The evolution of AAA gaming

[FBnil]

Alley Cat

good memories! Recommended game.

@Klumpen: You forgot that some games actually do nothing with the information you give... so it is not even a branch, just the illusion of a free choice.

Although I have the money, I do not own a current or previous gen console. (I stopped at PS2). I do grab back to indies, but only if free (lamulana, gardengnomecarnage, stuff on the Pandora like microbes which I still can not pass a level, some zelda games that I need to restore an old flash image in order to play it, because it dies immediately with the new images)... that sort of thing...
One I like is shaun the sheep in particular: home-sheep-home (flash required)

Or this one:

 

[Exophase]

These days I almost exclusively play indie games and I feel like they've a lot of them have done a good job picking up where the console generations from the 90s left off.

But I was never a PC gamer back in the day so I can't really complain about the move to controller-oriented interfaces. Actually, for the most part I don't even want to play a game today if not with a controller, and I like that PC today has whole genres that were largely unavailable in the 90s.

 

[benoitb]

I think we are reaching a new golden age of gaming (maybe mostly for japanese games ?).
2016-2017 is awesome:

• Project Diva Future tone (PS4)
• New Doom was really great (PC)
• Last Guardian (PS4)
• Nier Automata (PS4, PC)
  
• Persona 5 (PS4)
• Zelda (WiiU, Switch)

Honestly I love old games and play them also now, but you cannot argue that modern games are all bad, there are too many coming out and I don't have the time to play them all.

Maybe for the certain genre you are talking about, the Western PC RPG, there is a crisis ? It doesn't apply to the whole video games landscape, that's for sure.

Someone who says he doesn't like modern games maybe doesn't know where to look or just doesn't like gaming anymore.
I also bought Owlboy (indie game) and it looks really promising. I have just played 1 hour of it so far.

I do agree that bullshit like DLC and paid online gaming are a plague. I don't give any money for that which means I restrain myself from playing online on consoles. The gamers themselves are the ones to blame for accepting and financing such bullshit.

 

[erico]

I didn´t read much into everything here yet but...AAA game has become Dragon´s Lair for me a long time ago, the kind of disguised passive scripted beauty I always avoided back in the days.
I won´t even get into the issue that some, if not all, of the modern shoot-open-door games, don´t even calculate the bullets but simply throw a dice to see if it hits or not.

 

[Klumpen]

I think we are reaching a new golden age of gaming (maybe mostly for japanese games ?).

To me, Japanese gaming today is the absolute worst.
But that's probably because I give a damn about DRM and they absolutely love it.
Also region locks, censorship and weird pricing to no end.
Now there are even paid de-censoring patches...

 

[benoitb]

To me, Japanese gaming today is the absolute worst.
But that's probably because I give a damn about DRM and they absolutely love it.
Also region locks, censorship and weird pricing to no end.
Now there are even paid de-censoring patches...

How different was the SNES in the 90s ?
There was region locking, copy protection, eventual censorship (not systematic, I'd say the situation has improved and very few games are censored today).

The PS4 has no region locking, still copy protection, extremely rare censorship ? I don't even know of cases of censorship on non-Nintendo consoles nowadays.

In the 90s, the blood was often turned from red to green. We didn't get "risqué" games from Japan. I think the Germans didn't get Wolfenstein 3D, etc...

I have never paid for any DLC and still enjoy excellent games. Could you give examples of games that are worthless or worth less because of the "weird pricing" or DLCs ?

 

[WizardStan]

I think the Germans didn't get Wolfenstein 3D

Germany didn't get Wolfenstein for a completely different reason than "generic" censorship. It's literally too close to home and a very special case. Look at Australia for examples of modern day censorship.

 

[Bernd]

Germany did get Wolfenstein.
It took only a little detour (Austria - Import.)

There is a funny story that a game developer didn't get why they sold the game that good in a little country like Austria.
For US-people:
Austria = The country next to Germany -> Large mountains
Australia = The country in the middle of an ocean -> Kangaroos.

I haven't bought an AAA title in years (except japanese ones) because they are expensive, short play time and have a lame story.
Most games I buy are from little indy-developer.

 

[benoitb]

Germany didn't get Wolfenstein for a completely different reason than "generic" censorship. It's literally too close to home and a very special case. Look at Australia for examples of modern day censorship.

My question to illustrate positive change: is that still the case in the past few years ? I have a feeling the newer releases are authorized in Germany as well, aren't they ?

Edit: I found an article saying "The new order" was released but with censorship to the Nazi imagery. I'm French and I find that censorship actually scary. To me it's like being unable to face one's history.
Sorry for derailing the thread.

 

[kuru]

You aren't allowed to display swastikas, the only exception is in a historically proper/educational context. So museums and Schindler's List are fine, but shooty bang bang games or that flag in your neighbour's living room are not okay. Edit: The problem being games are still widely not accepted as a form of art. The medium must mature. Edit: Another thing is, maybe, that computer programs are super easy to change, movies less so.

another edit: I was particularly annoyed by the last Battlefield installment. The single player part of the demo they put out had me really going in the beginning and, for a short while, I believed they were managing to include that "horrors of war" theme that. Too bad that just a few minutes later you're once again turned into the unstoppable killing machine mowing away battalions of enemies. They should quit trying to establish an air of historical accuracy stop feigning regret and respect towards the suffering and lost lives and just commit to the power fantasy aspect. Battlefield 1 is no This War of Mine, no sir.

 

[rygD]

Somewhat of off-topic I suppose: As a fan of older FPSs, some of the ones from the late 90s lost the things I liked about the genre, and by the 00s I stopped buying new ones (Halo might have worked for me, but Microsoft).

To try to be on topic, somewhere during that same period I backed off of the big new games with the exception of certain Nintendo titles (not sure if those qualify as AAA). The few that I have purchased since then are usually several years after they were released. I think the last one was Left 4 Dead 2. In recent years I have been going for indie titles, and I don't really have a solid reason for why. The ones I enjoy the most are closer to older games that are mostly overlooked by the major players these days. I would rather have an enjoyable game that I can play forever than one that looks and sounds "amazing" or whatever, but isn't worth replaying despite the high price.

I would really like to play Alien: Isolation eventually, and I am pretty interested in the newer Fallout games.

 

[ible]

i'm watching Wreck it Ralph, which is about arcade gaming; and it reminds me of when i played an arcade emulator on an rpi cabinet my neighbor (at the time) built.

recalling the X-men game i was playing, it seems that it's not just modern-day games which are "pay2win." (although you could argue a better player wouldn't have had to pay as much...)

which isn't to say that modern day games aren't obnoxious, but that we just have to wait for emulators where we can insert infinite "quarters" without real cost.

 

[levi]

Yeah, that's true. Even from the beginning games were designed to extract the most coins from players. It's only because we had so much practice on home computer ports (early on) then later emulated versions that we can today take an advantage of the ghosts in pacman and not ose a couple of lives immediately to them. Or make it through the first stage in defender, more often than not. Later on the games got harder and harder, I think, requiring very accurately timed keypresses, or quite commonly extraordinary feats in memorisation even after you've spent enough to learn all of the traps.

I actually remember home computer games towards the middle and end of that era tending to be problematic big memory tests, but I assume they got the idea in the arcades.