On Sun, 1 Sep 2024 10:32:05 +0100, JAB <
noway@nochance.com> wrote:
For me this is a really is on the 8-bit era by quite a bit. It wasn't
just the fact that I could now play computer games without spending
money at the arcade but also how quickly it went from arcade rip-offs,
and some text adventures named with really creative titles such as
Adventure A, to games that used the big advantage home computers had -
they weren't tied into getting you to put another 10p in the slot. It
was also an era where you still had people developing games because
that's a game they wanted to play*.
>
I think that the new tech era did have some of that but computers were
then 'old hat' so there just wasn't that level of excitement.
>
I kinda feel I should also mention what I think it the worse era - The
Modern era. It's not as though there aren't good games out there but
instead the big budgets are almost exclusive going to cookie cutter
games based on the same IP's/gameplay. Star Wars: Outlaws seems a good
example of that from the couple of reviews I've seen. Even if you put
the technical bugs to one side (I think I've been beaten into submission
actually expecting games on release to not be bug ridden) the core
gameplay was just described as generally bland and typical Ubisoft. You
can fix bugs but core gameplay, that's somewhat more problematic.
>
*I do realise that is of course a bit let's forget all the crud arcade
clone that were turned out just to try and make a bit of money and how
quickly big players moved into the market.
I'm of mixed feelings about this.
There's a lot I really dislike about this modern era of gaming.
- The repetitiveness of big-budget games that always go the safe
route, whether that's just re-using tried-n-true mechanics or sticking
to a handful of popular IPs.
- The awfulness of publishers nickle-and-diming its customers through
MTX, Season Passes and cosmetics that used to be included in base
games, and how this greed has affected the game-play.
- The worries about our lack of ownership and control over games we
legally purchased. All these make me sometimes bemoan the future of
our hobby.
And yet... there is so much that is awesome about video games nowadays
too!
- That they've never looked better is of course the most obvious. With
tools like Unity and Unreal, and resources like the various asset
stores, it's all but impossible to make an ugly game anymore. Even the
cheapest asset-flip game still looks pretty damned good in comparison
to what we used to get even ten years ago. Developers are purposefully
having to 'uglify' their games by using retro-filters and pixel art,
and they STILL look head-n-shoulders better than anything we ever
played in the actual era those games are emulating.
- We're also SPOILED with all the quality-of-life features games come
with. Whether it's basica stuff like autosaves or adjustable controls,
or more sophisticated stuff like accessibility options, games are just
easier to jump into. Level design is much less haphazard, and
difficulty curves are much smoother. There's a science to game design
that developers were still learning two or three eras ago but have now
become so expected that every game uses it.
- And while the big-name publishers push out their usual pabulum, the
smaller Independents offer us so much variety and experimental stuff
that it's hard to really bitch about the former. My /biggest/
complaint about this 'modern' era is that there aren't enough mid-tier
developers who take the lessons learned from the Indies and couple it
with the resources and skills of the big-publishers to create new IPs
with a AAA experience. But even that seems to be slowly changing for
the better.
- Dare I mention how awesome it is to have modern tech that can run
all my old games too? I have a huge library of DOS games that I can
start with a mouse-click, and they all play better than ever they did
on my real hardware. I've ripped all my Playstation disks to ISOs too,
so I get the same benefit there. Fans of Sega Genesis and Nintendo
have similar options. It's a period where (almost) No Game Gets Left
Behind!
- And don't even get me started on all the free games!
So there is a lot to like about this modern era too.
------
Actually, I had a really hard time making a selection for my own
'best' era. Each period had as many ups and downs that it was really
hard for me to decide. Those early years when Pong was new and
exciting; there was a freshness and excitement to it all. It really
felt like the world was on a threshold of an entirely new thing (and,
well, I guess it was). That '16-bit' era, when the tools were
available to developers to start creating games that went beyond
"Mario Brothers" and "Space Invaders". My so-called 'era of
consolidation' where we just got a lot of really solid, really well
made games (even if some of the worst parts of the modern era started
creeping in). It's all so good!
[The only eras that don't personally excite me were the
years of the first- and second-gen consoles, and the
8-bit PCs, but that's largely because I wasn't that
invested in games and computers back then.]
In fact, my final selection actually owed less to playing the actual
games themselves than everything /around/ the games; the rapid changes
in technology and the rush of keeping up with it all. It wasn't just
the constant upgrades or the amazing advances in graphics; it was also
stuff like new operating system paradigms and the Internet! The
amazing amounts of capital being pumped into the industry didn't hurt
either; where games used to take six months to develop by a handful of
people, now we were getting productions that took years to finish and
cost tens of millions of dollars. Like those very earliest years of
Pong, it again felt like we were on the threshold of something huge.
Not that it was all sunshine and roses. There were A LOT of awful
games out there, and -thanks to that same rapid advancement of
technology- some will never be easily playable (there's a glut of
shitty Win9x games that just don't like running on the NT kernel, yet
demand more resources to run smoothly than can be expected from most
emulators). And the 'keeping up with the Jones' technology race was
exhausting... and expensive. You'd buy a new video card only to find
six months later that nobody was supporting it and it wasn't able to
run the newest games anyway. Plus, corporate mergers and bankruptcies
killed so many beloved franchises.
Still... it was a real rush, being a gamer back in the "New Tech" era.
But every period had its ups and its downs. Regardless, they were all
good times, whichever one you personally enjoyed the most.