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[MatrixReloaded101]

I had a debate with some friends about the quality of gaming these days , we are all 30+ so we have been gaming for over 20 years , ive played games like the old 2d prince of persia , carmageddon , fallout , dangerous dave stuff like that , and we just couldnt decide if gaming was better back then than it is now

i think that nostalgia can play a huge factor , its like that 1st girlfriend that you had in highschool and go on your separate ways once you go to college , you might hook up with better looking women in your 20's or 30's but you will always remember that 1st one , lets take resident evil for example , resident evil 4 is one of my fav of the series but if resident evil 7 released in that same year and someone would ask me which is the better one ofc i would choose resident evil 7 because of the immersion , i cant decide if the story is better but graphics and the way the world is designed helps alot

i think that the technology helps in creating games that are much better than the ones we had , sure the dev might not use it properly and instead feed us microtransactions and dlcs but still there are alot of good games releasing , if i had to count i think i finish more games that released in 1 year since the launch of ps4-xbox one gen than i was in the 90's - 00's

the only thing that changed in me is that i put way more focus on story now , when i was 15 i didnt care about the story at all , finishing the game made me happy and as long as the gameplay was fun i was fine with it

what do you think ?

Nope, I don't think games were better in the 90s/00s compared to now. People that say that are definitely being fooled by nostalgia. However, I will say that the state of the gaming industry was in a better place back than in some ways compared to now.

Back than, there were more games being released in different genres, the focus was of course more on single player experiences, games launched with more polish and I think more creatively and passion was put into games especially AAA games compared to now.

 

[Krathoon]

Gaming used to be this underground weird thing. That was the whole point of PlayStation Underground. It was like this niche thing. That is why you had so much more creativity.
Now, it is more mainstream and they are afraid to take risks.
You still have really creative games here and there.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Trunx81]

There is a reason why the GBA was so loved, as it brought back the 90s 16bit memories while trying some new things.

Nostalgia is big nowadays, just look how many YouTube channels are dedicated to retrogaming. It’s also escapism from todays world, back to simpler times when we were kids.

Gameplay wise, we are currently stuck in what I would call an innovation hole. You can just implement so much into a 1st and 3rd person game, but in the end it’s more of the same. 90s gaming was a lot about experimenting, especially when the new 3D consoles made it on the market. You could really see and feel a difference, coming from the 2D age. A Seamen would never happen from a big company nowadays. Better play it safe.

Storywise, games learned a lot from Hollywood, although Hollywood still fails to just adapt those stories and make good movies out of games (looking at you, Uncharted). But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have great storytelling back in the days.

tl;dr: Nostalgia clouds our thinking, but todays games could be a lot more innovative

 

[Krathoon]

Video games were more of a special thing back in the day.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Graphically sure, but they would have soulless gameplay compared to the golden era.

What is "soulless gameplay"?

Heck, I'd argue graphics were relied upon more back then to sell games than they are today.

 

[TexMex]

Both

 

[killatopak]

It was better.

At the time. If you go at it now, it'll be a lot less interesting.

It was an era of change and experimentations. Everything was exciting. The switch from 2D to 3D. The prolifiration of FMV as a storytelling device. Better audio quality or even a worse one is also amazing due to the fact that you had to work around constraints and that produced ingenious ways to make music. MMO and online MP in general.

Games were a lot more personal in nature, more emphasis on word of mouth in regards to strategies so you can effectively hold huge advantages in terms of knowledge.

Games also weren't afraid to hyperfocus on their audience and not try to go mainstream and effetively lose its identity in the process.

Shit, I could go on but it was definitely the golden age of gaming.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Not a question you can answer objectively. For me, they're better. Others might prefer more modern games.

 

[Krathoon]

There are just so many classics on the older systems. I do find that NES games don't hold up as well anymore.

 

[MacReady13]

All forms of art and entertainment are better when they are being created by passionate and creative people. When the big money and big corporations take over, the spirit of the art or entertainment form gets slowly destroyed. It happened to rock music; it happened to movies; and now it's happening to video games.

