I swear nobody has actually read the original post. I'm seeing so many posts using the arguments and points I already debunked, such as the whole 'shitty game practices' stuff.

Honestly, I thought I made it clear that, while there is some shit out there, it's only a small percentage of the games released in any given year.

People don't seem to like long posts. If you want your thread to be successful, you need to make your OP as short and controversial as possible.

Unfortunately yes, sites biggest weakness.

OP is right, there is too much whining and not enough enjoying these days. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this, I'm pretty sure many people agree with you.

And there will be some who find it offensive and whine for the sake of whining.

I think this is going to be the gaming push that leads us into gaming becoming an integral part of society.  Into the next evolution of the industry.  This will be on the level of the NES transition or maybe the PS2.

Are we in a new "golden age"?
Short Answer:

Movies - No
TV - Yes
Games - Maybe
Books - Don't Know

Longer Answer: To know if we are in a "golden age", it helps a lot to know what the previous golden ages were like. Does this era have the same kind of impact that the greatest eras of the past did?

Movies - Disney is doing great overall (ignoring Solo). Generally the other studios are nowhere close to Disney on the big budget stuff. There have been some decent smaller budget films coming out, so maybe movies are headed for a golden age in the long term if they keep improving, but they just are no where close yet. The late 70s/80s were just an incredible era for films. I kind of think Lucas and Spielberg raised the bar for film making in that era and then the other filmmakers rose to the occasion. That is the sort of thing that film really needs again.

TV - Netflix and the internet in general have shaken things up in a good way. Now you've got internet platforms: Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, etc... putting out original content. At the same time traditional TV has had to step up their game in response. TV is extremely good right now, all the way around.


Games - Let me be clear. Generation 8 has been a huge LOW point in gaming. XB1, Wii U, 3DS, and Vita have all been huge disappointments. The PS4 is isn't really that great either. It just happens to be unoffensive while all of the other platforms are offensive and disappointing. The best selling game of Generation 8 was also released in Generation 7. That is just how terrible Generation 8 is.

Also, the emphasis on rereleases, remasters, NES classics and the like DO NOT mean that we are in a golden era. They signal that modern gaming sucks and that people prefer the games of the past. A good sign that you are in a golden era is that people stop caring about the past. When the NES came out, no one gave a damn about the Atari 2600 anymore. That was a huge sign that the NES was a golden era for console gaming. I haven't observed this sort of thing since, although I will admit that Generation 6 & 7 were also fairly high points and Gen. 8 was a huge decline from that.

So, now that I've crapped all over gaming why did I say "maybe" we are in a golden era? Because the Switch is a new hope. So far, I've been happy with what I've seen with the Switch and its only been on the market for 15 months. I also think the Switch has a huge potential to shake things up because it is a home/handheld hyrbrid and these markets are going to get redefined. The video game industry really needs to be shaken up. That is where golden eras come from.

See the TV industry was just shaken up by internet streaming. Now TV is really good. Even traditional TV has upped it's game because it has to compete with Netflix now. The movie industry is mostly stagnant (except for Disney). They can make money following the same old formula, so they have no motivation to improve. The video game industry needs to be shaken up the most. Not only do we have remakes, but the industry relies far too much on sequels. There are too many Yakuza 16's, Final Fantasy 71's and Call of Duty: Postmodern Renfairs out there. In a healthy industry, new IP should come in and equal or outdo the old IP every year. Or at the very least small IP should explode and become huge like GTA 3. That is not really happening anymore.

I do have hope for the Switch to shake up things on the game side, but we'll just have to wait and see. I do think the Switch is an improvement from anything in Generation 8 though and that alone is pretty good.

Then why did you even ask the question, if all you've debunked and negatives swept under the rug don't matter?. It feels like you're trying to say "yes, we definitely are in a golden age", but you asked with the thread title "are we living in a new golden age of gaming?".

People have already given you their points and reasons as to why it is/isn't. The matter itself is highly subjective and the results will always vary from year to year. 

I personally do not think we are living in a new golden age. I think we're still stuck at the exit point of the previous one. 

I was HOPING for some intelligent discussion, some back-and-forth, and some sharing of ideas. 

What I got was a bunch of people seeing the title, automatically assuming I was a fool and responding accordingly because they have the attention span of a goldfish and couldn't be bothered actually reading what I wrote. 

If you disagree with my stance that we're living in a golden age of gaming, that's fine, but at least explain WHY you disagree. Don't just say 'no, gaming sucks', tell me WHY gaming sucks. WHY is it that EA messing up Star Wars somehow destroys the whole industry. WHY is it that Ubisoft making every game of theirs an open world map with radio towers somehow destroys all of gaming. 

