bangersnmash on 8/12/2015 at 17:59
I happen to think so, but to be honest I'm not sure if that's just a subconscious "old fuddy duddy" whinging about the good old days on my part.:D
I grew up in the UK in the 80s and I can say that video games for the ZX Spectrum were a big thing with the guys in school. Yes, even taping copies and giving/ trading them with your friends, so software piracy is nothing new! I later moved onto the Atari ST games and they seemed a big step forward both in graphics and gameplay. I gradually lost touch with gaming until about 1999 when my brother introduced me to his PC game collection, mostly sims like Grand Prix Legends, Apache Havoc etc. I was amazed at them, I never realised that gaming could have advanced so far. I managed to play some now almost legendary games like Half Life, Tomb Raider and of course Thief and SS2. Time marched on and my system gradually got left behind. It never broke down and I felt no need to shell out all that money for a new system. The end result is that I couldn't play a post 2007 game even if I wanted to.
I've seen the graphics and gameplay demonstrations of newer games on Youtube and such, but I find they don't really grab my attention anymore, or not as much as they used to.
So are modern games less involving/ exciting than games from earlier years? Or is it just a jaded perspective on my part? I'm willing to be converted!:cheeky:
Manwe on 8/12/2015 at 19:12
Heh, that title is pretty biased and doesn't really give much room for a debate. I love video games and grew up with them like most people here but I'm also aware that they're the lowest form of culture there is. If the 90s were what video games could do best, I shudder to think what will come next.
I agree that a peak in gameplay possibilities and interactivity was reached with Thief, Deus Ex and System Shock 2. But other games and genres? No way, try to replay some early PS1 games, they're horrendous. I guess the pixel art and animations in Super Nintendo games was pretty great. But when you see what they do with pixel art these days, it puts everything else to shame. And the writing in those games, god the writing was so horrendously bad. I played through FF6 recently and the writing felt like google-translated fanfiction. Although I agree JRPGs had their peak with Chrono Trigger and just went downhill from there. And what about that whole FMV phase? Hardly something to be proud of (luckily it was slightly before my time and I wasn't subjected to it).
I think there are absolutely fantastic games these days that are miles beyond what was ever done in the 90s though. I mean, look at The Witcher 3, or MGS5 or even the Farcry games. Had they been made ten years ago we would all have creamed our pants. Now we're so spoiled with great games that they barely even register on our radars.
Jason Moyer on 8/12/2015 at 19:27
There's was some great stuff that came out in the 90's but as a whole it was probably my least-favorite decade in gaming. And the first half of it seemed like a big blur of shitty fighting games, if I'm totally honest.
WingedKagouti on 8/12/2015 at 19:35
No, the 90s were not a golden age of video games. No more than the 80s, 00's or the current decade. There have always been a ton of uninteresting shovelware available, and every decade has its memorable games.
I'd wager that there are at least two factors making you long for the 90s games:
1) You were younger and hadn't played as much before the titles you regard as classics, thus those titles stand out more and since you had fun with them you hold them in high regard.
2) Your interests have changed as you got older and a game that would have appealed to you back in the 90s is not going to draw you in today.
Is this bad? No, it just means that you aren't as interested in modern titles as others. That doesn't make modern titles worse than those of the 90s, nor does it mean that those who like modern titles over early ones are wrong. For me there are plenty of titles generally regarded as classics that I enjoyed (at least once) when they were released, but I would not give them more time than a look at gameplay videos if they had been released today (disregarding graphics).
Sulphur on 8/12/2015 at 19:39
To answer the question posed - no. Considering we've only had mainstream video gaming for all of 3 and a half decades or so, it's a bit early to call it.
If you've moved on from gaming, there's no real reason to believe anything recent or in the past 8 years is going to change your mind: to be clear, there have been great technological advances, refinements, new formulas, old formulas, great games, and terrible games, the same as there have always been since gaming became a mainstream form. It doesn't seem like there's anything groundbreaking to have come out in as short a span of time in the 90s, but that's only because we're too effective at pigeonholing experiences and letting that calcify and stagnate entire genres when there's great things happening outside (or even, at times, within) them.