This 1000%. Doesn't mean that every single rock song/movie/game is shit but it means more now than ever are terrible.

In short, gaming was FAR better in the 90's and 00's. Someone in here mentioned stories better today. I don't think stories were poor in the old days of gaming. They're told more like movies today, but that doesn't mean they're better stories!

 

[Xeaker]

They were better. Of course there have been shitty ones too lol
I can't hear this stupid nostalgia argument anymore. I have played old games I never played before recently like Shadow Man or Baldurs Gate 1&2 and I had a lot of fun.
EDIT: I just see that you made this thread few months ago already

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/were-90s-and-00s-games-really-better.1632032/

 

[Umbasaborne]

Games from your childhood/teen years will always be better. Not objexctively, but largely due to nostalgia. I enjoyed banjo kazooie during a time in my life when i was a child, didnt have to work, was actually able to enjoy summer time, didnt have to pay bills, ect. In recent years ive played objectively better platformers, like mario odyssey, but banjo will always be superior in my head because it reminds of a time where i had no worries.

 

[Clear]

Its all about expectation I think.

I mean as someone who's been into games for over 40 years its hard to explain how something like Xevious was literally jaw dropping in its day purely because it introduced simple shading techniques like bas-relief.

Games just didn't look like that before.

 

[Uiki]

Way better.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I think today’s games are better, and we receive quality releases on a constant basis. VR is amazing, and PCs are incredible. Digital delivery is amazing since we can buy new games whenever we feel. Video clips of games are abundant.

But the industry was better back then. You got complete games for your money, usually with bonus cheats and unlockables.
Multiplayer was done with friends or people in the arcades, versus some toxic jackass hiding behind a screen. Arcades in general we’re amazing, and magazines were a lot of fun. People also weren’t so super sensitive, complaining about too much skin on a female character, or crying that the protagonist was a mass murderer.

So for me it’s todays games are better, but the industry overall was better back then.

 

[Krathoon]

I get really annoyed when they re-release the game and they mess with the atmosphere.
Looks at Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition.

 

[samoilaaa]

They used to be better.

Although one can argue about today's games having a higher standard for quality, that's simply due to production values and mature processes.
Old games had more imagination and creators felt less restricted to experiment.

Now everything is too methodic and designed by committee. All about numbers, sales and engagement.
Everybody plays too safe, afraid that their game will bomb if they attempt anything that deviates from the norm.

yeah , if you want creativity you can find in one or two AAA games per year but the indi market is where you have to look , i recently played a game called creaks , its so much fun and the puzzles really stimulate your imagination and to be honest i dont remember playing a game in the 90's-00's as creative as outer wilds , a 2019 game

 

[protonion]

I could live with the library of the SNES to PS2 period for ever.

The hardware restrictions of that era worked in favour of game design.

Example: Jrpgs.
When we played the masterpieces FF7-9 we all dreamed these worlds realized in full 3d and no random battles.
So we have that now only to see that developers never managed to do anything interesting with their big worlds.

Just huge open spaces wasting my time traversing them.

Old games were on point.

Just think what you experienced in 30 hours of Xenogears vs 30 hours of FF13-15.

Compare the 15 hours of BoF Dragon quarter vs the thousands of hours we have wasted playing the repetitive current games.

Old games all the way. Much richer experiences, full of heart.

 

[Bakkus]

Yes, so many legendary studios from that time have been shut down or went AWOL. Very few have been able to carry the torch forward.

 

[samoilaaa]

I could live with the library of the SNES to PS2 period for ever.

The hardware restrictions of that era worked in favour of game design.

Example: Jrpgs.
When we played the masterpieces FF7-9 we all dreamed these worlds realized in full 3d and no random battles.
So we have that now only to see that developers never managed to do anything interesting with their big worlds.

Just huge open spaces wasting my time traversing them.

Old games were on point.

