By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 06 April 2019
Edit Thread
bigtakilla said:
VAMatt said:

When games are broken now, they can be fixed.  Maybe you weren't gaming in the 80s and 90s  But, I was.  Back then, sometimes you'd get literally stuck in a game, with not choice but to restart.  That also meant huge lost progress, because of the relatively save options.  Sometimes, you'd get stuck in a glitch in the final level, and have to start the whole thing over.  Thankfully, those days are long gone.  Games now either work, or they're fixed.  

As for cost of entry, there's no comparison.  When adjusting for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been.  They're also much, much bigger, on average. 

So, sure, there have been some changes that one could argue are bad.  But, they're have been a whole bunch that are objectively good.  I simply don't see any case to be made for games being worse now than they were - let's say 25 years ago - except totally subjective personal opinions.

Yeah, but glitches weren't notorious in mostly every AAA game, they were fairly rare. And yeah, now games are fixed, YEARS after the fact in some cases. There really is no comparison.

As for cost, even when adjusting for inflation at best they cost roughly the same with season passes and dlc, I mean if you want the full game. Not to mention that only really becomes the case if you look at the beginnings of gaming, a PS2 game with all content cost substantially less than a PS4 game with all it's content for a majority of AAA games. Not to mention you are looking at inflation as a universal constant that effects all goods at a precise increase, and sure that makes gaming look good, but it's not exactly that precise of a measurement.

Bigger or longer games also don't necessarily mean better, that's a subjective personal opinion.

And there are a whole bunch of things you can argue is bad about modern gaming, and these are some of the reasons that aren't my opinion. *edit* But also, a lot of personal opinion does also go hand and hand when asking if games are as good as they used to be.

I would think Tomb Raider was AAA back then. I paid 89 guilders for it in 1996, which was about $52 at the time which converts to about $84 today. I could not finish the game as it crashed in the last level at the same place every time. There was no patch, no you tube to watch the end, that was just it. And while I prefer the tank controls of the old games, I doubt any new gamer would like to play modern tomb raider that way.

There were plenty PC games that wouldn't even run with no hope of a patch, or would simply crash after half an hour. Everquest was great, yet the server went down daily, link death was the most frequent way to die and lose a lot of progress. It cost $15 a month to play with paid DLC (boxed) added once or twice a year which you pretty much had to buy to keep up. It was great, I played it for 5 years, yet shudder to think how much money I spend on it.

Gaming is cheaper, easier, more streamlined than ever before. No more writing down level codes, making your own maps (although that was fun) or needing a big manual to figure out what to do, no more fussing with code wheels or enter word 15 on page 25, or praying the tape still loads or worry about the discs going bad / getting scratched. No more messing around with himem.sys autexec.bat to get games to run or the disasters windows 95 brought along.

As for the game content, longer doesn't necessarily mean better, yet if you like a certain game, there's a lot more to like nowadays. So many details to take in.

No man's sky was a complete game at release. I played it for months, it was great. Just one of those games hype ran away with, nothing compared to ET lol. Now the game is getting VR after getting tons of extra content already. Same with DriveClub. Apart from server issues the first couple weeks, it was a complete game. Then it got so much better still. Compare that with NFS 2, that had 9 cars and 7 tracks!