Thinking about quitting gaming

[econ21]

If one asked me what my GOTY is for '07, I'm at a complete loss. Honestly I'd have to say it's probably Vampire Bloodlines........

Yes there are tons of good games out there, they're all just very old and I've played the crap out of them. I just got done playing KOTOR1 and SS2 a few months back, and Deus Ex and Fallout 1 and 2 earlier this year.

I share your taste in older games - you are mentioning 5 out of my top 10 ever games in one sentence - but I am not convinced that gaming has declined dramatically since then.

Vampire Bloodlines is right up there with the Fallouts, in my opinion. Many similar virtues in terms of atmosphere, character and originality of sidequests etc. But benefiting from the rather astounding computer graphics of recent years. I'm very miffed that Troika went under for it.

KOTOR1 was excellent, but it seems from reports that Mass Effect is roughly comparable. (I'll have to wait a while for the PC release to find out for myself). Even Jade Empire - an underrated CRPG - kept my faith in Bioware strong. I disagree with you about the Obsidian offerings, NWN2 and KOTOR2, and found them very good offerings.

Yes, Bioshock and Invisible War were let downs after SS2 and Deus Ex, but I suspect we will see great things in those kind of RPG/FPS hybrids in future. Stalker was a pretty close near miss. Like Morrowind/Oblivion, it creates a pretty amazing gameworld. It just needs a bit more of a game to fit into it. On the more "action" side of the spectrum, Max Payne 2 and Mafia provided very immersive story based experiences.

One strategy game that has kept up my faith in computer games is Civ4. IMO, this keeps everything good about Civ2 and then adds lots more goodness. It's harder than Civ2 and also more flavoursome, in terms of little touches and fun gameplay.

I'm also getting a sense that hardcore wargames are making something of a comeback from independent designers - Matrix Games, Ageod etc - although as yet I have not managed to wean myself of the lighter genres of RPGs and TW to get back into the hardstuff.

[Productivity]

I barely play games anymore to be honest. The increasing drive for graphics at the expense of gameplay and the prevalence of console based games kills most of the fun for me. The only new game I've truly enjoyed recently is probably Supreme Commander. I'd prefer to play Deus Ex than any of the similar games released in the last five years.

The gaming industry is moving on, from effectively small target groups to a large mainstream. This is good for the industry (maybe?), but bad for the originally focused groups. Games are a lot more about the intial wow factor now, in order to get the sales out rather than catering to people who will play it to the extreme.

Look at the TW games. R:TW was the major turning point and it got worse from then on - effectively CA focused more on easy to play battles that look good, rather than hyper intensive battles that required skill. A majority proportion of the gaming population completely suck at games and this proportion is rising. Game developers and publishers understand this and so refuse to alienate that proportion by throwing the fact that htey suck back in their face. Older games could get away with it, because games were more nichey and less mainstream, ie. they catered to people who could play them with a reasonable level of skill. Now however, you have to make a game that a guy with 80 points of IQ can easily win, or else you lose sales. Guess what? They make games like that and because they can no longer compete on gameplay, it gets to be a battle of image quality.

[Komutan]

A question to all who claim the games are getting worse:

Are games really getting worse or is it you who changes?

I bought my first computer(C64) when I was 11 years old. Today I am 32. It is impossible for me too see the games(and many other things) as I was seeing them when I was 11.

[Bava]

Good point, Komutan. But there are other aspects. Good Games in the C64 era could be developed by a one or two man team in a garage who were able to persue their "vision" of the game, nothing had to watered down due to time constraints, contract deadlines with publishers etc. Games from gamers for gamers, you could feel the heart that has been put into. The only limits were the limits of the given platform and being innovative didnt cost much. And we´ve been much more used to abstractions, visuals didnt count for much anyway. The gameplay and "feel" was what counted.