Just think what you experienced in 30 hours of Xenogears vs 30 hours of FF13-15.

Compare the 15 hours of BoF Dragon quarter vs the thousands of hours we have wasted playing the repetitive current games.

Old games all the way. Much richer experiences, full of heart.

well can you really blame the developers ? lets be honest here , a huge company like square enix isnt gonna make games just to please a couple of people they need to make profit , most gamers prefer open world games with action combat , the sales numbers dont lie , put yourself in their shoes , what would you do ? make a game that will only please a certain category of gamers and lose money or make the type that pleases most people and make profit ?
the top 5 most sold games of all time are action open world except tetris

i bet that if ff7 remake would have been turn based and corridor type world it wouldnt have sold as much as it did , developers only give what the majority wants and i know that most people here dont like generic open world games ( myself included ) but we represent maybe 1% of the gaming community ?

 

[Wildebeest]

People really struggle to find language to describe what makes a game really great. Like, you can say that this game has some sort of magical or playful feeling to it and people will say they hate the sound of that because it makes games seem childish, insubstantial and inauthentic. You can see and touch how games get better graphics, more play tested design, or more reliable net code and matchmaking. But still...

 

[Infamy v1]

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, especially in media.

 

[MacReady13]

The hardware restrictions of that era worked in favour of game design.

Works in film as well. Just because you can see the creature doesn't make it better. Jaws was famous for it. Don't see it but imagine it and it works so much better.

 

[samoilaaa]

People really struggle to find language to describe what makes a game really great. Like, you can say that this game has some sort of magical or playful feeling to it and people will say they hate the sound of that because it makes games seem childish, insubstantial and inauthentic. You can see and touch how games get better graphics, more play tested design, or more reliable net code and matchmaking. But still...

for me its not that hard to say what i like about a game , instead of saying what i like about a certain game im gonna say what i want a game to have for me to enjoy it and since i mostly play rpgs i will talk about how an rpg should be

1. Mature story with well written characters , both good and evil characters to have more complex motives for doing what they do , not just fight because good vs evil
2. Choice and consequence , i want my decisions to matter in the world and the lives of npcs , when i acomplish something i want npc to acknowledge that , like in oblivion when i saved the city kvatch people in town recognized me
3. Alot of skills that let me play the way i want , i dont want the difference between a rouge and warrior for example to be just the weapon i use
4. The combat doesnt matter if its turn based or action
5. I want the world to feel alive , the npcs to have their own work , dont just walk like a bunch of zombies in synchronicity with eachother like in cyberpunk
6. I want dungeons with puzzles that give good loot , and the puzzles must be good not like in horizon forbidden west
7. I dont want to have a world map from the start , let me go travel and as i do that the map completes itself unless the action takes place in a modern setting , then a world map from the start makes sense
8. I want good level design especially in dungeons

 

[Wildebeest]

for me its not that hard to say what i like about a game , instead of saying what i like about a certain game im gonna say what i want a game to have for me to enjoy it and since i mostly play rpgs i will talk about how an rpg should be

You are describing a bunch of features in games of the past which you felt helped you get to some sort of state. You do not appreciate the features themselves for their own sake, but for what they made you feel. I can say that I really appreciate a good underwater section in a game, but I will not say that without very substantial underwater segments, a game cannot be considered great.

 

[p_xavier]

I do distinctly remember an article that was summed up as “I consider Ocarina of Time to the greatest video game ever made…because I specifically choose to never replay it as I know it will no longer hold that rank if I do.”

It still holds well, but on 3DS. Original on N64 I couldn't play again.

 

[Bonfires Down]

Like 75% of my favorite games are from the last decade or so.

I actually think the worst period was PS2 gen. PC exclusives were dying out leaving way for less interesting console games and there are only a handful there I want to go back to at this point. 90s is great and had a lot of innovation as gaming was new, but again I think there are better modern options most of the time.

 

[TheGecko]

Like 75% of my favorite games are from the last decade or so.

