Hey guys. Got a new blog for you all:
http://www.invisiblegamer.net/2012/0...f-milk-crates/
A bit heavy handed, but hey...we're older gamers and damnit, it's our prerogative to be grumpy.
Hey guys. Got a new blog for you all:
http://www.invisiblegamer.net/2012/0...f-milk-crates/
A bit heavy handed, but hey...we're older gamers and damnit, it's our prerogative to be grumpy.
I don't remember milk crates, but otherwise yeah, all true.
One myth I hear a lot from younger gamers is that gaming has always been about riding on big-name franchises, similar to the endless Maddens and Calls of Duty of today. I don't know where these people are coming from: the NES had Super Mario Bros, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Bionic Commando, Totally Rad... all brand new games, in some cases only loosely based on an arcade game that was released just a year previously. Same goes for the 16-Bit era. We had one new Zelda, one new Contra... and the invention of Sonic the Hedgehog, Aero the Acro-Bat, Lunar, Lufia, so on and so forth. The majority of titles were new things, not franchises.
Nowadays, it seems like all I ever see are sequels, and it gets depressing. Although, I know that's untrue and I can find an original game by looking elsewhere, but its just too costly.
There are hundreds of original titles released every year. You don't have to buy MEGABLOCKBUSTERAAAGAME#28347.
Very true. With 3 major consoles, atleast 2 major handhelds(and variations), pc and tons of OS games there are literally hundreds of new games that get released every single year. It's been that way for atleast the last 5 years and will continue for the foreseeable future.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
Originally Posted by THE 1 2 P
So recently I've favored the older stuff like NES and Genesis but I also pick up other old games when I find them cheap, For instance when I got my wii I started buying a ton of gamecube games, they were super cheap and just as fun then the new games and like $5. I can hardly wait for the new Nintendo system to come out so I get some good cheap wii games ( there must be a couple ).
For more modem experience I like my PC. I've been pretty happy with Valve's Steam service for all the FPS games.
Not so sure if I agree in all regards. While I do believe that the formative years of console gaming (and video gaming in general) were necessarily more innovative and experimental, I absolutely don't believe that the reliance on pre-established franchises was ever any less severe than it is today. I mean, just look at that "Nintendon't" ad in the article. It advertises *nothing* but games based on preexisting intellectual property and celebrity-endorsed sports titles. The author even brings up the Madden series specifically in the list of reasons why current generation gaming is overly derivative and inferior, yet there were *eight* Madden Football titles released for the Genesis alone, one every year, just like today.
If you want to go back even further, just think of all the innumerable direct clones and ripoffs of pioneer titles like Galaga, Space Invaders, Pac Man and, of course, Pong.
Don't get me wrong, though. I do think the article is a decent attempt at an honest explanation for a preference for older games, but my personal impression of the gaming industry of yesteryear is just drastically different. I can't recall a time when mainstream gaming wasn't plagued by lazy imitations and franchise-milking.
Maybe as the result of (just) nostalgia, my (mostly) lack of responsibility as a kid time-frame where as A kid I had fun! I am now 49 and can remember that as a child growing up in the 60s watching a LOT of TV, really Lvong TV (Batman, Dark Shadows, Godzilla, old cowboy movies, etc...) that when I transitioned into the 70s all of a sudden, now I could PLAY on a TV rather than just watch it, I could manipulate what I was watching, It was that much more phenomenal, and cooly involving: Pong!, Combat!, etc...).
I think that the older games mean so much more to me for that reason. Sort of like that very first girl friend/boy friend one had; They may not have been perfect (in our minds and hearts currently) as comparison to who we are with now, but they were the first, they were in essence nostalgically the most important in our formative years regarding relationships outside of our nuclear family.
I think older games are like that to me. New games and systems are great (some) but to me not the same in importance, personally speaking/thinking... I do not get excited finding Halo 2 when hunting for games in thrifts, garage sales, estate sales, game stores, but If I find Frogger, or Mario All Stars, or a Heavy sixer, man, that can get me so excited and happy, like a kid at Christmas morning...
p.s. I Loved the Galaga reference in Avengers.