For example, if you were to develop a true succesor to the C64 Pirates! that has the gameplay and the atmosphere of his predecessor and pleases the "old" fans out there, you´d have to do:

- decide wether you want a really realistic approach (prolly good for the older
fans, meaning a lot of more work and lower sale numbers) or a rather
"cartoonish" one for the younger audience (less work but higher sales)

- a 3d engine that is fully capable of representing a strategic map,
seabattles ( at least on the level of PotC), landbattles and sieges (TW), fights in first/third person
view (Mount&Blade) realisticly,

- an AI and physics engine that is able to handle all four,

- a plot or storyline that is believeable (that means a lot of historcal research)

To be able to do this you´d need at least a 30-50 man team, a budget of 40 million dollars and a very understanding publishers when it comes to deadlines.
No wonder Sid Meyer made just a graphical enhanced C64 Pirates! two years ago

Butthis is where modifications come into play (a point that has been neglected so far in this discussion, i think). For example, the Build Mod for PotC is the best pirate game ever made in my opinion (sadly, its pretty unknown, too), combining many of the features of Sea Dogs, Uncharted Waters, Pirates etc. and capturing the overall theme perfectly. Why? Because its, again, made from gamers for gamers (on a second note, it should better read:
from adult gamers for adult gamers ^^).

So, to come to a conclusion, is PC gaming today rather dead for a more demading audience? Pretty much. But thankfully, the more demanding audience is able to mod a game we like into something we can love and play for years, without modifications i would probably have quitted pc gaming when i was 18 or 19.


P.S. Sorry for my bad english

[Rodion Romanovich]

Yes, but the original game has to be good enough for the mods to at all be created. Nobody would make a mod for a game if that game isn't bought in the first place by the modders. Mods also have less reliability among users in general (even though so far afaik none of the major mods released in the history of gaming have contained malicious stuff), and the majority of players of a particular game don't install any of the major mods for it if I'm not mistaken. This means that multiplayer becomes rare or almost non-existent for any modded games (except CS, but CS is crap *dives for cover as angry CS fans open fire* ), meaning that if the unmodded multiplayer is bad, there's often little or no chance of better mp.

Anyway, I think the customers bear as much responsibility as the big, evil producers in this case. Sure the big evil producers tell their developers to dumb down their games, but that is because the buyers not often buy the great games in high enough quantities, but instead only buy the "big names". Who here can for example honestly say they completely forgot about buying Quake III, Half-life II, Halo II, Bioshock and Crysis, but instead bought Operation Flashpoint and Vampire Bloodlines? Well, I can - almost - but not quite. The temptation of buying the big names is often too great, and the chance of finding the truly great stuff is small. I think it goes like this: the great titles aren't discovered until after the price drop (from 39 to 19 USD), whereas only the big names, due to the type, manage to acquire huge sells in the important first months when the price is still 39 USD. That, and the kids who want simple games, and the fact that even the "experienced gamers" go "OMG Crysis" instead of "OMG Operation Flashpoint", and that graphically impressive games are easier to hype up in the marketing. Who can efficiently market great AI? Only way to do it is by releasing some tech videos, but what do you think the player will do then? "OMG those graphics suxx"... No, the behavior of the customers is also to blame for the decreasing quality. The producers are not entirely wrong when they say a dumbed down game will grant more revenues, because most of the time it does.

[Bijo]

Who here can for example honestly say they completely forgot about buying Quake III, Half-life II, Halo II, Bioshock and Crysis,

I can, more or less.

---

And about mods: they are irrelevant; what matters is the original game in question.

[Zenicetus]

A question to all who claim tha games are getting worse:

Are games really getting worse or is it you who changes?

I bought my first computer(C64) when I was 11 years old. Today I am 32. It is impossible for me too see the games(and many other things) as I was seeing them when I was 11.

I've thought about this, and obviously things change as a person gets older. You get a little more patient, you appreciate deeper storylines, and yeah... your reflexes degrade. But I think it's mostly the games that have changed (talking specifically about PC games here).

I've been playing since the beginning, starting with Flight Simulator running off a floppy disk in glorious 4-color CGA graphics. I've played most of the "big" PC titles over the years including shooters like Doom/Quake, RPG's like Baldur's Gate, strategy games like Civ, although the focus has always been on tactical combat sims (planes, subs, etc.) which is a dying market now. So that's one thing that's changed. First person shooters have somehow taken over the niche that used to be occupied by flight sims.

