Are we getting old or are videogames getting worse?

[Zima]

I feel like this thought must cross some people's minds occasionally, so if it's already been brought up, please disregard this and direct me to that post.

But if not...

Well, it's been a WHILE since I played a videogame I enjoyed. Especially a good RPG - I love RPGs. Diablo 3 had an immense hype around it, but virtually everyone I know who got it barely logs on anymore. And with good reason - it's just not as good a game as Diablo 2. Something is off. Skyrim is another example - it looks pretty, but the story lacks depth and the horrendous dialogue ruins immersion. In the MMO world, almost everything released over the past few years has been a failed attempt at a WoW clone. On the other side of the Pacific, Final Fantasy games are getting progressively worse with each release.

Most people I speak to agree, BUT - most people I speak to are in their early-mid 20's. Could it be that we're just getting old, or have emotional attachment to games from over a decade ago that clouds our judgment? Personally I find it hard to believe, but please, discuss!

[Ghost]

Games are getting worse as the market expands. More and more people are playing videogames, and when the market is mostly testosterone fueled teens all that is needed is more violence, and flashy graphics, thus the shooter games begin their rein. Storyline and getting your money's worth is gone, so sadly. My 2 cents.

[concretecavewoman]

I think

kind of sums it up, especially the Yeah I Get It factor. That said, I'm still a sucker for the loveliness of Skyrim/FF/et al.

[azsf]

gonna disagree, i think games in general are getting better. though if you find you don't enjoy games as much anymore, well that's a different argument i'd say nostalgia will play a big part in how you feel about the whole issue. but that subjective stuff aside, you can cut through your argument with one word: sequels. all the games you listed are sequels. diablo 3 is not a worse game than diablo 2, in many ways it is a lot better. but its fundamentally the same experience as diablo 2, an experience that you've relived over and over and over again. so of course diablo 3 gets boring after only one or two play throughs.

if you're playing the sequel to a game you loved to death, chances are you wont have a "better" experience with it. the only time this doesnt happen is when the sequel dramatically changes the scope or playstyle of the original (super mario bros 3). or when the original is good but not great (smash bros n64 - smash bros brawl).

if you're feeling jaded about current releases though, you can try looking at the indie market a little harder and pick up some of the more obscure stuff. extra credits has a couple of good videos on random but awesome titles.

edit! also that video is amazing! love egoraptor xD

[sumdawgtwigg]

i'd say nostalgia will play a big part in how you feel about the whole issue.

I agree with that statement. I always think the older games are better but when I go back and play them, I lose interest pretty quickly. Unless of course they are zelda

I do think games were going downhill for awhile. Now, I feel like they are starting to get a little better. Some of the creativity is coming back instead of just trying to make games look as flashy and pretty as possible. One of my favorite examples is LA Noire. It wasn't the prettiest game by a long shot but it was really new and creative.

[Lachy]

I certainly feel they aren't as good as they used to be. Well, they're better in every aspect, graphics, sounds, mechanics, etc, except enjoyment.

Good games of somewhat recent times, for me, are Batman Arkham Assylum (Arkham city, no) and Red Dead Redemption. Both games I wasn't expecting to like, but found I loved them.

The most disapointing game of recent times, again, for me, was Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo is now dead to me).

Just meh games, Gears of War 3; Batman Arkham City; Mass Effect 3 (this was almost a good game); Diablo 3.

Yep, sequal-itis is going on.

For refference, I am a jaded 32 years old now.

OH almost forgot, Portal 2, awesome! Though not as good as the original ...

[Lachy]

I'll add, while most games now are mediocre, or crap, the great games are fantastic! When they get it right, boy do they get it right!

[joeyb]

I don't play many video games because I can't get into most of them. I have been playing Diablo 3 a lot, though, and I love it. I've asked people at work why they aren't playing it as much and some were frustrated with the launch/inferno. The bigger reason, though, is that basically everyone plays through a game and moves onto the next game. Back in the day, you got a game and played it for years, or at least months. Now, "epic" games take 150 hours of playtime.

As a software developer, I'd say that the real reason that games are getting worse is that their complexity requires more and more time, which means more and more money. Sure, you've got frameworks and engines that you can use, but you're talking about tens or hundreds of people working on a game for years. Then, they release the game for $60, sell tens or hundreds of thousands of copies, and barely make their money back. People don't want to pay more for their games. Without that, you are going to get less content per game. Unless, of course, you have someone like Blizzard who has WoW subscriptions to bank roll the production of Diablo 3 and millions of copies guaranteed for sale on the first day to make profit on right away, or they start offering DLC, which people seem to hate more than paying more up front.

