What's wrong with games these days..

[Mrs_A_ZeTavia]

You're kidding,right? It's easy to make a game now? There's so much wrong with that statement. if anything, it's harder to make a game these days. Back in the day of the Atari 2600, every damn company and there dog had a video game development division, like Quaker Oats for Nyarlathotep's sake! It was considered that six guys was a large Development Team, and some were even coded by a single guy. Now? You need six guys just make sure the physics work properly, at most of the time two different companies, One to make the game and the other to publish.And most 360 and PS3 games are expensive to make, so unless you have the money or talent to catch the publisher eye, you're not going anywhere, code monkey. Sure, you can still be indie, but in this day and age it's not that easy to rub arms with the big boys.

Agreed! Although, it should be said it's very hard to make a successful game. Sure you can make a game yourself, but that game can only go as far as you can go. If all you can do is stick figures and some low programming, that game will go only so far........believe me. I've had so much drilled into my head (still more to go) by my game department teachers and they know what they're talking about! (One of our heads of the department designed "MechAssult")

The more complex games are the more complex it takes to make them. Does that mean they have to be complex? Not at all! The only reason a lot of them are is because of competition. Plain and simple competition is a never-ending and constant thing that will occur in the video game industry.........However, in the end it boils down to the consumer, the player, us; we are the ones who will buy them and play them. They should be learning more from there consumer market, then paying attention to how great they can outflash their competitors!  

[Tipod]

• Bring them back, bring them all back

I'm talking about a couple of Genres you don't see very often these days, the classic point and click adventure game, and to a greater extent, the Space sim.
Yeah i know telltale's been doing their fair share to bring back the fun adventure plots, but it just doesn't seem enough, i'm glad that services like GoG is bringing back the classics like Space Quest, etc so people can get back to the nostalgia.

I'm gonna call you out on old Sierra titles because they really, really have not aged well. At all. The only reason I'll sort of give the Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry games a pass is because they're funny, but things like King's Quest and Police Quest can go straight to hell.

I think the problem is that adventure games really had no way to innovate themselves after a while. For like a decade, it was "move cursor around, find small object two pixels wide, use inventory on everything." FPSes evolved with multiplayer, RPGs became more action oriented, and action games offered more and more interactivity, but adventure games pretty much languished in the same old formulas. And when adventure games were bad/unfair/stupid, they generally stood out more than bad games from other genres. Example: Amazon: Guardians of Eden, for its sheer level of "fuck you for playing our game."

[Kenji]

You're kidding,right? It's easy to make a game now? There's so much wrong with that statement. if anything, it's harder to make a game these days. Back in the day of the Atari 2600, every damn company and there dog had a video game development division, like Quaker Oats for Nyarlathotep's sake! It was considered that six guys was a large Development Team, and some were even coded by a single guy. Now? You need six guys just make sure the physics work properly, at most of the time two different companies, One to make the game and the other to publish.And most 360 and PS3 games are expensive to make, so unless you have the money or talent to catch the publisher eye, you're not going anywhere, code monkey. Sure, you can still be indie, but in this day and age it's not that easy to rub arms with the big boys.

Companies crank games out like no one's business anymore because game engines are shared freely amongst developers, for the most part. Most companies just abuse the same engine and give it new clothes to call it their own.

[Reese Tora]

RPGs became more action oriented

I'm gonna call you out on RPGs; the action RPG is it's own genre, including games such as Legend of Zelda for quite some time... and, TBH, the non action RPG genre seems to be dying off, which I think is a sad thing.  The major staples of regular RPGs that I grew up on, like Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire have either moved away frmo classic RPG play (Final Fantasy) or died off (Breath of Fire... seriously, 5 was awful, and I doubt that we'll see a 6 because of how poorly it did)

[Drayco84]

• Bring them back, bring them all back

I'm talking about a couple of Genres you don't see very often these days, the classic point and click adventure game, and to a greater extent, the Space sim.
Yeah i know telltale's been doing their fair share to bring back the fun adventure plots, but it just doesn't seem enough, i'm glad that services like GoG is bringing back the classics like Space Quest, etc so people can get back to the nostalgia.

I'm gonna call you out on old Sierra titles because they really, really have not aged well. At all. The only reason I'll sort of give the Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry games a pass is because they're funny, but things like King's Quest and Police Quest can go straight to hell.