One reason may be a change in PC gaming demographics. In the early days of PC gaming, computers weren't ubiquitous household appliances like they are now. The audience was older, on average, and computers were very expensive, not the $500 boxes you can buy today. The Dad in the house used the PC that doubled for home finances and word processing to fly a combat flight sim, or play a mature, well-written RPG like Baldur's Gate at night, while his kids were out in the living room with a game console hooked up to the TV. Kids just weren't allowed much time on Dad's expensive computer

These days, that's all changed. Now every kid has his or her own computer, at least most places in the developed world targeted by game companies. I think this has affected the marketing and the survivability of older genres like tactical combat sims, and shifted the focus more towards visual flash and shorter attention spans. It's the reason for the "dumbing down" of titles like Total War, and the reason why a game like Bioshock, which had great potential, turned out to be basically a very pretty shooter and nothing more. Any game with very high production costs has to be targeted to a 12 year old and up demographic, instead of the 30+ year-olds who used to be the only people playing home computer games. Even that phrase "home computer" is something of an anachronism, from the days when that was a fairly rare thing.

There are a few games that appeal to the older-than-30 crowd out there, but they're niche critters like Silent Hunter 4, MS Flight Sim, the Civ series, Galactic Civilizations 2, etc. I'm thankful that at least a few games like that are still around, for geezers like me.

Oh yeah, and get off my lawn, you kids!

[caravel]

From my perspective, I'm tired of the very real "dumbing down" of gaming. I'm sick of seeing every single last dev house cranking out games that cater to the lowest common IQ, and to people and kids who want a "quick fix". Sick of seeing games designed mainly for the console and a joypad, and then a halfarsed port to the PC that clearly shows absolute minimal effort on the porting team's behalf. Sick of games released with more and more huge and game breaking bugs, then half-hearted efforts to fix, if they're even fixed at all. I'm sick of seeing "community managers" who's jobs are to stifle dissent, "manage" the gamers, and spew propaganda instead of interact with the fans. Sick of crappy minigames, horrible AI, too much emphasis on graphics, bullet-time, misuse of genre types (RPG), subscription based gaming and MMOs, you name it.

I know what you mean. Nowadays I only play the occasional bit of TW. I'm pretty much sick of games in the same way I'm sick of modern movies for their cliches, poor plots, non existent character development and over emphasis of CGI effects.

With games we have formulaic, dumbed down, linear, eye candy fests with almost non existent AI, multiple bugs and intrusive copy protection. Instead of feeling like the valued game player that actually pays these peoples' salaries, you're made to feel as if they're doing you a massive favour by even letting you buy the game in the first place.

[Productivity]

Are games really getting worse or is it you who changes?

I still play Deus Ex, Medieval: Total War, Baldurs Gate series, Alpha Centauri, Planescape Torment etc. reasonably regularly and enjoy them just as much (and I still find new things in them). In my opinion games are getting worse.

Give the mentioned games to the average new gamer today and they will not enjoy them because they aren't pretty enough and will all turn around and smack you in the face if you are bad at them. My appreciation of games hasn't changed, the target market segment has moved.

[AntiochusIII]

Planescape Torment

I'm playing it right now.

The two things Planescape: Torment has going for it are top-notch storytelling and a sense of grotesque atmosphere that simply cannot be matched.

Usually "grotesque" in just about all games ever made before and after Torment translates into "eww, disgusting" or "zomg scary!" Torment simply took the whole thing to a different angle and made playing as an ugly zombie in a world full of trash, fiends, and corpses epic.

The storytelling has its own internal logic -- something crucial to create a sense of fantasy, IMO -- and yet remains very smart. One could simply compare Dak'kon to Zhjaeve from NWN2 to see which one makes for a more compelling "alien" character.

But enough of my digression, my one and only point on this post related to the thread actually has little to do with Torment, but this: I think one must remember that, like music, old games have a way of sorting out the classics from the junk. I'm sure ten years from now I'll still be here complaining about the junks being spewed out into the market and looked back to 2007 with nostalgia.

[Whacker]

Welps... So far, this has been ... interesting, not a bit painful perhaps, and good for me. Shortly after I made the initial cranky emo post that started this thread, I uninstalled the few remaining games on my PC. Cold turkey.

It does feel wierd. Really does make me realize how much time I've spent gaming all my life. I had a good conversation with proletariat, kongamato, and a few others in the channel, who had some good counterview and thoughts... In my mind, it is particularly interesting that it's taken me a full 20+ years to get really burnt out and sick of it like this.

