5 ms·

This. I remember the days of NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS games, even the case for a lot of games in other earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, etc. These mar

by just2n 14y ago

This. I remember the days of NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS games, even the case for a lot of games in other earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, etc. These markets were literally flooded with massive volume in games. You went to the store and could literally not decide what you wanted to play, because there were 30+ games you had never seen, you wanted to play them all, and another 30+ for a console you didn't own. And then a few months later, there were 20+ new ones. All of these games were relatively simple, creative, outside the box, not hyped nor mentioned in any advertising anywhere. And almost all of them kicked ass. Because they were still analog cartridge-ey and/or required a CD to play, you didn't want to own hundreds of games (even though you could because most were priced very reasonably), so it was amazing when things like Sega Channel came out. That was one of the truly awesome things I remember as a kid, even though it was short lived. I miss those days. Now it's AAA title that took 3+ years to make that looks good but has almost nothing to it. Back then, a $5 game that took a company 1 programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer, and about 2 weeks to make had significantly more playability to it. What happened to the industry?

talmand 14y ago
Some call it progress. EDIT: downvotes suggest I should wrap this in a sarcasm tag.
- just2n 14y ago
  I think this is a highly contentious opinion (primarily mine, and any view that modern high-budget games mostly suck, which resonates with myself and a lot of once-gamers I know). It might be that way because of the technical nature of this community and probably because many readers of these comments might actually be involved in that industry, and so it comes off as offensive. I don't really mean it to be offensive. We know a lot more about development today, and have a lot better tools, and I know what kinds of amazing creativity some of these designers have, so it personally bothers me to see the lion's share of investment in the gaming industry go into reproducing the same games over and over. Those of you who are in the industry: what do you think about starting your own shops, or building kick-ass games in your free time? If you work at one of these large companies and are pursuing things like this, I'd love to see your work.
demione 14y ago
That industry still exists and is thriving more now than ever. It's just moved over to mobile.
- just2n 14y ago
  That's definitely a good point. I've played some awesome mobile games. The only downside is that they are producing for a platform with such a horrendously inaccurate/crappy input system. I get enthusiastic about downloading a game on my n7 only to find that it's extremely frustrating to play, or that the game has been dumbed down in some way to compensate, massive sadface. This isn't true of all of them, especially games that are designed around the touch interface, but after a while I still get bothered by it. I'm really liking the resurgence of indie PC games, though. In the past few years I've played games produced by < 3 independent people that easily rivaled the games people tout as the "best of all time." Specifically, I'm curious why these huge companies want to produce 1 game over X years for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and still fail to be profitable when they sell millions of copies.
  - ericd 14y ago
    What are some awesome mobile games? The vast majority of the ones I've played have felt extremely shallow, and couldn't hold my attention for very long at all, so I'd love to find a few consistent go-to's for when I'm on a train and don't feel like playing a puzzle game.
    - DigitalJack 14y ago
      These are the games that have remained on my phone (sort of in order of favorites): plants vs zombies, middle manager of justice, minecraft pocket edition, plague inc., tiny wings, ticket to ride, carcassone, flight control, textropolis
subsection1h 14y ago
you didn't want to own hundreds of games I wanted to own hundreds of NES games because they didn't have remotely as much replay value as good modern games such as Counter Strike. (Heh, Counter Strike is the best example I have of a good modern game because it's the last game I played regularly.) even though you could because most were priced very reasonably Most of the NES games I bought cost $49.99 plus tax. I specifically recall that Double Dragon cost me $54.99 plus tax.
- 286c8cb04bda 14y ago
  > Most of the NES games I bought cost $49.99 plus tax. Wolfram Alpha says[1] that's ~$90 today. 1: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50%20USD%201990%20in%202013 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50%20USD%201990%20in%20...
  - SkittlesNTwix 14y ago
    It's interesting to reflect on this number, when you realize that the latest AAA platform title (whatever AAA meant in that particular day/age) have always cost about $50-60 in the past $$ terms of that day, regards of when in the past 20 years we're talking about. So you paid $90 worth of value in 1990 and we pay $49.99 today. What I mean to say is that games were EXPENSIVE back then!
    - just2n 14y ago
      A big difference then was that you could expect to reliably sell your used game back after you finished playing it, if you didn't want to hang on to it. So if you were into playing a lot of games and only keeping your all time favorites, you could reduce that cost significantly. And at the same time, if you were willing to wait a little bit after a launch, you could have the game for a nice discount. How often are you able to sell a game you pay $60 for today? And it doesn't help that the same game is repackaged and sold 10 times over a few years by the same company, each time for $60. At best that's a DLC, maybe worth $10 or $15, not another $60. :|
    - voltagex_ 14y ago
estel 14y ago
Sorry, but I can't help but feel you're looking at the industry through rose-tinted glasses. There were hundreds upon hundreds of games for NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS that absolutely stunk. The vast majority were rotten, rotten games that were plain unfun from the title screen through to the end credits. I'd happily contend that the opposite is true: that if you go into a GAME store today, the vast majority of games will be at least /ok/. Whilst I don't think it's yet true that the majority of titles are AAA (check the reviews section of your nearest games mag, only a few releases per month are evidently AAA), a declining market for medium-budget games is possibly more of an issue. And what happened to the $5 games? Since 2007 the industry has seen a huge, massive surge in (successful) indie game development, primarily on PC but also distributed digitally on PSN and 360. It's definitely there, alive, strong and very visible. (Sure, they might take more than 2 weeks to make, but not many games can be made in two weeks to contend well on quality).
- just2n 14y ago