[azsf]

that really only explains the big budget AAA games though. there are hundreds of indie developers and thousands of indie titles, and even more iOS games. it's not hard to find quality content. i agree that people tend to move onto the next game pretty quickly, but im not usually one of them. im still playing skate and mirrors edge (the first games i got on my xbox360 some 4/5 years ago?) and i still enjoy them. people played the hell out of minecraft and skyrim. even puzzle games like angry birds, peggle, world of goo etc still have people tapping away on a daily basis.

[Raincloak]

I wouldn't discount the nostalgia factor (having grown up without a NES, I *still* don't get what's so great about Final Fantasy 1), but games ARE different than they used to be. I don't play nearly enough current games to judge industry trends, but I think games haven't been "better" for about 5, 7 years ... which means they're overdue for a revolutionary one. I read that game developers are starting to spend more on real writers, which makes me hopeful that storylines and dialogue will continue to improve. I'm one of those people who really likes games with depth and plot.

I don't think the problem with bad games is a symptom of the industry catering too much to pubescent males (or more accurately, to young men with cash to spend). I think it's the opposite: developers are aiming for the widest possible audience nowadays, and so they make their games bland in hopes of appealing to more people. Video games used to be only for geeks, and so they used to have geek appeal: they were a little bit edgy and weird, they had in-jokes, the best ones were tightly focused, and they weren't trying to impress everyone from soccer moms to toddlers. They aimed for a niche.

But nowadays mainstream video games are, well, mainstream. They're a multibillion dollar industry, and they are no longer just for geeks. Notice how many girly, fluffy games Nintendo is putting out? Notice how Microsoft is changing the Xbox from a hardcore first-person shooter platform (eg Halo) to a "fun for the whole family" deal with Kinect games? They're marketing to people who don't know to expect quality in a game, and they're cutting corners. Either that, or the kinds of games we like are simply becoming an endangered species. It doesn't help that mainstream marketers confuse cutting-edge graphics and technological gimmicks for "quality," when a real game doesn't even need those.

I've been to PAX several different years, and if that's any indication of the pulse, I have noticed a trend: it's way less geeky and way, WAY more commercialized now. The dealer rooms used to be full of indie games and craft vendors; now they're flashy Las Vegas-style exhibitions for the latest MMOs. Several years ago I found a merchant at PAX with a miniature "dungeon" in the form of a big cardboard box. Last year, it was all TV screens with blaring trailers, and expensive life-size statues of dragons and cyborgs.

There were plenty of new games that were obviously aimed at girls, too, which there didn't used to be, because (gasp!) schoolgirls and soccer moms actually spend money on electronic toys and view Internet ads now. Maybe that's why "Skyward Sword" was a disappointment; was it too girly? I haven't played it yet, but I'm hearing rumors along those lines. (I'm female and I like a mindless round of MarioKart as much as the next girl, but when it comes to RPGs, my taste runs a little more grown-up. My favorite "Zelda" game was Majora's Mask, but I'm not gonna hold my breath for another one like that...)

[Zima]

Well, after reading all the responses, two things stand out as biggest potential reasons for what's happening:

1 - Games are becoming mainstream. This is true - I never liked anything "mainstream", whether I knew it was "mainstream" or not. I guess I just see things a bit differently than an average person - I guess I see things more like a "nerd", which explains why older games appealed to me. That, and from the developers' standpoint, trying to please *everyone* makes it hard to do a good job at pleasing everyone.

On the other hand, the dialogue of Skyrim is so horrendous it makes me wonder how ANYONE could play it...but people *do* play it, and few are complaining about the dialogue, so I guess overly simplistic dialogue is could be part of catering to the mainstream crowd. '

2 - Nostalgia plays a role. Although...well, I've replayed games like FF7, 8, 9, Diablo 2, Morrowind, and others when I was 20-22. Sure, it takes time to get re-adjusted to the outdated graphics, but after that, they were still *excellent* games. It's tough to say just how much my attachment to them really clouds my judgment. Then there's the occasional good game that's recent, like Dragon Age: Origins. The game is amazing, and there's no nostalgia there. Though I've got a friend who's your typical short attention span hack'n'slash/FPS only guy, and he found it to be too slow to get into - I guess this is part of the "mainstream" issue - your average person wants instant gratification rather than depth.

[Atalan]

There is a another trend that is affecting your enjoyment games (well at least, it's affecting my enjoyment). The move away from "Nintendo-hard". During the era of the NES and SNES beating a game was freaking hard. I still haven't beaten Sonic the Hedgehog 2 without using a port with save files. I beat the main storyline of Skyrim shockingly quickly without much muss or fuss. Then I upped the difficulty level and did the same thing. I maxed out the difficulty and it became a little challenging, but didn't have that one mistake and you have to start way the eff back/over thing from earlier games that made them so challenging, frustrating, and rewarding when you got a little bit further.

