I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the general statement here but it's based on a lot of vague terms like "Golden Era", "peak", "everyone" or "people" that are hard to measure. Is the industry worse off now financially? Has the number of players decreased since the 90s? Is the actual majority of gamers dissatisfied with the state of gaming? Or are those "people" just a number of 90's gamers who are now 20 years older and aren't happy that the future of gaming didn't turn out how they imagined it to be 20 years ago? It's all just assumptions without any reliable statistics to back them up. There are a lot of trends in the gaming industry that I don't like, but I think they wouldn't get away with it if a majority of buyers were really dissatisfied. Your guess is as good as mine, but personally I highly doubt that players who want DRM-free single player games without DLCs and that are similar to the late 90's classics are still the majority, I'd wager they are the target audience for indie developers now, not AAA companies, because they are "niche" ...

(The comparison about retrogaming seems a bit off, btw; in the 90's gaming was still young, and most players were probably still young as well, so why would they look backwards; and I think games from 20 years ago are much closer to modern games than games from the 70's and 80's were to late 90's games, since the late 90's games already had colorful graphics, extensive story-telling, sound card and mouse support etc.)

I guess I lucked out on only recently switching to PC gaming, and with a mediocre GPU at that. I had the whole PC library to check out for the first time, AND was limited to games at most from 2014. I was never a day-one AAA gamer.

It sucks to see dedicated gamers get shafted though. AB2012's post was pretty informative. The recent Diablo fiasco was an eye-opener for me as to how much people cared and how much big companies did not care about them. Although I assume the mobile consumer base is happy.

I live in Japan now and I noticed most people are on mobile for all their gaming. Possibly because of lack of space in apartments for a desktop, and in turn desktop gaming never taking off. Portable consoles have reigned for a long time. I still see PS Vitas or whatever. And a lot more older people on handhelds than say the States. Hell, my coworker recently bought a case for his iphone to play PUBG.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, just anecdotal info. I believe the industry is making money, so they are not particularly in trouble, but maybe their audience/people who pay their bills, have changed. Larian seems to have done well for themselves though.

Do you have a source for that one?
Last I heard Switch sales were still booming have already overtaken the Gamecube's lifetime sales.. so not doing too badly.


As for the question, I tend to lean more towards the "We've never had it better" side of the argument.
Sure, there's a lot of shit in gaming these days, but overall we have more choice (and I would say more quality games too) then there has ever been, no matter what kind of gamer you are.
On top of that older games are remaining playable and available (legally) in a way they've never really been before, most of the consoles offer some kind of backwards compatibility service allowing you to play a selection of older games, the mini series of consoles and GOG and other PC vendors selling classic PC games means that practically the entire history of gaming is available to someone starting out in the hobby today.
Prices are (mostly) more reasonable than they have ever been, I could currently buy 8 Warhammer games (most of them reasonably good as far as I'm aware) for £9, at least a third of the price I paid for Dawn of War back when it came out. I rarely spend more than £15 - £20 (if even that) on anything other than Switch games (because damn you Nintendo and your ever high prices).


So we have micro transactions, there not exactly new. I'd rather them than old style arcade games, and you can either avoid them or avoid the games they're in completely.
Same for loot boxes and the rest.

Gaming is unlikely to suffer any major set backs any time soon, there are a wealth of indie developers around and hundreds more waiting in the wings and customers are spending more on games (despite the lower prices) then they ever have so I can't see a crash happening any time soon.

Quite frankly the only problem I have with modern gaming is gamers.

Speaking of purely anectdotal info - despite having several RL friends who could be considered as pretty avid gamers, I hardly know anyone who's that much into good old single player games as myself; even though these guys are more or less from the same generation, that is born ~ '75-'90, and grew up with the same classics, they mostly play MOBAs, MMOs or other multiplayer online co-op games nowadays, sometimes even Battle Royale or F2P games, they are interested in E-sports, and they also play stuff on their tablets and phones. Their preferences are totally alien to me, but they make me feel like I'm the odd one, a relict who doesn't go with the times and prefers to keep to himself instead of coming out to play online with the other kids or something. XD

I don't know if that's representative in any way or if I'm just unlucky in this regard, but it still makes me think that the people in the GOG community are one of a kind ...

A lot of things are subjective. Eg, there are more gamers now, but is that statistic by itself "better" when the pay2win mobile games most of them play aren't focussed on skill development (like a normal game) or even a set of rules applied equally (fairness) but instead have been 'shaped' into mindless slot machines / pay to cheat? Literally everything about such games is more about faking the illusion of "winning" based on whether you would pay extra to cheat or not. Imagine a physical card game of Poker where some players were allowed to have extra cards, or look at cards before they were dealt if they gave the dealer an extra "back-hander" - most people would call that cheating and agree it would cease to be a "game" if the rules were based more on who can bribe the dealer than who's actually better at Poker.