I think the problem is that adventure games really had no way to innovate themselves after a while. For like a decade, it was "move cursor around, find small object two pixels wide, use inventory on everything." FPSes evolved with multiplayer, RPGs became more action oriented, and action games offered more and more interactivity, but adventure games pretty much languished in the same old formulas. And when adventure games were bad/unfair/stupid, they generally stood out more than bad games from other genres. Example: Amazon: Guardians of Eden, for its sheer level of "fuck you for playing our game."

You think "click on the object two pixels wide" is bad? I've got two words for you...

Text... Parser... 'Nuff said.

I've played King's Quest, which I'll admit I wasn't fond of, but not Police Quest. I'll freely admit that the old-school adventure games were kinda fun, but very annoying if you couldn't figure out what the friggin' hell you were supposed to do next. (Day of the Tentacle, anyone? Heck, how about the entire Quest for Glory series? Back then, an internet connection was scarce, and -I- certainly didn't have one... Talk about wandering around aimlessly for HOURS, geez!)  And mind you, at least ONCE on EVERY Zelda game I've gotten stuck because of something that would be blatently obvious to someone else. Then again, starting pointless conversations with everyone you see and swiping everything that isn't nailed down is kinda fun, but eventually you exhaust the dialogue trees and run out of stuff to swipe...

RPGs became more action oriented

I'm gonna call you out on RPGs; the action RPG is it's own genre, including games such as Legend of Zelda for quite some time... and, TBH, the non action RPG genre seems to be dying off, which I think is a sad thing.  The major staples of regular RPGs that I grew up on, like Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire have either moved away frmo classic RPG play (Final Fantasy) or died off (Breath of Fire... seriously, 5 was awful, and I doubt that we'll see a 6 because of how poorly it did)

Yes, and tell me, who in their right mind would call playing part of the game, starting ALL OVER AGAIN, playing slightly past the first reset point, and getting reset AGAIN could be considered FUN? Still, Capcom is well-known for milking a series until it drops. (Mega Man, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Battle Network, MMBN series 2...) And remember that they're not the only ones that said "Well, this sounds like a good idea! Let's not bother to playtest it and just force it onto the players!" (Poor, sad Working Designs... You will be missed...*Weeps.*)

I should open up the DS Lunar game... I mean, the HP ticking away could be overlooked, but NOT a combination of "blow into the microphone to run away from combat!" and "Running away from a boss fight? That'll cost you a turn!" (Nevermind the fact that the thing is supposedly ultra-sensitive to noise.) But to NOT allow you to pick which enemy they attack? (Well, P3F is tolerable, despite the somewhat dumb AI, and Fuuka! Please Fuuka, SHUT UP! I like you and all, but please, JUST SHUT UP! You're worse than Navi, dammit!) And combine breakable weapons PLUS having to pick between XP or items? Ugh... Just, ugh...

I know that there's a fine line between "challenge" and "break your controller/handheld out of frustration", but still... Seriously, some quirks can really make a game unique, but others just annoy players to the point of walking away. And, they may tell OTHERS of their kind about their experiences. So, if they didn't have fun, they will say so. If they had a great time playing the game, they will say so.

Oh, and for those that think making games is easy, consider this. Some game titles SURPASS THE BUDGET OF MAJOR MOTION PICTURES! Yeah, think about that for a second.

[Tipod]

Police quest had all the fun of "oops you missed picking up some doodad two hours ago guess you're screwed" mixed with having to follow actual police procedures in the manual. It sounded cool on paper (awesome, I'm doing a drug bust JUST LIKE REAL COPS DO) but when you realize your gun doesn't hit anything because you didn't adjust the sight on it all the way back at the range, get killed for not securing your pistol before taking suspects to lockup, and get other officers killed for not thinking to search the guy wearing only his skivvies, you just say "this game sucks ass" and boot up Doom or Quake.

And once adventure games crossed into FMVs... that was kind of the point that I gave up on the whole genre. Having photorealistic sets and actors actually felt more fake than using pixel art.

[Janus Whitefurr]

Police quest had all the fun of "oops you missed picking up some doodad two hours ago guess you're screwed"

Otherwise known as "Everything Sierra ever made."

