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R2D21999
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R2D21999
18,319 posts
Treasurer

Think of it when people buy a new game they r all excited that they have the game they've been always wanted but they figure out thats its just some dumb game when they start playing it put ur opinion here.

  • 43 Replies
TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
5,866 posts
Chamberlain

i have to agree with you, either standards are going up but not being met, or game quality has gone down for some game

WorstSniper
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WorstSniper
1,467 posts
Nomad

Maybe you have been getting bad games? There are still lots of good games, you just have to look for them. A lot of the games I enjoy are from unpopular/somewhat unpopular companies.

Darktroop07
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Darktroop07
3,592 posts
Shepherd

Well the COD series in my opinion has been going downhill lately so that might count a a decrease a for game quality it's not the same as the old COD.

ihsahn
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ihsahn
428 posts
Nomad

Games haven't gotten better or worse. I won't even say they got different, as you can still find tons of excellent 2D indie titles (and all sorts of other styles) out there if have a smartphone or know where to look in the web.

It's just that the mainstream of gaming is different. Games are more graphical now, genres have evolved, strategy games are much deeper than before, online gaming takes precedence over local multiplay now, MMOs are vastly increasing in scale and recognition in the market, lots of companies are making a grab for the casual gamer, everybody's looking for the next controller revolution, there's 3 major players in the console wars, FPS games are in vogue, open-world games are in vogue, handhelds are more comparable in power to home consoles than ever before by a huge margin, there's way more established franchises like COD, GTA, Halo to be mercilessly milked for sequels, Blizzard remade the biggest e-sport in the world...
I could go on.

"Have games gotten better or worse?"
You might as well ask if the world has gotten better or worse. It's just as impossible to answer.

The gaming world is a huge, expanding collection of changing factors and influences and demographics and tastes.

Highfire
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Highfire
3,025 posts
Nomad

as you can still find tons of excellent 2D indie titles (and all sorts of other styles) out there

Depends how far back you want to go. A simple game like I Wanna Be The Guy is very retro-style in that you die. . . and die. . . and die, in order to finally complete the pretty simple mission.
NSFW but MaximusBlack's raging of the game illustrates the (honestly unfair) of previous games that would be featured in the Arcades. Difficult, so they'd eat your money.

That being said, I can't think of many 2D Titles that are shallow in any sense. Frozen Synapse is very intricate, although the base mechanics are very simple (so that counts), whilst Trine 2 is certainly far more complex being as it hinges on 3 people. Although, it is just three characters being used and they're all kind of basic in terms of what they can do. . . I'd say due to the variety in how you can / need to use them and etc it's complex, though. On base mechanics? Not so much.

strategy games are much deeper than before,

The first recognizable Real Time Strategies -- Age of Empires, Starcraft 1 and Red Alert, were very different. Whilst I perceive Age of Empires as the least unique due to most units being the same for each civilization and etc, I must really give props to the common formula that Red Alert has shown for each faction being significantly different.

However I see it as unparalelled to the depth for Starcraft 1 and its expansion: Brood War.
Why?
Because only now, has it as an eSport been effectively dismantled. That means it's been running previously for what? 12 to 13 years?

You could also track back to Warcraft 3 being played professionally, which is a more recent RTS given how rare they are nowadays (sure now we have Starcraft II and Command and Conquer: Generals 2 coming out next year, but that barely relates to Age of Empires / Mythology, Red Alert, Act of War, etc. and this is because FPSs have taken the crown. . . for now).

With that being said, it's more in the mid point. Warcraft 1 and 2 back in the day could also be added to that list.

online gaming takes precedence over local multiplay now,

Kind of. Online gaming is much more convenient and can span a much larger amount of players. Just take any MMO - like the coming-soon Planetside 2, an MMOFPS thats features RELY on having hundreds of players, which you couldn't practically do in a Local Area Network.

With that being said, for connection purposes (and having a union with fellow nerds to rejoice in the game of Starcraft II, and possibly to sing this) a professional game between professional players you can quite commonly see being done in a LAN. Just take MLG, where you had a host, Clutch, a crowd as you could see, casters (that link is to MLG's site, not YouTube like the rest) and a live stream (Link to Twitch.tv) so you could watch live, should the case be that you couldn't be witness to the amount of awesome with your own eyes.

Although I totally understand the idea of having LANs with friends, even dial-up networking and LAN Parties if you were that nerdy.
Which, by the way, "nerd" I haven't intended to be an insult the two times (now three) I've used it.

Blizzard remade the biggest e-sport in the world...

