First off, video games are expensive art forms. The amount of money it takes to design, program, produce, and get a game successfully onto the marketplace is a figure with a lot of zeros. To put it into perspective on just how much our favorite games cost to make, Skyrim topped out at $100 million, Final Fantasy VII was $145 million and Grand Theft Auto V’s price tag was $265 million. Now, these are all AAA games that well-established companies produced and small developer indie games don’t require nearly as much cash to make, although they often take longer to develop.
From Xfire: "Stop if you've heard this one before - with all the unplayable buggy launches, rampant monetization, season passes, chunks of games being locked behind DLC paywalls, day one updates, always-online single player games, early access, lootboxes, massive patches, etc, games were so much better back in the eighties, or the nineties, or the oughties (pick whichever applies to your age bracket) right?"
Most definitely. Without a doubt.
The prices. DLC prices. Short stories. Less split screen gaming. Lesser amount of games are made these days because of the advancement of technology.
Everything is about graphics and resolution.
Replies(4)The prices: With subscriptions and sales I feel like games are cheaper than ever.
DLC: I agree 100% DLC and MTX sucks.
split screen: Well... yes but now we have online multiplayer you can game with people on the other side of the world.
Lesser amount of games: This is unequivocally false. More games are made than ever before by far.
Everything is about graphics and resolution: I agree there is too much emphasis on that, but at the same time you can find thousands of pixel art games as well. Modern recreations of retro style games have never been more popular.
"split screen: Well... yes but now we have online multiplayer you can game with people on the other side of the world."
Yeah, but that really isn't the same thing. Couch co-op encouraged actual human interaction, that is missing on multiplayer. I guess I don't really understand why both aren't able to be included on some games. I miss the old days of being able to sit down next to an actual person and play a game. I can still do it, as long as I have two different systems in the house I guess.
I'm old!! LOL
All that said, I think gaming today is a much more robust landscape. There is a game for just about anyone. As a male, who has seen games progress from Pong to what we have today, I suppose I could hate on the fact that not every game is designed for me. Back in the day, games were for boys, adolescents boys generally, and that's what everything was directed. Being an adolescent boy at the time, I thought that was pretty great! Now there are so many games out there that there is something for everyone, and I think that that is a good thing.
The MSRP are stable and consistent compared to the SNES and N64 days ( https://retrovolve.com/n64-... $80 for Star Fox 64 and $60 for Ocarina of Time. That was over 20 years of inflation ago.
"Short stories" - *lists Sony's PS4 output as counterpoint*
"Everything is about graphics and resolution" and yet almost every single new-gen title has a 60fps mode except for Watch Dogs (for a few more days) and The Medium, and most adopt resolution scaling to keep stable framerate.
Lesser games are made, and yet everyone seems to have a massive backlog when the topic comes up.
I think some people like to yearn for the old days because they weren't actually alive during these old days. I'll give you the point about DLC prices (though, in the 360/PS3 era, if you didn't spend the money, you were fractured from the online userbase. Now maps are generally free but cosmetics are worse. Which one is worse for you? I'd say being forced to pay to keep playing with your buds)
Yes, i still play a lot of old games for the first time and they are miles better than some new stuff is.
same, some ps2 games even.
i remember a time when i just bought a game on a whim but now .. ill think twice about it.
I feel like the market is changing a lot these days. Before it was about getting as much into the game as you could without blowing the console/computer up. Now that we have all this power and capability games take longer to make and there are way more steps. Prices go up because games get more expensive, the same thing with movies. But the experiences can be truly astonishing. No one who played Pong would have thought within 50 years they could play something like God of War. Of course, greed causes practices that are not liked by communities of gamers. Some companies have veered into such practices but some companies are maintaining a balance between profit and creativity.
There are pro's and con's but I don't think you can objectively say that gaming is better or worse than before.
Better and worse.
Most AAA releases are trying to figure out how best to nickel and dime you in the background. Even developing the entire game around that practice.
On the other hand, digital storefronts are now a big thing, allowing more smaller budget releases to be had, being they don't have to foot the cost of handling physical releases.
There's definitely more content to be had then ever.
Essentially the AAA space has become cancer in a lot of ways. I'm not talking every release, or even every company, but with all of the season passes, the dlc that boosts player progression in competitive titles, and now the retail price hikes being pushed on people .... it's obvious these companies are getting more greedy, year after year.
Yes and no. Yes in that it's annoying to have all this DLC/microtransactions in games and forced multiplayer that's hot for about a minute before something new and shiny comes out.
No in that, there are a lot of good games coming out and I have a comfortable backlog that should keep me entertained for quite some time. I never have an issue of what to play next.
I think it's a great time to be a gamer and if you don't have anything to play, you're not looking hard enough.
... yes.
What have they ever done for gaming? Its cut content from base game plastered in our face with a price tag
Not a fan of them either in most games as they are generally cash grabs. However, it's microtransactions or increasing the cost of game from $60 up to $70 - $75, choose your poison.
Development cost is at an all time high, and as much as we enjoy gaming and presumably developers enjoy making said games, it is still a business and money has to be made for games to continue to be made.
Yes but we should focus more on the people pushing microtransactions aka greedy publishers and GaaS.
Yes. If a game cost X to make and earned X+Y they should be satisfied with that. Not every game needs to make ALL THE MONEY.
I get it, they are expensive to make. Solution? Be more responsible with your budgets.