[Zima]

There is a another trend that is affecting your enjoyment games (well at least, it's affecting my enjoyment). The move away from "Nintendo-hard". During the era of the NES and SNES beating a game was freaking hard. I still haven't beaten Sonic the Hedgehog 2 without using a port with save files. I beat the main storyline of Skyrim shockingly quickly without much muss or fuss. Then I upped the difficulty level and did the same thing. I maxed out the difficulty and it became a little challenging, but didn't have that one mistake and you have to start way the eff back/over thing from earlier games that made them so challenging, frustrating, and rewarding when you got a little bit further.

I agree with this, too.

Skyrim was kind of a joke - though I didn't beat it. By the time I reached Winterhold, the dialogue and storyline drove me to uninstall it and never look back. But the difficulty was just not there. Though I suppose this could be part of appealing to the mainstream as well - kids these days wouldn't want to put in too much effort to, say, beat some boss.

The Witcher(I and II) was a nice exception to this, and it was the one other recent game aside from Dragon Age:Origins that I liked. But, that may be why no one I know has actually played it

[Mad Rocker]

I felt this way after playing Metal Gear Solid 4. Even though it's good, it seemed like a bit of a let down after 1,2and3.

I sometimes feel that the PS2 era produced far better games than the PS3 era. But then there are games like Fallout3, Red Dead Redemption, Alpha Protocol (despite the meh reviews, I liked it), Mass Effect 2, Infamous, Prototype and a fair few others that I have really enjoyed. When I hooked up my PS2 a few weeks ago and had a play through some of my games, I was quite quick to become frustrated by loading times, having to clear space on the memory card, etc. I was also a bit disappointed by some of the games I remember enjoying.

On the flip side I also played Civ4 again and it was as immersive as I remember it and all its predecessors being. Same with the Red Alert 2. The more recent installments in these franchises seem much worse except graphics-wise.

[Raikas]

Most people I speak to agree, BUT - most people I speak to are in their early-mid 20's. Could it be that we're just getting old, or have emotional attachment to games from over a decade ago that clouds our judgment? Personally I find it hard to believe, but please, discuss!

I don't know if it's nostalgia, but I think we're more likely to remember the good stuff from 5, 10, 20 years ago than the stuff that was just mediocre, so if you play a crap game today you're probably more likely to compare it to the best of the past rather than to the worst of the past.

Games are getting worse as the market expands. More and more people are playing videogames, and when the market is mostly testosterone fueled teens all that is needed is more violence, and flashy graphics, thus the shooter games begin their rein. Storyline and getting your money's worth is gone, so sadly. My 2 cents.

I'd agree that the number of bad games has gone up with market expansion, but I think the percentage of the good to the crap has probably stayed the same. It might be harder to sort the good from the mediocre when there's so much more to dig through, but I don't think that means that the games are honestly any worse. Personally, I've certainly found more games that I consider worth finishing (or worth a serious time commitment) in the past 5 years than I did in the ten years before that.

I agree with this, too.

Skyrim was kind of a joke - though I didn't beat it. By the time I reached Winterhold, the dialogue and storyline drove me to uninstall it and never look back. But the difficulty was just not there. Though I suppose this could be part of appealing to the mainstream as well - kids these days wouldn't want to put in too much effort to, say, beat some boss.

The Witcher(I and II) was a nice exception to this, and it was the one other recent game aside from Dragon Age:Origins that I liked. But, that may be why no one I know has actually played it

Even though they're all classed as RPGs, I don't think Skyrim is meant to be the same kind of game as the Witcher or Dragon Age games - all the complaints about characterization and dialogue and combat mechanics are fair, but at it's core I don't think it's trying to be great at any of those things - it's meant to be open and pretty, and at that level it succeeds (or at least delivers what it's promised).

[Mad Rocker]

Even though they're all classed as RPGs, I don't think Skyrim is meant to be the same kind of game as the Witcher or Dragon Age games - all the complaints about characterization and dialogue and combat mechanics are fair, but at it's core I don't think it's trying to be great at any of those things - it's meant to be open and pretty, and at that level it succeeds (or at least delivers what it's promised).

I think this is a good point. The Witcher and the Dragon Age games did have much better characters in general than Skyrim does (and the followers you obtained in the latter didn't ruin the experience so much), but there was no trekking through the wilderness and stopping to admire the view.

The quests do get a bit mundane though. Obviously most RPGs are 'fetch or kill', but fun characters can really help make them more interesting. Skyrim lacked them.

