Were games better in the past? Weekly Discussion Thread 1

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Hello and welcome to the first big weekly discussion thread on Cubed3! Here we will each week discuss one burnig topic in a big discussion thread! For the future the topic in question will be picked by the community through a poll topic that I will post as soon as this one is up, and the most popular gaming related subject will be picked to discuss here! Smilie

But as this is the first one and it is as good to just get it off with i have decided to pick the toipic for the week, which is a topic I have felt is always boiling in the gaming community: Wherever or not games were better in the past.

Some important rules are:
1. Stay on topic as well as possible. It helps a lot if everyone talks about the subject discussed in this topic to keep it clean and about the topic that is discussed this week.

2. No personal attacks or name calling. The goal is that this is going to be a weekly discussion topic in which people feel free to discuss the burning topic at hand as elected by the community. Therefore it is important that the discussion thread is warm and welcoming of people even if their opinion on the subject differs from yours, isn't that what this topic is about in the first place? Discussing differing opinions?

3, Try to add something to the discussion with your post. While everyone enjoys to hear that someone agrees with them, it is important that most posts add something to the subject in question. It is possible to say "I completely agree with you, because from my experience..." or "I disagree with your opinion, because from what I have seen...". This way each post in the topic contributes to the discussion and there will not be too many empty comments, which often ends up being the case.

So without further ado, I start off the discussion with my initial PoV on the subject:

EDIT: It can't be stressed enough that this is not meant to in anyway replace normal gaming discussion, but rather as a big and weekly thread in which a hot topic is discussed in an open and organized manner. Smilie
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While I am a great old-school junkie and most of my spare time gaming is indeed spent on games that are at least 10 years or older, or games that tries to recreate the feeling of those old games, I think that in general gaming has became better over the years. It is worth to keep in mind that when most of us play old-school games we only play those games we really loved and rarely has to play the shovel ware of the time which gives at least me a very biased view when talking about old-school gaming..

The overall number of great quality games released nowadays simply exceeds what you could expect in the past. Only the last month we have seen plenty of games that are extremely well-made such as BotW and HZD. It would be a lie to say that the current age gaming industry does not release it's classic masterpieces that we will talk about dearly a couple of decades later.

The only place where I can see that gaming has decreased over the years is in local multiplayer which for a while seemed to become rarer and rarer. Thankfully this is a trend that seems to change with both the release of the Nintendo Switch, which is the perfect system for local multiplayer, but also by many companies starting to realize that people actually want local multiplayer which seems to give us better and more creatie local multiplayer experiences than we have ever seen before.

While I must agree that many of my favorite games comes from the 90's such as Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, many others such as Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, Xenoblade Chronicles X etc. are just released in the last couple of years.

The biggest thing that makes gaming today better than it has ever been before in my opinion, and why so many recently released games are instant favorites of mine, is the diversity in the market. If I want to play a game with an old school feel I can easily find it on Steam, if I want to play a great JRPG there are more of them than I could ever dream of playing through. Even niche genres gets a lot of love an attention nowadays when indie companies can create wonderful game experiences to cater to the genre's core audience.

There seems to be something for everyone nowadays, and those games are catered to those audiences in ways that was not possible when the industry was smaller. Diversity, quantity, and technical improvements are the keywords as to why I think the games has actually, no matter how hard it is to me as a retro junkie to admit, improved over the years.

( Edited 13.07.2017 19:24 by Guest )

The difference between illusion and reality is vague to the one who suffers from the former and questionable for the one suffering form the later.

Whilst I think people can see this as a subjective question, I think there's no doubt that games are "better" now in the sense that the majority of games play and control in a much more user friendly way. The subjectivity perhaps comes in whether games are now too easy, or too short, or have too many collectibles, too many fetch quests, are buggier, require post-release patches to fix them, are getting major story content patched in... and so on.

