Let me preface that I’ve been gaming since I was 10, own a PS5 and had an Xbox Series X both at one point (and played Game Pass)
But man… after spending the summer going to garage sales, finding older / retro games for PS2, GameCube, SNES I’ve realized that games are not any better than they are these days, or not even near the amount of originality that came with said games.
I’ve played some great games like Ghost of Tsushima, the Tomb Raider Reboot on PS4 and loved those, looking into the future of games I’d want to get on PS5 and the list seems rather small, maybe I’ve consider GTA 6 and the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, but really that’s about it – and I usually try new things but haven’t found a modern day game on the PS5 that really hooks me in.
I find myself going back playing Donkey Kong Country on SNES, Tetris on GameBoy, or even having a blast playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy on PS1 – games like those while tied in nostalgia just seem to have been made better – I just don’t know what changed. I’ve also been collecting older video game magazines like GamePro and EGM – and it shows so much excitement around video games.
My question is too, is it because rental stores disappeared and now we’re stuck with a 50-70 dollar game (refund if we can, sometimes not always the case) – did developers get lazy? Small studios bought out by big companies? What about exclusives being faded out, or everything being ported over to every system?
Part of the problem is that fun gameplay mechanics and gameplay loops are harder to market that new pretty flashy graphics. Those in charge don’t play games and don’t know what makes a game good, so they are just pushing for prettier graphics and forget the actual game part.
Nintendo is basically the opposite of that currently, they are held back by the switch but they do technical miracles from the gameplay and aesthetic pov
https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-20-pc-games
I mean how can that be true. the number 2 and 3 most popular games are minecraft and fortnite. Nobody is playing those because of their “stellar graphics” (\s on the stellar graphics part but serious evreywhere else)
number 5 and 6 is roblox and league of legends, which is also not known for being graphically advanced.
number 9 being valarant, is also non graphics intensive. it only needs an intenl HD4k graphics card to run.
in this year’s game of the year awards, 2 of the nominees are super maro bros wonder and legend of zelda, tears of the kingdom, and these are switch games, aka the console lagging behind in graphics technology.
It was probably worded poorly, but i kinda meant single player games as OP was.
Multiplayer games, especially free and easy to run ones have much more staying power. Single player can sell millions and not be in most popular list in couple months since it just ends and people move on.
My point was that new games rarely innovate anything, and just do the things that have proved adequate, just make it pretty and it looks good on trailer.
Maybe the games you play.
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There’s a really good one called Sea of Stars that captures the nostalgia factor while also feeling modern. Turned my teenager on to it and he plays it more than the AAA titles. Lol.
While 60$ was always the price for quality games, 70$ is definitely overpriced for anything AAA, Baldurs Gate 3 proves that.
I think nostalgia is definitely deceiving until you play those games again, I always replay the Souls trilogy to once again convince myself how I feel about them. I did the same with older CODs this year becayse I felt scammed by MW2, since Activision is falsely advertising that their CODs have a working MP and are knowingly distributing games with huge security problems, it was a bit hard.
But after pirating, I managed to play those old CODs again, and let me tell you, they are indeed better than new ones, in almost all ways.
They were made in times where to make money from games, you HAD to make them good, now you just don’t, people who buy games aren’t only gamers anymore and bar for quality and effort is minimal. This is something you have to remember.
It’s not that the games used to be “made better” it’s just that you are old and high on blinding nostalgia
This is a common feeling among gamers, and threads like this one pop up quite regularly. It’s a valid thing to want to talk about, but I don’t think you’re going to get a satisfactory answer here on Reddit.
Do you understand how complex the question you’re asking is? You want to know how changes to the games industry have affected the actual games, on an artistic level, covering a period of about 30 years. This is the kind of thing that a sociologist would spend years researching to write a PhD thesis on! So, I’m sorry, but I don’t think anyone here on Reddit is going to be able to answer it with any kind of authority.
What you’ll get instead are a bunch of very confident people, whose only evidence is their own personal experience (which is all you have as well, by the way). Some will agree with you, most won’t. But, no one really knows, because none of us have ever properly researched it.
Fellow old school gamer here. I really like the variety of games that are released nowadays but there is a lot of bloat to navigate through before you reach the fun parts. That means a lot of money and time spent filtering through the stuff you can’t really get into.
Once you can do that then gaming is better than ever.
A lot of it is nostalgia.
It’s also just a different kind of experience. Older games tend to be more one dimensional, gameplay wise.
There is ZERO reason to go back to something like Gameboy Tetris other than crippling nostalgia. Your horizon has become too small, and that’s not the fault of games.