Games got crazy big and focused on the wrong things and now it would be awesome if it imploded.

News & General Discussion
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When I fell in love with video games, it was in the NES and Sega years. After the first huge market crash, in what I consider to be the beginning of golden age of classic gaming. Now I realize that is just rose-colored glasses, because there were lots of bad games back then and things have always been about the money, and I have always been a Nintendo fanboy so my perspective tends to be limited… But still, games were adventures and it wasn’t that serious, but it was fun and sometimes you could get a good story.

Now games are movies with actual Hollywood actors, and they have focused on money so much that kids aren’t even playing them anymore… Kids play little free games or they watch YouTube. Games are now boring and for old people, like art and music once were. Then Looney Tunes and Disney targeted younger audiences with cartoons and voila, art is fun for everybody. Music has been deconstructed and rebooted so many times, and there’s a sound for everybody out there.

Games are undergoing a similar trend, sort of like… “this is not a game”. I think we are always in a state of continual upheaval but really, it’s the small time guys with non existent budgets that are making new stuff. Thanks to them, maybe there is a future where new franchises like Zelda or Metal Gear can be started.

but before that happens we need to burn it to the ground

I humbly submit that idea, for your consideration and discussion, that for new life to grow, we must prune the dead branches of crappy AAA dominated microtensaction hell and create whatever stupid, idiotic games we desire without the promise of making money because that’s what your idols did way back when.

here is a series of unrelated emojis

:snowflake:

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What? The game industry born and bred on microtransactions. The “idols” of the game industry made games because it was their job and they got paid.

Making games is a huge spectrum from blockbusters to lame noob crap filling the stores, and everywhere in between. Make the games you want, others will make the games they want, Buy the games you want, others will buy the games they want. Worry less about what others are doing, and more about what you are doing… put another way, you can talk about making games or make games. If you think you need to make a difference, then get to it.

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One big difference today is just the vast quantity of games available. Your criticisms apply well to current AAA titles, but even though they get a large portion of game revenue, they are actually a very small portion of the number of games continually coming out. You mention Nintendo, yet the Nintendo Switch still has a good focus on some of those earlier style games. You can just hop into Super Mario Kart today on the Switch just like you could on the SNES.

AAA’s have some of the best eye candy and the budgets to drown out a lot of the little guys in the discussion, so it is hard to avoid the noise they make, but other games from niche publishers do in fact get a lot of play regardless.

Take PUBG for instance. It didn’t come from a AAA studio. It doesn’t have any movie elements at all. Its graphics aren’t bad, but it isn’t even close to a modern Call of Duty game. Its a game that you can just jump in and play from the get go without all the modern AAA game non-sense. How did it become one of the top games in the world while in early access? It did it by including some innovative gameplay, that other games had come close to but never packaged together the way PUBG did.

So I don’t at all see why we would need to burn down the AAA’s. There’s room for everyone, and good games can rise to the top on their merits.

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I just bought a Sega Genesis Flashback console for a Christmas gift for someone. I’m thinking of getting one for myself too, to re-live the old days.

I also still play old-school SNES games using free PC emulators.

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Nah, no making a difference here.

Just an opinion.

Way I see it, what’s going to happen will happen, I’m just playing my part according to the personality I was basically assigned.

And so are you.

all is going according to plan

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It’s more of an institutional statement than a literal one.

It’s like how indie games changed the landscape of AAA indirectly.

I want to see a new thing, which will probably mean an old thing, and in some regards that’s already happening… But I have a relatively tiny, but existent, presence on this community and so I figured I’d do my little part and voice my opinion.

Maybe I will reach one person, and plant the seed in their mind to do something they ordinarily may not have.

That would be good enough for me.

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“Buy my game. Buy my game. Buy my game.” :stuck_out_tongue:

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If I actually got off my elitist high horse and dared sully my noble hands with actual work, I bet I could get you to buy it.

You seem morbidly curious.

