken titles, and that does suck. But it's not a blanket of the entire industry and certainly not a "modern gaming" problem. It would be more fair to say that "Gaming sucks" because none of the things that happen now are really new, they just have more attention on them because gaming as a whole has grown.
"Modern Gaming Sucks".
And in looking at high profile releases that haven't come out of the box in great shape, it's easy to see why people would say that. However for me, I feel like that statement is a rather ignorant statement to make, because generally speaking the Youtubers and people who make those statements on forums are fairly young comparitively with some suggestions. Yet people who really knew gaming like the late TotalBiscuit, Jesse Cox, and several others, never would make that statement. People on the older end like me (I'm pushing fucking 40 oh fuck) who've seen gaming since the Atari 2600 days.....well we know better.
Back on the NES especially games were often broken buggy and everything Fallout 76 was at launch on a much smaller scale simply because of limitations of tech. The problems that plague the industry now, plagued the industry then (less rape though), games released that were simply shovelware and the NES was the king of that. Because NES games were small and easy to make they could be shit out like candy without any real effort. Just watch some Angry Video Game Nerd videos and you'll see several examples of shit that just didn't work. Hell even games that are regarded as classics like Final Fantasy 1 didn't fucking work, stats didn't work, spells didn't work, a lot of that game was broken.
Modern gaming has one advantage over the NES days and that is The Internet. With the internet games can now be fixed post launch, either because something is discovered that was missed during development, or simply to add new content to the game in the form of DLC. So now when something like No Man's Sky comes out and everyone hates it, the developers can buckle down and fix it, rebuilding the game to make it better.
Of course the obvious argument to that is that the games shouldn't come out fucked up to begin with, and that point does have merits. In the case of No Man's Sky it wasn't a broken game, it just wasn't the game people thought it would be, and credit to Hello Games for going back to the drawing board and putting in all the cool shit the players expected. In the case of Fallout 76, well yes nothing should release that fucked up. But the release of a buggy game isn't new, it's just exaggerated by modern tech.
What i mean by that is that games feel more buggy now, because with modern graphics those bugs are more noticeable. Better AI systems mean that it is a lot easier for the player to notice when something in that AI breaks. Graphics are so realistic now that when pop-in textures are a problem it's extremely obvious. No longer are the bugs able to hide themselves by the imaginary requirements and suspension of disbelief that makes things less obvious to the player.
Games are bigger and clearly better than they ever were. So I really have a problem when people say "Modern Gaming Sucks" because it doesn't. For every Anthem, there is a Jedi Fallen Order. For every Fallout 76 there is a Doom Eternal. For every Final Fantasy 14 there is a Realm Reborn.
There are pockets of games that seem to always have issues, but these games are usually very obviously bad well before release and they usually come from EA and Bethesda, who are basically the modern LJN (again look at old NES games).
I know it is frustrating to get a new game and have it be broken. But if the last four Battlefields have been shit, maybe your dumbass should stop buying them, just saying. There are pockets of gaming that are shit, bad business practices, broken titles, and that does suck. But it's not a blanket of the entire industry and certainly not a "modern gaming" problem. It would be more fair to say that "Gaming sucks" because none of the things that happen now are really new, they just have more attention on them because gaming as a whole has grown.