Are games in general getting worse or is that nostalgia talking?

[V8 Ninja]

I would say it's nostalgia. However, I do think that what games are popular in gaming has changed from awesome and interesting to more-or-less boring and/or shit. You know what was popular in the 90s? Mario, Sonic, and Doom (and throw in some Duke Nukem if you want). All of those games were good and not boring at all. Now compare those games to the popular games of today. Today's popular games are almost interchangeable and either suck or are just average. Today you just have to look harder for the gems.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

There are two main problems with the direction that gaming has taken.

First, consolisation. This isn't a new thing though it has become more apparent as the years have marched by. I remember Deus Ex:IW as a prime example of the consolisation of what had been an incredible franchise. Oblivion to Morrowind is another example. Games that were previously more complex (in a good way) and deep were now being made for controllers with few buttons, checkpoints instead of quicksave/standard saves and levels/textures for the not-so-capable console hardware.

Second, mass-market appeal. Activision, EA, Ubisoft et all are concerned about one thing and one thing only. Their bottom line. Please shareholders means rakeing in more cash with tired rehashes, sequels and unoriginality. Previously, games had been made for niche appeal. Baldur's Gate II was the pinnacle of the RPG genre without any attempts to appeal to a wider audience for example. Now games have to be dumbed down to appeal to the lowest common denominator, made controller-less so grannies and 6 year olds can play them or be rip-offs of other successful games.

I can understand the drive for higher income, it's the nature of business. I just preferred the days before the $50mill AAA titles, when Bioware wasn't owned by EA, when Valve made PC games that were ported to console instead of the other way around, when games didn't play themselves or consist of umpteen hours of cutscenes. I would prefer to buy genre specific games with greater depth and challenge than the 2 weapon/regenning health Halo shizzle.

 

[Guilherme Zoldan]

I think its unfair to judge the old school games by the standards of that time when comparing them to modern games. There was more inovation in mainstream games back then, but thats because the industry as a whole was new, there wasnt much that had been done before. If anything the less mainstream titles now-a-days are much much more creative then any games in any age ever were. I refer you to Braid and Echochrome.

Maybe, but is it so much to ask to have a few AAA games be innovative, rather than just the indie scene? It was the heads of the industry who came up with new stuff back in the day, and not just studios with a very low budget.

Echochrome isnt really an indie game. And I believe the reason most mainstream games are not very inovative anymore is because they have immense budgets, the publishers dont want to risk that much money making something they dont know for sure is gona work. I agree that is a bit greedy and souless but it is reasonable considering the gargantuan ammounts of money going into each game.

 

[Kenko]

Wouldn't say getting worse. The "mainstream" side of gaming has become stagnant though, especially all the shooters.

 

[Yopaz]

The game industry is getting big. The games some of us (me among the masses) was small and not in the same league as the movie industry. At some point it looked as if it would just perish and die because the games didn't really spike much interest in the long run. Playing PacMan in the arcades was great partially because it was a reason to leave the house, meet people, compete, and most importantly you couldn't play it for all eternity since you needed money for every game.
Playing PacMan now either as a flash game, mobile game or or as a download game for either PC or one of the consoles lets you play until you get bored. There will always be someone better than you so you're not likely to hit the global score board and if you do you can't brag about it to those you beat. This was somewhat off my topic, but my point is. If games were to spike interest each game had to be new, interesting and good. Nintendo chose not to release Super Mario Bros. 2 because it was too similar to the first one since they were in actual danger of failing as a company.
These days the companies are able to make games all the time because their budgets are bigger and they know there's a huge interest in games. No matter how bad they are some will buy it for a familiar name. I am not saying that this means there are less good games, there's simply more games and less quality. there are probably more good games now than 20 years ago, but they drown in the endless piles of big titles in making and recent releases. Of course, some of those are good too.
In short, games aren't getting worse, but we only remember the good old games since the bad old games are forgotten. Erased from our memories by time.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Nah - there are good games then, and there are good games now. We just, looking back, have the tendency to conflate entire half-decades and only remember the good stuff from them. This is the year of Minecraft, Skyrim, Witcher 2, Deus Ex 3, Portal 2, Skyward Sword, Arkham City, and Mass Effect 3. I think a strong majority of those (and certainly all of those that are out now) are future classics.

 

[Matterer]

Games are getting better, a lot better. The reson it may seem that games are getting worse is because that years in the past have gone buy with only a few good games per year, whereas games of that quality are a common thing now. The difference is the cumulative amount of good games in the past is far more the the good games that are recent, obviously. What open world games of the past are better than fallout 3 or oblivion, what strategy games are better than SC2 or Civ V, what (multiplayer) shooters are better than Battlefield BC 2 or Halo 3, what stealth games are better than Archam Asylam, what fighting games of the past are better than Mortal Kombat or Super Street Fighter 4. Noone can say that there isnt any variety either with the rise of indie games. So ya, games are most definitly getting better.

 

[jamesworkshop]

Bioshock
mass effect 2
Amnesia the dark decent
crysis

or

No I don't think games are getting worse, far more variety, far more technical mastery (art assest, voicer work)

 

[Sean951]

I think it definitely depends on the game and genre. For RTS, I wasn't even 10 when many of the "hard core" games came out, but I would definitely take StarCraft II over StarCraft because 1) Single player gained quite a few units and a much better campaign structure 2) I REALLY like some of the new units, like Banshees and 3) Units actually look like what they were meant to. Firebats always reminded me on hedgehogs and now actually look like they would be an imposing figure on the battlefield. I am also a big Total War fan and have been since Rome, and I like where they are going with the game as a whole. That said, Rome is my favorite time period so I'm anxiously awaiting Rome II.

