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| Aeolus451 said: Why do you think it's getting worse and compared to what? The only thing that's really declining is nintendo itself. People only have to look at how much of a buzzkill it's fans are to see the truth of it. Their dissatisfaction with nintendo is coloring their outlook of gaming as a whole. MS is trying really hard to win over new gamers and please it's fanbase with the deals and games that they're offering. MS fans might not be happy that they're console isn't selling really well but they're more or less getting a better deal out of it. BC, cross-play and MS backtracked on that anti-consumer stuff. MS did right by their fans after lto be honest. PS fans are happy that their console is selling well and that they're getting the kind of games they want. |
In terms of profits and mindshare, yes, that's true. But in terms of game design I'd argue Nintendo has been the most consistent - although there's no doubt the company stumbled with WiiU. For all its glorification, PS4, in terms of its library, is weaker than PS3, which is weaker than PS2. And XOne is certainly far weaker than Xbox 360.
But back to your question. I think gaming is getting worse relative to its glory years: the fourth, fifth, and sixth generations. That era, to me, is the height of game design and ingenuity. The 90s and early 2000s saw so many creative and groundbreaking games - on home computers, consoles, handhelds, and in arcades. Beginning around 2005/2006, things took a turn for the worse. The seventh generation, for the most part, didn't provide many new or better experiences. Developers seemed to have hit a brick wall. Games got bigger, prettier, and more cinematic, but they didn't make significant progress in gameplay.
What caused this? One factor, I think, is technology. Now, that sounds like an oxymoron considering video games are a medium peculiarly reliant on technology. But I think progress with broadband internet, game engines, and HD graphics came at a cost. Sure, it allowed bigger game worlds, more accurate physics, and increased connectivity, but it also allowed developers/publishers to eschew local multiplayer options, abuse DLC and patches, and focus on style over substance. And it caused budgets to skyrocket, meaning less room for error and, consequently, less room for experimentation. So we've seen the industry move to two extremes: big-budget action games and small-studio indie titles, with very few profitable games in the middle.
And the eighth generation has only doubled down on all the negative trends begun during the seventh.
Now, that's not to say the last 10 years have produced nothing good. Far from it. Some of the best games of all time arrived over the last decade: BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, Demon's Souls, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, etc. But those classics come less frequently now than they did 15, 20, 25 years ago.
