Having realistic expectations never killed anyone.
Modern Gaming Sucks!!! Or Does It?
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
It's funny that whenever a big AAA release comes out that isn't an insane masterpiece, articles and video pop up like the video above exclaiming that Modern Gaming is bad again and again.
I want to address an early argument in this video where the guy talks about how much the Ps5 and Xbox Series X suck because the graphics aren't that much better than what we had on the Ps4. It's points like these that showcase how ignorant the people who make these arguments are. A lot of these videos and articles read or sound like people going, "I'm not 12 anymore so gaming is bad."
But on topic of the complaint that this latest generation was unnecessary because graphics, completely ignores the point of the updated hardware. Are the graphics that much better? No. But they run much better, especially when you consider how much the last consoles were struggling to get 30fps on the latest titles. Making the Ps5 and Series X all about graphics means the author doesn't know what they are talking about. The loading times are amazing on these systems, the improvements in playability due to the fps, for the playstation the improvements and innovations in the controller.
Graphically we've hit pretty close to the ceiling in terms of how good shit looks. Realism can only go so far, and the same for Fidelity, these things have caps and we're damn close to it. So people have to remove graphics being better from their mindset because the kind of leap of going from polygonal figurines to realistic models can't happen again.
Then you have the live service problem and microtransactions. While those things are a problem, more often than not those games crash and burn, and the ones that do succeed are either niche fandoms (like sports games), or genuinely good games on their own (Fortnite, League of Legends, etc). The vast majority of modern games are not greedy cash sinks, nor are they cynical garbage fires.
Realistically how many big AAA-games come out in a given year. Typically it's only about 10, sometimes less. These are your Zelda's, God of Wars, Elden Ring's, etc. Most of the years releases are AAA adjacent, meaning games from off-shoots of a AAA-company, things like Forspoken a game technically from Square but not really. Than of course you have AA and indie games coming out pretty much weekly and that's what fills a years releases out.
Looking at the AAA games of last year, how many were filled with Microtransaction garbage? How many would be considered vapid hollow games. Maybe Call of Duty? That's really it though. Everything else was just normal games.
Of course you can point at games like Saint's Row and say, "Look at this shit." And you'd be right. However the good games far outweigh the bad in terms of highlight releases. Shovelware will always be shovelware.
Things are much better today than they were in the NES days, hell the AngryVideoGameNerd made a career in showcasing how bad games in general were back in the day. Even the bad games today would have been incredible masterpieces yesterday, and that's kind of a cool thing to consider. The thing is, everything is relative. The bad games stand out more today because of the hobby itself being more popular, and because the games that are fantastic are REALLY REALLY fantastic so it's a much sharper contrast between games these days.
Still doesn't change the fact how many and how often a lot of publishers and developers got away with this crap. The only reason there's not as much now, is because people are finally starting to realize how bull crap it is, and publishers/developers tapped out the market. You have a good amount that are still trying this, but finally failing or not getting as much as they want. I'll give credit to people like Capcom and a few others, but all the other ones are still crap or don't put up much content anymore, cuz they have to make all the money in the world. EA and Ubisoft both have so many IPs they are not using or just holding on for the sake of it, but will throw out one or two once in rare while and just stick with whatever annual releases they make. We can't release this other thing, because it won't make us $500 billion, but here's another Madden, FIFA, or another Assassin's Creed & Far Cry. Not to mention all rampant racism and sexism at Ubisoft & Activision. Crunch, a lot of the gaming industry suffered from (which led to glitchy, faulty or money abusing products), but at least we're finally seeing pushback with unions and actual regulations/standards to meet. More can and will be done though.
There are some definite truths to that, but they're both bad games from the 8-Bit and 16-bit era I would not play, and I have the exact same feeling for the modern games that are bad now or really trying to scam the consumers out of their money. It's a different type of bad, but it's still bad that I'm not going to waste my time on, nor justify trying to get through.
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Idk, I have to actually stop and think which AAA games even came out in 2022.
Elden Ring, Ragnarok, Call of Duty whatever (I think it was Modern Warfare? Remake or something), I"m assuming Ubisoft relesed something. I think the Horizon sequel was this year too.
I think I commented this during the GotY awards thread, but while the bulk of these games range from competent to good.... they're barely distinct from their direct predecessors.
Pop music is always my go-to comparison. Where you get the same dozen or so corporate glossed people generally blobbing over the top 10-20 of the Hot 100, whether on their own or in tandem. Sheer marketing usually means they can debut entire albums i the top 20 at once. And 98% of it is being written by like six or seven people or distinct production teams, or blatant imitators thereof. Very intermittently some other quirky person sneaks in momentarily and they often get snapped up and polished into a near-form on their sophomore release. But you're probably going to have to at a bare minimum find a genre chart to get something interesting, if not outright go indie diving on Spotify or whatever.
