Decline When did decline start to you?

[samuraigaiden]

Everybody knows the Codex list is skewed towards the games from the late 90s and most people here don't play older games released before 1996. Looking at those graphs one would assume the first half of the 2000s had more incline than the second half of the 1980s.

KOTOR, Anachronox, Arx Fatalis <<<<< Dragon Wars, Dark Heart of Uukrul, Chaos Strikes Back, Nethack, Space Rogue...

 

[octavius]

Playing old HoMM 3 maps I'm starting to see Heroes Chronicles as a minor harbinger of decline. The endless fan fiction level drivel that infected HC also infects many otherwise good user made maps. HC would not have been good even with good writing, though. I mean how interesting is it to read pages upon pages of what your character dreams, their relationship with some other Hero, or whatever insignificant things they supposedly do, which often totally clash with where they actually are on the map.
Accursed storyfaggotry!

 

[Grauken]

There are different decline events, but for me it was the advent of the CD and the cinematic adventure games in the 2nd half of the 90ies that killed PC games for me. All that space, lets fill it with useless, terrible life action cut scenes and downgrade gameplay to nothingness as well, yeah

 

[Squid]

There are different decline events

Ah yes. Like nature and disease controlling population. Cycles and shit. Or something. Who knows.

Good games will always be made. Sometimes more than other times. Sometimes there will be droughts or diamonds in the rough. I just don't think any era will replicate like what was the 80s and 90s. AAA titles must make money, must sell more digital skins, must appeal to the widest audience and only take safe bets! Let the smaller people try to innovate or experiment and if it works, they'll just use it once they see it works. Games are becoming like music and movies very quickly when you compare the lifespans.

 

[Great Deceiver]

 

[Great Deceiver]

(SNK cabinets were the cheapest for stores to afford since they were basically big consoles you only had to switch cartridges out of instead of keeping up to date on new boards like CPS-2/CPS-3, etc.)

God, I miss those days.

Just a small correction - CPS-2 also operated on swappable games (the hardware setup was a board sandwich: you had a main board - known as an "A" board, which contained the common circuitry shared among all games of the platform, and the game board itself - known as the "B" board, which housed the specific program EEPROMs, which you could swap out, similar to MVS carts). There were different A and B boards for different markets, and they were usually distinguished by different colours - i.e. blue for Japan, green for US, orange for Mexico and Latin America, grey for Asia, etc. This worked as a sort of region lock, you couldn't run blue B boards on grey A boards, for example. In any case, this helped keep the costs down and Capcom games were hugely popular in poorer markets such as Brazil because of that fact. There was even a local Brazilian Capcom representation for arcade hardware (Romstar) back in those days.

CPS-3 games were also theoretically swappable (as the first CPS 3 releases were on CD-ROM), but there were all sorts of different editions. My Third Strike board was all solid state on EEPROMs, for example.

In any case, great post and your assessment of "arcades were the proto-mobile fleecing pricing model" fallacy is spot on. It's a lie. Most arcade games (barring some egregious exceptions) were designed to be fully finishable on one credit - you just had to get good. This has nothing to do with the predatory time/money conversion that's so common in mobile games now.

Whoever doesn't get this never 1CCd an arcade game in their lives, and I feel sorry for them. For me, the first game I 1CC'd was Double Dragon, when I was 8 years old. Yeah, everyone and their granny can finish it using elbow cheese, but it gave me a real sense of accomplishment 30-odd years ago. Second game I 1CC'd was Black Tiger and I still remember it to this day.

 

[DalekFlay]

There are different decline events, but for me it was the advent of the CD and the cinematic adventure games in the 2nd half of the 90ies that killed PC games for me. All that space, lets fill it with useless, terrible life action cut scenes and downgrade gameplay to nothingness as well, yeah

Under a Killing Moon is one of my favorite games of all time.

 

[samuraigaiden]

This discussion inspired me to go research some old PC focused magazines from the 80s and 90s to try and pinpoint the exact moment decline began. I've come to a predictably unpopular conclusion. Decline began with a game that has four letter in the title and starts with a D.

Spoiler

Yep, it's Doom

Yes, I know, it's one of the best games of all time, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't matter. You look at PC gaming coverage prior to Doom and it was legitimately and unironically monocled. It wasn't trying to be elitist or sound smart, it was written by a well educated individual addressing his or her peers. Respect for the readers intelligence and horizontal identification are present in every line.

