Originally posted by Derwood Ah the good ol days, when games were writen by gamers for other gamers. When each game came with a detailed intruction manual on how to get it to run on your machine, but almost no instruction on how to play it. Where you would sytematically punch every key on the keyboard until something happened. Back when you changed key mapping by hacking the code. Man, I miss those days, NOT!
Okay, my wife hijacked the computer for most of the day, and I wasted the few hours I have on the PC playing Tremulous (yes, I know that Natural Selection is better, but I'd have to re-purchase HL and I just don't like using steam).
Anyway.... I realize that not all games can be great. Even 10 years ago, there were crappy, uninspired games. Go check out Zero Wing or Shaq-Fu to see for yourself. Last year however, The only games that seemed to hook me were Meteos, Lego Star Wars, and Dragon Quest 8. Notice that out of those three games, one was on a portable system while another was a kiddie game. That's not sad.... it's tragic.
Given, a lot of this is just my opinion, but when I ask gamers in my age group (25-35) what they're playing, the answer is usually "nothing" or "World of Warcraft." The greates bulk of games, a greater bulk than ever before, just feels like the developers phoned it in. I can pick up the latest WWII FPS or YAMITG RPG and just not feel that they are any different than any other games in their genres. Even crappy games used to seperate themselves from the pack back in the day. Now, it just all feels the same with only a few small budget, indie, freeware and portable titles even attempting anything new.
And by new, I don't mean a whole new genre or wacky concept game. I mean "new" in the entire sense of the word. From the a new twist on an old format, to the as-of-yet untried MMOFPRTSRPG.
Oh, and one last thing......
GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES!!!!
I don't play games because I want a story. I play games because I want an experience. I really didn't give a shit about the Plot of Smash TV (what little there was), and I really didn't need to know it in order to enjoy the game. Games are a competitive dialog between two players. Games are conglomorations of abstact components that are used in cunjunction with one another to provide "challenge" to the player. My own belief is that game devs are to busy trying to make interactive movies and not games. This mentality is exactly why we have a "hit driven" video game distribution system that totally ignores anything that isn't on the top 20 list. We have to take steps towards more indepent developement and less dependence on Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Otherwise, the games are going to get worse. And when the games get worse, people will stop playing them. And when people stop playing them, people will stop buying them.
Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe Oh, and one last thing...... GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES!!!! I don't play games because I want a story.
Other people have different tastes in gaming than you do, in spite of the fact that most posters on this board believe their preferences to be the One True Way of gaming.
The way I see it WoW is both a blessing and a curse. Namely, it sucked up this massive subscription base from other MMO games, but it also brought in an unsurpassed amount of new gamers to the MMO genre. The problem? the majority of these gamers are degenerate bnet kiddies, who now for the first time are experiencing the MMO are trickling down into new and previous MMO games completely silencing the mostly mature community.
Have you ever played EQ2 and WoW alternating?. EQ2 players are a million times nicer and much more mature about things. WoW players are bleh... my god are they horrible. Sure, you can find the mature in the bunch, but why bother when you have to weed through millions.
Other people have different tastes in gaming than you do, in spite of the fact that most posters on this board believe their preferences to be the One True Way of gaming.
I never claimed that my way was "The One True Way." Simply writing my statement off as opinion seems like a cop-out though. Opinions DO matter. Especially when opinions are shared by large groups of people. Many people in my age group are not finding games that keep them entertained. We're looking for a gaming "home" so to speak and, from the number of requests for games on this board, we are not alone in this. <shrugs> If that isn't an indication that games are losing something, I don't know what is.
It's kinda strange, the budgets get bigger and bigger with longer and longer developement times, but the content gets shorter and shorter. This is mainly due to the insane amount of detail thats needed for even the smallest and most unnoticeable piece of graphical content. They actually hired a full time programer to work on the particle effects in NFL Street. Real important stuff like smoke coming off of a grill and water falls in the background. They pay so much attention to things that the player doesn't even focus on during play....
I'm sure that some people do play games for stories. After all, someone bought Xenosaga and Metal Gear Solid 3 only to sit through several HOURS of cut scenes. Personally, I think it would have been cheaper and more entertaining to watch a movie seeins' how the worst B movie acting is shakesprear in comparison to most video game voice work.
The fact that you think Oblivion is a better game than Morrowind tells me some things about you as a gamer. To put it in a neutral way: it says we value somewhat different aspects of games.
But you asked how depth can be measured.
The most obvious way it can be measured is to consider how fleshed out the world is. I'm still going to use Oblivion and Morrowind as my points of comparison, BTW. As these games are both in the same world, they have the same depth of world historical development.
