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| UnderwaterFunktown said: TBH I don't fully get the glorification of 90s games. The 90s had some bangers for sure, but many games were unpolished, unbalanced, buggy (back when most games didn't get patches so you just had to live with it) or just made the weirdest design choices. |
I believe 90s were good when it comes to 2D gaming and PC gaming, but early 3D games from the 90s are close to unplayable. Very few of them are any good. 00s is for sure a great improvement, I remember playing on PS2 and the 3D games were finally viable because devs could figure out how to actually design controls and environments to make the game fun. On PS1/N64 generation the best games were either 2D or 3D games that relied heavily on 2D sections. And even then, it was not uncommon for PS2 games to also be very lucky and unsatisfactory to play, not to say very restrictive as well
As a kid gaming was always a second tier entertainment for me, it was fun just not my main hobby. 20 years later I can say that I enjoy gaming quite more than as a kid, and this is mostly thanks to the improvements from the 00s that allowed to make the majority of games to be enjoyable rather than a collection of just a few per generation.
I understand the arguments that the 2000s was the only last innovative generation and the 10s and 20s are just iterative improvements over the 2000s, but I honestly think this is a very shortsigned vision. The 00s was the last innovative generation because it was the generation where innovation had a final lasting impact. Sometimes it takes time to figure out the best design approaches and the 2000s was the decade where design philosophy and gaming engines started to finally be polished and high quality enough for devs to stick with them rather than asking themselves "This is shit, how can I make things better?" Over and over again.
Sometimes the design is just good enough to become the standard for the next decades. It's the case with most of 2000s gaming mechanics. That's why they are imho the best and most important generation.
Hot take but I believe in 2060 people will remember the 2000s and maybe the 2010s as the definitive decades for gaming, the ones that build the bases for the industry to become long lived and lasting while the 70s, 80s and the 90s will be regarded as "classic gaming" that only the most hard-core gaming story scholars will adventure themselves. Kinda like the movies of the 10s, 20s and 30s are more restricted to academics with lesser broader appeal
There are few reasons why I think that but they are all related to internet and mobile games taking over. In 40 years we shall see (well the ones who will still be alive)