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Everything that is successful inevitably becomes itself the primary agent of its decline. Infact the true incline, that is games such as Thief, System Shock 2, Fallout 2, etc., weren't so successful in the first place. They weren't murdered by themselves, but by others.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

But trust me, it's the truth.

Says you

 

[DalekFlay]

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

Since all my favorite PC games came out between Doom and Morrowind, I'm gonna go with a big no on that one buddy.

 

[Grauken]

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

Ever heard correlation is not causation

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

Ever heard correlation is not causation

But in this case is causation. Probably Doom was the single most impactful game to date. It changed the gaming landscape, in goods and bads. From it and beyond, gaming started to become more and more mainstream, and the PC platform started to be identified as an interesting platform for action games.

Also the 3D thing; before Doom there was no relevant 3D in games, with the exception of some flight simulators. After Doom: the cool and modern games were in 3D, the 2D started to be considered "retro" and "old-school" (but without any of the positive connotations that we have today.)

Also the multiplayer (over lan) new gaming modalities that Doom popularized, vs the single player gaming. There was a moment when multiplayer was considered a mandatory sell-word in every games and single player games seemed to be destined to be extint like dinosaurs soon. (And this is still happening now)

Obviously the overall change was gradual and not monotonic, and you can find exceptions. Think however what kind of games were considered the top tier, both commercially and qualitatively, on the PC before Doom: mainly RPGs, adventure games and maybe strategy games. After Doom: 3D acton games and multiplayer shooters. You see that. Fallout, PST and BG are now considered the renaissance of RPGs. Thief, Deus Ex and System Shock 2 the renaissance of single player gaming. But why that? Because before there was a dark age.

Obviously now we know that even this "renaissance", this glimpse of light in gaming, was just an illusion, paventing the arrival of even a bigger decline. A dark age so long and without hope the even Doom itself now can be cosidered incline, with respect to what happened after.

 

[Grauken]

Doom may have changed the gaming landscape and given rise to more action-based games, but I don't see that inherently as decline. Only idiots would argue that FPS are inherently decline. 3d was coming anyway, if not Doom something else would have been the game to do it on a massive scale. Multiplayer, same reason, the technology tree was at the right place to push it forward. But none of those led to decline.

CDs with their massive space to fill and developers with no ideas how to it fill remains for me the main culprit at that junction in time. CDs would have happened either way, but the pivot to live action cut scenes lead to a massive rise in shit games. Myst with its sterile graphics lead to massive shitty follow-up games. Lots of others like those

For all the copy-cats that followed Doom, Diablo and Command & Conquer, none of them were as dire and decliny as the legions of shit games build entirely around live action cut-scenes and even good games had those shoved into them, wasting valuable budget

 

[Lemming42]

This discussion inspired me to go research some old PC focused magazines from the 80s and 90s to try and pinpoint the exact moment decline began. I've come to a predictably unpopular conclusion. Decline began with a game that has four letter in the title and starts with a D.

Spoiler

Yep, it's Doom

Yes, I know, it's one of the best games of all time, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't matter. You look at PC gaming coverage prior to Doom and it was legitimately and unironically monocled. It wasn't trying to be elitist or sound smart, it was written by a well educated individual addressing his or her peers. Respect for the readers intelligence and horizontal identification are present in every line.

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

Are you talking about gaming journalism, or games themselves? Games themselves clearly take a dramatic upturn in quality shortly after Doom (though not necessarily because of Doom).

Pre-1993, you're fucked unless you really like arcade games, or shitty ports of arcade games to home consoles like NES. There are some decent cRPGs and strategy/sim things for PC from before then, and a couple of jRPGs, but gaming as a whole skyrockets after Doom, both in quality and variation.

As for games journalism, who cares. Some of the magazines around when I was a kid were fucking unreadable. I'd literally rather read Kotaku.

 

[samuraigaiden]

This discussion inspired me to go research some old PC focused magazines from the 80s and 90s to try and pinpoint the exact moment decline began. I've come to a predictably unpopular conclusion. Decline began with a game that has four letter in the title and starts with a D.