Small changes in the game (even though there were substantial) would have dramatic effects on the metagame. They hit the nostalgia with a new look and style, with brilliance thus far. Although, it is a trilogy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and two expansions (Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void as first and second respectively) which will change it even further. I'm sure they will be balancing both Wings of Liberty and its coming expansion when it is out, if it is stuck with (which I imagine it will be, for a while).

You might as well ask if the world has gotten better or worse. It's just as impossible to answer.

There are two things you can definitely sign off with though. The first of it (it growing and being of larger variety) you hit. The second is that there is something that extends to the games but not necessarily their quality. I'm talking about the business models companies have developed.

Which, for the consumer, I can safely say is becoming worse on a financial basis. Although, if you could argue that the quality has increased (which, especially in terms of CoD, I couldn't really vouch for) then you could put forward that it is worth it.

- H
xNightwish
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xNightwish
1,608 posts
Nomad

Well, to me, so once in a while, I have no hope in gaming. I just start thousand different games but they never seem to pull me in the game.
But on the other hand, sometimes I don't have time and money enough.
Like November/December. I wanted to play SR3, Skyrim, Arma 2, AC revelations and a few more indie games. I just didn't have enough time. But now I can't seem to find a game that makes me want to pull all-nighters (although I never did one).

So I think it just relies on the games you want to play. I'm now downloading the day-z mod for Arma and I'm going to buy the expansion tomorrow and if the rumors are true this mod will suck me in.

RenegadePlayer
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RenegadePlayer
684 posts
Nomad

games have been getting better without a doubt, its just that expectations for those games have been getting WAY overhyped and that false advertisements make those expectations happen, which results in "this game sucks" by a bunch of complaining kids. when it comes to shooters, maps have been getting progressively worse though. i feel like the designers try to make everything counterable which causes complications and makes the map not enjoyable. take call of duty for example. world at war had great maps! while they werent balanced, they were fun. mw2 had good maps but they were more compact and directed for the run and gun. black ops barely had any good vantage points for a king of the hill to get there, and if there was a good vantage point, it could be shot at from all directions. lulz then the fail of maps on mw3. they were WAAAY too complex and based on the close quarters, fast paced hip fire part of the community. MW3's maps also had way too many routes to cross the map, which causes the players to get tangled about the map and its unpredictable where the enemies are unless you have a uav, and if they have assassin (i think thats what its called) you can get shot in the back. ive been played a lot of battlefield and mw3 is dead to me, and even battlefield's maps have faultered.

vinex2002
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vinex2002
8 posts
Nomad

hik

miniphu
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miniphu
72 posts
Nomad

I think that games have improved greatly in some respects, but these improvements let game designers slack off a bit in other areas.

Games are better for:
Graphics
New controls
Faster controls/less lag
Customization
Variety

Games are worse for:
Fewer "original" ideas
Less interesting music
Oversimplification

Overall, I'd say that games are getting progressively better. An analogy with music: Classic Rock and Oldies seem to have "better quality." That's because the songs were "original." More importantly, people had plenty of time to weed out the rejects. Likewise, new games may seem to be worse, but that's because we haven't gotten rid of the bad games. Truly good games stick around for a long time, so older games appear better. Since the actual mechanics of gaming are improving with better processing and cooler control schemes, I think video games are headed for a bright future. At least some of them.

ihsahn
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ihsahn
428 posts
Nomad

Games are worse for:
Fewer "original" ideas

I have to take issue with that. Sure there's a lot of sequels nowadays, but advances in gaming technology have allowed for very creative new ideas to emerge. Portal is a game that simply couldn't have existed in previous generations, like many other physics-based puzzlers. Today's MMOs are insanely huge in scale and scope and the possibilities of player interaction are endless. Games like Mass Effect, Bioshock and notably heavy rain are doing away with fixed plot progression, allowing player choices to affect the ending.
Basing a console around motion controls like the Wii did is unprecedented. Kinect is insanely original and futuristic, potentially.

Fewer "original" ideas? I'm afraid you're just playing unoriginal games.

Less interesting music

Videogame music has evolved. There's no room for repetitive midi soundtrack anymore. Maybe that's just a matter of taste, anyway, but I still dare you to tell me with a straight face that God of War doesn't have an excellent score.

Loads of games are still released with fantastic music. You either need to look a little more or admit it's just not to your personal preference.

Oversimplification

What does that even mean?

An analogy with music: Classic Rock and Oldies seem to have "better quality." That's because the songs were "original." More importantly, people had plenty of time to weed out the rejects. Likewise, new games may seem to be worse, but that's because we haven't gotten rid of the bad games. Truly good games stick around for a long time, so older games appear better.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. This generation has produced titles worthy of mention alongside Ocarina of Time, Megaman, Final Fantasy and such, but there's still a lot of hesitation for fear of naming classics too soon and too rashly.