I actually think the worst period was PS2 gen. PC exclusives were dying out leaving way for less interesting console games and there are only a handful of there I want to go back to at this point. 90s is great and had a lot of innovation as gaming was new, but again I think there are better modern options most of the time.

 

[bender]

I think the overall quality of games these days is much higher if you discount shovelware. We just have more standards for how games should feel and control. Budgets are so much larger now that developers and publishers tend to be way more risk averse. The 90s/00s felt way more experimental but that's offset somewhat in the modern day as almost anyone can easily develop and publish a game to a very large audience.

 

[Shifty]

The stuff that matters was better back in the day - gameplay, design, innovation, cohesive execution, completeness of product, and value proposition.

The stuff that doesn't matter is better now - graphics, presentation, engagement, title lifetime, and profit generation.

I'd trade it all off for a return to the industry not being a tangible capitalist nightmare, but it'd only fuck itself up again given sufficient time

 

[StormCell]

I really believe that gaming peaked in the '00s. I recently picked up playing the Crysis Remastered trilogy and it became immediately clear to me that some games, some series, are literally sliding backwards in terms of immersion and overall world quality. All I've been doing is running around an island that is mostly jungle with some rocky bluffs and some streams, but in all of that is vegetation that responds to my actions and fully destructible environments. Spend one hour in Far Cry 5 and weep at what all is sacrificed just to make a big sandbox with modern day "visuals." You can literally mow a friggin' forest down with machine guns, RPGs, and grenades in Crysis.

Somewhere along the way between PS360 and PS4/XB1 I believe we saw a change of direction in the industry. What I know for a fact is that today there are games that all feel alike or similar that control similarly and all play very similarly. The graphics all generally look the same. It's all very vanilla.

 

[Dorago]

UI, loading times, audio/video quality, and controls have improved but the intangible qualities have not. There's a handful of indie game that had some of the "feel" of 90s/early 2000s but these all came out 10 years ago now. There hasn't been a 3D game that could match these either, 2D only.

 

[Bragr]

The only ones who champion 30-year-old games over modern games are people who don't play modern games and are ignorant and got their heads up their asses.

 

[64bitmodels]

Again, look at 2000s gaming forums and compare it to modern gaming forums
Look at all the hype that 2000s gamers had and how none of them mentioned anything about MTX, Soulless yearly games, or doubt in the game studios they were hyped for
The best way to describe modern NeoGAF is a giant chamber of cynical skeptics who are praying that the next game that comes out won't have microtransactions, dlc, or woke politics forced in them, so they can then be disappointed over the complete lack of creativity that was found in previous titles. Im not trying to insult you guys, but im just saying that It's all a product of the gaming industry's decline over the past 10 years

 

[JimmyRustler]

If you compare todays games directly to the ones back then… nostalgia.

If you put them into perspective… Games were soooooo much better and I‘m baffled anyone can even argue. Is this a joke?

Take Horizon FW… Beautiful, massive and generally great. But it had nothing really new to it. Been there, done that.

Compare that to MGS1 or MGS2. Shit shook the industry in gameplay, graphics and storytelling. There was nothing like it before, which is why those games were so god damn awesome and the anticipation and hype was unprecedented.

Were the games back then better in comparison? Hell no. But fuck me if it wasn’t much more exciting to go along with the process of improved controls, gameplay mechanics and graphics.

Today the whole industry feels just like corporate business with every now and then some big publisher handing some creative people a bit of a budget to make a passion project out of pity.

 

[Shifty]

Again, look at 2000s gaming forums and compare it to modern gaming forums
Look at all the hype that 2000s gamers had and how none of them mentioned anything about MTX, Soulless yearly games, or doubt in the game studios they were hyped for

Ah, but that's the thing about insidious change - it is, by design, meant to get ahead of the game and be fully established as the norm by the time its victims become aware that it's a detriment to them rather than a benefit.

The digital future was just beginning during that era. DLC, patches and the various other elements introduced then were full of promise - greater convenience, improvements over time, quality new content. What great ideas.

