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Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

:) Yes, pretty much. DotA was created as a small mod, and now look at the commercial explosion it has spawned, with tournaments containing $2+ million in prizes and everyone wanting to make MOBAs.

I think in the past 20 years, we actually have not made as many breakthroughs in game mechanics (of course, this was easier in the early days). Games are still fairly similar to those of the 90s, only technically more complex. I think we are beginning to maybe get a better handle on game design, which I am seeing creep in with more appreciation of more obscure (now less obscure) game types like roguelikes and CCGs. Little known fact is that Plants vs Zombies was largely inspired by deck building mechanics found in Magic the Gathering, so you are beginning to see some more obscure mechanics like that get mainstreamed.

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I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.

Genres completely abandoned by AAA developers ages ago are seeing a resurgence thanks to crowdsourcing. Space sims have been all but dead since Freelancer in 2003 but now there are several to play and look forward to.

Formerly obscure genres like roguelikes are seeing mainstream success thanks to high quality "roguelike-like" games like FTL.

Hell, even the impenetrable Dwarf Fortress brings in enough money from donations to support future development.

> Formerly obscure genres like roguelikes are seeing mainstream success thanks to high quality "roguelike-like" games like FTL.

I actually trace this to Diablo II and Torchlight. Yes, they aren't strictly rogue-likes—among other things they're realtime—but they raised excitement for the genre just the same.

I think Diablo and Torchlight were inspired by early roguelikes, but I wouldn't say the current wave of roguelikes were inspired by these games except maybe in terms of style (e.g. Binding of Isaac). FTL and Diablo 2 for example are quite different games.

I don't think Diablo and Torchlight had any influence at all on the current surge of roguelike-likes ushered in by Spelunky and FTL, though. They basically draw on completely different aspects of the roguelike tradition: the former takes the superficial D&D-esque dungeon crawling, plus lots of high-grade polish and minus the permadeath and much of the variety. The latter instead focuses on a wildly different experience for each runthrough, with permadeath as a matter of course, and can draw the superficial surface from anything (Indiana Jones-esque platformer, top-down crew management sim...)

Roguelikes are defined by permadeath, quick runs and procedural generation.

Diablo 2 and Torchlight have the latter, but they are quite old, and the resurgence of roguelikes is relatively recent.

I believe it's just has to do with it being a very solid (and addictive) gameplay model, and one that fits much better indie games than AAA titles.

> I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.

Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon's 300 pages manual, or even Colonization's fantastic booklet that went far above describing how to just play the game.

The early 90s were dominated by AAA titles from Origin, pushing both the boundaries of what was technically possible on PC as well as driving genres forward by developing non-linear game structures and exploring 3D environments. Nowadays AAA blockbusters jsut rehash the same formula over and over again (care to take another Assassin's Creed?).

Colonization 1994 manual (135 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8194

Colonization 2008 manual (38 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.377

Edit: fixed duplicate link, thanks ekianjo.

You just posted the same links I think.

Np! Otherwise good find, which proves my above point. The first 1994 booklet had a whole essay on the History of the colonization of America, I used to read it several times after playing the game. But this was not just this game, so many others went ahead to provide tons of value besides the game itself (Ultima 7's map printed on a cloth! A classic!). This was just so much more than mere tutorials. They also help create the atmosphere of the game OUTSIDE of the game.

I still have the Ultima 7 map, apart from being beautiful it was fairly useful since it really helped you navigate the world.

The booklets also helped the immersion, things really have changed.

I have played Colonization for countless hours and yet had never seen the manual, thank you very much for pointing it out!

Incidentally, for many years, everything I "knew" about the colonial & revolutionary times in the US, I had learned from Colonization and Day of the Tentacle :)

I don't think there were many games that matched the complexity of Paradox's grand strategy games in the early 90's, but I'm curious to hear of any examples.

I agree with you, but simulation games were a whole genre back in the early 90s. It has almost completely disappeared. Remember Microprose? Remember Maxis ? Remember Did ? Bullfrog ? They were all huge businesses dedicated to educated/curious gamers back then. Paradox falls into the indies - they clearly do not have much means (while they make great games).

I don't think Paradox really qualify as indie anymore. They're more on a niche market than anything else.

Paradox has transitioned into being a niche publisher, particularly since merging with Slitherine. Also, DiD was, I believe, making simulation software for the RAF.

I do really miss Microprose and Bullfrog. As a wargammer, I would add SSI, SSG, and Three-Sixty to that list as well.

SSI and SSG, good call, I forgot to mention them.