Even double-checking in the last year alone, my AAA game content has been Monster Hunter Rise (idk, thats still leaning towards "AA" despite being Capcom) and Stranger in Paradise (which a friend bought me to co-op with them, and again, the publisher is Square but the game is pretty definitely AA-level fodder despite its pricing).
Elden Ring, Ragnarok, Call of Duty whatever (I think it was Modern Warfare? Remake or something), I"m assuming Ubisoft relesed something. I think the Horizon sequel was this year too.
I think I commented this during the GotY awards thread, but while the bulk of these games range from competent to good.... they're barely distinct from their direct predecessors.
Pop music is always my go-to comparison. Where you get the same dozen or so corporate glossed people generally blobbing over the top 10-20 of the Hot 100, whether on their own or in tandem. Sheer marketing usually means they can debut entire albums i the top 20 at once. And 98% of it is being written by like six or seven people or distinct production teams, or blatant imitators thereof. Very intermittently some other quirky person sneaks in momentarily and they often get snapped up and polished into a near-form on their sophomore release. But you're probably going to have to at a bare minimum find a genre chart to get something interesting, if not outright go indie diving on Spotify or whatever.
Even double-checking in the last year alone, my AAA game content has been Monster Hunter Rise (idk, thats still leaning towards "AA" despite being Capcom) and Stranger in Paradise (which a friend bought me to co-op with them, and again, the publisher is Square but the game is pretty definitely AA-level fodder despite its pricing).
My secret to healthy gaming in this modern time: keep things diversified and balanced. Like a diet. AAA is the gaming equivalent of junk food. Fine in moderation, like a cheat day. Unless it's from EA, Ubisoft, Activision, or Konami, in which case, don't partake. Other than that, switch things up. A serving of AA, a course of indie, and some retro for dessert. But above all else: don't hype. You'd be amazed how much disappointment you'll avoid simply by not getting swept up by hype.
Honestly, a synonym for "gaming discourse" may as well be "strawman convention."
We need to separate tech (things) from intentions (people).
Of course PS5 > PS4 in terms of tech. Of course it has tangible benefits besides graphics. Playing the Witcher 3 update on PS5 after playing it on PS4, the loading time after a death is light-speeds faster. The hardware upgrade improved the core experience immeasurably. And yeah, I notice a graphical improvement, too.
So of anyone is arguing "well the new consoles don't literally do anything" they're being ridiculous.
But one can have the opinion that the upgrades aren't worth the cost to the devs, customers, and its perceived impact on the industry. And I would say that would be WAY too simple a conclusion, but exactly the sort of thing that generates videos and clicks.
Overall we have to want tech upgrades without getting fleeced by the industry, I hope we can all agree on that.
The fact that the new generation of consoles is coming with the same time as NFT's and more expensive games and many high-profile broken games can make it "feel" like the new gen = modern video games suck, but that is really just describing how both capitalism and temporal mechanics works lol.
As for me, yeah, I would agree that "modern video games suck." But I also feel like modern music sucks and modern movies suck. And the reason I feel that way is about how the business and social models have contracted under monopolization and cultural hegemony to fiscally reward repetition over originality. Top Gun: Maverick is an Oscar nominee and Resident Evil 4 remake is the most anticipated game of 2023, and that pisses me off for the same reason.
I actually am both surprised and think it’s good to see something like Maverick getting a Nom. It was one of the few movies this year that properly took advantage of the theater setting. It also showed that Hollywood can still make a “real” action movie if they put enough effort in, which goes double for making the cast fly-ready.
Basically it’s all but guaranteed it won’t win anyways, but it’s a step towards recognizing quality film making and talent in areas where it historically hasn’t been given its due. Acting ability and thought provoking plots shouldn’t be the only criteria for these things.
Best post in the thread!
For me, most modern AAA games suck. AA and indie have been killing it.
At least mainstream music took a big hit from the internet and showed how everyone doesn't need to go through its bullcrap to get their music out.
I am surprised Maverick got a nominee, but I am not upset. More power to Maverick. I don't know why you're surprised by RE4RE and upset. We all knew it was going to happen, because people keep buying it. I look foward to the game, because I have not much love for the original.