@ Tincow - I appreciate you comments and sentiments. Only thing I would add is that I don't necessarily agree that the industry is headed back towards niche-style gaming with more specifically targeted audiences. If anything, I think it's heading more and more down the Dark Path (that will forever dominate it's destiny?) of mass marketing and generalization. Perhaps someday it make take a swing back, your example was good, but I have my doubts. In a way I hope you are right, and it does swing back sooner.

@ Econ - Likewise, I appreciate your comments, I think it just boils down the point where we have to agree to disagree like gentlemen. The one thing I would offer is that perhaps your tastes and... "standards", for lack of a better term, have changed over time, I know you also have a younger son. It's hard to be objective, but I do not think that my personal tastes and whatnaught have changed over time, thus what has slowly built up to this point in my life. /shrug

@ Caravel and others - Glad to know I'm not the only cranky old fart around here!

@ Odin - You my friend are a bum.

I do plan on sticking around here, though perhaps not online/active as much, for the exact reason that Antiochus pointed out. You guys by and large are a good lot (except for that Odin guy!), and I do enjoy chatting/arguing/debating/haranging you all.

Cheers

[Productivity]

I think one must remember that, like music, old games have a way of sorting out the classics from the junk. I'm sure ten years from now I'll still be here complaining about the junks being spewed out into the market and looked back to 2007 with nostalgia.

So I'm curious... what from say the last three years will you still want to play in 2012?

[caravel]

The quite brilliant Planescape Torment is quite arguably the underrated all out best game of those based on the Bioware infinity engine. Compared with Torment, Baldurs Gate is as dull as dishwater.

[TinCow]

I agree about Planescape Torment, but to be fair it is so utterly bug-ridden that it makes M2TW look flawless by comparison.

[caravel]

I agree, though the unofficial patch fixed most bugs.

[AntiochusIII]

So I'm curious... what from say the last three years will you still want to play in 2012?

I won't know until then.

[econ21]

So I'm curious... what from say the last three years will you still want to play in 2012?

The question was not addressed to me, but it is such an interesting question, I'd like to provide my answer. For what it is worth, I suspect I will probably play Vampire Bloodlines and KOTOR2 five years down the line. I rate them as among the best games of all time.

Civ4 and M2TW could certainly be playable in 2012, although they may be replaced by future versions in the same series.

If mods count, I could see myself playing EB too.

And perhaps Mount and Blade.



For reference, some of the older games I keep coming back to now:

System Shock 2
Jagged Alliance 2
Panzer General 2
X-Com 1
Fallout 2
Baldurs Gate 2
Ghost Recon 1
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Imperialism 2

[Husar]

Who here can for example honestly say they completely forgot about buying Quake III, Half-life II, Halo II, Bioshock and Crysis, but instead bought Operation Flashpoint and Vampire Bloodlines?

Well, I bought the Orange Box last weekend so I'm almost guilty concerning HL2 but I don't have any of the others and neither do I have any of their predecessors, I did however buy Operation Flashpoint and it's addon.
To some degree I have always seen games as modelling the real world so I can play on the PC what I do not or can not do in reality, that's why most of the Quakes and UTs never really appealed to me, apart from the fact that I'm too slow.
There are, of course, exceptions and some games are just fun without being realistic in any way, my priorities have also shifted a bit, I've bought some games with only multiplayer in mind as well, if I had some really good friends playing Quake online everyday I might buy it.

That's concerning this part, about the overall quality of games and growing tired etc. I don't really have an opinion, I play what I want, like and can afford, often I'm hyped about a game at release but cannot afford it and later when I can afford it I feel I don't want to play it anymore, most recent case, World in Conflict and The Witcher. Maybe I'll get it one day, maybe not.
Saves money.

[Subedei]

I for my part play around 4-5 hrs. a week in average these days. So playing is not taking that much time in my life. Oh, and i kinda really don´t know what is going on in the gaming community....Well, at least by now I know CS means counter strike & a lot of folks play it.....I only play the TW series games & mods. A big part of my other free time is used for reading [a lot of history books in the TW-relevant timeframes], hiking, sports, friends, gals, pubs, clubs, phtotgraphy, the movies & other staff.