Shooters on the other hand... Well, I was a fan of Perfect Dark and GoldenEye, so I am a little disappointed in many modern shooters. I don't want realism, I want to be a walking armory capable of bringing down hell on small armies with amazing guns like the Super Dragon, or taking on the legions of hell in Painkiller with my rocket launcher/chain gun. Now it's 2 guns and grenades taking on terrorists/Russians.

 

[Icehearted]

State of gaming is worse than it's been, but then it was only better for a while. We hit a sort of golden age approximately 15 years ago, and left it behind about 4-5 years ago as game developers strove to release less quality content and more commercially viable content.

When gaming was more about innovation, new ideas to support new ways of connecting us to their story, their world, their puzzles, or whatever, it was a brave and exciting new world. These days however it's either "dig our cool new facial capturing/3D/motion sensing gimmick" or "the game is coming in a month, and we're already well underway on making a lot of DLC that could have been included, but really we want more money (and who doesn't?)"

The concern is less getting money as a byproduct of making a quality game and more about money first, quality later. Patches for games that arrived months ago prove this point all too readily. This isn't genre specific either. One simply needs to perceive gaming as an industry and see where the industry places precedence. Unfinished, barely workable games (consider Fallout: New Vegas) or games with cut content becoming DLC, and everything must now have added fees (my personal favorite), demonstrate that the state of gaming is bad compared to just one console cycle before, when the aforementioned three issues didn't even really exist for the most part.

PC gaming also fits, but there's still a more consumer-centric nature to it, so it still feels a lot like it has for the most part.

My 2¢

 

[linkvegeta]

Honestly I point fingers at EA and publishers like them that try and pump out a game per year. that heavily reduces quality in a game and make me very sad. there is the occasional gem though.

Yeah, that never happened *COUGH*MEGAMAN*COUGH*

Gaming is getting better. Every problem people think is new has been around forever, and we've pretty much cured or promply killed off earlier problems.

Megaman was a bad series. you just helped me prove my point.

 

[funguy2121]

I find it quite disappointing these days that multiplayer trumps over gameplay and narrative. In general it seems like some companies at the moment do the following : copy and paste, set pieces here, have a slow motion bit here oh lets have an on-rail section everybody loves that. In my opinion, I think if companies want to focus on multiplayer then just do multiplayer and leave campaign and narrative alone. Does anyone remember Dead Space 2 and Bioshock 2's multiplayer? My thoughts exactly.

Well, let's look a little closer at the examples you gave.

You feel that the industry as a whole has the view that multiplayer (which is itself a form of gameplay quite valued by many consumers) > gameplay and narrative. So I would suggest that you play Double Dragon, both single and multiplayer versions, and then play one of the Call of Duty games, again single and multi. If you mean that many developers are shortening/cheapening the single player campaigns and focusing more on multi, I think you have a point. However, it's more a trend than an overarching industry change; it won't last forever. If you want to expedite the reversal of this ugly development, you have two options available. Though I don't think it would do much good, you could join up with a whole lot of other gamers and find one or two really good writers and contact the companies responsible (it helps if you haven't previously likened said companies to a drooling monster in an online forum). What I know will happen is that gamers will vote with their dollar, and if some of these companies don't reverse these trends, they'll lose those gamers to companies who are eager to exploit the fact that they're not giving their consumers their due.

Narrative? No, I don't think narrative is getting worse in games. I actually cringed a couple of times when I last played Resident Evil 4 or a Sands of Time game. When I first played it, I remember how superior I thought it was at the time to a lot of other games I had played. The aforementioned Double Dragon is another great example. The manual tells you that Jimmy kidnapped your girlfriend, and then you see a cartoon with a Denise Richards forehead punch her out and run off with her. THAT IS ALL THE STORY YOU GET, AND THIS TREND PRETTY MUCH PERSISTED THROUGHOUT THE 8- AND 16-BIT ERAS. So no, games haven't atrophied in the area of storytelling.

I'd say it's not nostalgia talking, but cynicism. It's the same thing that makes people say "The world's so fucked up now" or "People used to know how to treat one another," referring of course to a time when minorities couldn't vote and women, homosexuals and children had no rights at all.

Enjoy your HD console and the overwhelming wealth of choices you have at your disposal. The disappointments may be in the limelight more, but there's still roughly as many shit games and as many great games. The difference is that, as has always been true, developers simply have more tools, more ways of making a great experience better.

 

[MikailCaboose]

Well, nostalgia does seem to have a large impact. And while Yahtzee does bring up glitches, and how old cartridge games didn't have as many, that's also because the games are doing a lot more than the old games were.

At the same time, you do have Pokemon which does seem to be suffering "Sequel-itis"
Then there are games that just feel like the graphics were the main driving force of the project. So, it's pretty much a mixed bag.

 

[WhyBotherToTry]

No, as technology improves, games get better. Think about it - when you say 'in the past', you're thinking of a whole range of games from the 60s to around 2005. Comparing that to a period of 5 years, which STILL has awesome games in, is just unfair.

That's a fair point, but gaming isn't all about technology. Story standards have declined a lot I feel, especially in mainstream titles. The technology impresses, but the story is what really makes the experience, as the technology that powers today's big sellers will be redundant in a few years' time, but a well constructed story will live on considerably longer.