When did video games become so boring? About 1998 | Hacker News Reader

When did video games become so boring? About 1998

akinokure.blogspot.com

16 pointsbarry-cotter35 comments

I used to be a video game reviewer, and from my experience there are just as many awesome games being released year after year as there has ever been. The thing is, it's become so easy to release sheer and utter crap that it's padding the walls in every video game store.

This happened before the NES, which cause the video game industry to bubble and crash. I wouldn't be surprised if the market for video games bubbles and crashes again, because there's simply way too many games being released that the average person has no clue what's good and what's bad.

Then there's the problem that games that are utter crap and repetitive imitations are given absolutely massive advertising budgets, yet great games are given virtually no advertising. Then there's all the rush job releases that damage reputable games.

I understand why he believes video games have degraded in quality, however from my experience as a video game reviewer and personally having grown up with NES, video games are better today. There's a bigger genre selection, more replayability.

TES4: Oblivion was a piss poor sequel to Morrowind. Not only was the story atrocious, (for those who haven't played it) the story is announced in all of a 5 second speech during the tutorial. I'm not saying it's easily explained, the story is literally a straight line from the Emperor to the guys illegitimate son who has to kill the bad guy, there's no twists or turns along the way. In Morrowind it took like half the game before you found out where the story was going, but it involved twists regularly. This is not to mention that when Oblivion released, it was utterly impossible to play as any character type except a fighting one, as due to the bad guys levelling up with you the game became too hard unless you was wearing heavy armour with amazing skills. If you was a thief you could be easily killed by a rat when you hit level 15, where as the rat was easy pickings when you was level 1.

As a reviewer I got to play games that were sheer amazing, like Psychonauts, that didn't get picked up by the public. Then I got stuck with games like Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, which is basically ripping off Brothers in Arms, yet the squad AI is so appalling your team mates would run out in front of a tank. It wasn't original, it was an insult to the original FSW and it was an insult to the customers because it was hugely advertised in the gaming mags because it was the sequel to FSW.

There's been lots of great games in the past few years. GTA III->IV, Fable 1/2, Fallout 3 (although lacking the feel of Fallout 1/2), Mass Effect, The Movies, Black & White 1/2, Sims 1->3, the Total War franchise, Half-Life franchise including Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and Portal, Mario Galaxy, the X franchise.

I really don't see how you can think games haven't improved since the days of Megaman where there was absolutely no story, you just shot things and ran right.

I now find much less entertainment in video games than when I was a child, although this is the product of ageing and not of deteriorating video game quality. I'd rather do more productive things with my time and now I rarely play games even in my free time. However, I can still pick a game off the shelf that'll be great from any store just through instinct.

Thanks for the insight. I don't have much to add, except that FSW was a truly awesome game. Too bad that Ten Hammers ended up the way it did - while I never played it (due to poor reviews), I was hoping for better.

I really don't see how you can think games haven't improved since the days of Megaman where there was absolutely no story, you just shot things and ran right.

Well, I think that is one of the points. The emphasis on story has distracted from gameplay details somewhat. "Just shot things and ran right" is really terrible way to describe how Megaman was actually played. Despite the author's apparent lack of experience with modern games, but the approach of evaluating what you actually do while playing and how enjoyable it is, is worthwhile.

Complete and utter bullshit. Games have gotten better if anything.

You may not remember the absolute deluge of games that were utter tripe on the SNES and Genesis (and N64 and PSX), but I do... oh how I do. I think I bought half of them.

Also, the real change in terms of difficulty... was that games added different difficulty LEVELS. Go play Halo 3 on Legendary by yourself and tell me it's a walk in the park.

"You may not remember the absolute deluge of games that were utter tripe on the SNES and Genesis"

I do, and it's just the same today. Generic FPS 1, generic FPS 2, generic FPS 3, etc... I agree with what you said, but I don't think it's changed. Games today require more money and time to produce and have suffered the same fate as Hollywood big budget movies, they have become bland and predictable.

"Go play Halo 3 on Legendary by yourself and tell me it's a walk in the park."

I never play FPS gmaes, I recently was visiting my parents and played through this on my brothers XBox, and I beat it. Why? Because there is a save point every 2 seconds. It took some time, but not that much. Still have never beat Mike Tyson, excuse me, Mr. Dream.