Maybe in your case it would be cool to give the whole thing a bit less of your time & attention, find new staff to do & come back to gaming with a few other hobbies you love just as much.

Real life games like soccer kinda satisfy the "I wanna play/win!"-need actually better than another one of those "Average Victory!"-afternoons.

Anyways man, take care and thank god there is tons of things out there to do! Sub

[frogbeastegg]

Who here can for example honestly say they completely forgot about buying Quake III, Half-life II, Halo II, Bioshock and Crysis, but instead bought Operation Flashpoint and Vampire Bloodlines?

:raises hand: Well, mostly. I tried the Flashpoint demo and didn't like it; FPS aren't my thing. I waited with baited breath for my copy of Bloodlines to arrive shortly after release, only to find it unplayable due to random crashes. I do own Bioshock. Nothing to do with the name and the hype, more to do with the attempt to follow in the footsteps of System Shock 2 and Deus Ex. Wouldn't touch any Quake game with a barge pole, don't care in the least about Crysis, only own Half Life 2 because it's bundled into the Orange Box and I wanted a non-steam version of Portal, and the first Halo bored me silly when I rented it, reluctant to buy because I doubted the adoration heaped upon it.

The org isn't exactly your typical gaming community though, so your point still holds water. The people here are typically older, more mature, and more sceptical than places like gamefaqs. Ask the same question there and you'd get blank looks from most. Um, and then get called a troll. And be flamed.

[TinCow]

In somewhat related news, it looks like video games will have their best selling year ever in 2007.

[Productivity]

In somewhat related news, it looks like video games will have their best selling year ever in 2007.

See I don't think that's surprising. Games have moved into a different target audience, one which is far larger so it makes sense that they would sell more. That doesn't mean that the games themselves are better.

I won't know until then.

You can be flippant all you like about it, but it hardly adds to the discussion. Everything that's ever stood out as a classic for me has been readily apparent at the time and judging by other responses it is hardly me who has this ability.

[AntiochusIII]

You can be flippant all you like about it, but it hardly adds to the discussion. Everything that's ever stood out as a classic for me has been readily apparent at the time and judging by other responses it is hardly me who has this ability.

Well, I was serious. I -won't- know until then.

5 years is a long time you know. I might move on, I might not. Some games I thought are way too complex might grow on me (say, Victoria, that piece of micromanagement nightmare); some action games might feel worse than it is today, etc.

In any case, econ21 has provided a few examples from the recent years I agree with.

I'll likely be playing Vampire: Bloodlines for quite some time for example. The game is certainly an excellent RPG on the same caliber as the best of the old Infinity Classics.

Civilization seems like a game that'll last very very long if you don't play it too much.

Or any of the Paradox games, more precisely EUIII.

Etc.

[caravel]

Wouldn't touch any Quake game with a barge pole

The first quake game was very original and quite revoltionary for it's time in that it led to basically every FPS game that came afterwards and had quite an eerie and compelling atmosphere. The 2nd, 4th and later installments departed to the cliched "marines vs alien borg types" theme which for me was not as original or as interesting as the "slipgates between worlds" type scenario of the first game. The third is only good as a multiplayer game, and even then is quite cartoony and garish in it's attempts to recapture the atmosphere and gameplay of Q1. Another FPS game with great atmosphere was the first Unreal game. For it's time it's graphics were pretty amazing along with it's atmospherics, flora, fauna, landscapes, water and sound etc.

[frogbeastegg]

The first quake game was very original and quite revoltionary for it's time in that it led to basically every FPS game that came afterwards and had quite an eerie and compelling atmosphere. The 2nd, 4th and later installments departed to the cliched "marines vs alien borg types" theme which for me was not as original or as interesting as the "slipgates between worlds" type scenario of the first game. The third is only good as a multiplayer game, and even then is quite cartoony and garish in it's attempts to recapture the atmosphere and gameplay of Q1. Another FPS game with great atmosphere was the first Unreal game. For it's time it's graphics were pretty amazing along with it's atmospherics, flora, fauna, landscapes, water and sound etc.

