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Gaming has become the "you played yourself" gif and we have no one to blame but ourselves

Even the most popular DF videos top out at like 1 million views, meaning less than 1% of the player base so I dunno about that. More likely the developers themselves are the main graphics whores.
 

ButchCat

Member
We are to blame for it. We wanted more everything in our games and that comes with a cost. There used to be a time where we would happily pay 40 pounds for a 7 hour campaign and now if devs do the same we feel ripped off and entitled.
I said this before.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Where are the games with deep physics, interactive environments, incredible AI? It's a sad state when it's certain indie developers that are going the furthest to push this aspect of gaming. It's a sad state that Fear, nearly a 20 year old game has AI that puts nearly all modern games to shame. It's a sad state when Guerrilla: Red Faction still has better destructibility than anything on the market 12 years later. It's a sad state that a Nintendo game (BOTW) released in 2017 on inferior hardware probably has the best use of physics and environmental interactivity of any game ever released. It's not that these games were incredibly expensive to make, the developers just allocated more time into trying to make them.... you know? FUN.

We traded all of that in because the DF console war crowd just couldn't let go of "teh graphics, framerates, and resolutions" to besmirch each others consoles which has very much shaped our current predicament.

And yes it made a huge difference, companies in the PS4/Xbone/Wii U generation were absolutely crippled if their games fell short in head to head comparisons and didn't tick the right boxes with resolution and frame-rate.

What we're left with are graphics focused games with massively bloated budgets that have become GaaS nightmares just to make a return in investment. There's a lot fewer of them and there is a lot less risk in terms of genre (so generic as well). To make matters worse, I don't even feel the games look substantially better. There are exceptions here and there, but I can count them on one hand.

Maybe the industry was headed in this direction anyway, but I can't help but think we played ourselves.


This is wrong on numerous points and levels.

For a start off, "deep physics, interactive environments, incredible AI" has fuck all to do with playability. Its just another feature checklist like 60fps, 4k res, HDR. Its completely arbitrary.

Which isn't to say these things aren't of any use, just that they are tools employed in pursuit of entertaining the player and giving them a good experience.

The way this is stated indicates the OP has a belief that there is some sort of ideal design template to follow, which of course is nonsense. Making every action RPG like BotW would just result in that formula getting stale and uninteresting.

GaaS and AAA are not the same at all either. For example Sony's signature tentpole releases tend to be pretty complete standalone titles with limited post-sale monetization if any. Also a lot depends on what you consider GaaS, I mean there's a big difference between say Final Fantasy 14's pure subscription model, and a thing influenced by F2P mechanics invented in the mobile space - which being honest is where the rot originally crept in.

The reality is that the casual market has demonstrated its willingness to be bent over in order to secure a competitive advantage or some sort of social distinctiveness for themselves. This is the mobile philosophy writ large.
What needs to be understood is that this sector of the market is far bigger and more lucrative than the traditional gamer demographic.

Gaming has gotten bigger as a whole because its ranks have been swollen by this sort of end-user, not because there are so many more traditional gamers playing. You can see this clearly based on combined console install-bases which have remained fairly static for the last 20 years.

The changes to the product have largely been a result of this interacting with a sharp rise in production expense due to increasingly capable tech and greater overall competition.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Beamng looks like trash. It’s just the impressive physics.
"trash"

nceg3AD.jpg

And indie games are depression simulators.
"Depression simulators"





You know, i seriously wonder if you're always being this disingenuous on purpose. Is this some new form of trolling?
 
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Just play the games you enjoy, old or new. Simple, If you no longer enjoy it go do something else, So much to do out there other than gaming. Many people get so caught up in it all.

I'm 41 and been mostly a pc gamer since I was 14. 4 weeks ago I sold my Ryzen 3950x and 3080 to a friend of mine who is a music producer. Right now I'm using my Mac and playing my old ps1 ps2 n64 when I feel like it.

Doing this has made me realise that yes modern games are shit, But the old stuff is still there, will always be there and theres no pressure to play anymore.
Yeah, and I think I'm going to a similar direction. Recalling the thread of a user with gaming mid-life crisis, I'm 32 and also used to be a pc gamer and loved to research for better hardware combination and play all the latest s#!t here and there, but perhaps I won't bothering anymore, just saving up money to get a new laptop by the end of this year, and if Mac Os Ventura and Metal 3 with Apple M2 can do wonders with emulators and games up to now, i'll get one, otherwise i'll pick up any windows gaming laptop (put linux on it and whatnot). indies may better save the day anyway.
 