I think there is a lot of validity in what he is saying. Games today are way easier than games 15 years ago. I really don't think it's even close. It seems that developers today are more interesting in graphics than things like story and game play. Of course there are exceptions to the rules. If he is looking for a challange, go play Star Craft on iccup or login to a Counter Strike server. It seems PvP play is where the challenge is these days.

I don't think so. Games written before 1999 were MUCH higher quality than anything today, even the art was better. I guess since they were written in assembly, they were forced to produce higher quality products or else they would have wasted their time whereas now everything is done in very high level languages and any idiot can make a half ass game and make a few bucks.

About difficulty... take for instance Crysis where it has nothing but graphics and it's almost impossible to die. Any Wii game that has nothing but a new controller. Pretty much every FPS is EXACTLY the same, and have no challenges. And World of Warcraft... way to waste your life. I have to admit some RTS games are very nice, like Red Alert 2 (does that count as modern?). Halo 3 is easy btw... and being hard doesn't necessarily make a game better anyways. Halo games were decent too imo, but older games are still much better.

The train sequence in Crysis Warhead was incredibly hard to me.

Totally agree. People love to chest-thump and talk about how everything was better when they were young. Bullshit.

Sturgeon's Law somewhat applies here. 90% of everything is crap. We need to look at the best-in-class entries to see what's actually good.

In my mind, games really peaked in 1998. They were innovating back then. StarCraft and Half-Life are still near the top of their respective classes (RTS, horror-themed shooter). We also had Baldur's Gate (singlehandedly revived the PC RPG genre), Thief (basically invented stealth in first-person games), Starsiege Tribes (popularized the sort of role-based team gameplay that's so popular in multiplayer games today), and Pokemon (say what you will, it popularized the so-called "collecting" RPGs), among others -- '98 was a very good year for games.

Compare 2008. Spore and Assassin's Creed are the big "original" properties here. For me, though, these don't make me think of innovative gameplay: they make me think of DRM.

There are a number of other good games, but they're mostly sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.

What about world of goo or portal?

You're right, I'd forgotten Portal came out in '08, and forgotten entirely about World of Goo.

Yeah, but those are (amazing) PC games.

The guy who wrote the article seems to be a Console-only player.

The article does have a point, though: The dominant rewards system of games has changed.

Games were once designed primarily to be challenging and only secondarily to be completed -- essentially equating difficulty with fun. Today, games are designed primarily to be completed and only secondarily to be challenging -- equating completion with fun. Of course, it's a matter of opinion which design is actually more fun.

This is why today we have difficulty levels, completion percents, unlockables, collectibles, achievements, etc.: to allow players that value completion to complete the game, but also to allow those that value difficulty to find a challenge. While these design elements are a good compromise between the two extremes, the author is correct that they diminish the value of the game's nominal completion and that they tend to reward time spent in the game over skill.

We can partly blame economics for the rise of these game mechanics: Games that have a reputation of being "too hard" rarely do well. Likewise, if a player has completed a game, he is more likely to buy its sequel than if he is still struggling with the original... The sooner players complete a game, the sooner they can buy another.

SMB 3 had to have been the easiest game in the world to beat. How could he not beat it? Why is he talking as if he's an expert?

At any rate, it's pretty clear that games have approached reality through time, simply because they can, and since reality is uniform, games have become uniform. Look at the old Atari games, and it's like a gallery of bad LSD trips.

http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/atari2600.htm

Here's a summary.

"I was 10 years old in 1998 and the Super Nintendo was the funnest evah."

It's definitely a generational thing. I hear what the author is saying as we're probably the same age (original Ninja Gaiden is my all time favorite game). As others have said, though, you don't remember how much crap you had to wade through on the NES. For every Faxanadu, there were a dozen Indiana Jones & the Temple of Dooms. For every Ninja Gaiden or Bad Dudes, there were twenty Fist of the North Stars. It's like thinking that in the 70s on the radio, it was all Led Zeppelin and no Foghat.

I don't agree with the author, but games DID get a little less interesting around that time, but the reason was actually 3dfx.

In my opinion, fixed function triangle rasterizers killed a lot of the wonder and excitement that used to come with each game release. Before that, it was thrilling to see what people like Carmack were going to come up with next.