My stance was pretty straightforward: We've never been given so much choice and quality as we have been now. There are shitty things out there (Mostly mobile stuff, trend-chasing, and aggressive monetization), but the games that use these don't even begin to cover the whole spectrum of games. This year alone I could play nothing but indie titles and I'd never run out of things to play. I could play nothing but remakes and remasters and I'd never run out of things to play. I could ONLY game on the switch or ONLY game on the PS4 and I'd never run out of things to play. Hell, I could play JUST on the Xbox and ONLY play multiplatform games and I'd still never run out of quality games to play. 

The point is that it really doesn't matter that some games suck, it should never matter that Call of Duty is bland if you're a person who likes platformers. It shouldn't matter if you're the type that aggressively hates the concept of remasters and remakes, there's always gonna be new content out there. It shouldn't matter if you're a hipster who hates all AAA gaming, becuase there will always be esoteric and quirky indie games out there to satisfy you. 

We're in a golden age of gaming because when it comes to the reality of what you have as options, the industry has literally never been better. You can cite nostalgia all you want, and I confess there's no way to know if stuff like Dark Souls or Horizon Zero Dawn will stand the test of time like Mario has, but the reality is that games are better produced, more varied, and more versatile than ever before. The only way you could NOT see the strength of the current market would be if you're the type of pessimist who wants to only see the bad or are a cynic who choses to let the bad completely overtake the good despite the fact that the bad is overshadowed by the good tenfold. 

I shouldn't HAVE to make a huge deal out of looking at a form of entertainment I enjoy with wide eyes and a smile. I shouldn't have to defend myself for the crime of being satisfied. I shouldn't have to explain myself with a 2500 word essay describing why I think that, yeah, gaming is pretty awesome. I shouldn't have to hold a flame shield on the thumb I point up.

The fact that I've actually had people call me a fool (not here, I posted this article on my facebook as well) or straight up told me I'm wrong for looking at the industry from a positive viewpoint says so much more about the rampant negativity in the world than I'd like to admit. I'm upset and lashing out because people are so keen on embracing hatred and cynicism when the reality is that we live in a world that is, objectively, better than it ever has been; I don't just mean in entertainment, either. I just chose to focus on Games, TV, and movies because it's pretty hard to be positive in a world where Trump is president and Doug Ford is Ontario's Premier. I try to stay out of politics, though; nothing to be gained by arguing that.

For most people a golden age means that there is more new quality content released in this period than in other periods.

It is a matter of course that the total amount of quality content is always growing since old games, movies, TV shows, music and books doesn't disappear in thin air to make room for the new stuff.

But with this logic, the present / near future is always the golden age (unless some catastrophe destroys lots of old quality content)... which makes that claim pretty meaningless.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants. But 10 or 20 years from now, there will be even more choice of quality games, movies, TV shows, music and books... will the 2010s then be remembered as "golden age"? Probably not. 

But if we only look at the new games of the last five years and ignore any older game (which also includes ports, remasters and remakes), the output wasn't more impressive than any other 5-year-period within the last 30 years of gaming.

people are telling you why, but the way you worded your previous post, you made it out as if those reasons people gave as to why they didn't agree with you were somehow auto "debunked". If we went by that logic, people would have to automatically agree with you, because you have apparently debunked all negatives, or made any negatives brought up as being insignificant.

I disagreed with the title question, though to give my reasons, would require a long essay and back history as to why I disagree. I decided not to write that essay because we've already had a threat on that topic recently, and for another, I'm not wasting my time to write a long essay, only to have it swept under the rug by OP's reasoning. 

Also, you don't really care for the side I game on, so me writing out why I disagree about the title, isn't going to make much sense to you, because you aren't interested.

You know we've had options in the past right?. For decades we have had access to competitive products and games. We haven't been living in some medieval dark age for years you know.

You talk of pessimism, but you're displaying the complete opposite of it, which also lends itself to blind ignorance of one's surroundings, just like cynicism can. Both sides of the same coin have their flaws. 

@bolded: I am not sure as to how or why you even need to make that an actual thing. No one here is going out of their way to mentally hurt you, let alone take away your enjoyment of gaming, so I'm not sure why you need to make it out to be a two pronged attack/defense.

My dude. I have been upset for a year and a half since my mother passed away. I am deeply upset as to what EA has done to a franchise I held dear to my heart in the gaming world, but I know that at the end of the day, I still have friends to talk to, friends to play games with, memes to share. Gaming for me has a lot of ups and downs, but it's the friends that make it good for me.