It's hard to make the case for the early 90s being the peak of game quality, use Origin as an example, and completely miss out a reference to Roberts Space Industries and Star Citizen.

The golden age is in the future, and the future is already here (just not evenly distributed).

We'll see if Star Citizen is as good as it promises to be, but until then, the height of Roberts' creative career is in the early 90s for now, before he went into movies with his disastrous Wing Commander film. Plus, he is just directing Star Citizen and not involved in development as he was during the Wing Commander series (where he was a programmer himself at least for the first 2 episodes).

Ah... a couple nitpicks there. First, Roberts did almost all of the initial Star Citizen pitch prototype development himself, with some assistance from CryTek employees. While most of his current time is more on the vision/direction side, I've read a number of discussion posts indicating he's still hands-on in the code when he gets a chance.

Also, he's VERY involved in the design aspects. CIG recently published a breakdown of their ship design and development process. There's three or four major stages, and every one has "approval from Chris Roberts" as a gate at the end.

So, while he's certainly not writing a majority of the code like he might have in the past, I'd definitely disagree with the phrase "not involved in development".

Good points - I had the impression Roberts was not involved in direct development anymore, that is reassuring for Star Citizen I guess.

This is a perfectly valid opinion and seems to be downvoted because of disagreement. (albeit you could have clearly stated it's your opinion).

I kind of agree. A lot of AAA games these days are just unoriginal. They follow the genre they exist in without much creativity or original ideas. Perhaps the storyline in the game is what people are after these days, but gameplay-wise, I don't remember when I've seen a big production game that I would have wanted to play.

Not to underestimate the value of nostalgia, of course. Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.

Good thing that there are still interesting indie games. Even 15-20 years ago when I played more games, I spent more time playing small indie titles I found from BBS'es and computer magazines than I did playing big titles.

> Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.

Certainly, but the opposite is also true. Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape Torment still hold up very well to this day and shame more recent RPGs lacking good stories and good character development, aimed at folks who liked RPGs on pen and paper and who actually liked RPGs before they existed on computers.

Indies are great, but there's a certain lack of ambition and a lot of rehashing there too (shovel knight reproducing 8 bit games, others using pixel art as a form of style instead of using all pixels available on screen to do something gorgeous, many reboots of ancient IPs, etc...). Truly original, innovative games are few because most of the genres have already been established for a long time.

I think you're looking at a pretty narrow genre (Complex Games) and extrapolating the entire platform's content/potential from it. There are fewer people making as complex games as back then, but saying people are uneducated is a bit silly.

While his example of the flight sim might be an extreme, I'd agree that many genres have been oversimplified. One incredibly disappointing example that comes to mind is the X-Com series.

I'm not saying people are uneducated, I'm saying most games are made nowadays for the mainstream and I don't think you can argue gamers back in the mid-80s were more likely to be more of the college types of folks who happened to be early adopters in the days. Nowadays even 10 years old play on PC and that completely skews what games you make for that market.

I wouldn't describe DF as "impenetrable", exactly, but rather as a wormhole that teleports you from Friday evening to Monday morning.

I have noticed an amazing resurrection of the point and click adventure genre. It is my favorite genre and I could never get enough of it when I was younger (Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, pretty much all the Lucasarts games, Phantasmagoria, etc etc). I was very sad when I noticed a total lack of point and click games between the years 2005-2012ish (more or less, obviously). Now, I see a lot more games like this coming out on Steam, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc etc and I am super happy.

I think we are headed for the dark ages of PC gaming.

Before, the top AAA studios made games with mods in mind. This allowed massive genres like Dota and Counter-Strike to come into existence.

Nowadays AAA studios see modders as leeches and try to cut them out of the game so they can sell DLC and skins to whales.

You can see this happening everywhere.

- No modding in Blizzard's new games.

- No modding in Dota2.

- CS:GO and TF2: Making 3rd party servers hard to find compared to official ones.

- Minecraft declaring freemium servers to be illegal

The indie games on Steam Greenlight don't make up for this. It is much harder to prove a concept by making a game from scratch. Most of them are quite shoddy and get abandoned after they receive a bunch of money from early access.

Some say it is the Golden Age (see MrMember's comment), some say the Dark Age. I say there is a bit of both, but it is getting so crowded with people trying to make a buck, vs. people trying to make good games, that it is easy to be pessimistic (I definitely am in many regards).

There is not enough accountability on Early Access and Kickstarter, and this is magnified by the fact that most people are not good at judging a team's ability early on (see: YogVentures, etc).

Things are still rosy because most players are not tired of the genres (MOBA / CS) that grew from the last generation of being friendly to modders.