Sure, Horse Armor blew up as a harbinger of what was to come, but there was no expectation that such exploitation would eclipse the ideal as it was sold to us and become standard. It's much easier to be justifiably cynical about it when you have a couple decades of precedent demonstrating that letting the genie out of the bottle was a bad idea.

And I know as well as the next guy that said cynicism isn't going to alter the course the industry is set upon, but it sure as hell beats lying down in front of the road roller.

 

[Rat Rage]

Yes, they were objectively better.
A) The market in the 90s wasn't figured out and there was no social media, thanks god, so there wasn't an opportunity to market cinematic games well. Part of why the industry has got poisoned with cinematic games is that, regardless of their quality, they can be marketed really well; especially with the advent of social media and fast video transmission like youtube, this generated a lot of hype especially for some heavy hitters like Uncharted (which I fucking hate, but can't deny it's a good cinematic game) and so it created a trend. Suddenly every fucking studio tried to make a cinematic third person (cover) action game.
B) Teams were smaller, the budgets were smaller, so the developers could get way more experimental, which lead to a huge variety of all kinds of unique and cool games, both in style and gameplay.
C) Since the market wasn't figured out and budgets were way smaller, I feel that especially 3rd party publishers were waaay less involved in the decision making process of the developers, which lead to more creative freedom and thus to more exciting gaming experiences. You also had more middle class publishers, which helped the overall gaming variety, too.
D) Fucking Unreal Engine hadn't taken over the industry. I really miss the days, when almost every publishers had their own gaming engine, thus helping the overall visual variety of the games released.
E) All of the points above can be summed up with:
- Back then, you had gamers (the devs themselves) developing games for gamers (well, the people who play games). Gamers making games for gamers. That's why so many games had SOUL back then - you could really feel the love and passion of the people who made the games.
- Today, most (not all) of the game-making can be summed up with: big, soulless multi-million dollar corporations trying to sell easily consumable products to people, in order the squeeze as much profit out their audience as possible. That's why we have all the bullshit with microtransactions, loot-boxes, dumbed down gaming experiences, games as GAS, free to play shit and so on. I'm not talking about indies, but the big publishers, who still dominate the market.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Depends on the game. Only factual aspect that is better today is graphics (technically).

 

[xpresstuning]

what do you think ?

It depends on the game, and as another user put it, video games designed with passion and creativity will always be a far more valuable investment of your time than a video game designed to sell.

 

[samoilaaa]

You are describing a bunch of features in games of the past which you felt helped you get to some sort of state. You do not appreciate the features themselves for their own sake, but for what they made you feel. I can say that I really appreciate a good underwater section in a game, but I will not say that without very substantial underwater segments, a game cannot be considered great.

but isnt that what makes a game good in our head ? a sum of certain features that the game has ? for example for me if the story sucks i cant play the game no matter how good the gameplay is or how beautiful the graphics are

 

[Wildebeest]

but isnt that what makes a game good in our head ? a sum of certain features that the game has ? for example for me if the story sucks i cant play the game no matter how good the gameplay is or how beautiful the graphics are

So what I'm saying is imagine the example of the rat taught to run a maze to get the cheese. The rat has some sort of map in its mind and a ritualistic script it follows to get to the cheese.

So for you, you have some sort of mental map of what a good story looks like in a game and how you can follow it to get to the cheese. But what is the cheese?

For me, I have a map of story presentation in games which can stop me getting to the cheese, so I quit out of those games as soon as possible. And, like, I'm one of those people who never really learned to enjoy horror as a genre as a young person, so that sort of content, I have no mental map of how it can lead anywhere good, so mostly I just find horror boring to the point where I just don't see any point in it existing. Perhaps I'm too old and stuck to ever learn what people see in horror, but a bit of flexibility is a good thing.

 

[StormCell]

If you compare todays games directly to the ones back then… nostalgia.