Happens with every generation of every form of art and entertainment.
nichodemus
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nichodemus
14,991 posts
Grand Duke

The Total Wars Series do tend to go up on a gradient of standards. So have most of Paradox's games, in particular, Europa Universalis. I would say that most strategy games have gotten better, if just because of the level of detail and micro-managing features.

Highfire
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Highfire
3,025 posts
Nomad

if just because of the level of detail and micro-managing features.

Er. . .
Depends what strategy. In general single-unit control RTSs such as Age of Empires and Starcraft you'd find that the later games have actually been "dumbed down" -- where you could rally your harvesters onto mineral patches to gather the resources whereas in Starcraft 1 you could only rely them to a place and need to select them to go to the patch and collect.

As well as control groups only allowing 12 units in Starcraft 1, with only a single building in a single control group if you tried it like that -- instead of having your 12 Barracks on a single key in Starcraft II you would have a Screen Location Key to go to your production area, to manually select each building and tell them to build. It's these 'tedious' things that make you require 300 APM in Starcraft I.

Also, more options doesn't necessarily make them better. The way people had to work around -- or how effectively they could manage their units with such restrictions could define how good they were and their speed in doing so could be a massive factor as well.

Because it gives you the ability to do something doesn't necessarily make it better. By restrictions in Chess of how the pieces can move it is brilliant, which is an immensely far-gone point but nonetheless the same.

but these improvements let game designers slack off a bit in other areas.

In a sense, yes. But the people that let developers slack off is the consumers who will (quite often mindlessly) buy products based on the advertising or hearing from reviewers (which are the people you LAST want to talk to about games).

You're far far better off hearing from fellow players that you know have a mind of their own and look at the most meaningful aspects of the game -- ones that don't praise the game for being linear (unless done brilliantly and reasonably) and finds the game intuitive as opposed to simple time-killing fun.

Well, that would be mine. But I take no joy in the mindless gameplay that is Call of Duty.

Reviewers don't do that. They'll articulate things in such a way that it suits their agenda (whether or not it's actually good) and give an arbitrary rating out of 10 (or out of 5, 100, or out of stars) that don't mean ANYTHING, especially considering anything below an 8 nowadays is utterly abysmal.
The best person I can propose to you about games is the slightly biased (particularly against puzzle and point-and-clicks, self-admitted by him due to his lack of ability at them) is TotalBiscuit. He seems to know what he's talking about.

- H
R2D21999
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R2D21999
18,319 posts
Treasurer

Maybe you have been getting bad games?


umm no i have not i choose my games prisicly but i hear about it all the time like that epic mickey game when the commercials came out it didnt look like much because of mickey but when u start playing it for a while u c the action and the fun in it. i cant really do an explanation on bad games because i dont really c any bad games.
miniphu
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miniphu
72 posts
Nomad

They'll articulate things in such a way that it suits their agenda

That's a very good point. I would say that games with sequels tend to make me think that they are better. Previous titles mean a lot to me, and that probably makes me think that older games have this awesome aspect that continuations can't achieve. I mean we'll say stuff like "Do you remember when the first _____ game came out? It was the best ever! And very groundbreaking."

@ihsahn
Notice that original is in quotes. By that I mean that of course originality is totally subjective. More importantly, most game concepts are invented once and then "modified." Obviously, older games were the first to boast their achievements, and newer games will always have a harder time finding something "original."

By oversimplification, I mean that games are too easy or otherwise stripped down to one aspect. Take the Call of Duty series, for example. I happen to enjoy the repetitive multiplayer, but many people rightly accuse the franchise of being one-dimensional.

As for the God of War Soundtrack, I'm unfamiliar with it. Anyway, tearing apart generalizations is super easy, so it's no surprise that some modern games have good soundtracks. I disapprove of games that incorporate songs from real life instead of creating their own soundtrack (except stuff like Guitar Hero where that is the point). This is an issue thanks only to modern advances in what kind of sounds a game supports, but it's present nonetheless. And who doesn't like that 8-bitty sound of nostalgia?
melon0111
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melon0111
211 posts
Nomad

In my opinion games have been getting better its just that as ideas are used there are less and less good original ideas. so somebody gets accused of copying someone else but they have to copy someone because all the good ideas are taken. but its also true that the bar has been raised. and as a good game comes out people raise the bar to that and people with inferior graphics and engines are considered bad. and it is true that a lot of games i like a lot are by unpopular people. but sometimes they are by popular people but the games just aren't popular.

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