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DavidGzz

Member
I think that the video of the combat of Diablo 4 is showing some advancements. Better hit reactions/dismemberment than fighting games. But overall, yes the OP is correct.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I ain't playing it unless it's 60fps, 30fps is a slide show.
I ain't playing it unless it's 120fps, 60fps is a slideshow.
I ain't playing it unless it's 144fps, 120fps is a slideshow.
I ain't playing it unless it's 240fps! 144fps is a slideshow

And they expect every game to have it too.

So here lies your problem.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
Not to sound sour faced, but I do hope blockchain gaming bellies up and fails. I’m getting to where I dislike this new direction businesses are trying to make money with video games, but at least some things are nice. I sure do look at the past more than the future though. I realize this whenever I’m buying an older game, a remaster of an old game, or buying the next entry in a series that’s continuing. Which the last part is going to happen. I can’t say I agree with you that modern gaming isn’t good because I don’t think that’s true. There’s just a smaller margin of games I want to buy. The rest is just a matter of availability. There’s plenty of good games beyond the Copyright 2022 on the back of the box.

Here are some of my complaints. It sucks when I purchase my 2nd, 3rd, or 6th iteration of a game and realize I’m just buying it again because I’m a big fan. Stuff like RE4R doesn’t seem to count cause I’m excited for that stuff or even FF7R. It just proves there’s no real vision outside what’s already been created. It’s either copying or it’s just there to exist. I get excited for new stuff, but it isn’t an all new original idea. It’s just stuff I want more of.

I also think it sucks to click on the Gaming tab at places like YouTube, Twitch, or news sites like MSN. It’s either games I don’t care about whatsoever or it’s esports stuff that isn’t interesting to me at all. I do better by not clicking on those tabs because I feel like I’m not even a fan when I start seeing all those stories. If you were to travel back in time, those tabs use to have interesting stuff. I’m not into Fortnite, Warzone, League of Legends, or any other game out there. That’s what the headlines are for video games on those platforms. It’s like I’m a hunter whenever I’m looking for gaming news that interests me.

Am I doing some mental gymnastics to make everything seem good? Yes and no. Yes, but it’s only if I start looking at what’s on this weeks flavor of the week list. No because there’s like 3 games I want coming soon and a couple more down the road. I definitely don’t have the universal excitement of seeing a Video Game and being excited because it’s simply a Video Game anymore. I’m not discouraged about it to the point where it stops me from having a good time with games. New games come and go. A new game isn’t new after people have had their fun with it. It typically gets shuffled in with the last one. If you’re like me, you tend to play those games and move on. Then I realize those games are still trying to make money even after I’ve finished my copy, so it’s really nothing to get worked up about. It’s a hobby after all. There’s bound to be bad stuff with all the good stuff.
 
It’s like some of you have battered spouse syndrome.. you hate everything but can’t bring yourself to leave.
I have left. Only maybe two out of every dozen new game releases interest me and I'll play maybe one of them. Most of my gaming life is now spent wandering steam hoping to come across some obscure, forgotten, or overlooked gem that'll scratch my itch for something different. I just like to come on here to bitch on occasion with my fellow old men.
 
Where are the games with deep physics, interactive environments, incredible AI? It's a sad state when it's certain indie developers that are going the furthest to push this aspect of gaming. It's a sad state that Fear, nearly a 20 year old game has AI that puts nearly all modern games to shame. It's a sad state when Guerrilla: Red Faction still has better destructibility than anything on the market 12 years later. It's a sad state that a Nintendo game (BOTW) released in 2017 on inferior hardware probably has the best use of physics and environmental interactivity of any game ever released. It's not that these games were incredibly expensive to make, the developers just allocated more time into trying to make them.... you know? FUN.

We traded all of that in because the DF console war crowd just couldn't let go of "teh graphics, framerates, and resolutions" to besmirch each others consoles which has very much shaped our current predicament.

And yes it made a huge difference, companies in the PS4/Xbone/Wii U generation were absolutely crippled if their games fell short in head to head comparisons and didn't tick the right boxes with resolution and frame-rate.

What we're left with are graphics focused games with massively bloated budgets that have become GaaS nightmares just to make a return in investment. There's a lot fewer of them and there is a lot less risk in terms of genre (so generic as well). To make matters worse, I don't even feel the games look substantially better. There are exceptions here and there, but I can count them on one hand.

Maybe the industry was headed in this direction anyway, but I can't help but think we played ourselves.

I'm playing through Sonic Mania with my nephew and it's like better than 99% of the trash released today. I'm not hopeful for the future.
 
