4 ms·

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 Gen

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.

chez17 17y ago
"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.
bunn 17y ago
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.
- Shorel 17y ago
  The train sequence in Crysis Warhead was incredibly hard to me.
MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
Totally agree. People love to chest-thump and talk about how everything was better when they were young. Bullshit.
amalcon 17y ago
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.
- zitterbewegung 17y ago
  What about world of goo or portal?
  - amalcon 17y ago
    You're right, I'd forgotten Portal came out in '08, and forgotten entirely about World of Goo.
- Shorel 17y ago
  Yeah, but those are (amazing) PC games. The guy who wrote the article seems to be a Console-only player.
jcl 17y ago
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.

chez17 17y ago

"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.

bunn 17y ago

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.

Shorel 17y ago
The train sequence in Crysis Warhead was incredibly hard to me.

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago

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

amalcon 17y ago

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.

zitterbewegung 17y ago
What about world of goo or portal?
- amalcon 17y ago
  You're right, I'd forgotten Portal came out in '08, and forgotten entirely about World of Goo.
Shorel 17y ago
Yeah, but those are (amazing) PC games. The guy who wrote the article seems to be a Console-only player.

jcl 17y ago

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.