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Comment by pipes | Hacker News Reader

Unreal engine 1 looks good to me, so I am not a good judge.

I keep thinking there is going to be a video game crash soon, over saturation of samey games. But I'm probably wrong about that. I just think that's what Nintendo had right all along: if you commoditize games, they become worthless. We have endless choice of crap now.

In 1994 at age 13 I stopped playing games altogether. Endless 2d fighters and 2d platformer was just boring. It would take playing wave race and golden eye on the N64 to drag me back in. They were truly extraordinary and completely new experiences (me and my mates never liked doom). Anyway I don't see this kind of shift ever happening again. Infact talking to my 13 year old nephew confirms what I (probably wrongly) believe, he's complaining there's nothing new. He's bored or fortnight and mine craft and whatever else. It's like he's experiencing what I experienced, but I doubt a new generation of hardware will change anything.

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> Unreal engine 1 looks good to me, so I am not a good judge.

But we did hit a point where the games were good enough, and better hardware just meant more polygons, better textures, and more lighting. The issues with Unreal Engine 1 (or maybe just games of that era) was that the worlds were too sparse.

> over saturation of samey games

So that's the thing. Are we at a point where graphics and gameplay in 10-year-old games is good enough?

Are we at a point where graphics and gameplay in 10-year-old games is good enough?

Personally, there are enough good games from the 32bit generation of consoles, and before, to keep me from ever needing to buy a new console, and these are games from ~25 years ago. I can comfortably play them on a MiSTer (or whatever PC).

Yep, I have a mister and a steam deck that's mainly used for emulators and old pc games. I'm still chasing old highs

If the graphics aren’t adding to the fun and freshness of the game, nearly. Rewatching old movies over seeing new ones is already a trend. Video games are a ripe genre for this already.

Now I'm going to disagree with myself... there came a point where movies started innovating in storytelling rather than the technical aspects (think Panavision). Anything that was SFX-driven is different, but the stories movies tell and how they tell them changed, even if there are stories where the technology was already there.

I get so sad when I hear people say there’s no new games. There are so many great, innovative games being made today, more than any time in history. There are far more great games on Steam than anyone can play in a lifetime.

Even AAAs aim to create new levels of spectacle (much like blockbuster movies), even if they don’t innovate on gameplay.

The fatigue is real (and I think it’s particularly bad for this generation raised to spend all their gaming time inside the big 3), but there’s something for you out there, the problem is discoverability, not a lack of innovation.

This so much. Anyone that's saying games used to be better is either not looking or has lost their sight to nostalgia.

"if you commoditize games, they become worthless"

???? hmm wrong??? if everyone can make game, the floor is raising making the "industry standard" of a game is really high

while I agree with you that if everything is A then A is not meaning anything but the problem is A isn't vanish, they just moved to another higher tier

You probably have a point and it's not something I believe completely. My main problem I think is I have seen nothing new in games for 20 years at least.

Gunpei yokoi said something similar here:

https://shmuplations.com/yokoi/

Yokoi: When I ask myself why things are like this today, I wonder if it isn’t because we’ve run out of ideas for games. Recent games take the same basic elements from older games, but slap on characters, improve the graphics and processing speed… basically, they make games through a process of ornamentation.

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