Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

I like good games, but there simply are none; that doesn't make me a hater...

fork

Guest
...eventhough I hate game journalists. I think the only thing that's worse are forum Jews (hi there, Infinitron) and random fanboys with shit taste or retarded cucks who shill every dev's project who posts in the forums regardless of their game's quality in order to be more relevant as a community. Good luck creeping down to resetera's level, lel.

Every single genre has its reference titles, and 99.9% of what's released year after year, regardless of genre, is worse than those established classic greatest games of all time. Most of the time that's because newer titles are simplified, dumbed down versions of the originals in order to attract a broader, more stupid audience, which honestly starts to show on the Codex more and more every year, but in some genres, the oppossite (or some kind of mix) is the case, i.e. mechanics are introduced which dilute the core experience and add nothing of value (e.g. FPSs and progression systems), which is another tactic of modern devs and publishers to attract retards instead of gamers. Then there's the morons who praise indies over everything, who fail to realise that again 99.9% of indies are shit, and who condemn AAA titles, failing to realise that 90% or so of the greatest games of all time were not 'indies' (and that independent means something else now than it did in the 20th century). And then there's the rest, which falls victim to the current Zeitgeist.

Before I completely start to lose focus, let me make my point: The only thing that's been improving continually in gaming over the decades is graphics, and even that, only technically. The things that count most, art style and level design, have been on just as much of a decline as most gameplay systems have been as well. Every once in a while erupts some kind of exception to the rule in some random genre. And even then you often have to ask yourself whether the game is really that good, better than almost anything before it in that specific niche/genre, or if it just seems to be that good due to the decades and heaps of shit that diluted all our memories.

If I see a piece of shit 2021 cashgrab that's worse than an Amiga, SNES, WinXP, Saturn or PS1 title, I'll call it shit, even if the forum administration, and Infinitron specifically, or some imbecile, possibly even financially invested fanboys, are frothing at their mouths, and even if some precious, completely unknown dev should feel offended. Because that is the value that the Codex provides. There are enough safe spaces for current year devs already and I'm sure should the Codex start pandering to them, it's gonna lose the relevance it still has.

Sorry for the rant.
Good night, sleep well.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
I agree with the first few paragraphs of the post, but think it's contradictory that you'd expect the Codex to shun any potential games which may be great, regardless of where they come from.

If on one hand we (rightly) call out shit for not being up to the standard of old PC, Amiga, SNES etc. titles, each new game should get at least a chance.

It is the bizarre hype-up which I've never understood. If it looks your cuppa cha, pop it on your Wishlist or radar, and grab it when suits. But don't convince yourself it's great before playing. The big devs rightly get panned for fucking over core gaming fans for years, but as unlikely as it is I'm still open to any mint games they release. The fact they rarely do and they get a backlash is their daft fault.
 

0wca

Learned
Joined
Jan 27, 2021
Messages
504
Location
Not here
...eventhough I hate game journalists. I think the only thing that's worse are forum Jews (hi there, Infinitron) and random fanboys with shit taste or retarded cucks who shill every dev's project who posts in the forums regardless of their game's quality in order to be more relevant as a community. Good luck creeping down to resetera's level, lel.

Every single genre has its reference titles, and 99.9% of what's released year after year, regardless of genre, is worse than those established classic greatest games of all time. Most of the time that's because newer titles are simplified, dumbed down versions of the originals in order to attract a broader, more stupid audience, which honestly starts to show on the Codex more and more every year, but in some genres, the oppossite (or some kind of mix) is the case, i.e. mechanics are introduced which dilute the core experience and add nothing of value (e.g. FPSs and progression systems), which is another tactic of modern devs and publishers to attract retards instead of gamers. Then there's the morons who praise indies over everything, who fail to realise that again 99.9% of indies are shit, and who condemn AAA titles, failing to realise that 90% or so of the greatest games of all time were not 'indies' (and that independent means something else now than it did in the 20th century). And then there's the rest, which falls victim to the current Zeitgeist.

Before I completely start to lose focus, let me make my point: The only thing that's been improving continually in gaming over the decades is graphics, and even that, only technically. The things that count most, art style and level design, have been on just as much of a decline as most gameplay systems have been as well. Every once in a while erupts some kind of exception to the rule in some random genre. And even then you often have to ask yourself whether the game is really that good, better than almost anything before it in that specific niche/genre, or if it just seems to be that good due to the decades and heaps of shit that diluted all our memories.

If I see a piece of shit 2021 cashgrab that's worse than an Amiga, SNES, WinXP, Saturn or PS1 title, I'll call it shit, even if the forum administration, and Infinitron specifically, or some imbecile, possibly even financially invested fanboys, are frothing at their mouths, and even if some precious, completely unknown dev should feel offended. Because that is the value that the Codex provides. There are enough safe spaces for current year devs already and I'm sure should the Codex start pandering to them, it's gonna lose the relevance it still has.