[Rhiarti]

Having seen what goes on the other side of the fence, I think part of the problem is that big, sexy games take big, sexy budgets to make... and that inevitably means corporate intervention of some form or another. Of course, it's possible I'm just horribly jaded by the experience! But certainly what I saw was an awful lot of exceptionally talented people being effectively gagged and/or blocked by bloated, uncreative middle management structures, leaving them no choice but to give up or strike out on their own, at which point we come back to the big, sexy budget issue...

It's a relatively young industry, though, and there's still cool stuff being made or attempted. I'm sure it'll find some happy medium eventually!

[Zorch]

I feel like this thought must cross some people's minds occasionally, so if it's already been brought up, please disregard this and direct me to that post.

But if not...

Well, it's been a WHILE since I played a videogame I enjoyed. Especially a good RPG - I love RPGs. Diablo 3 had an immense hype around it, but virtually everyone I know who got it barely logs on anymore. And with good reason - it's just not as good a game as Diablo 2. Something is off. Skyrim is another example - it looks pretty, but the story lacks depth and the horrendous dialogue ruins immersion. In the MMO world, almost everything released over the past few years has been a failed attempt at a WoW clone. On the other side of the Pacific, Final Fantasy games are getting progressively worse with each release.

Most people I speak to agree, BUT - most people I speak to are in their early-mid 20's. Could it be that we're just getting old, or have emotional attachment to games from over a decade ago that clouds our judgment? Personally I find it hard to believe, but please, discuss!

Computer games, particularly RPG's, are definitely getting worse - at least with respects to my personal taste.

Much of it has to do with what I would call "Console-ization" - "streamlining" would be a euphemistic way to put it - but really, so many games have oversimplified gameplay to such an excessive extent - in many cases due in part to the transition to console-style gaming with fewer controls(which results in fewer usable skills, etc.) compared with a keyboard, etc. Skyrim is a prime example of this - the combat is horribly oversimplified, and the dialogue/plot development is extremely weak other than a couple sections of the game. Diablo 3 is also pretty bad in this respect. On the other(good) side, I am(slowly) playing the Witcher 2 right now - which seems to be much better than average than most current games in the above respects - interesting plots and subplots, and combat that has a decent amount of complexity available if one chooses.

I love complexity(both in terms of plot and in terms of gameplay) in games - and fewer and fewer games are delivering in those respects these days. Games are becoming too simplistic, and they bore me.

Concluding thought: Baldur's Gate 2 was an amazing game.

[Raikas]

Skyrim is a prime example of this - the combat is horribly oversimplified, and the dialogue/plot development is extremely weak other than a couple sections of the game.

While I totally agree true that the story/combat/characters are weak, it's just as true that Skyrim isn't a departure from the older Elder Scrolls games - and they go back to the mid-90s. If anything, the TES series is an example of a series that's stayed fairly true to its roots.

I think the most fair comparisons need to be between games that are trying to do the same thing - and maybe the diversity in titles now makes that a little more complicated than it might have been in the past (when a shooter, an RPG, an adventure game, a fighting game might each have fallen into a narrower category), but I think that's actually a good thing in general since it allows a fan of specific sub-elements to find games that focus on those elements (so within RPGs, if you want an exploration-based experience you can play Skyrim, if you want a strong narrative you can play The Witcher, if you want a character-driven experience you can play Dragon Age, if you want a combat-based experience you can play Diablo, if you want to dungeon crawl old-school you can play a Dragon Quest remake, and so on).

[azsf]

raikas hit the nail on the head here: you only remember the good games, not the mountains of shovelware that have existed since the atari. there are more games available now then ever, if you can't find games you enjoy, you're not looking hard enough. period. playing only a handfull of AAA games every year and lamenting that video games are shit now is just lazy.

things like "nintendo-hard", or "weak-dialogue" arguments are strawmen at best. making the barrier to entry (or barrier to progress) lower is not a bad thing. and do you think classics like sonic or mario were renowned for their amazing storylines? hell, even the earlier RPGs like zelda and final fantasy have ultra simplistic storylines and even more basic dialogue. compare that to games from the last 5 years (like bioshock, fallout 3, uncharted 2 & 3, mass effect 2, arkhum asylum) which created some of the most memorable characters and storylines ever. you can even take off the "fucking COD is bullshit" blinkers for a second and realise that millions of people feel the same way about soap that you did about aeris.

oh and if you want complexity in games, then why aren't playing something like starcraft 2, LoL or DOTA 2 (at high level)? or hell, street fighter 4 for that matter?

modern technology means more variety in games; in terms of gameplay mechanics, character design, level design, and story telling. we're at a point now where you can go to school to learn about game design, and it's taken freaking seriously. saying these people can't make a decent game is idiotic.

if you don't enjoy games as much as you used to, that's your problem, not the industry's. and if you want to keep saying games suck now, you need to start going a little bit further into your analysis than "the gameplay/storyline/dialogue sucked". why did it suck? why didn't you enjoy it? explore the issue properly and with depth.

