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SvennoJ on 18 October 2024
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LegitHyperbole said:
SvennoJ said:

I see that argument made a lot in this thread. Yet that's bypassing the question.

Otherwise the best time to be a reader is now, best time to be a movie watcher is now, best time to be an art lover is now, best time to be a music lover is now, best time to be a collector is now. Every creative industry you have access to all older created stuff. That doesn't make now the golden age for any of those creative industries.

So that argument just renders the question moot.


As far as excitement for gaming, late 90's early 2000s had the biggest dreams come true. Rapid advancements, new genres and IPs springing up monthly. Exciting new hardware coming out and new ways to play. Real competition driving creativity and keeping prices stable.

Today that excitement is mostly gone. Lot of talk about diminishing returns, price of HW, price of games, invasive practices, people getting fired all over the place, studios closing, games taking many years to develop, UE5 woes, and so on.

You're a VR user though, how did the VR train not give you the excitement of those times and more? And you mention creativity, some of the most creative games are in that space... that one time based puzzle game where you play with previous versions of yourself to complete puzzles as one example. There was never anything as creative as that before it. 

It did. PSVR1 made me feel like I was back in the late 90s again. So many fun experimental games, developers trying to figure out what was all possible with the HW. Many studios giving VR a try with extra modes or short experiences, like Tomb Raider, Star Wars, The Last Guardian, LA Noire, next to lots of creative new games and experiences. The Joshua Bell experience looked extremely promising for VR video, so well done. VR video with parallax. It was one of a kind :/

That was 2016-2019 though. Today VR is still great but ignored by most established studios as well as the mainstream game press. PSVR2 looks like it will sell less than PSVR1 and any hype is mostly negative towards it.

PSVR1 days were more creative while today eg Astrobot snubbed VR entirely. If it weren't for many Quest ports, the PSVR2 library would also look quite bare.


And as great as the early days of the revival of VR were, the excitement was still far greater in the naughties. Halo 3 launching was an event. Midnight launches with people lining up around the block. Camping out in line to get their hands on new HW or high profile releases. Now we have to deal with scalpers snatching up inventory before it even gets to stores.

And more and more game stores are closing, how can now be the best time to be a gamer? Access to older hardware and pre-played games is going down. The second hand market is getting squeezed out.



Not to piss on PSVR2, there are still plenty creative games. 7th Guest adding volumetric video for characters is very cool in VR. And indeed The last clock winder using copies of your own motions to complete puzzles is very creative and fun. Yet with PSVR1 these kind of new ideas and releases happened on a monthly basis.

PSVR1 was simply better game wise. More people put up with the insane mess setting up and keeping PSVR1 going was with the breakout box, camera placement, ambient light issues, infernal move controllers. The mood was anything is possible, a new era of gaming has started. The mood today is, Sony has abandoned PSVR2, where are the hybrid games, just play wonky PCVR VR mods.