For me I see a general consensus online and amongst my friends that modern gaming is shit, so no its not just being depressed.... As depressing as today is though with everything that's going on in the world.
Which is why I'm so impatient to get next gen games.
These new consoles are meant to allow more creative freedom for developers and a new way to design games but if we're still stuck with this cross gen nonsense, we'll never get to see what's possible on new hardware.
Your outlook on this issue may change once we get next gen exclusives and finally drop the old and busted PS4/XOne
 
I think people are expecting more from "true next gen" (we're more than a year into the current gen but whatever, this happens every gen) than developers could ever deliver. It's mostly based on those same developer's wild promises before this gen even got started but there is plenty of wild fan-fueled imagination in the mix. I guess we'll see once this gen fizzles out how things went.

I expect more of the same with better lighting and post-process effects, at most I see a better adoption of 60fps. I think creative gameplay has mostly been left for the indie scene while the big releases become more and more cinematic with less actual substance. You can have all the processing and hardware capability in the world but unless there are ideas on how to properly utilize that added power and capability we'll just get more of the same shit we've been getting for the last decade with more geometry and more accurate lighting. I've found more innovation in indie titles that run on a potato than I've seen from the AAA space. I've found more innovations I missed while digging through old Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games lately than playing new titles.
 
I think that while you are kinda right OP I wouldn't bash graphics, resolution or framerate as being less important. It's partly a visual medium after all.

I think the right take would be "why not all of the above?"
 

GermanZepp

Member
I feel you op, I like playing on console, but, the mayority of games i would like to try are on pc and I don't have the money to build a good one. There are lots of indie, weird cool stuff to try. I miss the corky arcade racing games, pvp couch games and arena shooters.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
I wish every game with realistic vehicles had physics like BeamNG, which I always viewed as a proof of concept of what could be in bigger games.
I wish BeamNG had online multiplayer. Then instead of being a fun car physics simulator it could become a destruction derby, racing game, rally, etc
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
I blame the ever increasing resolutions that hardware has to render to.
we should stop at 4k and chill for like... 20 years
Honestly this is where it's at for me. People say higher resolutions are needed for bigger screen sizes, but is anyone here genuinely going to play any video game on say, a 150" tv? Or even buy one? 4K is high enough for the next god knows how many years until we come up with some new tech
 
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Nickolaidas

Banned
"Man, sex used to be ... special, you know? Intimate, exciting. Now ... it just ...doesn't do anything for me. It seems stale. Boring. By-the-book," he said as he just finished having sex for the 500th time.
 

Three

Member
Bruh, are you really telling me you see a smoking hot chick and say “ I really wish she was uglier but had a way bigger brain?”
What we're left with are graphics focused games with massively bloated budgets that have become GaaS nightmares just to make a return in investment. There's a lot fewer of them and there is a lot less risk in terms of genre (so generic as well). To make matters worse, I don't even feel the games look substantially better.

I don't think he thinks they are even smoking hot. I guess he thinks games are Amber Heard nowadays. Really shitty and not that pretty when you spend some time with them.
 
I don’t overthink it, and enjoy where we are today, but it amuses me that gamers have become the most joyless group in entertainment - it definitely didn’t used to be that way. Everything’s a battle, everything has a winner, innovation must be stifled, things should remain the same (hardware and software) but look a bit better or we riot.

The internet community has a massively disproportionate stranglehold over the creators - to the point where I think creators have become paralysed. Every risk is potentially catastrophic - every minor error is mercilessly ridiculed, every failure is punished with devastating, company destroying ‘mob justice’ and every attempted innovation is met with such withering suspicion and jaded cynicism that it’s much easier to just iterate than it is to innovate and risk the wrath.

Welcome to 2022.
 
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The only people playing themselves are the console warriors. On my side, I’m having fun, whatever which plastic box is “winning”.
Yup have enjoyed PS, Xbox and now PC. I play whatever I want. Getting a PS5 soon and will continue my near $1000 catalogue of games on that platform.
 

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
Modern games are soulless trash. Given todays state of gaming business, does anyone actually believe developers are still wholeheartedly in the process of making a game? I sure don't. And you can feel it while playing the games.

I'd really love to say that the old games are still there but there is only so often I can play them and once you've had enough of them you are standing here with empty pockets.

This was the bittersweet caveat for me when I finally managed to cleared my backlog. I put effort into it so I can focus on modern games. But once I was through I started to see modern gaming for what it is.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Yeah, I don't need every game I play to be innovative. I mean, it's rather shit should all of them be the same, but I'm also not one of those people who feels every sequential game in a franchise needs a jump in innovation to the magnitude of Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild, or Assassin's Creed to Assassin's Creed II. Those moments are cool, and special because of their relative infrequency.