The next question is plot: how intricate are the plots involved? There are a LOT more twists and turns to the Morrowind plot than to the Oblivion main plot. That is not a subjective thing: you can directly compare both plots and see which is better crafted.
Next are the side-quests and other quest related things you can do with your character. Here, Morrowind again had superior side-quests, for the most part: the Assassin's Guild quests in Oblivion were very good, IMO.
Now, on a more general level, games like Baldur's Gate II have a lot of subtle touches and interesting details which few modern games match -- I thought KotOR came close (though it was a shorter game) and KotOR II had the potential to be even better than KotOR I -- but failed because it was pushed out the door unfinished.
To return to the original comments I made: When I go into a place that sells game software, it used to be that I found a lot of new titles, a few of which I thought about buying. Now, not only are there fewer titles overall, but there are fewer new titles, and only occassionally a title that I might actually want to buy. This is NOT because I have become more jaded, but because they simply don't make games with the depth they once had.
I know that not everything we feel about games can be put into objectively comparable values. They don't need to be. Games *are* supposed to be subjective to a great degree. While my liking of older games may have some aspects of nostalgia, I think most of it is due to the fact that game makers made games that I LIKED, and they've CHANGED in such a way that I find them shallow and unsophisticated. Yeah, I've grown more mature, but my taste in games hasn't really altered a whole lot -- some, sure, but the core of what I like in a game has really changed very little over the years. I think the same is true for a lot of people.
I don't think games have gotten better over the years. I think they've gotten more expensive to make, and have higher visual and auditory quality. But the game itself: the plot and story and world and interaction that make up the heart of a game, seems to me to be generally worse today than it was ten or twenty years ago. I wish that were not the case, but I think it is, and I know many people around my age (37) agree with me.
My major concern is for gaming industry in general. If you will look out there, the number of games made every year nearly doubles. However how many of those things are simply old games in new cloth? A game that includes some innovation is called revolutionary, and those games are few and far between because everyone is out there to make money and no one wants to invest into an idea that has not been tested before.
Aside from that we can all see the collapse of single player RPGs. Lets take a look a decade back 1996, FF-V. It has taken me weeks to beat it. Just to beat the game it has taken me well over 60 hours of gameplay, when you get all the cool things we are looking at 100 hours of playable conent.
Lets look at the games now, like FFX it has taken me a bit under 20 hours to beat the game and in about 45 I had all the cool things that I have skipped the first time.
Same goes Oblivion, it took me unbelievable amount of time to beat Morrowind. Got done w/ Oblivion in under 30 hours.
Now days developers concentrate so much on pritty graphics, state of the art sound so much that they forget about stuff that makes game fun. Being, creativity and content.
Comments
Okay, my wife hijacked the computer for most of the day, and I wasted the few hours I have on the PC playing Tremulous (yes, I know that Natural Selection is better, but I'd have to re-purchase HL and I just don't like using steam).
Anyway.... I realize that not all games can be great. Even 10 years ago, there were crappy, uninspired games. Go check out Zero Wing or Shaq-Fu to see for yourself. Last year however, The only games that seemed to hook me were Meteos, Lego Star Wars, and Dragon Quest 8. Notice that out of those three games, one was on a portable system while another was a kiddie game. That's not sad.... it's tragic.
Given, a lot of this is just my opinion, but when I ask gamers in my age group (25-35) what they're playing, the answer is usually "nothing" or "World of Warcraft." The greates bulk of games, a greater bulk than ever before, just feels like the developers phoned it in. I can pick up the latest WWII FPS or YAMITG RPG and just not feel that they are any different than any other games in their genres. Even crappy games used to seperate themselves from the pack back in the day. Now, it just all feels the same with only a few small budget, indie, freeware and portable titles even attempting anything new.
And by new, I don't mean a whole new genre or wacky concept game. I mean "new" in the entire sense of the word. From the a new twist on an old format, to the as-of-yet untried MMOFPRTSRPG.
Oh, and one last thing......
GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES!!!!
I don't play games because I want a story. I play games because I want an experience. I really didn't give a shit about the Plot of Smash TV (what little there was), and I really didn't need to know it in order to enjoy the game. Games are a competitive dialog between two players. Games are conglomorations of abstact components that are used in cunjunction with one another to provide "challenge" to the player. My own belief is that game devs are to busy trying to make interactive movies and not games. This mentality is exactly why we have a "hit driven" video game distribution system that totally ignores anything that isn't on the top 20 list. We have to take steps towards more indepent developement and less dependence on Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Otherwise, the games are going to get worse. And when the games get worse, people will stop playing them. And when people stop playing them, people will stop buying them.