I hate to break it to the "everything was better back when I was a kid" crowd, but the only reason developers didn't do things like live services and microtransactions back in the day was because they couldn't. Instead we got things like Action 52 for the NES and E.T. or Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. (And as a side note, everyone who wants to whine about Steam letting porn games be sold there might want to look up Custer's Revenge, also for the 2600.)
In short, a message to that crowd: Everything was shit then just like everything is shit now, and you don't remember it because you were little fucking morons back then.
I'm in a state I am more into Retro Gaming right now then new games.
Not that I completely shut the door on new games. I'm still looking forward to things that interest me. But the past is just more entertaining and simple to get into then modern gaming. I bought a Series X for the use of Backwards Compatibility just as much as I wanted new games
Not that I completely shut the door on new games. I'm still looking forward to things that interest me. But the past is just more entertaining and simple to get into then modern gaming. I bought a Series X for the use of Backwards Compatibility just as much as I wanted new games
Seriously how did we go from Final Fantasy 4 to things like Forspoken?
How did we go from the Quake 1 to the bloated mess that is Modern Warfare 2 (2022)
And graphics, I feel they peaked in the Gamecube/Xbox era. That jump from Smash Bros on the N64 to Smash Bros Melee on the Gamecube was insane.
Same as the jump from Resident Evil on the PS1 to RE 1 Remake and RE 4 is insane.
The jump from Tekken 3/Virtua Fighter 2 to Soul Calibur 2/Dead or Alive 3 is insane.
Heck remember people saying the first Unreal game people were blown away by its graphics with a magazine saying "THAT'S AN ACTUAL IN-GAME SCREENSHOT!!!" that was a game from 1998. Now look at Smash Melee in comparison to Unreal 1
How did we go from the Quake 1 to the bloated mess that is Modern Warfare 2 (2022)
And graphics, I feel they peaked in the Gamecube/Xbox era. That jump from Smash Bros on the N64 to Smash Bros Melee on the Gamecube was insane.
Same as the jump from Resident Evil on the PS1 to RE 1 Remake and RE 4 is insane.
The jump from Tekken 3/Virtua Fighter 2 to Soul Calibur 2/Dead or Alive 3 is insane.
Heck remember people saying the first Unreal game people were blown away by its graphics with a magazine saying "THAT'S AN ACTUAL IN-GAME SCREENSHOT!!!" that was a game from 1998. Now look at Smash Melee in comparison to Unreal 1
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FFVII Remake and FFXVI would like and will have a word with you at some point respectively. Keep in mind, I don't like how they're splitting FFVII Remake into three parts.
I guess you never played Doom 4 and Wolfenstein: New Order and New Colossus. Shout outs to Shadow Warrior 3. Any of those are better than some shitty remake of a tired series and genre.
Smash Ultimate has everyone and still looks great. It's a celebration of all things gaming. That, and the jump between Melee and Brawl was noticeable as well.
RE4 to RE5 was no slouch either. RE1Remake still looks great today and looks even better than RE4. RE4-6 to RE7, REmake 2-4, and RE8. The RE Engine is Capcom's new MT Framework Engine. The RE Engine can run on Switch without any problems!
Well, that and the 7th generation era. Both had their multiple moments of WOW factor, but I appreciate the 6th generation more.
Ah, it's a classic argument. "People hate X now because it has Y in it, but X has always had Y in it, therefore the hate is nonsensical." What is almost always the case when this sort of argument occurs is two things:
1. They fail to acknowledge that Y now is several orders of magnitude worse now than it was back then. For example, in the case of video games yes bugs existed back 20 or so years ago, but since games couldn't just plug into the internet and download a patch for everything developers had to work much harder to make sure the game was as bug free as possible because patching it was nearly impossible, so it made or broke how a game played and is perceived.
Not only can developers get away with releasing a very buggy to the point of unplayable game now but it's become so common that it's expected that a game will not just have bugs but be nearly unplayable at launch. Why take the time to release a great mostly bug free game anymore when you can release a clearly unfinished piece of crap, sell a ton of copies much earlier, use your customers as unpaid beta testers, and then release a patch or two to fix the things that shouldn't have been released as broken in the first place? Well, why is reputation, but video games have become so big now that even a reputation for making downright awful games can't stop the big AAA companies from making record profits.
That's another thing that's changed, despite the proliferation of the internet making it so knowing that a game and the company making it is terrible easier than ever to find, companies as a whole in the video game industry seem to have stopped caring about how they or their games are perceived.
