| LegitHyperbole said: Wow. I was not expecting the 90's to win that poll. I agree with it of course but people generally choose the 80's cause of the colour and the warmer nostalgia factor that can get you even if you didn't experience the decade. |
The 90s are probably the last decade where the game industry continued steadily upwards, at least in the eyes of the users here. You went from FF1 at the beginning of the decade, at least in the West, to FF6 with its brilliant sprite graphics and orchestral sound, to FF9, which was all of that, only in 3D. You went from Zelda II to Ocarina of Time and Majora's mask. You had Resident Evil and Metal Gear. The SNES and Genesis brought colorful graphics and sound that was pretty close to real-life music. The PC ended the decade with Baldur's Gate and Fallout, among other games. After the PS2 generation is when things started being introduced that were not as well-liked, like shady monetization schemes, corporate consolidation, microtransactions, and ballooning budgets that meant that a game studio could be shut down if they didn't make millions of first-week sales, and the dominance of just five games-as-a-service platforms (GTA, Fortnite, CoD, Minecraft, and Roblox). Most of all, it's been largely a matter of perceived diminishing returns, though I can definitely tell the difference between a PS5 game and a PS4 game, especially comparing a game in a long-running series on PS5 with its PS4 iteration. Whether you like the way the industry has gone since the end of the PS2 era is up to your own interpretation. There's been bad, and there's been good.
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