  Sure, but it's all independent now. They used to be small game studios with the resources to push out high quality games at a pretty rapid pace. I'm not saying the people building indie games today aren't talented, but some of them spend years polishing a single title, only to have it make a few hundred K, with a few massive outliers (Braid, Minecraft, Binding of Isaac, etc). I remember playing crappy games back then, too, but so much more of it felt like today's indie scene. It's like some big business machine marched in and bought all the "pro" talent to produce the same few games over and over again on different engines, while everyone who gives a shit about actually building fun, innovative games just started their own few-person ventures.
  - zanny 14y ago
    I think you touch on a major problem. There are two extremes now - the ultra-publisher umbrellas that push out AAA market products, and the indies composed of 5 guys in a basement. There are very few companies with 50 - 100 people in the mid-range making mid-tier games with good gameplay (not revolutionary) good graphics (not Crysis 3 here) and fill in an industry gap. They all get acquired by big publishers. In the 80's, even when Nintendo was practically the only publisher on the block, development studios contracted to publish games with them, they weren't owned by them. Up until the mid 2000's studios weren't owned by the publishers like they are now. Look at how Blizzard / Bioware / Epic / id etc all got bought and brought under big publisher umbrellas.
pablasso 14y ago
almost all of them kicked ass The past always looks brighter from the present.
ijk 14y ago
In a sense, those days are back. Despite all of the AAA games that were released in 2012 (and there were some excellent games) the Game Developer Choice Awards last week were dominated by an independent title, Journey.[1] The conference as a whole had a strong focus on independent developers.[2] Kickstarter projects are bringing back mid-range development, with smaller studios like Double Fine and Obsidian raising millions. Some Kickstarter projects, like FTL, have already been released to award-winning success.[3] The Kickstarter for the Planescape: Torment sequel being developed by inXile has raised almost 3.5 million with 51 hours to go.[4] There's a lot of innovation happening. Just play any of the IGF finalists if you want a taste.[5] [1] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-27/business/38080334_1_spacewar-telltale-games-video-games http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-27/business/38080... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/arts/video-games/game-developers-conference-celebrates-indie-creators.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/arts/video-games/game-deve... [3] http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=360 http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=360 [4] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera?ref=category http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... [5] http://www.igf.com/2013finalistswinners.html http://www.igf.com/2013finalistswinners.html
moron4hire 14y ago
I agree with Estel. What you have written here is no reflection of the reality I grew up in. There weren't a lot of games. There were just under 1000 NES games for both the US AND Japanese market (combined), and the total clocks in at about 200MB in size. The 30+ games you saw were probably the entire library of unique games for the platform. The games we had yesteryear sucked. Really, really sucked. Most of them were bare derivatives of each other. For every Super Mario Bros. 3 there were 5 clones of Arkanoid. The controls were bad, the artwork was bad, the framerates were bad. We just didn't know they sucked because we didn't have better games yet. Look at some of the best games on the market back then, games like Megaman or Star Fox, and they are are only popular as nostalgia pieces today. I don't consider Golgo 13 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES; PilotWings or DOOM on the SNES; Driver or Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation; to be anything close to playable games today, but I remember playing all of them for hours and liking it, because that was really all we knew. And the games were not cheap. The NES retailed at $300 in the US when it debuted in 1985. That'd be almost $650 today. Super Mario Bros. 3 (the pinnacle of the series, IMO) debuted in 1990 at a price point of $60--over $105 in today's dollars. Chrono Trigger on the SNES debuted at $80 in 1995--over $120 today. I remember paying $70 for Yoshi's Cookie in 1992 (because I was 10 and that was all the Christmas money I had and I really, really wanted. My mother and I played it together for hours. It was great). That'd be $115 today for a puzzle game I could rewrite in a weekend now. I don't know what you're talking about with "$5 games". You're praise of Sega Channel just further underscores that you were probably too young to understand money back in this time. It was $15/mo in 1994 when the only subscription services anyone had were telephone and TV cable (and you were "rich" if you had cable). I remember my father freaking out over a $20 telephone bill one month in the 90s: I regularly pay almost $100/mo for my cellphone today. The downloads constantly failed and you could only play the games for an hour before they reset.
- ericd 14y ago
  There are lots of very playable games on the SNES and Playstation - my friends and I still break out Contra 3 and Super Bomberman sometimes, and Chrono Trigger is still a lot of fun to play through for the first time. NES, not so much. Also, 1000 games for a platform is a good number. PS3 clocks in at around 700. Your money arguments are pretty accurate, though. He might be talking about FuncoLand and other used game shops?
kunai 14y ago
If you take a look at the brilliant success of Minecraft, the games you are talking about may be making a comeback. I miss Zelda as much as you do, but we'll just have to wait. And also get those CoD fanboys to stop speaking for the rest of us gamers.
27182818284 14y ago
I didn't really feel like I could chime in to this thread at first, because I don't play the latest COD or Bioshock, or whatever the latest gen games are. Then I saw your comment. The most fun I've had with a video game in a long time was Braid. A novel concept of the old side-scroller. I'd throw my wallet at the screen for a new Braid with even a few new time-altering features. It was relaxing and fun. That isn't quite the "1 programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer," you mentioned, but glancing at Wikipedia, it was close to that.
- tapoxi 14y ago
  I'd like to throw out Fez as a suggestion, it was another 2-3 people platform game developed recently and a twist on a classic puzzle/platforming mechanic. Honestly with Steam/XBLA/PSN we're seeing some of the best titles we've seen in years, even if the $60 retail industry is hurting.
primitur 14y ago
>What happened to the industry? Its still there! You just have to ignore the hype and look beneath the curtains. http://www.tigsource.com/ http://www.tigsource.com/ EDIT: and, of course, http://repo.openpandora.org/ http://repo.openpandora.org/
uonyechi 14y ago
The industry hit a bad limit and is now in reset mode... starting again from mobile.