Sorry for the rant.
Good night, sleep well.

I agree with you on most parts, but bear in mind that there's a fine line between having standards and elitism. That line is very blurry for a lot of people today.

Game journalists are human trash and deserve absolutely no attention. This is due to the fact that they are neither journalists nor gamers, but just a niche group of pretentious cunts who write about shit they give less then a shit about because they can't do anything else. Pay them no mind.

The reason game quality is in decline is, ironically, because the industry is too big for its own good. It used to be comprised of studios of passionate developers who took large risks when making these games because they were usually breaking new ground and weren't sure if they would sell or not. That's why they took extra efforts and often didn't have the manpower to make them as big as they wanted. But they were still great, because they were works of love. Nowadays it's a massive industry and the new generations are so dumbed down that they'll buy pretty much anything if it looks pretty and doesn't take more than 1 braincell to comprehend. Fast and shallow- that's the motto for today's industry. Consume quick and move on.

I don't agree that 99.9% of indie games are shit though, I think you're a little too fond of that particular percentage and are just applying it to everything. The rare games that I like in modern times are from small studios because they have to make a good impression if they want their little game to sell, kinda the same way the old studios used to be. Problem is, some of these studios have the will and the time to make a good game but either lack the experience or the funds, which usually amounts to the game falling flat.

In short: AAA games are fail because they have the technology, manpower and the funds, but their CEOs only want to make a ton of money, which fucks up the quality. The indie games don't have that, but are often lost in the wake of the big titles or simply don't have the resources to make the game they want.
 
Joined
May 28, 2021
Messages
179
Location
Nairaland
Well we do have one good project that's been on here for a while, Space Wreck, which I will continue to shill when anybody whines about no good games since muh classics. You can play the demo out now on Steam and even its current incarnation it is a great CRPG comparable to early Fallouts imo, they are doing a really good job with that game. I'm surprised there isn't more fuss about it around here.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
When a modern developer is talking, 9 of 10 of his points are about accessibility, if they wasted 50% of the time they waste trying to make their games playable by grandma on actually making their games interesting, we wouldnt have this problem. They were so worried about trying to answer the question "Is my game accessible?" that they forget to answer "Why should someone play my game?"
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,271
Location
Massachusettes
When a modern developer is talking, 9 of 10 of his points are about accessibility, if they wasted 50% of the time they waste trying to make their games playable by grandma on actually making their games interesting, we wouldnt have this problem. They were so worried about trying to answer the question "Is my game accessible?" that they forget to answer "Why should someone play my game?"

I think Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the first grandma-friendly game in the modern PC era, or at least that youtube video I saw a few years ago of the old lady streaming herself and screaming, "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT! I FORGOT TO PUT AWAY MY SWORD!" as the city guard barked at her, "STOP RIGHT THERE, CITIZEN!" gave me that impression. I'm sure she even has her own twitch stream now.
 

Louis_Cypher

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2016
Messages
1,519
Games used to be created by geeks. Intelligent, passionate fans of genre fiction. They would create games for people like themselves. Made by fans for fans. People who fantasized about being able to actually visit a fictional world like Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Alien, Terminator, Hellraiser or Middle Earth, or wanted to see a lost chapter of it's fictional history, or an unknown war in that setting. People who looked at a game and thought "wouldn't it be so cool if this was even bigger, more intricate", "what did Angband look like in the First Age?", "I wonder how epic the Old Sith Wars must have been; I wish there was a game!" or "what would happen if the Klingon Empire and Federation fought a full-scale total war?" Thus we had faithful, expansive, wish fulfilling, well considered adaptations of fantasy and science fiction. They were loaded with details like functioning buttons that were only there to add immersion, or a library that could actually be read, for the sake of the faith. It was unbridled obsessive love.

9AjVtzA.png


N4AH8k5.png


NUBaX7u.png


9KCfmIk.png


xfk4udr.png


XTbFFxG.png


1STivxm.png


MyF8bCh.png


DyJniPn.png


As prosaic as this may sound, it's still true; the decline of this breed of thoughtful gaming, was the search for new markets, targeting the lowest common denominator, so that the profits of an AAA game were now expected to be higher than if they targeted the geek community alone. The hope perhaps has always been that the general public will become geeks themselves, and to some extent this has happened, but they still don't have the attitude of detail worship, genre reverence, that nerdy people develop as children. Thus the people who created the industry, geeks, without whom it wouldn't have existed, were driven from their own creation. Gaming is rarely for them anymore, barring odd games like Battlefleet Gothic: Armada or Doom Eternal. People who barely understood fantasy, history, occult horror and science fiction flooded the industry. Customers became those who don't care or notice details.