Trust me, the only thing just as shitty as biege lens flare FPS '23 # 450 is a game that feels the need to twist everything up just to say it did. Shit like that is how we ended up with Wii U's (a product that was warning us how badly it stunk before we even purchased it) and shit like of that caliber.

Innovation needs to be the next logical step in a process, not the process itself. Necessity is the mother of progress. It's also why the things that were innovative in the natural order of things are so memorable. Super Mario 64s and Pac Mans and Ocarina of Times and Breath of the Wilds and Final Fantasy VIIs and Counter Strikes and Half Lifes, etc, etc.

I dunno. I'm easy to please, I guess. But I also can sit down and laugh at a Fast and the Furious movie without needing it to be the next Citizen Kane or Pulp Fiction or 12 Years A Slave or the fuck ever. It's not as doom and gloom as you think, man.
 

CamHostage

Member
Which is why I'm so impatient to get next gen games.
These new consoles are meant to allow more creative freedom for developers and a new way to design games but if we're still stuck with this cross gen nonsense, we'll never get to see what's possible on new hardware.
Your outlook on this issue may change once we get next gen exclusives and finally drop the old and busted PS4/XOne

I'd love to be wrong and get the wow-factor you crave, but I think we are getting those "next gen games" built on a new way to design games... and yet, they're delivered as games that are also still cross-gen.

The new CoD MW2 blog post goes into detail about the technical specs of the game, which will include "a physically based material system allowing for state-of-the-art photogrammetry, a new hybrid tile-based streaming system, a new PBR decal rendering system, world volumetric lighting, 4K HDR, as well as a new GPU geometry pipeline." Now, a lot of that is sort of fuzzy naming for technical terms which may be end up being used in many different ways, but "hybrid tile-based streaming system"? "World volumetric lighting"? "GPU geometry pipeline"? Those relate to familiar bulletpoints in conversations and demonstrations of UE5: World Partition level data management, Lumen global illumination, and Nanite GPU-driven pipeline of virtualized geometry.

https://www.callofduty.com/blog/2022/06/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-II-announcement-release-reveal
 
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That's why I love playing on PC. There are so many great, overlooked games that try something different other than fancy graphics.

Try Teardown for example.
 

GymWolf

Member
I was missing a stealth botw brag topic.

Op need to play just cause 4 if he think that botw has the best use of physics in a game or how inventive you can get.
 

Wildebeest

Member
Start with "gaming has never been better" optimism. Look in detail at some of the best games from 10-20 years ago and the care that was put into small but important details in them, then look at the more recent follow ups that just have higher definition art assets but less care. Basically, just go on a binge of watching crowbcat videos. Fuuuuuu. What was the turning point? When GTA5 not only got away with declining standards but turned into money printing online service for basically forever more?
 

kyussman

Member
Is it not just that gaming used to be niche,back in the day games were designed with more complexity and depth for people who wanted that experience......these days gaming is mainstream entertainment just like movie going.......therefore more games are dumbed down for a mass audience.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Where are the games with deep physics, interactive environments, incredible AI? It's a sad state when it's certain indie developers that are going the furthest to push this aspect of gaming. It's a sad state that Fear, nearly a 20 year old game has AI that puts nearly all modern games to shame. It's a sad state when Guerrilla: Red Faction still has better destructibility than anything on the market 12 years later. It's a sad state that a Nintendo game (BOTW) released in 2017 on inferior hardware probably has the best use of physics and environmental interactivity of any game ever released. It's not that these games were incredibly expensive to make, the developers just allocated more time into trying to make them.... you know? FUN.

We traded all of that in because the DF console war crowd just couldn't let go of "teh graphics, framerates, and resolutions" to besmirch each others consoles which has very much shaped our current predicament.

And yes it made a huge difference, companies in the PS4/Xbone/Wii U generation were absolutely crippled if their games fell short in head to head comparisons and didn't tick the right boxes with resolution and frame-rate.

What we're left with are graphics focused games with massively bloated budgets that have become GaaS nightmares just to make a return in investment. There's a lot fewer of them and there is a lot less risk in terms of genre (so generic as well). To make matters worse, I don't even feel the games look substantially better. There are exceptions here and there, but I can count them on one hand.

Maybe the industry was headed in this direction anyway, but I can't help but think we played ourselves.

gonna cry tobey maguire GIF


Tell the switch it has inferior hardware and it will give you over 100 million reasons why it doesn’t care
 
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SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Gaming has never had the incredible selection spanning every genre, the way it does now. It’s never been better.

Also physics and interactivity don’t automatically make a game great. I’d be perfectly fine trading the ability to cook apples with a torch in BotW, for some more enemy variety/real dungeons.
 