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In all fairness, some of the design decisions are just to try to appeal to a broader audience. With large AAA titles, there is a real need to appeal broadly. A niche title won’t cover hundreds of millions in development costs.

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you probably won’t believe me when i say this, BUT there are still some games that are somewhat fun to play
without all this microtransaction, hollywood dlc garbage !

but in all seriousness
if you had already a lot of games under your belt and now you had the chance to build a new game with 200million dollars
and you have this nice IP you could use which you know would at least make the 200million back
would you still attempt anything complete new which could fail badly and bankrupt your business ?
many indies have a regular work, so if their games fail, it doesn’t really have any impact on their lives apart from a damaged ego and maybe some money sunk
even if you do this fulltime, you could stop at any time and look for work

also, the games that are being made are made, because they sell
i know, its sad, but that’s how this works

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I beg to differ with respect. I also began playing video games from the 80s, but in my case, I’ve always wanted to play such games that feel more like a movie with real actors and depicting more serious subjects with subtlety.

And as I grow older, I became more interested in seeing such games exploring the artistic potential of the medium like for example, the case with What Remains of Edith Finch.

As such, it feels like I’m finally starting to see my dreams come true nowadays, with such titles like Life is Strange (both of the series) which prove video games are not always about having a few hours of mindless entertainment regularly released these days.

I’m not saying that every games should stop dealing with instant actions or violence and try to be more serious. But the point is, we didn’t have much choice in this matter in the 80s and 90s, when pretty much every game was just running around and shooting things or solving puzzles.

At least, we have a choice nowadays, from such simple platformers you can play on your mobile device to get some distraction to such movie like experiences which you’ll be thinking over for the next few months to come.

I can easily understand to some people, Zelda or MGS could be the best experience a video game can ever provide. But you don’t really need to ‘burn down’ everything else, to get your next Zelda or MGS like franchise to come. In recent few years, the game industry has seen such an explosion in diversity of subject matters and styles that games deal with, so it became big enough to accomodate both Zelda and Life is Strange fans without having to eliminate either of them to make space.

To me, this expansion of diversity alone proves that we are in fact experiencing the first real golden age in history of video games, probably not too dissimilar to what happened to the popular music in the 60s.

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I’m always somewhat curious to see the games of people who make threads of this nature.

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Nobody does what I do, cept me.

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I seem to be going through an inverse as I close in on 30. I use to appreciate artistic stuff, but now…it’s all crap!

I like games that are like sports (ahem, not sports games). I want action, thrills, wild fun, fast thinking, joy and agony, etc. I appreciate video games ability to create an immersive experience, but I don’t know – maybe its more the kind of people who make games (first world persons), but I just haven’t found a video game that tried for some kind of
“message” that didn’t seem trite or pandering or annoying or just plain ole stoopid.

I think there is a disconnect when people who’ve suffered nothing serious beyond minor emotional conflicst in their life try to wax poetic or tell a dramatic story. I just can’t buy it. It’s not like I’m some salty old codger – I’m 28 – but I’ve done a few things in my life like been to war and some other “hard times” type of things that make me feel like everbody’s just a bunch of cry babies. I mean, if you haven’t missed a meal in the last year, what are you blubbering about? You should be dancing and having a good time. Just imagine all the poor cavemen an eon ago. Just poor dumb animals that were broken by the time they were twenty five. They were probably happy enough not knowing any different, but if they could see us now. They’d be having a nonstop party!

Didn’t play Edith Finch though.

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@BIGTIMEMASTER Yeah, I can see that it’s clearly something that reflects each person’s disposition, beliefs, preferences, or in short, personality. So, I see absolutely no problem in your preferring those types of video games.

Personally though, I believe that the concept of human being includes such an ability to feel subtler kinds of emotions, or to sympathize with other living beings in a different situation from oneself.

While most other animal species can feel pain, hunger, or such direct impulses, none other than humans can understand a sense of ‘nostalgia’, for example, and can transfer that feeling by expressing it in certain ways that make other members of the species sympathize with it. That’s basically how art works and it’s one of the most distingushing traits we have, compared to other animals.