Hope is not lost, though. One word: Larrabee

I used to love video games when I first got my own PC. In fact, I got into programming just so I could build my own games (the fact that I never even tried is a completely different story).

Some of my favorite games used to be the tycoon games. I can clearly remember gems like Caesar 3, Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2, SimCity, Civ3 etc. Now, the focus has shifted to storylines and graphics. No, I don't want to waste 15 minutes of my gaming time looking at your silly cutscene. I don't want to waste an hour getting used to your horribly complex interface. All I want to do is kick some alien ass, build a theme park, kill some Romans, conquer the world, do whatever and then get back to work.

Although I have stopped keeping up with developments in the gaming world, but I do look at a few games from time to time. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 has fireworks and what not. The newer version of SimCity allows you to drive through the town. Those are nice add-ons, but they add nothing of value to the gameplay. The new Civilization looks so complex that I gave up on it after about 10 minutes of play.

Bioshock? Crysis? Portal? Gimme a break. I, for one, didn't find anything new or innovative about them. But then again, I only watched the videos, read the reviews and looked at forum posts discussing those games. I'm sure I'm not the best judge.

Portal IS innovative.

You totally missed an awesome game.

If anyones looking for an old school frustratingly hard yet incredibly rewarding game, I would like to nominate ninja gaiden for the xbox. It is incredibly hard, yet always feels fair, and rewards clever strategy rather than /played time. I'd love to hear others recommendations for similarly hard games.

Xbox had a couple of difficult gems. Try Gunvalkerie or Panzer Dragoon Orta on the hardest difficulty.

I remember everyone saying Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was this massively hard game, but I remember beating it without too many problems. It was downright easy compared to the original Ninja Gaiden series (1-3).

I should append that, Ninja Gaiden Black is the one you want. The AI was vastly improved, and the flying swallow trick (you know the one), was nerfed intensely.

Article summary: "Games have become easier over time to appeal to a broader audience. Players no longer have to spend days polishing perfect timing to get perfect moves in a side-scrolling platform game, as they formerly had to do just to get past the first level."

Games trade off challenge and frustration. In a serious competitive pursuit, the challenge becomes more important, as does the dedication to advance to the next level. In video games, though, I sure don't enjoy the frustration of playing the same battle over and over again (Baldur's Gate 2, I'm looking at you --- so much potential, yet I can't force myself to get more than half-way through Chapter 1).

The article seems rather light on cites from modern games. It's not a very convincing case.

Sounds like the author used to be an avid gamer that has only really skimmed over modern games.

I wish I could find the comic (I think it was on salon.com) which stated that the best things were made when you were 14. Most people feel this way about music. It is inevitable that people feel the same about video games.

Every medium has these articles. They essentially boil down to: "everything was cooler when this was a smaller, more dedicated crowd".

Well, guess what? There -are- still games out there for those who preferred gaming in the 90s. They just don't line up with what's popular anymore because the audience shifted.

I'm not sure how someone can say that in the era of TF2, Portal, HL2, GTA series, WoW, Mario Galaxy, the Wii itself, etc...

Games like TF2 are difficult in a much more complex and intelligent way. It's not just a reflex test, it involves strategy, decision-making and coordination.

WoW is the natural evolution of addictive gameplay with no true lasting value. I blame the lack of decent single player RPGs recently on MMOs.

What about Half Life? System Shock 2? Bioshock? Portal?

> System Shock 2

Thanks... there goes my day.

this just occurred to me two days ago. i realized that games became a consumable.

Became? Most games started out as consumables. Adventure wasn't made with a mind to the future if you catch my drift.

Even several board games are made with a consumable nature. Trivial Pursuit, for instance, will become very boring if you play long enough to have memorized most of the cards. The only solution is to buy new packs of cards.

It's also why Starcraft still enjoys immense popularity despite being over 10 years old. The story mission is only a side note to the multiplayer aspect. There is no answer, no pre-determined path you are taking. Any game with a narrative and no multiplayer aspect is essential a consumable product.

to me the difference between a consumable and other forms of entertainment is that once you've experienced a certain aspect once you don't need to experience it again. You can play mario 1000 times because the fundamental action of jumping from platform to platform is fun. Consumable games in contrast have many mechanics that, lacking the overall motivating factor of advancing the experience forward, are things you would never choose to do.

Presumably the author is unaware that people said the same thing in 1988, and how all the new games were crap.

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