Last edited by scaleworm; 05-20-2012 at 02:59 PM.
Game on!
I just read the blog. It is nicely written, and I agree with the way you characterize the lifecycle of today's game systems. However, I disagree with your main point; that it "wasn't the way it used to be." I'd say about 75% of the things you mentioned about the modern console cycle also apply to many generations of previous systems.
"The system launches with evolutionary new hardware, promising “immersive new experiences that would have been impossible” on previous generation hardware; a handful of rushed and bug-ridden launch games help justify the ridiculous amount of time and money you spent securing your new favorite t.v. toy."
This has always been the case. For example, the Saturn launched with some rushed games, like Clockwork Knight and Virtua Fighter.
"• Artificial shortages cooked up by marketing teams increase the perceived lustiness of the new must-have system; inflated prices on the secondary market serve only to worsen the situation."
Were there really shortages of Xbox 360s, PS3s, DS's and 3DS's? I know the Wii was hard to find for a year or so.
"• Decent-to-good games begin to show up on the market 6-8 months after launch as the hoopla dies down and retail channels are flooded with the once-elusive system; the install base begins to justify the expense of creating better games."
This has always been true.
"Nowadays, there’s so much cross pollination of titles between platforms that the very existence of two platforms as similar as the PS3 and Xbox 360 seems ludicrous"
Multi-platform releases have happened since the 16 bit era. In some cases, it was hard to tell the difference between the competing releases.
Basically, I think the cycles of today's systems are very much like those of the past, it's just the numbers are larger: more people playing, longer lifecycles, and longer development periods for games. I'm not trying to bash your blog; it was a nice change of pace from the "2d graphics" are better argument that many old school gamers make.
Last edited by Orion Pimpdaddy; 05-20-2012 at 09:38 PM.
My Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/GamingTheSystems/featured
I think alot of us hit that wall eventually where new stuff seems either too derivative or too weird/off-putting/offensive for us to maintain interest. So we retreat into nostalgia, shaking our fist at the kids on our lawn like Cranky Kong.
Or maybe that's just me.
There are hundreds of really good quality retro games out there that stand the test of time, out of the tens of thousands of retro games. The graphics are of course far more basic than modern titles, however were innovative, fun and still give great gameplay. Gameplay is after all what you play games for. Modern games are as much shovelware as always have been however there are very few titles these days that will stand any test of time - look at your game collection for Wii, 360, Xbox, PS3; and think "in a year's time, will I play that again" - bet the answer is "no" - that's the point.
Retro games are quality still, easy to get hold of, cheap to buy too; and give good honest gameplay and variety new titles don't. With most modern titles, I think the buyer tends to feel a bit ripped off, spending £30-£40 for a game that only keeps their interest for a matter of a week or two, if that!
Interesting piece. Got some thoughts on some points:
"Publishers, now beholden to investors with deeper pockets than Donald Trump, resort to chicanery to ensure maximum profitability: re-packaging the same game with a different title (Modern Warfare, Madden, “New” Super Mario Bros)"
While the investors side probably wasn't as big back then and there wasn't as much "name milking" as there is now, you did get a lot of genre milking which can be seen as being just as bad. Yes there's Super Mario Bros. but look, there's a bunch of other run/jump/bop games out there to the point that mags like VG&CE were thinking that gaming was starting to go down the toilet. Or look at the old Space Invaders slide n' shoot-that game spawned a ton of clones with their own twists. And the fighting games of the 90's...oh man...the sheer number of fighting games. Or on PC the Real Time Strategy explosion after Warcraft hit it big or worse yet, the Deer Hunter clones (shudder).
All in all, I think it's about even if you compare these concepts.
"Sure, video games has always been a business – you can’t make games without money – but it used to be a business in which game publishers competed with other game publishers to make better games. "
And that's different today how? I think it's more on the lines of trying to get a decent game out based on the budget and talent you have available. There were a LOT of games back in the 8-bit/16 bit days that were just plain average. Not that it's bad, just doesn't hang up on the pillars that such games as Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, Streets of Rage and such sat on.