[azsf]

this is part of the "mainstream" issue - your average person wants instant gratification rather than depth.

kids these days wouldn't want to put in too much effort to, say, beat some boss.

and this, this is just plain wrong. firstly, kids are the ones with time to sink into games, and often do. it's the mature gamers who don't have time to drop 3 hours into a final fantasy style boss fight, only to fuck up once and have to start all over again. but more importantly, people like to feel like their actions have an effect on the game they're playing. running around spamming your attack button on a boss just isn't much fun, unless more shit is happening to keep you involved. a good example of this is God of War (specifically referring to 3 here). In order to defeat a boss, you'll often have to defeat small segments of him; cut this part open, kill these adds, move to this area. the game keeps you moving, keeps you progressing, even through the longer fights. the extended version of that is WoW raids, especially once they shifted to 25mans. boss mechanics required a lot of group cohesion, effective damage output and management, and everyone felt important and necessary.

on the subject of challenge (or difficulty), the balance is between the player feeling powerful and feeling powerless. you need to have things that inspire the player, moments where they can kick so much ass it's not funny. then you also need to have parts that are threatening; the risk of meaningful death/loss. bioshock does this well with it's big daddies. heavy rain is my favourite example though, as the game easily sweeps you up into each scene and you never know when a wrong move might take the character out of the game for good.

[Rorschach]

I can honestly say that yes, they are getting worse. The most objective test for this is to play new next-gen console games as well as older games you've never played before, and you see a marked difference. What we're seeing now is the same thing that happened to video games back in 1983, with the market saturated, but with repetitive themes and gameplay. When you look at the best eras for gaming - once the 2600 hit its stride, when Nintendo blew everyone away with the NES, when the competition between SNES and Genesis/Megadrive was extremely fierce, etc. - you see a lot of innovation, stuff that made you say "I've never seen that in a video game before!" While nowadays there's innovation, you don't see it as much, or it gets used as a bell and/or whistle on an otherwise bland, mediocre, or terrible game. I see a lot more innovation in the indie gaming scene, and I'm sure that the big players notice it - a lot of new and interesting indie games have found themselves on Live Arcade and the Virtual Console. But, sadly, GameStop's walls are all mostly plastered with what the game makers know will sell - bland war games and sports games. I do enjoy both, but I see them getting more and more boring as time goes by. It's honestly the same problem with modern literature - sometime in the 20th century publishers shifted more towards genre fiction and books that follow "what works". One could make a case for Call of Duty and its entire genre being the video game equivalent of Twilight and the many tween vampire books that followed...

[Raikas]

I can honestly say that yes, they are getting worse. The most objective test for this is to play new next-gen console games as well as older games you've never played before, and you see a marked difference.

What objective differences are you basing that judgement on? What types of games are you comparing? How are you defining "innovation"?

One could make a case for Call of Duty and its entire genre being the video game equivalent of Twilight and the many tween vampire books that followed...

And yet people don't generally claim that the existence of Twilight means that literature as a whole has degraded.

[azsf]

Call of Duty and its entire genre being the video game equivalent of Twilight and the many tween vampire books that followed

i can't facepalm enough. this is the only game you mentioned in your rant, and you couldn't have picked worse to "make your case" (which you didn't , btw). the COD series does many, many things right. you might not enjoy FPS, or maybe you have an issue with the multiplayer thing, but taken as the game that it is, COD is brilliant. It ties in huge action set pieces, vibrant level design, innovative and engaging mechanics (can't remember the name of the weapon, but the door explosive -> charge in combo for raiding buildings was awesome) and game-changing plot elements; namely the nuke in the first and "no russian" in the second.

i'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest you probably didn't even play COD, just hear a lot of other armchair professionals putting it down and decided it would make you look cool to act all above it. it's not akin to twilight, it's not akin to transformers. if you want to compare it to a movie, it's the avengers. big action, well crafted characters, engaging plot, fun and engaging play.

a lot of new and interesting indie games have found themselves on Live Arcade and the Virtual Console

so play those games. go and buy them and encourage their developers to make more games like them.

[kombimankenny]

Things that will always get progressively "worse" as I get progressively older: Games, Music, Movies, and Those Damn Young People