FPS games I enjoy are incredibly rare, for the main part thanks to the fact I find shooting things dull and for the rest due to my utter inability to dodge effectively. Quake never managed to appeal to me sufficiently to try it. It couldn't be said to have the keen humour of the two no one lives forever games or the narrative of Dark Forces 2, to give two examples from the very small set of FPS I've liked. I know neither game is fully contemporary with Quake; I don't think I played any FPS that were. They're the oldest two I can summon to mind, with the exception of the original Dark Forces. I played that because it was Star Wars.

Unreal came closer to making me try a demo. Atmosphere is something I consider important in most types of games, and on occasion I will slog my way through a game type I don't enjoy as much simply for the atmosphere. Never did get around to it; it looked too much shooty-shooty-kill-kill-bang! for me.

[Whacker]

The first quake game was very original and quite revoltionary for it's time in that it led to basically every FPS game that came afterwards and had quite an eerie and compelling atmosphere. The 2nd, 4th and later installments departed to the cliched "marines vs alien borg types" theme which for me was not as original or as interesting as the "slipgates between worlds" type scenario of the first game. The third is only good as a multiplayer game, and even then is quite cartoony and garish in it's attempts to recapture the atmosphere and gameplay of Q1. Another FPS game with great atmosphere was the first Unreal game. For it's time it's graphics were pretty amazing along with it's atmospherics, flora, fauna, landscapes, water and sound etc.

I'd agree largely with your sentiments, but I have a different overall view. In hindsight, I don't really prefer any one 'genre' of games, and have played just about all of them. That said, I do loves me a good FPS, but have really grown tired of them over the past few years because that's what about 80-90% of the newer games have boiled down to.

Regarding Quake, I've loved every single one of them, because I treat them as what they really are, and that is tech demos. Quake 1 was the only one that was well and truly revolutionary, as Caravel stated, it was the first true 3d shooter than set the stage for everything else. I mean seriously, how many games out nowadays are based on some version of the id Quake engines? Quake 2 was an experiment in advanced 3d, opengl and directx (even glide) which was finally starting to become worthwhile to program in. Quake 3 was proof that one could have dozens, hundreds almost of people playing on the same map, with a ton of eye candy, and very very little lag, the netcode was phenomenal (after the 3rd or 4th patch). Quake 4 was further revision and experimentation from the Doom3 project with near-photorealistic graphics, and proving that it can be done and still run well on reasonably old hardware. 99% of the people I saw complaining about how slow it was had hardware that was crap, and they should have known why they had bad performance.

Unreal is a different animal. Fully agree with Caravel, Unreal 1 was rather original for an FPS in it's time, and it was a good playthrough. Unreal Tournament was friggin' legendary, that and it's contemporary Quake 3 were equally enjoyable to play, and had their strengths. UT1 was better looking, but didn't scale nearly as well and was a bit harder to mod for, Quake 3 wasn't as good looking, but it scaled a hell of a lot better and the netcode was far more robust in our views. UT2k3 was a bit of a joke, UT2k4 was a decent revision in the series, but not really original, and still a bit hard to develop for as compared to id's engines and SDK's.

Bottom line, neither the Quake or Unreal series are deep at all, but they have served their purposes well, and provided for some good fun. I'd give the edge to the Quake series, mainly for the reasons I stated above. If one doesn't enjoy shooters, then it definitely makes sense why one would overlook those. If one does enjoy shooters I'd still suggest trying any/all of those, not only for some good gameplay but also for a bit of a direct look at how those games evolved over time. Plus there are numerous mods that can breathe some new life into them which are all worth playing.

My $0.02

[Csargo]

Whacker never would try a Paradox game.

[Husar]

Quake 1 was the only one that was well and truly revolutionary, as Caravel stated, it was the first true 3d shooter than set the stage for everything else.

That sounds a bit like no game can be revolutionary for you anymore without being 4D.

Doom3 project with near-photorealistic graphics

That's got to be a joke.

That said I'm waiting for the final breakthrough of streaming engines after Half Life 2 would reload in every third tunnel(it was still a good game, mind you).
I'm talking about OFP and Gothic here, they're the games I know using streaming engines to have seamless big environments, since I haven't played Far Cry/Crysis I'm not sure whether they're streaming but I wouldn't be surprised if they are, they're also both closer to photorealism if you ask me.