by just2n 14y ago

talmand 14y ago

Some call it progress. EDIT: downvotes suggest I should wrap this in a sarcasm tag.

just2n 14y ago
I think this is a highly contentious opinion (primarily mine, and any view that modern high-budget games mostly suck, which resonates with myself and a lot of once-gamers I know). It might be that way because of the technical nature of this community and probably because many readers of these comments might actually be involved in that industry, and so it comes off as offensive. I don't really mean it to be offensive. We know a lot more about development today, and have a lot better tools, and I know what kinds of amazing creativity some of these designers have, so it personally bothers me to see the lion's share of investment in the gaming industry go into reproducing the same games over and over. Those of you who are in the industry: what do you think about starting your own shops, or building kick-ass games in your free time? If you work at one of these large companies and are pursuing things like this, I'd love to see your work.

demione 14y ago

That industry still exists and is thriving more now than ever. It's just moved over to mobile.

just2n 14y ago
That's definitely a good point. I've played some awesome mobile games. The only downside is that they are producing for a platform with such a horrendously inaccurate/crappy input system. I get enthusiastic about downloading a game on my n7 only to find that it's extremely frustrating to play, or that the game has been dumbed down in some way to compensate, massive sadface. This isn't true of all of them, especially games that are designed around the touch interface, but after a while I still get bothered by it. I'm really liking the resurgence of indie PC games, though. In the past few years I've played games produced by < 3 independent people that easily rivaled the games people tout as the "best of all time." Specifically, I'm curious why these huge companies want to produce 1 game over X years for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and still fail to be profitable when they sell millions of copies.
- ericd 14y ago
  What are some awesome mobile games? The vast majority of the ones I've played have felt extremely shallow, and couldn't hold my attention for very long at all, so I'd love to find a few consistent go-to's for when I'm on a train and don't feel like playing a puzzle game.
  - DigitalJack 14y ago
    These are the games that have remained on my phone (sort of in order of favorites): plants vs zombies, middle manager of justice, minecraft pocket edition, plague inc., tiny wings, ticket to ride, carcassone, flight control, textropolis