In the last 8 years we've had the rise of indie gaming and bedroom/garage developers like you had in the 80s, only now they have a wickedly effective distribution system at hand called the internet. You have the rise of crowdfunding. The phenomenon that was/is Minecraft. And never before has it been easier to create your own games - 3 of the most sophisticated AAA game engines have been opened up to the general public and are available to use for free or near enough to it to not be a barrier to entry. Progress has been made in most everything, if you look for it.
Nameless Voice on 8/12/2015 at 21:04
I've played awesome games from pretty much every year since the mid 90s. Maybe the rate of good games hasn't increased in proportion with games in general, but they are still there.
Just for fun, I tried to make a list of games that I consider to be good, noteworthy, or exceptional in some way, and their years, trying to get at least 2 for each year. I couldn't manage it for a few years.
I think the reason I had a lot of trouble with some of the later years has more to do with my huge backlog of unplayed games than with there not actually being any quality games from that year.
1994: System Shock, Doom 2
1995: Warcraft 2, Command & Conquer
1996: Daggerfall, Tomb Raider, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Civ 2
1997: Fallout
1998: Thief, Starcraft, Half-Life, Commandos
1999: System Shock 2, Drakan, Unreal Tournament
2000: Thief 2, Majesty, Deus Ex
2001: Gothic, Evil Islands
2002: Gothic 2, Morrowind
2003: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
2004: Vampire: Bloodlines, Dawn of War, Doom 3
2005: Civilization 4, F.E.A.R
2006: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Call of Cthulhu: DCotE
2007: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., The Witcher
2008: Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Fallout 3
2009: Trine, Mirror's Edge, Risen, Cryostasis
2010: Fallout: New Vegas, Metro 2033, Alpha Protocol, Starcraft 2
2011: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Portal 2, L.A. Noira, Skyrim
2012: Dishonoured, Dark Souls, Divinity 2
2013: Gunpoint, Cry of Fear
2014: Divinity: Original Sin, Dark Souls 2, Subnautica, Dead State
2015: Vermintide, The Witcher 3, Underrail, Soma
2016: Doom (4), Shadow Tactics, Infra, Firewatch, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
2017: Prey, Heat Signature, Divinity: Original Sin 2
2018: Return of the Obra Dinn, Vermintide 2, Frostpunk, Mechanicus
2019: They Are Billions, Slay the Spire
2020: Desperados III, Noita, Doom Eternal
2021: HellSign (?)
2022: Elden Ring, Darktide
2023: System Shock Remake, Amnesia: The Bunker, Aliens: Dark Descent, Shadow Gambit, Blood West
2024: Tactical Breach Wizards, Shadows of Doubt
242 on 8/12/2015 at 22:45
Quote:
Do you think the 90s were the "golden age" of video games?
No. As you suspected quite correctly, you simply got older.
Quote:
I grew up in the UK in the 80s and I can say that video games for the ZX Spectrum were a big thing
The same, only in Ukraine.
Quote:
Time marched on and my system gradually got left behind. It never broke down and I felt no need to shell out all that money for a new system.
Again, same as me, but I found a solution - switched to consoles for gaming. Simply cheaper and more convenient.
Starker on 8/12/2015 at 23:33
For me, there are two periods (1991-1994 and 1997-2004) when a lot of my favourite games came out that I'm still playing today, so these are my golden ages. I think the last couple of years starting from 2012 have been pretty good as well, so there just might be a third one on the horizon.
heywood on 9/12/2015 at 00:35
I think there was a golden age of PC gaming, from the early 1990s through the early 2000s. But not a golden age of gaming in general.
Starker on 9/12/2015 at 01:42
Quote Posted by heywood
I think there was a golden age of
PC gaming, from the early 1990s through the early 2000s. But not a golden age of gaming in general.
Hmm.. can't say I agree. A lot of my all-time favourites like Silent Hill were console games. NES, SNES and PS had some amazing libraries. Parasite Eve, Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country...
