When do you feel gaming hit its apex?

[Lemming42]

Hard to give an exact year, somewhere from the late 90s to the early 2000s. Maybe like 1997 - 2003 if I had to give an exact year.

Personally I'd go with that, but there's a lot of merit to the early 90s apex argument.

Of course, I hope that we actually haven't hit the real apex yet and it's coming in a few years, but that doesn't look even remotely likely from here.

 

[Siveon]

Hard to say, I'm a bit more optimistic for the future of gaming, though not in the AAA environment. It also depends on the genre, I find.

Probably the early nineties though, a lot of games I plan on playing/enjoy came from that era. Loads of innovation and clever ideas being put to good use.

 

[Sranchammer]

You're not a real gamer if you don't think now is the best time in gaming

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS FOR CONSOLRES THE 16 BIT ONES ARE HARD TO TOP

LOTS OF SHIT PERFECTED AND RAREERLY BETTERED NOWADAYS

 

[Night Goat]

PC games: late 90s/early 2000s. Technology had improved as much as it was going to before the Great Decline, games had budgets but not so much they couldn't take risks, and we got amazing games like the first two Myths, the IE games, Morrowind, and many more.

Console games: SNES era, obviously. The games were fun, they looked good - unlike the hideous early 3d to come - and they were mostly console-exclusive instead of being watered-down PC ports or vice versa.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

2015


Grimwah
Wasteland 2 Directors Cut
Path of Exile fully patched
Bloodborne
Torment: Tides of Nomunera
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Spoiler

new star fox game

2015 the next 1998.

Not even close:


Quake 2: The Reckoning / Ground Zero
Fallout 2
Unreal
Commandos: BEL
Shogo: MAD
Sin
Half-Life
Blood 2
Metal Gear Solid
Tekken 3
Warhammer: Dark Omen
Dune 2000
Heart of Darkness
Hopkins FBI
Street Fighter Alpha 3

etc.

 

[dunno lah]

2015


Grimwah
Wasteland 2 Directors Cut
Path of Exile fully patched
Bloodborne
Torment: Tides of Nomunera
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Spoiler

new star fox game

2015 the next 1998.

Not even close:


Quake 2: The Reckoning / Ground Zero
Fallout 2
Unreal
Commandos: BEL
Shogo: MAD
Sin
Half-Life
Blood 2
Metal Gear Solid
Tekken 3
Warhammer: Dark Omen
Dune 2000
Heart of Darkness
Hopkins FBI
Street Fighter Alpha 3

etc.

How dare you relegate Thief to "etc"...

 

[Destroid]

And Starcraft. '98 was a killer year, I feel blessed to have been in my mid-late teens through the end of the 90s and early 2000s, premium gaming years.

 

[:Flash:]

I'm with those that say the early '90s.
I got my first Computer in 1995 (or 96?), with Win95 installed, but almost all of my favourite games are pre-95 Dos games.

Everything was at its best back then.
Graphics had evolved to VGA with 256 colours and pallette effects, which is still the best graphics style. After that came 3D decline. The graphics were goood enough, but still left plenty of space that required creativity on the creator's part and imagination on the players part.
Sound was great as well, with catchy tunes coming out of soundblaster card.
Genres weren't standardized. Compare how different Realms of Arkania, Wizardry and Ultima played. The late 90s RPGs already adhered to certain standards and were thus more similar.
Small teams with good ideas could still land a hit, if the gameplay was right. Worms and Micro Machines were technically very simple compared to other games of the time, but they were simply fun to play with friends.

Even today I sometimes discover games from that era that I have more fun with than with all the new stuff.

 

[Destroid]

There wasn't much networked multiplayer in the early 90s

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Not even close:

Blood 2

EDIT:

How dare you relegate Thief to "etc"...

And Starcraft

Sounds like someone slept through 1998...

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

'Etc.' was for the reason.

It' just first 15 game that came in mind, 1998 was so strong that I could easily choose another 15 (30) of its gems: Grim Fandango, Baldur's Gate, Montezuma's Return, Last Bronx PC, Die By The Sword, Tresspasser, Rainbow Six, Spec Ops, Myth 2, Target, Mysteries of the Sith, Carmageddon 2 and so on. Damn, it's piss easy to create such list without hesitation, now try to this with 2013, 2010 or 2007 and here's the answer for OP.

BUT if I had to choose ONE year in which gaming peaked, it would be 1997.

