The Hollywood Age of Gaming

I quit playing spore after I looked at the cover at the store. OHSNAP

 

This sounds like a great idea. I think I will do that on Trackmania United, Oblivion and Fallout 3 (the only recent games I played).

 

I'm a little bit of a nostalgist as well as people may know from my feelings for Fallout 3 and its lack of well...intelligence compared to its predecessors. I see both sides of the coin, developers want to make money now because well, they know that now they can! Now although I could be massively stereotyping it seems to most people that nowadays a lot of companies are putting out the same kind of games over and over but you've got to ask yourself why...

Its because they sell! Most kids nowadays (I'm 24) have attention spans that can usually be counted in nanoseconds so having a game where you have to pay attention to the development of your character, party and the storyline won't sell. Hence why there are a million FPS's nowadays but games like Quest for Glory, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Oddworld! and Planescape:Torment just won't fly.

Two final things:
1. You can find The Incredible Machine online but you'll need to get DOSBox
2. Some games over the past two years have been new additions in ways people hadn't thought of before (I've removed all the ones people have already listed)

Mirror's Edge
Psychonauts

and some that hopefully will:

Starcraft 2
Brutal Legend
Diablo 3 (Yes its a sequel and yes it probably won't come out till 2010 but hot it looks good)
Heavy Rain

 

What I'm looking for is a good story. Graphics and gameplay are important, but if that is all a game has, I'm likely to get bored very quickly. My favorite game of all time is Deus Ex. It's graphics were sub par for the time, and the gameplay wasn't the best; it is the story that makes it my favorite. Maybe I'll get into gaming again once developers start putting more effort into story.

 

I think games, particularly for the PC, are becoming a bit stale...publishers, in the interest of maximizing profits, have encouraged developers to push cross-platform products (unless the publisher was the hardware owner or the publisher got a large payoff from the hardware owner)...you can't typically do on a console what you can do on a PC due to interface restraints (although that's changing)...

In the 80's, there were very few cross-platform titles...Atari had their set and Intellivision had their set...with everyone trying to mimic the arcade games...the difficulty in porting arcade games was that arcade games were designed to be quickly learned, slowly mastered with very short periods between rewards resulting in several, short games that took all the quarters out of your pockets...but after about $100, you finally did have all the Dragon's Lair sequences memorized...that experience didn't do too well at home...

In the 90's, there was still a lot of separation between platforms...Sega did Sega, and Nintendo did Nintendo...and PC gaming finally came of age, and shared very few titles with the other two prevalent platforms (Sega, Nintendo and then Sony, Nintendo...Sega R.I.P.)...

Nowadays, publishers have gone cross-platform and PC gaming, in my opinion, has suffered...in fact, that push has all but killed the detailed flight simulators which used to be a favorite staple of mine...going from Gunship on the Commodore 64 to Pacific Air War to Jane's F-18 to IL-2 Sturmovik on the PC...

I think the digital distribution services will eventually fix that though...developers with no publishing clout will no longer be excluded from the buying public by denying them the retail space reserved for multi-million dollar titles...they will be able to deliver their product to the masses just as shareware Doom infected thousands upon thousands of college campus computers back when PC gaming was still relatively small...look at what XBox Live has done for small, clever independent games...

And for the record, and it's just my opinion, but I curse the Wii just as I cursed The Sims...getting the world on board with my hobby isn't exactly a good thing in my mind...and that's sounds very snobbish, and perhaps it is...but that d*mn Wii is the most over-hyped piece of hardware in the last decade...there are people buying Wii's for no other reason than everyone else is buying a Wii...Windows Solitaire is a hugely popular game...Windows Hearts Online had an online base that probably made Everquest jealous...there are only X amount of programmers and if all of them are busy coding games that appeal to the masses that have bought the Wii because you can wave a stick in front of a TV (which is great for some games, and unfortunately, terrible for others), then the deep storied games will sadly be a thing of the past...I hope the Wii fad passes and they end up next to the hula hoops, but I doubt I'll be so lucky...

And I'm not a Nintendo hater...for a long time, the only console that I had was a Gamecube...and my fondest gaming memory after finishing Questron on the Commodore 64 was finishing Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube (and talking about Doom 3/Dead Space creepy suspense...if anyone has played RE4, you'll remember the boss at the end of the sewers)...and I still think the Nintendo Wavebird was the best controller ever made...