[Reese Tora]

Yes, and tell me, who in their right mind would call playing part of the game, starting ALL OVER AGAIN, playing slightly past the first reset point, and getting reset AGAIN could be considered FUN? Still, Capcom is well-known for milking a series until it drops. (Mega Man, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Battle Network, MMBN series 2...) And remember that they're not the only ones that said "Well, this sounds like a good idea! Let's not bother to playtest it and just force it onto the players!" (Poor, sad Working Designs... You will be missed...*Weeps.*)

Oh, no, I completely agree that the 5th installment sucked royally, I was just trying to be nice and not point out the fact that it didn't do well because Capcom screwed it up, rather than from any lack of interest.

Heck, the official strat guide ended up being vaporware(atleast EB games refunded my $5...).

[Robbychu]

Police quest had all the fun of "oops you missed picking up some doodad two hours ago guess you're screwed"

Otherwise known as "Everything Sierra ever made."

Sierra has it's own section on TV Tropes for the Unwinnable tropes. All three of them.

Seriously. See for yourself!

[Sunblink]

The opposite is being able to do that fight and realising that the control system is full of crap and you wouldn't be able to execute all the flashy moves being pulled off -anyway-.

WET?

I think that was the first thing that came to mind for me.

[Kafzeil]

Companies crank games out like no one's business anymore because game engines are shared freely amongst developers, for the most part. Most companies just abuse the same engine and give it new clothes to call it their own.

But if developers didn't do this, nothing would get done. If you ha  to build up a unique game and physics engine for each new game, that'd chew up a lot of development time. And publishers, and the public, doesn't like it when a game takes too long in it's development cycle. Take Duke Nukem Forever, and Daikatana. Daikatana actually switched game engines mid development, Pushing the game's release date further back, earning mockery from the press, and causing most of the dev team to quite in disgust. Duke Nukem Forever took this up to 11.


Time is crucial to the development of games. Yes, you can argue that with the Evil Publishers forcing  release date on the Developers, games would be much better. But if Duke is any indication, game might not even get finished at all.

[Kenji]

Companies crank games out like no one's business anymore because game engines are shared freely amongst developers, for the most part. Most companies just abuse the same engine and give it new clothes to call it their own.

But if developers didn't do this, nothing would get done. If you ha  to build up a unique game and physics engine for each new game, that'd chew up a lot of development time. And publishers, and the public, doesn't like it when a game takes too long in it's development cycle. Take Duke Nukem Forever, and Daikatana. Daikatana actually switched game engines mid development, Pushing the game's release date further back, earning mockery from the press, and causing most of the dev team to quite in disgust. Duke Nukem Forever took this up to 11.


Time is crucial to the development of games. Yes, you can argue that with the Evil Publishers forcing  release date on the Developers, games would be much better. But if Duke is any indication, game might not even get finished at all.

There's a reason games that take years to make are considered classics and the rest get forgotten.

[Kafzeil]

There's a reason games that take years to make are considered classics and the rest get forgotten.

Define Classic. Everyone's idea of a classic is different, and there's no general consenous of the best games ever. I've hated games, movies, anime, comics, books, and TV shows that people said where amoung the best, most likley due to the amoung of hype it's fanbase generated. Games tend to age worse then other mediums anyways. Again, I'll point out adventure games.  Nostaslgaic fans will admire the stories and characters, but modern fans will likely just see medocrce to decent stories and twists, and game play that defines Save Scumming. The few Adventure game sI'll argue deserve the praise are the Lucasarts games and a handful of Sierra's games, more so the comedic stuff.

[Kenji]

There's a reason games that take years to make are considered classics and the rest get forgotten.

Define Classic. Everyone's idea of a classic is different, and there's no general consenous of the best games ever. I've hated games, movies, anime, comics, books, and TV shows that people said where amoung the best, most likley due to the amoung of hype it's fanbase generated. Games tend to age worse then other mediums anyways. Again, I'll point out adventure games.  Nostaslgaic fans will admire the stories and characters, but modern fans will likely just see medocrce to decent stories and twists, and game play that defines Save Scumming. The few Adventure game sI'll argue deserve the praise are the Lucasarts games and a handful of Sierra's games, more so the comedic stuff.

Classic as games worth playing despite being aged.
There's a general list of games that people define as classic. I don't care to list them however.

[Drayco84]

Police quest had all the fun of "oops you missed picking up some doodad two hours ago guess you're screwed"

Otherwise known as "Everything Sierra ever made."

Sierra has it's own section on TV Tropes for the Unwinnable tropes. All three of them.

Seriously. See for yourself!

Better link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Sierra
Yup, they've got their own section.