2. There's a lot more than Y in X now, there's also A B C D E F G H... etc. For video games there's not only a noticeable dip in quality overall, but there's a massive epidemic of anti-consumer business practices infecting the whole of the industry. Releasing buggy half assed games is just the beginning, there's very deceptive marketing, on disc DLC that has mostly faded with the switch to digital purchases, lootboxes, microtransactions, price gouging trying to increase the price of games to $60 and now $70 despite the fact that $50 is and was still plenty and also the lack of overhead from the transition to digital purchases should've resulted in a massive price decrease due to lower cost, and the list goes on.
3. In the case of this thread, there's a false equivalency. Games are not better now than they were over 2 decades or so ago. Bigger? More complex? Has more gameplay systems? Better graphics especially? Yes to all, but that doesn't make them better. What matters is the quality of the game itself, not how big it is or how shiny the graphics are. I still go back to the SNES and PS2 every so often to play games that massively outdo most modern games in nearly every way with the exception of the occasional gem. This is because back then games couldn't skirt by simply by having the shiniest graphics or the best presentation. Games had to work on either good gameplay, story, or both to entice people to actually play them.
Some of the most memorable games in the history of gaming were from 2 or more decades ago. They had simple graphics and gameplay, but the story managed to be incredibly moving anyway, because the story was what carried the game. Conversely, other memorable ones had little to no story but had great gameplay, which made it just as significant.
There's games that are gold and games that suck in both eras, but I don't really consider either to be superior to the other. Different most definitely, longer, probably, but not better.
In short, people say modern games suck for way WAY more reasons than something like the existence of bugs, and it's not about age either. It's a number of significant issues that didn't exist back just a few decades ago and the fact that issues like bugs that already existed have gotten much MUCH worse that's the reason. It's not exclusive to the AAA games either, it's just infected AAA gaming to a much greater degree, there's plenty of indie games that pull the same crap and even if they don't once the company becomes big enough they'll start to.
1. They fail to acknowledge that Y now is several orders of magnitude worse now than it was back then. For example, in the case of video games yes bugs existed back 20 or so years ago, but since games couldn't just plug into the internet and download a patch for everything developers had to work much harder to make sure the game was as bug free as possible because patching it was nearly impossible, so it made or broke how a game played and is perceived.
Not only can developers get away with releasing a very buggy to the point of unplayable game now but it's become so common that it's expected that a game will not just have bugs but be nearly unplayable at launch. Why take the time to release a great mostly bug free game anymore when you can release a clearly unfinished piece of crap, sell a ton of copies much earlier, use your customers as unpaid beta testers, and then release a patch or two to fix the things that shouldn't have been released as broken in the first place? Well, why is reputation, but video games have become so big now that even a reputation for making downright awful games can't stop the big AAA companies from making record profits.
That's another thing that's changed, despite the proliferation of the internet making it so knowing that a game and the company making it is terrible easier than ever to find, companies as a whole in the video game industry seem to have stopped caring about how they or their games are perceived.
2. There's a lot more than Y in X now, there's also A B C D E F G H... etc. For video games there's not only a noticeable dip in quality overall, but there's a massive epidemic of anti-consumer business practices infecting the whole of the industry. Releasing buggy half assed games is just the beginning, there's very deceptive marketing, on disc DLC that has mostly faded with the switch to digital purchases, lootboxes, microtransactions, price gouging trying to increase the price of games to $60 and now $70 despite the fact that $50 is and was still plenty and also the lack of overhead from the transition to digital purchases should've resulted in a massive price decrease due to lower cost, and the list goes on.
3. In the case of this thread, there's a false equivalency. Games are not better now than they were over 2 decades or so ago. Bigger? More complex? Has more gameplay systems? Better graphics especially? Yes to all, but that doesn't make them better. What matters is the quality of the game itself, not how big it is or how shiny the graphics are. I still go back to the SNES and PS2 every so often to play games that massively outdo most modern games in nearly every way with the exception of the occasional gem. This is because back then games couldn't skirt by simply by having the shiniest graphics or the best presentation. Games had to work on either good gameplay, story, or both to entice people to actually play them.
Some of the most memorable games in the history of gaming were from 2 or more decades ago. They had simple graphics and gameplay, but the story managed to be incredibly moving anyway, because the story was what carried the game. Conversely, other memorable ones had little to no story but had great gameplay, which made it just as significant.
There's games that are gold and games that suck in both eras, but I don't really consider either to be superior to the other. Different most definitely, longer, probably, but not better.
In short, people say modern games suck for way WAY more reasons than something like the existence of bugs, and it's not about age either. It's a number of significant issues that didn't exist back just a few decades ago and the fact that issues like bugs that already existed have gotten much MUCH worse that's the reason. It's not exclusive to the AAA games either, it's just infected AAA gaming to a much greater degree, there's plenty of indie games that pull the same crap and even if they don't once the company becomes big enough they'll start to.