subsection1h 14y ago

you didn't want to own hundreds of games I wanted to own hundreds of NES games because they didn't have remotely as much replay value as good modern games such as Counter Strike. (Heh, Counter Strike is the best example I have of a good modern game because it's the last game I played regularly.) even though you could because most were priced very reasonably Most of the NES games I bought cost $49.99 plus tax. I specifically recall that Double Dragon cost me $54.99 plus tax.

286c8cb04bda 14y ago
> Most of the NES games I bought cost $49.99 plus tax. Wolfram Alpha says[1] that's ~$90 today. 1: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50%20USD%201990%20in%202013 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50%20USD%201990%20in%20...
- SkittlesNTwix 14y ago
  It's interesting to reflect on this number, when you realize that the latest AAA platform title (whatever AAA meant in that particular day/age) have always cost about $50-60 in the past $$ terms of that day, regards of when in the past 20 years we're talking about. So you paid $90 worth of value in 1990 and we pay $49.99 today. What I mean to say is that games were EXPENSIVE back then!
  - just2n 14y ago
    A big difference then was that you could expect to reliably sell your used game back after you finished playing it, if you didn't want to hang on to it. So if you were into playing a lot of games and only keeping your all time favorites, you could reduce that cost significantly. And at the same time, if you were willing to wait a little bit after a launch, you could have the game for a nice discount. How often are you able to sell a game you pay $60 for today? And it doesn't help that the same game is repackaged and sold 10 times over a few years by the same company, each time for $60. At best that's a DLC, maybe worth $10 or $15, not another $60. :|
  - voltagex_ 14y ago

estel 14y ago

Sorry, but I can't help but feel you're looking at the industry through rose-tinted glasses. There were hundreds upon hundreds of games for NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS that absolutely stunk. The vast majority were rotten, rotten games that were plain unfun from the title screen through to the end credits. I'd happily contend that the opposite is true: that if you go into a GAME store today, the vast majority of games will be at least /ok/. Whilst I don't think it's yet true that the majority of titles are AAA (check the reviews section of your nearest games mag, only a few releases per month are evidently AAA), a declining market for medium-budget games is possibly more of an issue. And what happened to the $5 games? Since 2007 the industry has seen a huge, massive surge in (successful) indie game development, primarily on PC but also distributed digitally on PSN and 360. It's definitely there, alive, strong and very visible. (Sure, they might take more than 2 weeks to make, but not many games can be made in two weeks to contend well on quality).

just2n 14y ago
Sure, but it's all independent now. They used to be small game studios with the resources to push out high quality games at a pretty rapid pace. I'm not saying the people building indie games today aren't talented, but some of them spend years polishing a single title, only to have it make a few hundred K, with a few massive outliers (Braid, Minecraft, Binding of Isaac, etc). I remember playing crappy games back then, too, but so much more of it felt like today's indie scene. It's like some big business machine marched in and bought all the "pro" talent to produce the same few games over and over again on different engines, while everyone who gives a shit about actually building fun, innovative games just started their own few-person ventures.
- zanny 14y ago
  I think you touch on a major problem. There are two extremes now - the ultra-publisher umbrellas that push out AAA market products, and the indies composed of 5 guys in a basement. There are very few companies with 50 - 100 people in the mid-range making mid-tier games with good gameplay (not revolutionary) good graphics (not Crysis 3 here) and fill in an industry gap. They all get acquired by big publishers. In the 80's, even when Nintendo was practically the only publisher on the block, development studios contracted to publish games with them, they weren't owned by them. Up until the mid 2000's studios weren't owned by the publishers like they are now. Look at how Blizzard / Bioware / Epic / id etc all got bought and brought under big publisher umbrellas.

pablasso 14y ago

almost all of them kicked ass The past always looks brighter from the present.

