Inafune: “Japanese Game Industry is finished.” (Malstrom)

[Kenny]

theRepublic said:

I'm not too knowledgeable on PC gaming history. Is it really that bad compared to where it was before?

There are still plenty of games, aren't there?  I guess you could say it is not as influential anymore, but it still seems fairly healthy.

I'm one of those people who are old enough to remember the following names: Starflight, Star Control 2, X-Com, and Ultima, among others.  15-20 years ago, these were considered to be the apex of PC games.  In some ways, these games have not been surpassed.  Starflight and Star Control 2 gave you giant galaxies to explore with interesting plots, Star Control was astonishingly well-balanced for the number of ships it incorporated, X-Com was an incredibly compelling turn based strategy game that often led to One More Turn syndrome, and Ultima...  well, if you haven't ever played Ultima 7 Part 1, you really owe it to yourself to give it a try.  One of the finest open ended RPG series to ever exist, before Origin was bought out and ground into the dirt by EA Games.

Compared to these classics, it feels like games that are coming out today are nothing more than newer iterations of the formulas that work, with better graphics and little else.  In that, PC gaming feels like it has stagnated in recent years.  I acknowledge that some of those refinements have led to some truly great games, like Call of Duty 4 and Supreme Commander, but I just can't find any game that brings back the feelings evoked by the classics.  Maybe I'm just older, and I just don't have the time to get sucked into games like I used to before university, and maybe it's just part of growing up to lose interest, but there isn't much I wouldn't give to rediscover the "spirit" the old games had, for want of a better word.