

 When did video games become so boring? About 1998 - barry-cotter
http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2009/06/when-did-video-games-become-so-boring.html

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electromagnetic
I used to be a video game reviewer, and from my experience there are just as
many awesome games being released year after year as there has ever been. The
thing is, it's become so easy to release sheer and utter crap that it's
padding the walls in every video game store.

This happened before the NES, which cause the video game industry to bubble
and crash. I wouldn't be surprised if the market for video games bubbles and
crashes again, because there's simply way too many games being released that
the average person has no clue what's good and what's bad.

Then there's the problem that games that are utter crap and repetitive
imitations are given absolutely massive advertising budgets, yet great games
are given virtually no advertising. Then there's all the rush job releases
that damage reputable games.

I understand why he believes video games have degraded in quality, however
from my experience as a video game reviewer and personally having grown up
with NES, video games are better today. There's a bigger genre selection, more
replayability.

TES4: Oblivion was a piss poor sequel to Morrowind. Not only was the story
atrocious, (for those who haven't played it) the story is announced in all of
a 5 second speech during the tutorial. I'm not saying it's easily explained,
the story is literally a straight line from the Emperor to the guys
illegitimate son who has to kill the bad guy, there's no twists or turns along
the way. In Morrowind it took like half the game before you found out where
the story was going, but it involved twists regularly. This is not to mention
that when Oblivion released, it was utterly impossible to play as any
character type except a fighting one, as due to the bad guys levelling up with
you the game became too hard unless you was wearing heavy armour with amazing
skills. If you was a thief you could be easily killed by a rat when you hit
level 15, where as the rat was easy pickings when you was level 1.

As a reviewer I got to play games that were sheer amazing, like Psychonauts,
that didn't get picked up by the public. Then I got stuck with games like Full
Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, which is basically ripping off Brothers in
Arms, yet the squad AI is so appalling your team mates would run out in front
of a tank. It wasn't original, it was an insult to the original FSW and it was
an insult to the customers because it was hugely advertised in the gaming mags
because it was the sequel to FSW.

There's been lots of great games in the past few years. GTA III->IV, Fable
1/2, Fallout 3 (although lacking the feel of Fallout 1/2), Mass Effect, The
Movies, Black & White 1/2, Sims 1->3, the Total War franchise, Half-Life
franchise including Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and Portal, Mario Galaxy,
the X franchise.

I really don't see how you can think games haven't improved since the days of
Megaman where there was absolutely no story, you just shot things and ran
right.

I now find much less entertainment in video games than when I was a child,
although this is the product of ageing and not of deteriorating video game
quality. I'd rather do more productive things with my time and now I rarely
play games even in my free time. However, I can still pick a game off the
shelf that'll be great from any store just through instinct.

~~~
Goladus
_I really don't see how you can think games haven't improved since the days of
Megaman where there was absolutely no story, you just shot things and ran
right._

Well, I think that is one of the points. The emphasis on story has distracted
from gameplay details somewhat. "Just shot things and ran right" is really
terrible way to describe how Megaman was actually played. Despite the author's
apparent lack of experience with modern games, but the approach of evaluating
what you actually do while playing and how enjoyable it is, is worthwhile.

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DannoHung
Complete and utter bullshit. Games have gotten better if anything.

You may not remember the absolute deluge of games that were utter tripe on the
SNES and Genesis (and N64 and PSX), but I do... oh how I do. I think I bought
half of them.

Also, the real change in terms of difficulty... was that games added different
difficulty LEVELS. Go play Halo 3 on Legendary by yourself and tell me it's a
walk in the park.

~~~
amalcon
Sturgeon's Law somewhat applies here. 90% of everything is crap. We need to
look at the best-in-class entries to see what's actually good.

In my mind, games really peaked in 1998. They were innovating back then.
StarCraft and Half-Life are still near the top of their respective classes
(RTS, horror-themed shooter). We also had Baldur's Gate (singlehandedly
revived the PC RPG genre), Thief (basically invented stealth in first-person
games), Starsiege Tribes (popularized the sort of role-based team gameplay
that's so popular in multiplayer games today), and Pokemon (say what you will,
it popularized the so-called "collecting" RPGs), among others -- '98 was a
_very_ good year for games.

Compare 2008. Spore and Assassin's Creed are the big "original" properties
here. For me, though, these don't make me think of innovative gameplay: they
make me think of DRM.

There are a number of other good games, but they're mostly sequels, prequels,
and spinoffs.

~~~
zitterbewegung
What about world of goo or portal?

~~~
amalcon
You're right, I'd forgotten Portal came out in '08, and forgotten entirely
about World of Goo.

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mynameishere
SMB 3 had to have been the easiest game in the world to beat. How could he not
beat it? Why is he talking as if he's an expert?

At any rate, it's pretty clear that games have approached reality through
time, simply because they _can_ , and since reality is uniform, games have
become uniform. Look at the old Atari games, and it's like a gallery of bad
LSD trips.

<http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/atari2600.htm>

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bena
Here's a summary.

"I was 10 years old in 1998 and the Super Nintendo was the funnest evah."

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MikeMacMan
It's definitely a generational thing. I hear what the author is saying as
we're probably the same age (original Ninja Gaiden is my all time favorite
game). As others have said, though, you don't remember how much crap you had
to wade through on the NES. For every Faxanadu, there were a dozen Indiana
Jones & the Temple of Dooms. For every Ninja Gaiden or Bad Dudes, there were
twenty Fist of the North Stars. It's like thinking that in the 70s on the
radio, it was all Led Zeppelin and no Foghat.