The problem, OP, with your reasoning is that you incorrectly assume that gamers care about deep interactivity and physics simulation in every game.

In fact, the most successful games of all time are actually the simplest in terms of mechanics and interactivity; Minecraft, Fortnite, Tetris, Pokemon, Roblox, sports games etc.. None of these games chase bleeding edge visuals and yet are far and away the most successful games in the industry.

So folks like you who want deep game world simulation are in the minority. So yeah no one really played themselves.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Videogames as a whole are in the best position they've ever been. You just have to sift through the garbage. And vote with your wallets.
 

GymWolf

Member
The problem, OP, with your reasoning is that you incorrectly assume that gamers care about deep interactivity and physics simulation in every game.

In fact, the most successful games of all time are actually the simplest in terms of mechanics and interactivity; Minecraft, Fortnite, Tetris, Pokemon, Roblox, sports games etc.. None of these games chase bleeding edge visuals and yet are far and away the most successful games in the industry.

So folks like you who want deep game world simulation are in the minority. So yeah no one really played themselves.
You have a point but fuck me if that isn't a sad list you have there...
 
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Nickolaidas

Banned
Is it not just that gaming used to be niche,back in the day games were designed with more complexity and depth for people who wanted that experience......these days gaming is mainstream entertainment just like movie going.......therefore more games are dumbed down for a mass audience.
I remember a tank simulator game for the Amiga 500 that was impossible to play unless you had first read the game's 100 page manual. And we're talking old school manual, not the ps3 era magazine-like manuals.

Who the fuck would read a 100 page manual TODAY in order to play a video game?
 
People have the power to change things with their purchases. Just look at Yoko Taro and NieR Automata for an example. The guy put out super niche, unique stuff with barely any budget for a long time. Then NieR Automata sold 1 million copies and they plastered the announcement everywhere. Probably his most successful game ever. Then 2 million. Now his career was literally changed and he has the greenlight to write on multiple SQEX projects, and make another bigger budget game.

For games like GTA, or Assassin's Creed, 2 million sales is a rounding error. If you buy or don't buy that game, it doesn't change a thing. For games like NieR Automata, if you buy a copy new you potentially can change someone's entire career and get more games made that you like.

The next one on my radar is Project EVE. Buy that if it turns out good, and buy it new. South Korea is poised to be a new player in the AAA console space, and solid sales on this game could change the course of gaming investments for the next 10 years. Don't just put your money into a black hole and buy obviously popular titles that don't do anything new.
 

Gandih42

Member
I think games are more diverse than ever, in terms of mechanics, storytelling, visuals, technology, genres and so on. I'm pretty sure you can find games that push the envelope in whichever way you'd like. Even if that means lower budget/indie games. But I don't have much time to play games anyway, so my backlog of games I'd love to play is infinitely large.

Focusing on games at the higher end of the budget scale, I kind of see what you mean though.

[...]

Gaming has gotten bigger as a whole because its ranks have been swollen by this sort of end-user, not because there are so many more traditional gamers playing. You can see this clearly based on combined console install-bases which have remained fairly static for the last 20 years.

[...]

I think this guy said it really well. The gaming market has grown immensely because a lot more people started playing games casually, putting a lot more money into the market. But developers are then dependent on catering to lower denominators to make a return on the increasing budgets, or use GaaS-style monetization (at least that's what they will say they need to do). I think that's an issue that sometimes haunts the tripplest of tripple A games. If they put out a massive budget, they have to make sure its something everyone wants to play. And that requires that games are accessible, be it single or multiplayer.

Personally, I would really like to see massive budgets being spent on something other than visuals and open-worlds. For instance, a small and linear but crazy interactive single-player action game.
 

ahtlas7

Member
At least we have Atmos audio for a few years, in some games.
Op, I get your meaning. We have the power in these new systems so the potential is within reach.

200.gif
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
gonna cry tobey maguire GIF


Tell the switch it has inferior hardware and it will give you over 100 million reasons why it doesn’t care
here's a few reasons why the inferior hardware is a bigger issue than you think
1. lack of third party support (this is probably the most third party support they've gotten since the Wii and even then it's still bad, all it is is just ports of 7th gen games)
2. the thing's hardware is awful in comparison to the PS5/XSX
3. awful visuals (NO, BOTW does NOT look good, it looks like the video game equivalent of a RWBY episode. Get your eyes checked and look at an actually pleasing zelda like Majora's Mask or Wind Waker.)
4. also awful framerate (i had to suffer through doom 2016 on switch lite, it's a miracle i came out of it even enjoying the game)
 
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