Spoiler

Yep, it's Doom

Yes, I know, it's one of the best games of all time, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't matter. You look at PC gaming coverage prior to Doom and it was legitimately and unironically monocled. It wasn't trying to be elitist or sound smart, it was written by a well educated individual addressing his or her peers. Respect for the readers intelligence and horizontal identification are present in every line.

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

Are you talking about gaming journalism, or games themselves? Games themselves clearly take a dramatic upturn in quality shortly after Doom (though not necessarily because of Doom).

Pre-1993, you're fucked unless you really like arcade games, or shitty ports of arcade games to home consoles like NES. There are some decent cRPGs and strategy/sim things for PC from before then, and a couple of jRPGs, but gaming as a whole skyrockets after Doom, both in quality and variation.

As for games journalism, who cares. Some of the magazines around when I was a kid were fucking unreadable. I'd literally rather read Kotaku.

Media is a window into the zeitgeist.

 

[Makabb]

Everything went to shit after 2000

 

[octavius]

Are you talking about gaming journalism, or games themselves? Games themselves clearly take a dramatic upturn in quality shortly after Doom (though not necessarily because of Doom).

Pre-1993, you're fucked unless you really like arcade games, or shitty ports of arcade games to home consoles like NES. There are some decent cRPGs and strategy/sim things for PC from before then, and a couple of jRPGs, but gaming as a whole skyrockets after Doom, both in quality and variation.

Yes, that's my impression too.
Just about every game worthy of my chronological play list from 1981 to 1993 were CRPGs. Civilization is the only exception I can think of at the moment.
But after 1993 things got more diversified, at least for my taste (CRPG, FPS, TBS).

 

[Starwars]

The day the Codex started caring more about gender politics, developer's social media habits and sales figures for games they supposedly don't care about rather than playing and discussing games.



The time surrounding Bethesda's acquisition of the Fallout license was also a particularly dark time.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

When Star Wars SE happened.

 

[DalekFlay]

But in this case is causation. Probably Doom was the single most impactful game to date. It changed the gaming landscape, in goods and bads. From it and beyond, gaming started to become more and more mainstream, and the PC platform started to be identified as an interesting platform for action games.

Oh no, not an interesting platform for action games!

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

CDs with their massive space to fill and developers with no ideas how to it fill remains for me the main culprit at that junction in time. CDs would have happened either way, but the pivot to live action cut scenes lead to a massive rise in shit games. Myst with its sterile graphics lead to massive shitty follow-up games. Lots of others like those

For all the copy-cats that followed Doom, Diablo and Command & Conquer, none of them were as dire and decliny as the legions of shit games build entirely around live action cut-scenes and even good games had those shoved into them, wasting valuable budget

Increasingly widespread adoption of CD-ROM technology did result in an ill-conceived fad for FMV "games" based around live-action footage with gameplay that consequently was sharply limited. However, this was very much just a fad that burnt itself out in a few years once the novelty wore off and had no long-term impact on videogames (as much as I'll always harbor a resentment against this fad for ruining Gabriel Knight II).

Are you talking about gaming journalism, or games themselves? Games themselves clearly take a dramatic upturn in quality shortly after Doom (though not necessarily because of Doom).

Pre-1993, you're fucked unless you really like arcade games, or shitty ports of arcade games to home consoles like NES. There are some decent cRPGs and strategy/sim things for PC from before then, and a couple of jRPGs, but gaming as a whole skyrockets after Doom, both in quality and variation.

The irony that someone named Lemming should write such arrant nonsense. Numerous videogame genres and subgenres formed, thrived, and had their exemplars created, before Doom was published.

 

[Lemming42]

I agree there are plenty of great titles from before 1993 - Lemmings, Civilization, Eye of the Beholder, Another World, Sonic, Street Fighter, etc.

But variety undeniably increases after 1993. The refinement of existing genres continues, and on the PC we see the creation or popularization of FPS, RTS, TBS, Myst-likes, a much wider range of strategy/sim games, increasingly different types of cRPG and so on.

Games also start to get stories and more complex settings from the mid 90s onwards. Obviously a mixed blessing which often results in us having to sit through some of the worst shit ever written by humans, but definitely makes things more interesting.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Syndicate, Prince of Persia, Wing Commander 2, Sim City 2000, Dune II, Lemmings, Master of Orion, Day of the Tentacle, X-Wing, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Star Control II..

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Oh no, not an interesting platform for action games!

Pre-Doom: