90s Gamers vs. 21st Century Gamers

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

First of all, games weren't just harder, they were less balanced and generally not as good. (Yeah I went there.) The fact that people have gotten used to solid controls and fair gameplay is not a bad thing.

Second, "Better" may not be the right word. More patient? Absolutely. More skilled? No more so than these gamers will be at 20-25

 

[ElPatron]

Playing "HARD games for MEN!" doesn't make you a good gamer by default.

And practicing hard maths exercises won't get you a good grade in an easy test.

Of course, in modern day's games we have to take into account that balance is almost non-existent compared to old games.

First of all, games weren't just harder, they were less balanced and generally not as good. (Yeah I went there.) The fact that people have gotten used to solid controls and fair gameplay is not a bad thing.

What? Today's games have no fairness and no balance whatsoever.

Well let me ask you this: how do you think that one manages to get the kill streak rewards?
Its not by sitting around and waiting for them!

So in your opinion X kills should equal Y kills and not X, because a player really put his effort on making those X kills.

Kill streak rewards are unbalanced because they do not give the player being targeted a chance to fight back in the same way, thus unbalanced.

All they give you is cold-blooded and anti air assets, which are harder to use than killstreak rewards because you need to be standing up and can't move a lot, aiming at the sky without being able to check your surroundings.

Plus, it takes away your secondary slot and a perk, so you need a separate class to hit killstreak rewards.


That is unbalanced, because most times you'll be using that class is after you got killed.


And let's not mention how annoying it is to waste your missiles/rockets and the chopper/AC130 just pops flares and your effort was rewarded by a knife in the back.

And let's not mention how knifing is a joke. Or how overpowered commando pro is.

Unreal, Quake and Counter Strike all rely on exactly the same thing as Call of Duty: reflexes.

Just because they are older games and are therefore "old-school" doesn't make them any different than Halo or COD. Yeah yeah, I know its always cool to hate the most popular thing, but really, this is getting fucking ridiculous.

So yeah, I wish more people would stop fucking jumping on the nostalgia band-wagon and get some perspective. Older doesn't mean better.

Why don't you out your money where your mouth is and show us some Quake gameplay of yours?




I mean, it's not like in CoD you can time the exact second a certain power up will respawn, or that enemies can be rocket jumping from out of nowhere.

 

[Kermi]

Meh, I grew up on 'Nintendo Hard' and I'm pretty shit at games these days. It's the people who can S-Rank Devil May Cry on 'Dante Must Die' and make it past the bosses in Ninja Gaiden II that impress the hell out of me.

 

[Vegosiux]

Playing "HARD games for MEN!" doesn't make you a good gamer by default.

And practicing hard maths exercises won't get you a good grade in an easy test.

Your point being? Yes, it either went way over my head, or it's simply not there.

 

[zombieshark6666]

21st Century Gamer playing Doom: Where's the checkpoint arrow? Which dude do I shoot first? Who's going to open that door? When does this game end? I'm tired.

 

[ElPatron]

Playing "HARD games for MEN!" doesn't make you a good gamer by default.

And practicing hard maths exercises won't get you a good grade in an easy test.

Your point being? Yes, it either went way over my head, or it's simply not there.

Basically, if you study hard for a test, it will be easier than if you only studied easy exercises.

Playing harder games makes you conditioned for easy ones.

I make zombieshark6666's words mine

21st Century Gamer playing Doom: Where's the checkpoint arrow? Which dude do I shoot first? Who's going to open that door? When does this game end? I'm tired.

 

[Bento Box]

Wait, why does how "good" a gamer you are "overall" depend on how "hard" games you play? That's ridiculous, and I'm one of the old school gamers.

Playing "HARD games for MEN!" doesn't make you a good gamer by default.

I know, right? That's like saying that frequently picking up heavier things than other people do, will make you better at picking up heavier things later in life! That's just silly!

 

[Vegosiux]

Wait, why does how "good" a gamer you are "overall" depend on how "hard" games you play? That's ridiculous, and I'm one of the old school gamers.

Playing "HARD games for MEN!" doesn't make you a good gamer by default.

I know, right? That's like saying that frequently picking up heavier things than other people do, will make you better at picking up heavier things later in life! That's just silly!

Well, no, it's more like saying that frequently picking up heavier things than other people is going to make you better at physical labor later in life.

Playing "HARD games for MEN!" doesn't make you a good gamer by default.

And practicing hard maths exercises won't get you a good grade in an easy test.

Your point being? Yes, it either went way over my head, or it's simply not there.

Basically, if you study hard for a test, it will be easier than if you only studied easy exercises.

Playing harder games makes you conditioned for easy ones.

Well, there's more to being a gamer than just how quickly you respond to scripted events was my point, actually. To put it differently, "being a good gamer" and "being good at games" aren't nearly the same thing. Just like "being good at math" and "being a good student" aren't. Or for that matter, "being good at picking up heavy things" and "being a hard worker".

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I grew up in the 90s.

I sucked at modern games until about 4 years ago.

So, no real "skill" translating from Spyro to Halo, at least.

 

[Myke_storm]

there were no "gamers" in the 90's,that god awful term to lump people who enjoy playing video games as past-time was invented by those shady marketing executives 5-7 years ago when enough of us suddenly had enough buying power to become profitable to sell crap merchandise to.

but no playing games in 90's (or in my case since the mid 80's) does not a great game player make

 

[Warforger]

Honestly, the old era doesn't look much better than the current one, but well at least it didn't have as much modern shooters, with the amount of copy and pasted story lines across games it gets boring really quickly.

Before I can reliably answer this question I want to know what you mean by "better". Skillwise, "better" is very dependent on which games you play and someone who rocked Total Annhilation or Command & Conquer won't fare very good just because of that if they try out Dawn of War II or Company of Heroes, for example.

Well that's true with any RTS since getting good at them means memorizing the units and knowing how the resource system works.

I know, right? That's like saying that frequently picking up heavier things than other people do, will make you better at picking up heavier things later in life! That's just silly!

......What? So if I say beat Ninja Gaiden 1-3 or whatever I'll pwn everyone on CoD?

 

[orangeban]

Well, no, not really.

You can't just say someone is a "good" gamer, because gaming is really, really diverse and many different skills are needed. Take me for instance, I'm shit at twitchy shooters, but I'm good at puzzles and strategy games, everyone has different skills.

Gamers in the '90s might of played lots of hard platformers, so it makes sense that they would, in general, be better at platformers, but modern gamers are probably better at other kinds of games, the kinds of games that are more popular today.

Popular games get played more, so their players get better at them, practice makes perfect etc. etc.

Anyway, what does "hard" even mean? In my eyes, the remake of Prince of Persia is fucking hard, I died hundreds of times! However, I also died loads in Grand Theft Auto IV, but I wouldn't call that game hard, it's just got frustrating bullshit "gotcha" moments and crappy controls.

 

[SycoMantis91]

Probably. I was born in 91, so I didn't exactly grow up with the toughest games ever. But I do still own a Nintendo/SNES/Genesis and play games on all. I play Mega Man X, Contra, Ristar, even much less known games like the Sparkster games, EarthBound, Wild Guns, Demon's Crest, Splatterhouse, Metal Storm, Journey to Silius, Total Carnage, etc etc. So I'd like to think I can own most people my age when it comes to games like that and hopefully it overall makes me a better gamer. Though I don't have scientific backing.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Basically, memorization wasn't a mechanic back then but rather a result of players trying to avoid the strong penalties for dying. A great example is the Binding of Isaac. I have constantly seen many people talking about the high difficulty and using methodical ways to defeat stuff that I don't care to read about because I beat it on my first playthrough with Isaac, my second playthrough with Magdolene, and almost beat it on my 3rd playthrough with Cain where I only ever had 1 heart after level 2 trying to unlock someone with "deals with the devil". (I died on level 6 with Cain only having 1 heart) A friend of mine hasn't beat it once with Isaac yet despite a handful of attempts.

Memorization could be seen/used as one back then, because most games never changed. If it suited your play style (or you weren't good enough to beat games any other way), memorizing enemy spawns or level layouts was an extremely effective way to make it through many games. Binding of Isaac, and roguelikes in general, deliberately avoid/prevent that by randomizing everything. They force you to take the "be good at the game" approach to a greater degree, because even after you know what all the enemies and items do, you still can't know which ones will be where when.

Speaking of people talking about how ridiculously hard it's supposed to be and growing up with "Nintendo Hard" games, it took me a few more tries than that, but as someone who's been playing roguelikes since Rogue and Nintendo Hard games since the NES came out, I was still sort of surprised it wasn't a lot harder after everything I'd heard. I'm never going to get the "take no damage" in the later sections of the game achievements or anything, though. I'm just not quick enough for that these days.

 

[zuro64]

Unreal, Quake and Counter Strike all rely on exactly the same thing as Call of Duty: reflexes.

Just because they are older games and are therefore "old-school" doesn't make them any different than Halo or COD. Yeah yeah, I know its always cool to hate the most popular thing, but really, this is getting fucking ridiculous.

So yeah, I wish more people would stop fucking jumping on the nostalgia band-wagon and get some perspective. Older doesn't mean better.

Last I checked CS and Quake don't let you call in gunships that kill swathes of enemies for you or have broken spawn systems that let you achieve 144 kills in 1 game.

I never criticised Halo.

Well let me ask you this: how do you think that one manages to get the kill streak rewards?
Its not by sitting around and waiting for them!

You aren't serious, every single time a new COD comes out all I hear is issues with campers and people using exploits.

well the you have only heard the whiners, wich I will admit there are far to many of. A side effect of the 21 century gaming!

 

[Nomanslander]

Did playing Nintendo Hard games in the 90s make 90s gamers better overall at games than 21st century gamers?

No, it was just a different experience, the fact is the difficulty of games back then was enough to frustrate a person to the point of rage quitting. It wasn't just that they were hard, the limited continue system most games had made you lose all your progress and have to start over from the beginning, which for many of us was a deal breaker. I can't tell you how many games I stopped playing after having to continue from the start for the 30th time.

But like I said, what really made gaming in the 90s different, and more of an extent in the 80s since those were my childhood years were arcades. Gaming in the 80s and 90s were all about the arcades. All the best games could found there, in 85 you'd see graphics consoles couldn't match until 95, and the social atmosphere was something I haven't seen and felt since then.

 

[Auron225]

The only contribution I have to say (take it as you will) is I remember beating absolutely everything on Super Mario Bros Deluxe edition when I was a lot younger. I tried a level of it last year and just couldnt do it - some older games are damn harder than current ones! But I dont think that means you're a better gamer than those of today if you're playing games of today rather than games of yesterday... if you see what I mean.

 

[asacatman]

Congratulations, you missed the entire point of my post.

I didn't miss the point of your post, however I should of been more clear in saying my examples were not of 'great' games (for example, the first assasins creed was not very polished and didn't get a particually high metascore) but rather of innovative and creative games. But the rest of my post I spent arguing specifically about games being 'unique' and so on, so I kind of resent you telling me I missed the point. Whatever.

Now about the indie scene thing.

Back in the 90s it cost publishers a lot less money to make games. Less money=less risk, so perhaps in the publishing buisness there were more creative games out there.

But!

Now there *is* an indie scene, so therefore, todays games are more creative. That 'not as much money to make' market has been taken by indie developers, and I think their efforts are much more exciting and different than anything the 90s produced.

(some of your post makes good points by the way, I can't really argue about the FPS/3rdPS stuff, especially since I don't really play much of those games. But I think this 'set template' thing really is limited to shooters, I can't really think about examples from other genres.)

So baring that stuff in the brackets in mind...'games with a depth and creativity that we simply don't see any more.'



Frankly, you are blided by nostalgia. It's hard to argue about overall 'deepness' and 'creativeness' without using specific examples, which aren't much use when assesing the merits of an entire period. So without any evidence to back it up...we DO see games with EASILY as much creativity and depth in this decade as in any preceding one. Seriously, go play some portal or something. (please don't shoot my entire arguming down on that example, remember what I said about examples being useless.)

But anyway it sounds like you are set in your ways, and I can't think of any compelling arguments to make you come to my side... oh well.

The best I can come up with is this: 1. You can't just discredit the indie scene, as it has the same sort of budget as published games in the 90s and 2. the indie scene is and will in the future be producing more games which are innovative and creative than what publishers managed in the 90s.

Have a good day! (I hope it isn't rude to say you're blinded by nostalgia...)

 

[ElPatron]

Well, there's more to being a gamer than just how quickly you respond to scripted events was my point, actually. To put it differently, "being a good gamer" and "being good at games" aren't nearly the same thing. Just like "being good at math" and "being a good student" aren't. Or for that matter, "being good at picking up heavy things" and "being a hard worker".

Okay, old games requires you to respond quicker and have better accuracy than modern ones.


But modern games also feature harder puzzles, right? Oh, wait...

 

[Vegosiux]

Okay, old games requires you to respond quicker and have better accuracy than modern ones.


But modern games also feature harder puzzles, right? Oh, wait...

Your words, not mine.