 

[JarlFrank]

Early 90s to the beginning of the 2000s is my favourite era. Went to shit afterwards.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

'Etc.' was for the reason.

It' just first 15 game that came in mind, 1998 was so strong that I could easily choose another 15 (30) of its gems: Grim Fandango, Baldur's Gate, Montezuma's Return, Last Bronx PC, Die By The Sword, Tresspasser, Rainbow Six, Spec Ops, Myth 2, Target, Mysteries of the Sith, Carmageddon 2 and so on. Damn, it's piss easy to create such list without hesitation, now try to this with 2013, 2010 or 2007 and here's the answer for OP.

BUT if I had to choose ONE year in which gaming peaked, it would be 1997.

I hear you, and I ain't disagreeing. It's just when people normally bring up a year and list the best games, they tend to start with the big guns and work down from there, so dropping Starcraft was a pretty weird thing, especially in favour of a turd like Blood 2.

I've stated that I felt gaming (as a concept, irregardless of personal opinion or system) reached its peak in and around 2000, but my favourite years personally, my "golden age of gaming" were 1990-1994, with 1992 being the obvious highlight. The age came to an end when I realized just how big an impact Doom made upon the gaming scene as a whole, not just PC gaming. Doom turned heads and changed minds, new people emerged with different mentalities, the marketing aspect of gaming changed, became more brutal and in one's face. 3D technlogy finally stopped taking its baby steps and was walking upright, but at a cost to gaming in general. Games became simpler and had less content. Nothiing wrong with that during the first 5 years or so (up to around 2000) but when that de-evolution continued even after people had become accustomed to the technology I started to get concerned. It's only now within the Indie scene where we're seeing games that sacrifice cutting-edge graphics for actual content, but even there it's rare.

To name but one example: Despite the massive leaps in technology, social aspects, development funding and new talent in gaming, it took 19 years to make a game that could be compared to Ultima 7 (1992) in terms of scale, depth, gameplay and atmosphere, and that was Skyrim (2011). Captive (1990) has 65 THOUSAND multi-floored dungeons and I've yet to come across any game that even comes close to that. (No, they're not randomly generated.)

 

[Phage]

2015


Grimwah
Wasteland 2 Directors Cut
Path of Exile fully patched
Bloodborne
Torment: Tides of Nomunera
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Spoiler

new star fox game

2015 the next 1998.

Not even close:


Quake 2: The Reckoning / Ground Zero
Fallout 2
Unreal
Commandos: BEL
Shogo: MAD
Sin
Half-Life
Blood 2
Metal Gear Solid
Tekken 3
Warhammer: Dark Omen
Dune 2000
Heart of Darkness
Hopkins FBI
Street Fighter Alpha 3

etc.

How did you manage to pick so many of the underwhelming / lesser games of 1998? That is truly a feat to be reckoned with. Almost every game on your list has a superior title that came before/after it, lol.

 

[retardation]

With The Great Temple in Blood.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Almost every game on your list has a superior title that came before/after it, lol.

I'd say - almost none. Only exception is Blood > Blood 2 (despite being a poor sequel, it's still a good shooter on its own). Or if you mean UT > Unreal then ok, but the latter should be compared to Unreal 2 rather than multiplayer focused fps.

 

[Gozma]

BROS FOR CONSOLRES THE 16 BIT ONES ARE HARD TO TOP

LOTS OF SHIT PERFECTED AND RAREERLY BETTERED NOWADAYS

I'd knock the 16-bit console era for having shit arcade ports.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO TRUE

BUT AFTER THOSE CONSOLES ARCADES WREE USUALLY TO IRRELEVANT TO PORT

AT LEST WERE I WAS FROM MPOST ARCADE SHIT WAS DEAD BY THE NEX GEN OF CONSOLES

I THINK THER WAS A LARGE VARIETU AF GENRES THAT REALLY HABENT PROGRSSED MUCH PASTNTHE 16 BIT ERA

SHIT THEY WEREW PIONEERING RTS STUFF WITH GAMES LIKE HERZOG ZWEI AMD PLATOFORMERS WERE AT A PEAK AMD SPORTS GAMES WERE FINALLY GETTING MPRE SERIOIS JUST LOTS OF COOL GENRE BLENDIMG TOO

REALLY I DONT THINK THERE ARE GAMES MUCH BETTER IN WHAT YHEY DO THAN LINK TO THE PAST SUPER METRPOISD AND STREETS OF RAGE 2 JIST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD

 

[Baron Dupek]

Somewhere in the 1999-2001, later there was lot of middle tier games (popular in the Europe) that weren't shitty pixel fest and yet not required million or devs get kick. And games still weren't designed for mentally challenged casuals.
Pardon, it's too ofensive.... even mentally challenged are smarter than casuals in that case.