That comment reminds me of that science experiment where a researcher put fleas into a glass container with a glass lid. They inevitably tried to jump out but couldn't, and gradually over time they became habituated into not jumping at all. Then when that 1st generation died but had offspring born into that same environment, the researcher removed the lid, but the younger generations didn't even attempt to jump out because they simply knew no different. It literally never occurred to do anything but blindly copy their relatives / peers into what they were manipulated into doing.

"If people didn't buy MT's / loot-boxes them then they wouldn't exist" may be true in a "if everyone was like 90's gamers" sense. But the problem is a new generation of young naive post-millennial gamers are like that 2nd/3rd generation of fleas in a glass cage - they have known nothing else other than spending their entire lives deliberately habituated into becoming someone else's product (as opposed to being a customer buying a product) in almost every digital industry. "My First Data-Harvested FaceBook Account", "My First Microsoft Office 365 Rental Subscription", "I don't own any movies / music, I stream", etc, and now "My First Pay2Win Loot-Box" that's "Just like my 'free' Android games".

Like those "non-jumping fleas in a glass prison" - they won't make a choice if they don't even realise they have one - and games publishers are actively preying on "conditioning" the young to get used to loot-boxes, hence the strong opposition against national legislation trying to include them in gambling laws (which prohibit advertising to youths). When they start aggressively opposing that, it becomes very obvious who they're deliberately targeting - and why...

In the 90's we also had an absolute explosion of creativity where devs would made 1-3 games, and then make something different and fresh. Eg, Doom to Quake to Unreal, or Baldur's Gate to Icewind Dale to NWN, etc. If modern AAA games publishers did in the 90's what they did today and rigidly clung to 15 year old IP out of some deep rooted fear of making something new, none of these games would be made, as we'd still be stuck on Rise of The Space Invaders, Pac Man 34 HD, Donkey Kong 17 Remastered, and Double Dragon 22: Enhanced Edition...

i see gamings popularity causing most of the problems today, the quick cash grabs, many subpar games being created to meet the huge demand and so on. Its true for many aspects of consumerism, peaks and valleys as the market seeks new stability. Right now its coming off a bit of a gold rush mentality and the numbers used to reinforce that marketing strategy. Now its time for a cool down on the cash grabs and those companies that didnt interpret their analytics right will feel the pinch.

I dont want to see a gaming crash, I dont want to see talent losing their jobs and companies being disbanded. As an old pc gamer Im curious and saddened to see how the next generation will define gaming by their wallets. Lets face it, I think the days of super expensive AAA pc titles are numbered and the new focus will be on short term insta gratification mobile games that can be churned out cheaply and monitized to hell. Gaming companies are just that, companies whose continued longeviity depends on making a profit to meet payroll and fund the next title. The funny thing i cant wrap my head around is the clamor against expensive AAA games on release when that same person will easily spend triple that on microtransactions in a mobile game.


whatever, I have hundreds of games on my hard drive to fall back on cuz frankly im not into what the next cycle of games seems to be all about

I agree with a lot of things you say, up to a point. But it is indeed subjective. And how do you convince these new generations to oppose something they (think they) like? They're more likely to oppose you and ridicule your equally "old geezer" views instead ... Besides, like I mentioned in my last post, it's not just younger generations who adapt and don't see a problem with that.

About the 90's games, I don't know, there were a lot of sequels made then as well, and not all of them good, and when companies did something different like NWN instead of Baldur's Gate 3, it wasn't always met with praise by players. It's true though that the companies were still a bit less risk-averse, maybe because it wasn't such a big business yet. That's why you'll find more creativity in the works of passionate indie developers nowadays who still risk everything for what they believe in and don't have to answer to any suits. (Although there's a lot of uncreative stuff among indies as well.)

I do see these differences and all the problems nowadays, I just don't think the industry could easily revert to where it was in the 90's, just because we old farts think it was better back then.

(To clarify, I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose the really bad practices like loot box gambling or draconic DRM as much as we can by way of international laws and enlightening the public.)

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Not to mention retailers were having trouble keeping Switches in stock due to the demand. I wouldn't call that a lack of interest.

From what I've seen the switch has 3 major problems.

1) The launch library wasn't too impressive but that's a problem that will sort itself out over time. Look at the 3DS game library now and games are still going to be released on the system regardless of what happens with the Switch (they aren't competing consoles). Hell, I remember the N64 launch library was anemic but it did improve. If I was a console gamer back then, I probably would have gone for the Playstation instead as I thought the N64 library had too many sports and racing games, neither genre I'm too interested in.

2) Switch accessories are expensive but third party manufacturers are stepping in and dealing with that problem.

3) People aint too happy about the online service. I know the lack of virtual console on the Switch is a serious issue. Time will tell what Nintendo plans to do about that one.

Maybe just a profoundly changing definition of "quality" on the basis of personal preference, gaming experience and last not least, much less time available as more adults play games.

On GOG, you have basically have two kinds of AAA games: (1) games that were released 10+ years ago and have somehow found their way to GOG and (2) games that were made by the company that owns gog.com (and get advertised the shit out of). So I'm always a bit amazed when users seem to straight up argue against the entire indie scene on these forums. The vast majority of the games in my account are from indie studios. I'd say that these days I spend 90% of my time playing indie games and 10% with de facto "AAA" games.

