We are living in the best era for gaming

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Whether you think this is the "best era" or "worst era" or somewhere in between can vary a lot based on: 1) where you live, and 2) what parts of gaming you consider important.  Some of the best things to happen to gaming in the US and Japan happed at a time when the rest of the world couldn't experience these things.  It is really more productive to talk about what parts of modern gaming are actually good and what parts are actually bad.

What matters to me, personally, is if I find the games to be fun.  Right now, if you focus on the games that get the biggest budget, most advertising, etc... I do not find these games to be fun.  They are at the worst state that they've ever been.  A lot of fun comes from innovation, and innovation for these "top" games is at an all time low.  Most of these games are sequels.  Very few are original IP.  Currently the most original game big budget game is Elden Ring, which is actually Dark Souls but now in an open world.  While I like this game a lot, it's kind of pathetic that this is the ceiling for originality.  In earlier eras they were inventing whole new genres of games, and they were the big budget games of the time.  That just doesn't happen anymore.  

Our "best" is just not as good anymore.  At the same time the worst parts of big budget gaming are terrible: microtransations end up compromising the design of a game and make it worse.  Highly anticipated games like Cyberpunk 2077 release as a buggy mess and still sell millions of copies. GaaS was at its best about 10-20 years ago during the best days of MMOs.  In general, if we look at only the big budget games, today is not a great era for gaming.

On the other hand, there is the indie scene.  There is a lot of innovation going on here.  The main problem with the indie scene is accessibility.  Most indie games do not have a physical version available.  However, what is worse is that there are really not great ways to find the good indie games.  There are too many, and it can take a while for the cream to rise to the top.  My favorite era for gaming was actually the late 80's (because I live in the US).  Not only was innovation at an all time high in this era, but we had a magazine called Nintendo Power.  This did a pretty good job of steering people toward the great games and away from the turds.  Indie games don't really have an equivalent of Nintendo Power today.  Most reviewers focus on big budget games and Metacritic scores of indie games often don't get enough reviews.  There are indie review sites out there, but I certainly haven't found one that is comprehensive and well organized.  Nintendo Indy Directs aren't really that great either.  When I look back and these Directs and compare them to the Indie games that people really enjoy, there isn't a large overlap.

So, the current gaming atmosphere is not the worse it's ever been, but it's really not great either.  There is a very large room for improvement.  If you go back to the 80's and 90's you would see the most innovative games were getting some the biggest budgets at the time too.  Now gaming is kind of split.  The big budget games are low novelty, and the low budget indie games are where the innovation is.  There is a decent chance that this will actually lead to indie games becoming more popular, but they aren't there yet.  There aren't good tools yet to draw people's attention to the good indie games and away from the bad ones.  Overall, I'd say that this is not a great era for gaming, but it shows a lot of promise for the future.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 10 July 2022