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tophat02
I don't agree with the author, but games DID get a little less interesting
around that time, but the reason was actually 3dfx.

In my opinion, fixed function triangle rasterizers killed a lot of the wonder
and excitement that used to come with each game release. Before that, it was
thrilling to see what people like Carmack were going to come up with next.

Hope is not lost, though. One word: Larrabee

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GeneralMaximus
I used to love video games when I first got my own PC. In fact, I got into
programming just so I could build my own games (the fact that I never even
tried is a completely different story).

Some of my favorite games used to be the tycoon games. I can clearly remember
gems like Caesar 3, Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2, SimCity, Civ3 etc. Now, the
focus has shifted to storylines and graphics. No, I don't want to waste 15
minutes of my gaming time looking at your silly cutscene. I don't want to
waste an hour getting used to your horribly complex interface. All I want to
do is kick some alien ass, build a theme park, kill some Romans, conquer the
world, do whatever and then get back to work.

Although I have stopped keeping up with developments in the gaming world, but
I do look at a few games from time to time. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 has
fireworks and what not. The newer version of SimCity allows you to drive
through the town. Those are nice add-ons, but they add nothing of value to the
gameplay. The new Civilization looks so complex that I gave up on it after
about 10 minutes of play.

Bioshock? Crysis? Portal? Gimme a break. I, for one, didn't find anything new
or innovative about them. But then again, I only watched the videos, read the
reviews and looked at forum posts discussing those games. I'm sure I'm not the
best judge.

~~~
Shorel
Portal IS innovative.

You totally missed an awesome game.

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Dilpil
If anyones looking for an old school frustratingly hard yet incredibly
rewarding game, I would like to nominate ninja gaiden for the xbox. It is
incredibly hard, yet always feels fair, and rewards clever strategy rather
than /played time. I'd love to hear others recommendations for similarly hard
games.

~~~
smakz
Xbox had a couple of difficult gems. Try Gunvalkerie or Panzer Dragoon Orta on
the hardest difficulty.

I remember everyone saying Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was this massively hard game,
but I remember beating it without too many problems. It was downright easy
compared to the original Ninja Gaiden series (1-3).

~~~
Dilpil
I should append that, Ninja Gaiden Black is the one you want. The AI was
vastly improved, and the flying swallow trick (you know the one), was nerfed
intensely.

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gcv
Article summary: "Games have become easier over time to appeal to a broader
audience. Players no longer have to spend days polishing perfect timing to get
perfect moves in a side-scrolling platform game, as they formerly had to do
just to get past the first level."

Games trade off challenge and frustration. In a serious competitive pursuit,
the challenge becomes more important, as does the dedication to advance to the
next level. In video games, though, I sure don't enjoy the frustration of
playing the same battle over and over again (Baldur's Gate 2, I'm looking at
you --- so much potential, yet I can't force myself to get more than half-way
through Chapter 1).

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Goladus
The article seems rather light on cites from modern games. It's not a very
convincing case.

~~~
robryan
Sounds like the author used to be an avid gamer that has only really skimmed
over modern games.

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nutmeg
I wish I could find the comic (I think it was on salon.com) which stated that
the best things were made when you were 14. Most people feel this way about
music. It is inevitable that people feel the same about video games.

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roc
Every medium has these articles. They essentially boil down to: "everything
was cooler when this was a smaller, more dedicated crowd".

Well, guess what? There -are- still games out there for those who preferred
gaming in the 90s. They just don't line up with what's popular anymore because
the audience shifted.

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carbon8
I'm not sure how someone can say that in the era of TF2, Portal, HL2, GTA
series, WoW, Mario Galaxy, the Wii itself, etc...

Games like TF2 are difficult in a much more complex and intelligent way. It's
not just a reflex test, it involves strategy, decision-making and
coordination.

~~~
warfangle
WoW is the natural evolution of addictive gameplay with no true lasting value.
I blame the lack of decent single player RPGs recently on MMOs.

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nailer
What about Half Life? System Shock 2? Bioshock? Portal?

~~~
jcromartie
> System Shock 2

Thanks... there goes my day.

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nazgulnarsil
this just occurred to me two days ago. i realized that games became a
consumable.

~~~
bena
Became? Most games started out as consumables. Adventure wasn't made with a
mind to the future if you catch my drift.

Even several board games are made with a consumable nature. Trivial Pursuit,
for instance, will become very boring if you play long enough to have
memorized most of the cards. The only solution is to buy new packs of cards.

It's also why Starcraft still enjoys immense popularity despite being over 10
years old. The story mission is only a side note to the multiplayer aspect.
There is no answer, no pre-determined path you are taking. Any game with a
narrative and no multiplayer aspect is essential a consumable product.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
to me the difference between a consumable and other forms of entertainment is
that once you've experienced a certain aspect once you don't need to
experience it again. You can play mario 1000 times because the fundamental
action of jumping from platform to platform is _fun_. Consumable games in
contrast have many mechanics that, lacking the overall motivating factor of
advancing the experience forward, are things you would never choose to do.

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nomoresecrets
Presumably the author is unaware that people said the same thing in 1988, and
how all the new games were crap.