But you're definitely on to something with the consolification idea, because those 10% AAA are mostly games I play on my PS4 (despite hating the fricking fuck out of aiming with a thumbstick). From bugs, configuration, DRM schemes, the need to frequently change hardware/system requirement woes, control over the game's net access, to one of the most important things to me, the vast energy consumption of high end PC systems, the console has outwitted my PC by a huge margin. I just don't want to play AAA games on PC any more.

The PC, however, still has much better and much more diversified access to indie games. So as far as I'm concerned, my PC still wins precisely because of the indie scene.

The hurricane that Emob wishes for would undoubtedly wash the indie scene i.e. the actual innovation engine of the industry from the face of the earth and leave the AAA studios mostly intact, and that is precisely because of their habit of milking the consumer for all he's got with the very same games that they're doing over and over and over. The hurricane would squash the smaller, more story focused experiences in favor of the AAA's obsession with 'epic' games (defined as games that waste 100+ hours of your time, have a needlessly convoluted storyline and refuse to render narrative closure to boot, but have exactly the kind of visuals that got enthusiasts classified a "graphic whore" in the early nineties).

I don't think "we never had it this good". The AAAs are in a horrible money grabbing mood and all they seem to shit out these days are overly long, horribly boring ever more vast open world games that, indeed, were optimized for console. But we do indeed have more choice to find what suits our tastes.

Here is the way I see the current gaming industry problems: people are designing games by the numbers.

In "the old days" the videogames were the offspring of a person, or perhaps a small creative team. There was an idea, they would work on that idea, and hopefully it would sell well.

Then came the games with constant online connection. Companies could see how much of a game would be played how long and collected a vast amount of metrics. What do players seem to care the most about? What achievements are they seeking? What behaviours are they exhibiting? How can we monetize this information?

So the big bosses who make the big bucks hired some data scientists, asked them to milk all that information into a design document that maximizes a simple function called "Return on Investment". Those many bullet points were given to some guy with the note "design a new game around these". (And you know what many of those bullet points are). We have gone beyond the "design by committee".

I'm not an expert on this stuff and don't really follow the inside industry garbage, but my feeling is that the internet takes part of the blame for much of the problems. Maybe 'blame' isn't the right word, but it has facilitated / enabled many of the things that we see as problems or troubling signs. For instance:

- How is a loot box going to rake in the revenue without the customer having a constant connection to the publishers' one-click money raker-inner? Or at least, without the internet how would loot boxes work in a manner that makes them cost-effective enough that they become a major revenue stream for the industry?
-Game is buggy? No big whoop: every customer can go online and get the multiple enormous patches as we fix the problems that exist on the release date.
- Phone-home DRM-scheme? Who cares - your connection is always there so you'll always be able to validate your purchase. Except when you can't, but it's likely only temporary. You hope.

And on and on through the things people mention in the thread.

Not saying the entire matter comes down to the internet, but without it a lot of those things might never have come into being in the first place. Of course, there are some really big downsides to not having the internet...

I don't believe in the notion of the "golden era". There were plenty of turds during, before, and after the 90's - people simply forgot them. The same applies to the horde of games on today's market, some of which will help cultivate the talents of future Hideo Kojimas. In short, I think most things about modern gaming is plenty good,

Be careful what you wish for.
The short history of videogames shows that its always the smaller good companies that go down when the storm hits. The big bad ones end up getting bigger and richer.
Ironically some of the worst offenders of what you describe above are not the big companies, but the small indie developers, releasing an endless stream of trash into the veins of the gaming industry, and these small indies will not be affected by any storm. They dont care since almost anybody can scramble up some trash wannabe game with minimum effort and sell it for pennies in a bundle.

So if "trouble" hits, its mostly the good developers that will suffer the most.

I would mostly point you to 'gaming news' sources by typing in 'Switch Sales Down' in YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=switch+sales+down

I am mostly on the side of the debate that's hopeful, but still keeping a careful eye on things.

You can check out my previous comment to see where I heard that Switch sales were down. Once again I'm not really taking any sides in this debate, I'm mostly looking at it from a hopeful, yet watchful perspective.

That's assuming that all of those smaller companies are 'good.' I don't judge a company's moral standing by its IPO or the number of employees it has. There's lots of bad small companies too. Steam is loaded with bloat ware and absolute trash, much of it by indies.

And unlike many here, I don't wish to see that crash come in the way of taxation or regulation, but rather consumers finally deciding to let their money do the talking and turn away from this Stockholm Syndrome thing going on between gamers and game companies. Endlessly bitching about quality, release dates, loot boxes and such while at the same time throwing money at it will not make the problem go away. That problem is not relegated to large AAA publishers alone. If you were a AAA publisher, and gamers were throwing money at everything you made, why would you change anything? The motive is profit, and so long as profit exists, no company offering a good or service will see reason to change anything. Why should they?