Are games as good as they used to be?

[CladInShadows]

I'll probably ramble a bit here, but I think I can break my thoughts out into a few different points.

1. Nostalgia absolutely plays a huge part in things...to a degree. I am nostalgic for the good games of my youth, but not the bad ones. So the whole argument of "old games are elevated by nostalgia" only goes so far. The game had to be good enough to be played long enough to form a comforting and joyful period in your past. And because of that, I will always want to play a new indie game that taps into the styles from my youth, but I won't blindly love it if it's a bad game.

2. Newer games aren't necessarily of a higher or lower quality (barring technological limitations), but they're setting out to do different things, and reaching out to different audiences than games from the yesterday. Fact is, the fans of older 8 and 16 bit games are generally not the same fans who are fans of more modern styles of games, with some level of crossover, of course. So it's natural for people who used to game back in the day to not like newer directions, and natural for today's younger gamers not to like the old stuff.

3. Personally, I feel the mainstream (as in big publisher) gaming industry of today is continuing to move away from my tastes for the most part. But I'm glad to live in a time where even the "forgotten about" genres and styles are getting tons of games today on account of there just being way more games made.