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When it involves a majority of things from the AAA industry, it's the same difference.
So the problem with this logic is that back in the NES days, it was often difficult to tell what was a bug or even discover bugs being there in the core systems. Take Final Fantasy 1 as an example, in this game the intelligence stat was bugged and it didn't not do shit to spell damage like it was supposed to. However your damage still increased as a mage throughout the game because you gained bigger and better spells which covered up this bug for a long time.
Then there are graphical ones which in the 8-16bit era where also harder to spot. Enemies being the wrong color, pixel distortion, invisible collision. All sorts of shit.
Fast forward today and with the detail and realism of graphics, bugs are far easier for the everyday player to see. When someone's head rotates backwards, falling through the world, physics going wild, all that stuff is very obvious but it's also not any more buggy than games used to be.
And let's be honest, how many AAA-games released in 2022 that were fucking broken? Volition and Saint's Row are AA developer/publishers so that debatably doesn't count.
This is also an exaggeration. Microtransactions and all that are in a very select few games that come out these days (namely Ubisoft shit). But Elden Ring has none of that, GoW has none of it, Horizon none, in fact there are far more examples of game that DON'T have any of that bullshit, so the implication that games these days are filled with greedy shit is an exaggeration.
Do greedy games come out? Yes. Are they the majority, absolutely not.
This I also think is a clouded statement, because most of us are old enough that we past our formative years. As adults it's harder for games to impact us the same way Final Fantasy 7 hit me as a 13-year-old. Yes we absolutely can look upon "Ye Olden Days of Yore" and pick out games we thought were incredible and "better" than any modern release. But that ultimately is a false impression based on the impact of how that game hit us when we were younger.
I think it's very very few people who can or will go back to a 20-year-old game with no knowledge or history with it and equate it as a game that outclasses modern content.
Final Fantasy 7 is my favorite game of all time, but I don't think it's the best game of all time. It's like the perfect pasta sauce, there is no perfect pasta sauce only perfect pasta sauces. Everyone has different tastes and everyone will think a different game is the best thing ever. However I think we can agree that games are "better" now then they ever were before in terms of playability, scope, tech, complexity. The medium has evolved and I don't think anyone is going to say that The Lion King on SNES is objectively better that God of War Ragnarok.
I'm not saying there aren't bad things about the current gaming market, there are, my whole argument in this thread has been that gaming isn't worse than ever because of those negatives. There are a lot of positives and a lot of great games being made that people who have this attitude simply ignore just to make their argument more impactful.
My whole argument is the reason people say that modern gaming sucks is because however much good there might still be and has been introduced, it's far far FAR outweighed by the sheer amount of bad. Bad that either didn't exist a couple decades or so ago or if it did was nowhere near as bad. You are merely cherry picking all the good out of the current era while ignoring the vast blatant bad and conversely cherry picking all the bad from the games past while ignoring all the good because it if were to admit to the truth your idea would collapse like the house of cards that it is.
The fact is, indisputably and extremely obviously, the current age of gaming is godawful and much much worse than it has been in the past for many reasons that greatly exceed what might be better about it.
For my money this is a point of view only attainable by really hitching your emotional wagon to gaming’s horse. Like if you put some distance between the hobby and yourself, that which you perceive as truly awful just becomes eye rolling tiresome.
It's interesting when you see a video complaining about modern gaming, they usually show Halo.
Whats happening is that there is a giant demographic of people who got into gaming around the 2000s, also the time gaming became mainstream, who are noticing all those huge franchises during that time have either died or devolved in the last 10 years. I don't know why this is, times change I guess. Or maybe the big ones attracts hirees who are simply incapable of making a good game, and eventually it comes tumbling down. Just imagine how many B-List/TV writers these IPs attract.
Actually that kind of makes sense. Lesser known studios are spared, and Japanese studios are spared because they hardly change jobs so they get to keep their lead director/writer around forever.
Whats happening is that there is a giant demographic of people who got into gaming around the 2000s, also the time gaming became mainstream, who are noticing all those huge franchises during that time have either died or devolved in the last 10 years. I don't know why this is, times change I guess. Or maybe the big ones attracts hirees who are simply incapable of making a good game, and eventually it comes tumbling down. Just imagine how many B-List/TV writers these IPs attract.
Actually that kind of makes sense. Lesser known studios are spared, and Japanese studios are spared because they hardly change jobs so they get to keep their lead director/writer around forever.