ijk 14y ago

In a sense, those days are back. Despite all of the AAA games that were released in 2012 (and there were some excellent games) the Game Developer Choice Awards last week were dominated by an independent title, Journey.[1] The conference as a whole had a strong focus on independent developers.[2] Kickstarter projects are bringing back mid-range development, with smaller studios like Double Fine and Obsidian raising millions. Some Kickstarter projects, like FTL, have already been released to award-winning success.[3] The Kickstarter for the Planescape: Torment sequel being developed by inXile has raised almost 3.5 million with 51 hours to go.[4] There's a lot of innovation happening. Just play any of the IGF finalists if you want a taste.[5] [1] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-27/business/38080334_1_spacewar-telltale-games-video-games http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-27/business/38080... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/arts/video-games/game-developers-conference-celebrates-indie-creators.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/arts/video-games/game-deve... [3] http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=360 http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=360 [4] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera?ref=category http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... [5] http://www.igf.com/2013finalistswinners.html http://www.igf.com/2013finalistswinners.html

moron4hire 14y ago

I agree with Estel. What you have written here is no reflection of the reality I grew up in. There weren't a lot of games. There were just under 1000 NES games for both the US AND Japanese market (combined), and the total clocks in at about 200MB in size. The 30+ games you saw were probably the entire library of unique games for the platform. The games we had yesteryear sucked. Really, really sucked. Most of them were bare derivatives of each other. For every Super Mario Bros. 3 there were 5 clones of Arkanoid. The controls were bad, the artwork was bad, the framerates were bad. We just didn't know they sucked because we didn't have better games yet. Look at some of the best games on the market back then, games like Megaman or Star Fox, and they are are only popular as nostalgia pieces today. I don't consider Golgo 13 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES; PilotWings or DOOM on the SNES; Driver or Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation; to be anything close to playable games today, but I remember playing all of them for hours and liking it, because that was really all we knew. And the games were not cheap. The NES retailed at $300 in the US when it debuted in 1985. That'd be almost $650 today. Super Mario Bros. 3 (the pinnacle of the series, IMO) debuted in 1990 at a price point of $60--over $105 in today's dollars. Chrono Trigger on the SNES debuted at $80 in 1995--over $120 today. I remember paying $70 for Yoshi's Cookie in 1992 (because I was 10 and that was all the Christmas money I had and I really, really wanted. My mother and I played it together for hours. It was great). That'd be $115 today for a puzzle game I could rewrite in a weekend now. I don't know what you're talking about with "$5 games". You're praise of Sega Channel just further underscores that you were probably too young to understand money back in this time. It was $15/mo in 1994 when the only subscription services anyone had were telephone and TV cable (and you were "rich" if you had cable). I remember my father freaking out over a $20 telephone bill one month in the 90s: I regularly pay almost $100/mo for my cellphone today. The downloads constantly failed and you could only play the games for an hour before they reset.

ericd 14y ago
There are lots of very playable games on the SNES and Playstation - my friends and I still break out Contra 3 and Super Bomberman sometimes, and Chrono Trigger is still a lot of fun to play through for the first time. NES, not so much. Also, 1000 games for a platform is a good number. PS3 clocks in at around 700. Your money arguments are pretty accurate, though. He might be talking about FuncoLand and other used game shops?

kunai 14y ago

If you take a look at the brilliant success of Minecraft, the games you are talking about may be making a comeback. I miss Zelda as much as you do, but we'll just have to wait. And also get those CoD fanboys to stop speaking for the rest of us gamers.

27182818284 14y ago

I didn't really feel like I could chime in to this thread at first, because I don't play the latest COD or Bioshock, or whatever the latest gen games are. Then I saw your comment. The most fun I've had with a video game in a long time was Braid. A novel concept of the old side-scroller. I'd throw my wallet at the screen for a new Braid with even a few new time-altering features. It was relaxing and fun. That isn't quite the "1 programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer," you mentioned, but glancing at Wikipedia, it was close to that.

tapoxi 14y ago
I'd like to throw out Fez as a suggestion, it was another 2-3 people platform game developed recently and a twist on a classic puzzle/platforming mechanic. Honestly with Steam/XBLA/PSN we're seeing some of the best titles we've seen in years, even if the $60 retail industry is hurting.

primitur 14y ago

>What happened to the industry? Its still there! You just have to ignore the hype and look beneath the curtains. http://www.tigsource.com/ http://www.tigsource.com/ EDIT: and, of course, http://repo.openpandora.org/ http://repo.openpandora.org/

uonyechi 14y ago

The industry hit a bad limit and is now in reset mode... starting again from mobile.