It may take a while but I forsee people getting tired of getting milked for DLCs and skins, and the major studios won't have another genre like Dota or CS to copy because they screwed over modders.

Actually, just as Warcraft allowed for modding which led to Dota, Starcraft 2 supports modding. So that spirit is still alive in some form at Blizzard.

Starcraft 2 came out about 4.5 years ago. Hearthstone and Diablo 3 don't support modding, and all indications show that Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch won't either.

After reading some initial reviews of Diablo 3, I just got Torchlight (1 & 2) instead, and haven't really missed D3. They are not a AAA games, but they do have an active modding community.

> No modding in Blizzard's new games.

What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game?

http://us.battle.net/arcade/en/

> No modding in Dota2.

Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2."

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/3522031560...

> What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game?

Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, it is the only one.

> Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2."

Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game has already been out since 2013 with a hefty 1 year "beta" where anyone that wanted an invite could easily get one?

> * Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW...*

Starcraft 2 is still quite heavily played, and an expansion is still in the works.

I don't see how you can say Starcraft 2 is not recent, and then use WoW to further your point, when that game was released many years prior.

The fact that Dota 2's workshop tools are still in alpha is irrelevant. The fact is, there is a healthy, modding community within Dota 2, and this is being officially supported by Valve. It is also growing all the time, which contradicts your point that we are "headed for the dark ages of PC gaming".

> Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game has already been out since 2013 with a hefty 1 year "beta" where anyone that wanted an invite could easily get one?

The valve mod tools are based on source 2 and already work, though they are in an early state. I've played maps made using them - anyone can - they're in the DOTA 2 workshop. Valve has said the dev tools are paused while they port the main DOTA 2 client to source 2 so the client doesn't need to close & boot source 2 to play user-made content. I'm not a game developer, but I'm told the current source 2 map maker is excellent if buggy & poorly documented.

It's possible Valve will release Source 2 for the client and never update the tools, but that seems unlikely. They've made an enormous amount of money off user-created content, and I expect they'll want to continue to add to that revenue stream (as well as it being the cool & decent thing to do).

1. Blizzard only ever had extensive mod tools for their RTS series, not any of their other games, so this is not new.

2. Starcraft 2's mod tools are vastly more powerful than those from Warcraft 3 and especially Starcraft 1 (in some ways this is actually a bad thing).

3. Blizzard implemented a major overhaul of the custom games interface for Starcraft 2's first expansion in 2013, so clearly they still care.

4. Starcraft 2 is still under active development; the latest expansion is expected sometime this year.

I remember Diablo2 being heavily modded though

Right, but they weren't using any mod tools provided by Blizz.

THIS so much.

One of the more 'interesting' gaming communities is the PAYDAY 2 community. It's a fiercely competitive multiplayer game with lots of levelling up (why does EVERY game want to be an RPG these days.... I digress) yet all the play has been sucked out of the competitive part. There's this massive conflation between 'modding' and 'griefing' where the attitude to people experimenting with the game is openly hostile.

Now admittedly yes, in a multiplayer competitive game it sucks when a cheater enters your game server and griefs your game. Yet I couldn't imagine the kind of open hostility existing in the Doom or Duke Nukem 3D communities of old, where modding was encouraged and celebrated as experimentation and where the games weren't taken so damn seriously.

Uh, there's a difference between modding and cheating in a game. I should know, I used to do both (the days of hooking the DLLs OpenGL calls... though I mainly did it for the technical challenge, it's no fun playing a game where you get to win no matter what); modding and hacking are entirely different. One is building things on top of the engine, the other is exploiting it (and ruining others enjoyment of the game). How you can conflate the two is beyond me.

Most of the good mods from the last generation (CS, DoD, TFC, DotA, etc.) were less mods and more total conversions. And you don't need to mod a game to do that these days. The Source engine is free. Unity is free. The Unreal engine is cheap. We have more tools for making fully-fledged games at our disposal than we ever had in the past.

This is false. Nearly 100% of the assets from Dota 1 came from Warcraft 3.

I am not familiar with the other games to know how much original content there was, but I remember that both CS and TFC used a number of assets from the original.

Source is not free. Saying Unity is free and Unreal is cheap completely ignores the cost of modeling.

> Minecraft declaring freemium servers to be illegal

Yes, the dark ages, where developers look to protect their consumers (which in this case are often children!) from money-sucking leeches.

The Minecraft mod scene is thriving and massive and Mojang hasn't tried to stop it at all.

You know, it costs money to run servers. I'm an adult; I can choose to pay for extra items in a game if I wish to.

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