Other people have different tastes in gaming than you do, in spite of the fact that most posters on this board believe their preferences to be the One True Way of gaming.
Have you ever played EQ2 and WoW alternating?. EQ2 players are a million times nicer and much more mature about things. WoW players are bleh... my god are they horrible. Sure, you can find the mature in the bunch, but why bother when you have to weed through millions.
Pantastic wrote:
Other people have different tastes in gaming than you do, in spite of the fact that most posters on this board believe their preferences to be the One True Way of gaming.
I never claimed that my way was "The One True Way." Simply writing my statement off as opinion seems like a cop-out though. Opinions DO matter. Especially when opinions are shared by large groups of people. Many people in my age group are not finding games that keep them entertained. We're looking for a gaming "home" so to speak and, from the number of requests for games on this board, we are not alone in this. <shrugs> If that isn't an indication that games are losing something, I don't know what is.
It's kinda strange, the budgets get bigger and bigger with longer and longer developement times, but the content gets shorter and shorter. This is mainly due to the insane amount of detail thats needed for even the smallest and most unnoticeable piece of graphical content. They actually hired a full time programer to work on the particle effects in NFL Street. Real important stuff like smoke coming off of a grill and water falls in the background. They pay so much attention to things that the player doesn't even focus on during play....
I'm sure that some people do play games for stories. After all, someone bought Xenosaga and Metal Gear Solid 3 only to sit through several HOURS of cut scenes. Personally, I think it would have been cheaper and more entertaining to watch a movie seeins' how the worst B movie acting is shakesprear in comparison to most video game voice work.
The fact that you think Oblivion is a better game than Morrowind tells me some things about you as a gamer. To put it in a neutral way: it says we value somewhat different aspects of games.
But you asked how depth can be measured.
The most obvious way it can be measured is to consider how fleshed out the world is. I'm still going to use Oblivion and Morrowind as my points of comparison, BTW. As these games are both in the same world, they have the same depth of world historical development.
The next question is plot: how intricate are the plots involved? There are a LOT more twists and turns to the Morrowind plot than to the Oblivion main plot. That is not a subjective thing: you can directly compare both plots and see which is better crafted.
Next are the side-quests and other quest related things you can do with your character. Here, Morrowind again had superior side-quests, for the most part: the Assassin's Guild quests in Oblivion were very good, IMO.
Now, on a more general level, games like Baldur's Gate II have a lot of subtle touches and interesting details which few modern games match -- I thought KotOR came close (though it was a shorter game) and KotOR II had the potential to be even better than KotOR I -- but failed because it was pushed out the door unfinished.
To return to the original comments I made: When I go into a place that sells game software, it used to be that I found a lot of new titles, a few of which I thought about buying. Now, not only are there fewer titles overall, but there are fewer new titles, and only occassionally a title that I might actually want to buy. This is NOT because I have become more jaded, but because they simply don't make games with the depth they once had.
I know that not everything we feel about games can be put into objectively comparable values. They don't need to be. Games *are* supposed to be subjective to a great degree. While my liking of older games may have some aspects of nostalgia, I think most of it is due to the fact that game makers made games that I LIKED, and they've CHANGED in such a way that I find them shallow and unsophisticated. Yeah, I've grown more mature, but my taste in games hasn't really altered a whole lot -- some, sure, but the core of what I like in a game has really changed very little over the years. I think the same is true for a lot of people.
I don't think games have gotten better over the years. I think they've gotten more expensive to make, and have higher visual and auditory quality. But the game itself: the plot and story and world and interaction that make up the heart of a game, seems to me to be generally worse today than it was ten or twenty years ago. I wish that were not the case, but I think it is, and I know many people around my age (37) agree with me.
Aside from that we can all see the collapse of single player RPGs. Lets take a look a decade back 1996, FF-V. It has taken me weeks to beat it. Just to beat the game it has taken me well over 60 hours of gameplay, when you get all the cool things we are looking at 100 hours of playable conent.
Lets look at the games now, like FFX it has taken me a bit under 20 hours to beat the game and in about 45 I had all the cool things that I have skipped the first time.
Same goes Oblivion, it took me unbelievable amount of time to beat Morrowind. Got done w/ Oblivion in under 30 hours.
Now days developers concentrate so much on pritty graphics, state of the art sound so much that they forget about stuff that makes game fun. Being, creativity and content.