Being a fan of such games like Life is Strange, I come across those types of people a lot, who seem to think that it’s somehow more mature, or ‘manly’ not being able to sympathize with a story about teenage girls, or any other stories that deal with subtler sorts of human emotions.

I actually agree that it’s somethiing commendable if one can restrain one’s emotions and not easily affected by them when one needs to make a rational decision, for example.

However, being able to restrain one’s emotions is an entirely different matter from being unable to feel any emotions at all. While the former can be considered a virtue, the latter is nothing more than a defect, and quite a serious one at that. If a person cannot sympathize with anyone who’s gender, age, religion, ethnicity, political view, situation in life, or whatever is different from one’s own, it usually breeds misunderstanding, enmity and conflicts.

So, I feel rather sad when I see people visit the forum of such a game I mentioned, and declare proudly that they couldn’t feel anything because they thought themselves to be too ‘manly’ to play such emotional games - I’m pretty sure that teen age girls in general have much more common with such people than, say some badass super heroes that they claim they can easily sympathize with.

I’m not really an emotional person myself, and that’s quite an understatement. And as I grow older, I found that I tend to become less sensitive about other people’s feelings and feel it harder to sympathize with them. That actually worries me much, as it will probably make me a sour, insensitive, and grumpy old man if I leave it unchecked.

That’s part of the reason why I love playing those games which explore more subtler kinds of human emotions.

I’m already over 40, and I’ll probably never be able to feel all the emotions that I felt when I was a teenager. But if I could, I’d like to keep my ability to appreciate those emotions so I could sympathize with young people when I grow older, or I could create such a game, or write a story that can appeal to broader range of audiences.

Again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with preferring such games you like. I just want to share my own reason why I love more emotional type of games, and I hope we differ only in our preferecens, not in our ability to appreciate wider range of human emotions, and sympathize with them.

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What was your point exactly?

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I think there is some misunderstanding about my point, but it would take a book and an epic derailment of this thread to clarify.

To make it really brief though – and try not to be too negative – it’s not that I disdain attempts to convey complex emotional issues that don’t pertain to life/death scenarios in video games; and it’s not that I’m some “men don’t never cry” type of person either.

It’s just that almost every instance I’ve seen in which game developers attempt to tell a mature, emotional story – they completely missed the mark. It’s just a matter of skill in storytelling, I guess. Everything is always in BIG superlatives, or can be seen from a mile away, or is an obvious attempt to draw emotion from the player. It’s always too much salt, too much pepper, and way too soon, or none at all! Nobody knows how to take the time necessary to get players to actually care about a character. It’s like when it came to writing the story for games, a “Novel Writing 101” book was tossed at some programmers and that was the extent of it.

Perhaps part of the difficulty is in that video games are a collaborative effort in most cases. But how can you tell a deeply personal, emotional story if everybody gets to be part of it? Also, if you are trying to appeal to the masses, and not offend anybody in a culture that loves to be outraged over non-outrageous things, I think you will inevitably end up with flat, uninspired stories. I think this is why you always end up with dull archetypes and tired plot devices.

This all only pertains to me, obviously. But people don’t make video games only for me, so that’s ok. But this is why I prefer games that don’t try to be anything more than games.

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Can you give any examples of this?

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Well, yes, but I don’t want to rag on a game unless I can do so thoroughly enough to be constructive, and also I see no good reason to put my negativity onto people who don’t already have it.

But most importantly, my procrastination time for the day has come to an end, so I’ll disengage.

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Counter point to OP - this Era of game creation provides the largest variety of gaming experiences for the biggest multitude of audiences ever. And fringe games made by eccentric/different developers can find an audience because of the Democratization of game delivery services.
I do agree with OP view on crap monitization practices - and like the fact games bigtime is looking for can be made by one guy or a team without gaining permission from a publisher or higher up.

We’ll said @Joe-Censored

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