4 ms·

I don't have any data to back this up but I would argue that as the total number of video games has increased, the number of good games (as good and better than

I don't have any data to back this up but I would argue that as the total number of video games has increased, the number of good games (as good and better than the games when you were 20 years younger) has also increased. We didn't take N good games that 10% of people like and turn them in to N bad games that 90% of people like. Instead, we have something more like 10xN good games that 10% of people like and 100xN bad games that 90% of people like. With movies, as opposed to games, I think this is less pronounced given the age of medium but still present.

pjc50 10y ago
I don't know why this is being downvoted; there have never been more or more diverse games, and the old ones don't go away quite so readily, between emulators and GoG. Gaming is now mainstream and very nearly respectable. Kind of like football ("soccer") in the 90s, just with a different kind of hooligan. We've lost a bit to genre crystallization, but there's no shortage of people willing to experiment with weird things in Unity or mods to existing games. The hyper-mainstream games are of course boringly predictable, but it's a short step away to other things.
jbpetersen 10y ago
My own experience seems to reflect this. The availability of quality work seems to grow logarithmically in relation to the quantity of something.
- shuntress 10y ago
  I think the level of quality has also increased compared to pre-2005. Games like Factorio and Minecraft didn't even exist. It's not a stretch to call FTL and Spelunky the best rouge-like games so far. Ocarina of Time, even with its huge nostalgia bias, is less re-playable than A Link Between Worlds. CS:GO basically amplifies everything good about CS 1.6 and CS:Source then adds the competitive support. Similarly, DOOM (2016) takes everything (Except perhaps the mod-ability and level design) that made Doom so good and improves it.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Doom4 is fantastic for those of us who grew up on Doom1. OOT is a classic simply because of its weirdness and innovative time mechanics, but I prefer the bright joy of Wind Waker and the more recent Twilight Princess is just better in so many ways.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    Many people (myself included) would argue that CS:GO is worse than 1.6 or source. CS has always had competitive support by nature of being able to host your own servers.
- irrational 10y ago
  Yes, quality is a function of quantity. This applies to all kinds of things besides games such as the relationships between friends and family members. The more time you spend with someone, the more likely a certain percentage of that time will be of high quality.
douche 10y ago
I would agree about video games. I haven't seen the supply of games slowing down any, and there's a lot of high-quality stuff mixed in there - way more than any one person could ever hope to consume. Of course there's a lot of shovelware too, but Sturgeon's Law. Movies seem to really be hollowing out the middle more. You've got a lot of very low-budget fliers and indie prestige stuff and a lot of $100M+ mega-movies, drifting now into attempts at Marvel-esque cinematic universe perpetual money-printing machines for increasingly dubious IPs.
- dpark 10y ago
  Most movies have always been trash. It only seems better historically because we don't tend to remember all the trash that got released in decades past, while all the trash in the past year or two is still in memory.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    For your reference, that's a restatement of Sturgeon's Law.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I don't think so. Surgeon's law basically just says that most of everything is crap. I'm talking more about a form of rose-colored glasses, the "everything is crap now" mentality. It's sort of the same thing that makes everyone think that the music industry peaked when they were 20.
      - bryanlarsen 10y ago
        Sturgeon's law is a response to somebody asking "how come most of X is crap, when that's not the case for Y?". The response is that most of Y was crap too, you're just remembering the good stuff. So yes, it's definitely the standard reponse for the "everything is crap now" mentality.
        10y ago
foobarrio 10y ago
I think there are two situations here that account for this. [1] Technical barriers to entry. Photography had huge barrier to entries when it first started. With wet-plate exposures you had to be at a high level of technical ability in multiple disciplines to even take a picture. Only the people deeply interested in the subject participated. Also the high cost (in time and money) to take a single photo meant that a lot of effort was put into a single frame. Today it's trivial to snap a photo on my phone. However there is still great photography being today! It's just that there is a bunch more crap photos being taken. This is similar to developing a game (there were still plenty of crap games being made then too!). Personally, I think it's all awesome. Ignore the crap and enjoy the awesome. No one judges a guitar based on how bad players sound. People listen to the players they like.

pjc50 10y ago

I don't know why this is being downvoted; there have never been more or more diverse games, and the old ones don't go away quite so readily, between emulators and GoG. Gaming is now mainstream and very nearly respectable. Kind of like football ("soccer") in the 90s, just with a different kind of hooligan. We've lost a bit to genre crystallization, but there's no shortage of people willing to experiment with weird things in Unity or mods to existing games. The hyper-mainstream games are of course boringly predictable, but it's a short step away to other things.

jbpetersen 10y ago

My own experience seems to reflect this. The availability of quality work seems to grow logarithmically in relation to the quantity of something.

shuntress 10y ago
I think the level of quality has also increased compared to pre-2005. Games like Factorio and Minecraft didn't even exist. It's not a stretch to call FTL and Spelunky the best rouge-like games so far. Ocarina of Time, even with its huge nostalgia bias, is less re-playable than A Link Between Worlds. CS:GO basically amplifies everything good about CS 1.6 and CS:Source then adds the competitive support. Similarly, DOOM (2016) takes everything (Except perhaps the mod-ability and level design) that made Doom so good and improves it.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Doom4 is fantastic for those of us who grew up on Doom1. OOT is a classic simply because of its weirdness and innovative time mechanics, but I prefer the bright joy of Wind Waker and the more recent Twilight Princess is just better in so many ways.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Many people (myself included) would argue that CS:GO is worse than 1.6 or source. CS has always had competitive support by nature of being able to host your own servers.
irrational 10y ago
Yes, quality is a function of quantity. This applies to all kinds of things besides games such as the relationships between friends and family members. The more time you spend with someone, the more likely a certain percentage of that time will be of high quality.

douche 10y ago

I would agree about video games. I haven't seen the supply of games slowing down any, and there's a lot of high-quality stuff mixed in there - way more than any one person could ever hope to consume. Of course there's a lot of shovelware too, but Sturgeon's Law. Movies seem to really be hollowing out the middle more. You've got a lot of very low-budget fliers and indie prestige stuff and a lot of $100M+ mega-movies, drifting now into attempts at Marvel-esque cinematic universe perpetual money-printing machines for increasingly dubious IPs.

dpark 10y ago
Most movies have always been trash. It only seems better historically because we don't tend to remember all the trash that got released in decades past, while all the trash in the past year or two is still in memory.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  For your reference, that's a restatement of Sturgeon's Law.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I don't think so. Surgeon's law basically just says that most of everything is crap. I'm talking more about a form of rose-colored glasses, the "everything is crap now" mentality. It's sort of the same thing that makes everyone think that the music industry peaked when they were 20.
    - bryanlarsen 10y ago
      Sturgeon's law is a response to somebody asking "how come most of X is crap, when that's not the case for Y?". The response is that most of Y was crap too, you're just remembering the good stuff. So yes, it's definitely the standard reponse for the "everything is crap now" mentality.
      - 10y ago

foobarrio 10y ago

I think there are two situations here that account for this. [1] Technical barriers to entry. Photography had huge barrier to entries when it first started. With wet-plate exposures you had to be at a high level of technical ability in multiple disciplines to even take a picture. Only the people deeply interested in the subject participated. Also the high cost (in time and money) to take a single photo meant that a lot of effort was put into a single frame. Today it's trivial to snap a photo on my phone. However there is still great photography being today! It's just that there is a bunch more crap photos being taken. This is similar to developing a game (there were still plenty of crap games being made then too!). Personally, I think it's all awesome. Ignore the crap and enjoy the awesome. No one judges a guitar based on how bad players sound. People listen to the players they like.