 

Very well put "IWantMyMTV". Judging from your comments and your name, you're probably about the same age as I am. I grew up with same games as you mentioned along with being a flight sim aficionado. I ran the web site "Jane's Hangar" if you remember it, dedicated to the Jane's line of flight sims.

Anyhow, I understand the need to go cross platform. Quantity usually = money. But in doing so, devs need to understand that they need to do more than just make it "work" on the other platform. Controls so frequently suffer on the PC since they were designed for the console and never really tuned for the PC. Surprised this doesn't get heavily criticized during beta testing. Which is why every game needs *some* public beta testing to hit on this stuff that isn't easily fixed later.

LOL @ Jahar - I was saying the same thing about your generation when I was your age.

 

That's a great point IWantMyMTV. I never thought at how cross-platform influenced gaming, other than owning a friend of mine at COD4 (me on a PC, him on a PS3) even though I had only played for one hour and he for 3 weeks. Ah, the power of the mouse...

I ended up returning COD4. I just don't have the time to seriously invest in a game anymore. I guess that's part of the reason why I don't enjoy games anymore, they need serious investment of time.

 

I worry that the worst is yet to come, where the consoles' influence on PC gaming is concerned. Two of the perks consoles offer developers are a) a common established hardware platform, resulting in shorter production cycles, and b) a substantially lower level of piracy.

That's why I go out of my way to support companies like Stardock and Ironclad Games, who are still dedicated to PC gaming and opt against crippling their games with DRM. I pay for all my games. I am *immensely* more likely to buy from people who don't treat me like a criminal before I even open the box.

 

I hope you mean less likely.

Anyway, I'm considering buying one or two games from gog.com just to support them. They should have a donation option where you would donate something like 25-50 euros and get everything they have there. Would be great value.

 

I would guess the same (about age)...and into gaming at about the same time, I would imagine...and I try to avoid nostalgia...there are a lot of good games out there, but as someone mentioned, it just doesn't feel fresh...my favorite football game is still Mutant League for the Genesis (Electronic Arts)...I do remember Jane's Hangar...but I wasn't much of a community person back then (Navy and gone all the time)...

Stardock is the best thing to happen to PC gaming in the last five years...Blizzard had better pay attention there and keep the Activision influence out (which is a sad thing to say...at one time, Electronic Arts and Activision were the premiere publishers in gaming...they're both due for a name change...Electronic Manufacturing and Acti-repetition)...

I'm almost tempted to buy screensavers from Stardock because I like their business philosophy and games so much...Stardock, for me, is like Blizzard used to be...I will buy their stuff on sight...no review, no demo, nothing...I'm a bit wary of Blizzard now with so much of their time and resources going to WoW, the merger with Activision (what's the bottom line now, Blizzard?), and already some suspect decisions, in my opinion, regarding the development of Starcraft 2 (Terran only?) and Diablo 3 (art? and I don't really care whether you use a subdued or pastel palette...but they seem to be completely ignoring gamers which is unusual for Blizzard...where's Metzen?)...I'll wait to pass judgement there...Blizzard hasn't misstepped yet...they just seem a bit stuck...

 

I agree with this statement. I was introduced to Stardock when I bought Sins of a Solar Empire, and I've been a loyal fan ever since. But, on the Blizzard subject, I think you're misunderstanding Starcraft II. It's going to be a trilogy, with three separate titles coming out in succession for each of the three race's single player modes. Full multiplayer modes with all three races will be in all three of them.

 

That's the same thing that I understood...and it sounds like an easy way to sell three $50 games vs one...that's my concern...not sure Blizzard would have done this in the past...

If it becomes three $30 games (and episodic content like Half-Life 2 did...shorter games for a lower price) then kudos...I'm just very cynical and it seems like the accountants are now running Blizzard and they did the quick 3x50 >>> 1x50...

But I'm a tad worried...Blizzard's expansions (with the possible exception of Brood War...maybe Frozen Throne...and I don't know anything about WoW's expansions...I don't play it), although good, haven't measured up to the original game...but they were cheaper...and thank goodness Blizzard had nothing to do with the original Diablo's *shudder* expansion pack other than licensing...I think they learned their lesson with their IP's with that one...

 

No, I meant less likely. That's ok, I had to write it a couple of times, before I got what I meant to say down correctly. As a matter of fact, you may have responded as I was editing to correct it.