kirok said:
"Games are less magical, less unique as individual works of art, than they were during the 8- and 16-bit console era."
I disagree,
the gaming industry has matured, and now has huge companies on the top who have multi million dollar advertising budgets.
and they in general shovel repetitive crap, like other media industries.
But a large percentage of games are indie developed. Many of these games are very good and most are individual works of art.
I think you missed the point.
He's not saying that games today are less unique in the sense that they are clichéd or rehashes of older games, he's saying that thanks to the massive amounts of information we get from gaming oriented websites, magazines etc. there's no mystery in buying games. They have little to no chance to be surprising. Sure, they can be really, really good and enjoyable, but it wasn't a complete mystery when you bought it.
On that note, there were a lot of flaws with that system. Lord knows how many games people bought that failed to deliver a satisfying experience. It was basically a gamble whether or not you were going to get a good game when you hit the local game store.
I feel like gaming has turned for the better. When people talk about the past, all they can think about is the good days. It's like music. People talk like today's music is worse than the music of the 60s or 80s because of all the crap we see, but if you take the time to look around the LP section in a music store, you'll find a lot of unknown bands that glow of the crap-factor that didn't stand the test of time. It's the same with the old-school era of gaming.
People claim that today's games are bland and uninspired, but really, how many games do you think there existed that tried to ride on the backs of Super Mario or Mega Man? The truth is that in 20 years, only a few games will have stood the test of time. I'll give my own shout out to my personal favorite; Shadow of the Colossus, but it's no guarantee that it will last.
So in short: The only thing that can actually judge the quality of modern day gaming is the future. A future that will show just how much our generation inspired theirs. Until then, I guess we can settle with flamingly-hot speculations.