If you put them into perspective… Games were soooooo much better and I‘m baffled anyone can even argue. Is this a joke?

Take Horizon FW… Beautiful, massive and generally great. But it had nothing really new to it. Been there, done that.

Compare that to MGS1 or MGS2. Shit shook the industry in gameplay, graphics and storytelling. There was nothing like it before, which is why those games were so god damn awesome and the anticipation and hype was unprecedented.

Were the games back then better in comparison? Hell no. But fuck me if it wasn’t much more exciting to go along with the process of improved controls, gameplay mechanics and graphics.

Today the whole industry feels just like corporate business with every now and then some big publisher handing some creative people a bit of a budget to make a passion project out of pity.

I think this is what made Breath of the Wild really stand out. It was an established franchise going into a really large sandbox for the first time that allowed players to approach and strategize however they like, and then on top of that was world/physics engine that very, very few games have anything quite like it. Nintendo set out to do something totally new and fresh and in the process made something old fresh and new. At the same time, the actual game world has become a toy.

Most modern day Triple A sandbox games are nothing like that. Some very limited amount of the sandbox is interactive, and the rest is usually narrative with a lot of repetitive running about the map.

A lot of these concepts and qualities are not new to the industry. I remember Half-life 2 having its own hyped up big deal physics engine. The problem is that HL-2 released almost 20 years ago, and while modern FPS look much better and include a lot of QoL features, many of them don't do anything more than what the 20 year old game allowed players to do. Most buildings are indestructable in the games. There's no shooting through a brick wall and seeing it crumble away with each shot. You can play with fire in Elden Ring, but you can't burn the forest down or set a field on fire while beating up a giant. You can't because the world is static and plastic and not real at all in any sense.

They're simply not pushing the envelope in any sort of meaningful way besides visuals. I still can't hack a dude's arm off while battling him. If I shoot his leg off, I expect him to see him crawling afterward. Nope. Nothing even close. Progress on this type of thing stopped over a decade ago....

 

[ShirAhava]

I find a good 80% of modern games borderline unplayable, unfun and uninteresting
empty open worlds shat out by lazy devs with mechanics that are a step down from even the PS2 generation
I get bored with most modern games even some of the good ones after an hour or so
I can play retro games for hours and hours without getting sick of them it isn't nostalgia its effort and soul

 

[kunonabi]

I spend most of my time playing new games wishing I was playing some other older game I've already beaten a million times. I do love some new games but not many.

 

[KuraiShidosha]

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, especially in media.

How do you explain young kids today playing old games for the first time and absolutely enjoying the crap out of them? Is that nostalgia bogeyman too or is it possible that yes older games made by passionate talented people were better than modern soulless corporate garbage?

 

[Guilty_AI]

Some are better, others not so much, really depends. I think one of the biggest factors at play here is how the medium matured.

Old games, because they were still figuring out mechanics and such, tended to have a lot of jank and weird design choices, but this also meant they took more risks as well as tried some experimental stuff more frequently. Modern games tend to be much more polished, especially gameplay-wise, but this can also give them a samey feeling or perhaps make them too easy and "automatic", especially on the AAA market that needs to be as risk averse as possible.

Of course this is all just being generalist, you can find plenty of exceptions to those (like old copy-cat games or modern experimental indies)

Story and story telling is another factor. You can find many old games, especially RPGs and ADVs, with great stories. And even if there are modern games with good stories too, each one of them will still be unique so its not like you can go around trying to find modern equivalents.

 

[Benniewise de Clown]

For me, it's pure nostalgia.

Even if I try to go back just one gen, games feel archaic.

 

[Tams]

Pure nostalgia. Not necessarily from bad developers, but they were working with very limited systems, and the profession was still very new.

Sure, that meant some quite ingenious workarounds were done, every bit was precious, and people tried new things very readily.

But all that means is the games were great at the time. They don't hold up well.

The earliest I'd go for games holding up well today is the 6th console generation.

 

[Walter Matthau]

_