In terms of choice, I suppose that, yes, it is better than ever. You can indeed still find challenging old-school games coming out from indie devs, and so it is balanced by the modern stuff through bigger developers. Perhaps we are simply missing certain other genres, though, such as the 3D platformer collectathon, which Playtonic is rectifying with Yooka-Laylee (whether any more of these types of games will be made, we'll have to see).

I personally find it quite difficult to play NES 8-bit type games. I believe there are fantastic games from that era, and indeed in that style, as seen with Shovel Knight, VVVVVV and more, but I still sometimes find it difficult to go back to them. I find it much easier to play SNES 16-bit games, however, and I think the quality of that era was fantastic.

But there is a reason I am still gaming today, and that's because the quality is still fantastic. For all the flaws of modern games, the actual quality of the content is incredible, and I could go on with my list of favourite games of the last 10-15 years, and even older if we are including the PS1 and N64 era.

I think the fact that I have had some of my most memorable and favourite experiences with Breath of the Wild, The Last of Us, Life is Strange, Mass Effect, Persona 4, Metal Gear Rising and more indicates that gaming is still just as good as it ever was.

I do think it's difficult to decide if it's definitely better than the pre-3D era, as I only have great memories, albeit ones that are perhaps hazier due to being so long ago, and only remembering the great times I had.

It seems for sure that there is more choice now, though, so whatever your tastes, you can most likely find what you love, with some exceptions (the aforementioned 3D collectathon).

I can say that I find myself playing more modern type games than old-school, but I think it's best to have a mixture of the two. You can even say that certain old-school 3D games are making a resurgence, such as anti-grav racing (FAST, Wipeout) and platformers (Crash, Yooka), and with indies ensuring 8-/16-bit games are kept going, this is perhaps one of the best times to be gaming.

When looked at it like that, perhaps, yes, the best gaming period is right now.

( Edited 13.07.2017 19:24 by Guest )

I will agree, games today are pretty awesome.But the older 8-bit games like Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and Frogger have a better set up to them. Also, most of the games today just care about guns and blood, when the originals like PAC-MAN and Duck Hunt have a better appeal to them. Again, this is my opinion, where to others, they like call of duty and GTA. Personally, i like all video games. I just think the older games are better.

( Edited 13.07.2017 19:24 by Guest )

Games are undoubtedly "better" now, but the problem is the sheer number of "better" games. Its somewhat dispersed the market.Back in the 1980's and 90's there were only a few must have titles in a year. Now we get must have titles every month. Not only that but these games are much much bigger than they were back then (in general). Look at Horizon and Zelda launching so close to each other! 

As much as I love DKC (SNES) its hard to argue that DKTF (WiiU) is not a better game. The nostalgia puts doubt in peoples mind. Its not always the case for example the N64 version of Mario Tennis far surpasses that of Mario Tennis Ultra Smash (WiiU)

I also think that the average age of the gamer is also getting much older. So the nostalgia train definitely kicks in. We tend to be cash rich-time poor now. I have more games than i ever need but never have time to play through them.

Back in the 1990's and early 2000's I would only get a couple of games a year and play them to death. You come to respect those games a lot more once you know their nooks and crannies. I used to play through Sonic 3 & K literally every other Sunday, and that is why i think you probably could think games were better in the past. We've replayed them out of either lack of other top quality titles at that time or the fact that we just didnt have the money to buy new titles every week.

I would say kids these days don't suffer the same fate, the used game market and the fact that gaming is so much bigger than it was back then allows for mass economies of scale meaning cheaper games overall. This isn't particularly new, i'd say that this has been happening since the start of the millennium. Internet shopping such as amazon/ebay and other sites means that games can be purchased cheaply and quickly.Not that carboot/garage sales weren't an option. Back in the 90's/00's i used to check my newspaper listings to see if people listed games. I picked up games like WWF No Mercy for 5 quid pretty soon after it was released! 

Now if only SEGA would release a physical version of Sonic Mania then I might have something to do every other Sunday....

( Edited 13.07.2017 19:24 by Guest )

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