Today I think there's less tolerance for "average", or at least that's what it seems like in some big forums and review sites on the Internet.
"And whichever side of the debate they landed on, gamers won, because great games appeared five, six, seven times a month, meaning they never ran out of titles to play or brag about to their friends."
Like above, that's different today how? And are we counting on a single system or multiple? Where I lived, I didn't get to see that many titles as the stores didn't carry near as much as they do today. K-Mart carried maybe 10 titles in the early NES days. A local chain store called Prange Way had maybe 15 and when the Genesis came out there were maybe 8 titles that maybe grew to 10 over time. When Wal-Mart came to town they had roughly 10-15 per system (depending on popularity) in the early 16 bit days.
And what happened to the titles that were already on the store shelves?
As a whole, like others said, not much has really changed in the core of the business. The only real difference is we're able to hear about the things that happen behind closed doors with up-to-the minute news sites, blogs and forums.
I agree and half agree. I think with many of us we tend to look back at our childhood with rose colored glasses. We only have the good memories, and try not to remember the bad. We only remember the best retro games that we enjoyed, and not so much the crap. If you think about it, only about 2 or 3 out of 10 games or so then (and true today) were actually worth a play. There were literally THOUSANDS of crap games released.
For this console generation, retro gamers focus on the crap. So since they are focusing on the current crap it justifies playing retro games. The difference also is that you weed out several games from the retro generations that are so good, it makes the whole entire generation good when what you are really doing is cherry picking and ignoring all the crap.
Does that make any sense whatsoever ,.
Another note about the article. It was mentioned that back then, there were genres/ideas/themes being CREATED. And now they are just using those themes. That's partly true because those generation consoles were somewhat expiremental. The video game industry was still in it's infancy. There are only so many different ways to make a game, and as things continue in the future they will just keep re-using those ideas until a completely different way to play video games comes around (aka Virtual Reality)
Last edited by Oldskool; 05-21-2012 at 03:08 AM.
I don't fully agree with this. I have distinct memories of my time with the NES, and there is only one game that comes to mind that I owned or rented and thought was truly bad (Dragon Power). Even then, I only really disliked it because there was a point mid-way that I believed was literally impossible to pass due to a bug in the game.
Yes, if I look back and try to play many of those games now, I immediately see their flaws or will just not play them. However, when I was young, every game was a new challenge waiting to be conquered. I might come across only one new game a week, thanks to rentals, so I had to make it count. Even in the Coleco Vision and 2600 days, the Kay-Bee $2 bargain bin games were worth playing.
The difference is that now I can literally acquire and play any game I desire at almost any given moment. I also have 30 years of video gaming experience, giving me the intuition to know when a game is likely to be inferior to another. Most of my game playing these days isn't evaluated in isolation. It is evaluated as an opportunity cost. That is to say, when I am playing one game, it means I am not playing another, different game. This brings a whole new perspective on a game's overall value. I no longer have the seemingly infinite time of my youth to play games, so if a game is obviously similar to another, yet worse, I will stop playing it. When I was young, not only did I have the time to delve into sub-par games to see if they were diamonds in the rough, but I had significantly less access to games as a whole.
It's true, the video game industry has always been about making money. But back then there was more room for creativity and gameplay was more important than graphics.
I think the point where everything started going down hill was when 3d graphics became the norm. From there, the cost of game development started increasing and at the same time, due to the more realistic visuals, people who normally weren't interested in video games, became interested.
The realistic 3d visuals brought with it a new breed of gamer, one who cared more about graphics than of gameplay. This new gamer wanted to interact with objects on a TV screen, but didn't care much for challenge. In order to cater to this new gamer, developers started removing the game from video games. Now, many years later, these new gamers have become the majority. Now, video games are mostly just graphics with a story, and what little interaction they provide only exists to help immerse the "player" into the story.
Now that graphics, voice acting and cutscenes have become more important than gameplay, developers have placed even more emphasis on them, which has caused budgets to rise further, which has driven out the little guys, which means even less creativity in the future.
Last edited by chilimac; 05-21-2012 at 11:23 PM.