 

[the_shadow]

Gaming has never hit its apex. I think people think otherwise for two reasons:

1. Rose coloured glasses. There's definitely a nostalgia factor at work, and you're generally much easier to impress when you're a kid, than when you're a jaded butthurt adult.

2. Generic cookie cutter sequel games from big publishers receive a *lot* more publicity these days, which drowns out positive feedback for less well known games.

 

[dnf]

Gaming hit ITZ apex with Crysis. DAT GRAPFIX.

For me, my personal gaming apex happened when i aquired a PC with Internet.

 

[TheGreatOne]

Untamed creativity: 80s
Quality, iconic games that hold up
1992-1994: Classic gaming.
1997-2000: 3D gaming, storytelling (+the high peak of 2D visuals)
It's quite sad actually when you think that it didn't take all that long for 3D to go from being a novel new thing to 3D games reaching their mechanical apex. Pretty much everything that has come since titles like Deus Ex, Thief 2 and Ape Escape hasn't been able to significantly add anything new or interesting to 3D gameplay, only better graphics. There are some exceptions like Portal and some third person view console games, but mostly only graphics/AI have been improving with players being given more toys to play with (Half Life 2) and bigger game worlds (sandbox boom), but nothing as ground breaking as Super Mario 64 and System Shock.

2001 and Xbox ruined it all. From both consoles and PC gaming flourishing simultaneously (both in 92-94 and in 97-2001) to stagnation, decline and a decade long drought.

Console gaming was NEVER competitive with PC.

Technically it was in certain scenarios (I'm assuming you don't include commodore, amiga, apple etc in the "PC"-category). Soundwise PCs were shit until the mid 90s while other platforms (consoles and C64/Amiga/ST) had amazing music. id's Commander Keen was considered technically impressive when all they did was recreate scrolling on PC that had earlier become common in NES games. PC Engine was a very early adopter of CD technology and used it some years before it became popular amongst PC games. Neo Geo was a very powerful machine for it's time and had great longevity, pushing 2D graphics forward for almost a decade. After that it was quiet for years, untill Dreamcast came along. In that Dreamcast/Xbox/Gamecube time period in 1999/2001, there were some console games that looked better than contemporary PC games. Shenmues facial animations, Soul Calibur and some early Dreamcast titles and then Final Fantasy X, Resident Evil Remake and Silent Hill 2 a few years later. After that nothing on consoles has looked technically better than PC games.
But the real draw of consoles in 80s and 90s was how cheaply (neo geo and 3do asdie) they could offer high video and sound quality. PC Engine/Turbografx-CD and SNES were great examples. A console would cost a few hundred dollars and a PC would cost over a thousand easily. Yes a high end PC will always have the best graphics, but the graphics/video&sound quality to price ratio is way worse than what consoles offered. (No shit PCs do a lot more stuff and have keyboard+mouse, but speaking purely for just wanting to play some games. How much it cost to get a CD based game system in 88-90, or comparing side scrolling PC, Amiga and SNES/Mega Drive games from 91-93 and comparing which had the smoothest scrolling and best graphics)

 

[DalekFlay]

Console gaming was fun and interesting when it was a totally different thing from PC gaming. Now it's watered-down PC gaming and everything is worse because of it.

 

[Machocruz]

Gaming has never hit its apex. I think people think otherwise for two reasons:

1. Rose coloured glasses. There's definitely a nostalgia factor at work, and you're generally much easier to impress when you're a kid, than when you're a jaded butthurt adult.

For some people,. maybe. I didn't start seriously PC gaming until 2001. And in the last 5 years I've played classics like Alpha Centauri, X-Com, JA2, Civ 4, Thief, System Shock 2, SS1, Ultima 7, NoLF, UU, Fallout 1, Daggerfall - for the first time. I can safely say as a decade, the 90s, on PC, were the peak. Count backwards from Deus Ex, and you have the 5 year peak.

Since we can't know what the future will bring, any talk of an "apex" has to concern what has been so far. That doesn't mean it's been constant down slope since Xbox came out or what have you. I'd rank Metroid Prime, Demon's Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, Splinter Cell: CT, Htman: BM as highly as anything from the 90s. But not higher.