Who were some of these early nerds:

- Geeks with affinity for science fiction (created first person shooters, space sims, real time strategies and tactical games)
- Geeks with affinity for high fantasy (created role-playing games, adventure games and strategy games)
- Geeks with affinity for military vehicles or history (created tactical and strategic war games)
- Geeks with affinity for horror and heavy metal music (created first person shooters, horror and role-playing games)

Simultaneously, it was the developer's desire to 'elevate' their writing, appeal to 'literary' pretensions that introduced cynical deconstruction of joyful genres to gaming, and allowed the infiltration of the usual parasitic fake-fan crowd into another hobby. Much of the general public can only accept Game of Thrones, which is barely fantasy so much as medieval history, because most of them are incapable of the leap required to enjoy a richer canvas. Now things couldn't be earnest, gleeful, but had to adhere to the literary establishment's idea of what high art is; which in our present post-modern age essentially means sapping the joy out of everything fun and virile in favor of their ego-projected image of what is 'realistic'; because for people who can't just sit back and enjoy things like blasting demons apart (they ironically lack the emotional maturity and acceptance of themselves), taking joy in adventure is evidence of a moral problem, rather than a wholesome part of human existence as geeks instinctively understood.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Simultaneously, it was the developer's desire to 'elevate' their writing, appeal to 'literary' pretensions that introduced cynical deconstruction of joyful genres to gaming, and allowed the infiltration of the usual parasitic fake-fan crowd into another hobby.

Funniest part about that is that throughout 99% of human history, people would have tossed some boring literary novel about some middle class man's inner turmoils into the trash but would devour genre fiction.

All literary classics before the 20th century are genre fiction.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Odyssey. The Iliad. The Aeneis. The stories of 1001 Nights. Beowulf. The Song of the Nibelungs.

Gods, heroes, monsters. High adventure. Mortal men struggling against powers higher than them. Timeless questions of life and death, deep philosophical inquiries coated in the exciting veneer of heroic struggle.

Genre fiction is the real high literature.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
What defines high literature is if the person writing is actually a real human being wanting to have some fun with the reader throwing some ideas and thoughts around almost like a genuine bar talk between friends or a storyteller trying to awe the children of the tribe. Anything else is just trash and a waste of time, ideological propaganda, nonsense to appear clever and subversive that end being just dull, incoherent, empty and pointless, and overhyped hack writing being the worst kind of New York Times stamp of approval type of trash.
 
Last edited:

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,435
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
Simultaneously, it was the developer's desire to 'elevate' their writing, appeal to 'literary' pretensions that introduced cynical deconstruction of joyful genres to gaming, and allowed the infiltration of the usual parasitic fake-fan crowd into another hobby.

Funniest part about that is that throughout 99% of human history, people would have tossed some boring literary novel about some middle class man's inner turmoils into the trash but would devour genre fiction.

All literary classics before the 20th century are genre fiction.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Odyssey. The Iliad. The Aeneis. The stories of 1001 Nights. Beowulf. The Song of the Nibelungs.

Gods, heroes, monsters. High adventure. Mortal men struggling against powers higher than them. Timeless questions of life and death, deep philosophical inquiries coated in the exciting veneer of heroic struggle.

Genre fiction is the real high literature.

100%, it's only in the 19th century that "literature" became associated with meoldrama around the tedious minutiae of middle class lives.
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,350
Location
Lusitânia
All literary classics before the 20th century are genre fiction.

This

I would actually go as far as to say that most of what's today considered "high art" (in regrads to literature), were in their own time considered "lowbrow" works
Given enough time, history tends to reframe "popular art" as "high art"
And this seems to become more apparent, the older the work is

Take for example Shakespeare
Today he's fellatioed as one of the greastest writers in history
But back then, a great portion of his audience (and therefore revenue source) were peasents
Even his most "serious" plays were still meant to entertain the uneducated masses of London at the time
 
Last edited:

fork

Guest
Games used to be created by geeks. Intelligent, passionate fans of genre fiction. They would create games for people like themselves. Made by fans for fans. People who fantasized about being able to actually visit a fictional world like Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Alien, Terminator, Hellraiser or Middle Earth, or wanted to see a lost chapter of it's fictional history, or an unknown war in that setting. People who looked at a game and thought "wouldn't it be so cool if this was even bigger, more intricate", "what did Angband look like in the First Age?", "I wonder how epic the Old Sith Wars must have been; I wish there was a game!" or "what would happen if the Klingon Empire and Federation fought a full-scale total war?" Thus we had faithful, expansive, wish fulfilling, well considered adaptations of fantasy and science fiction. They were loaded with details like functioning buttons that were only there to add immersion, or a library that could actually be read, for the sake of the faith. It was unbridled obsessive love.

9AjVtzA.png


N4AH8k5.png


NUBaX7u.png


9KCfmIk.png


xfk4udr.png


XTbFFxG.png


1STivxm.png


MyF8bCh.png


DyJniPn.png


As prosaic as this may sound, it's still true; the decline of this breed of thoughtful gaming, was the search for new markets, targeting the lowest common denominator, so that the profits of an AAA game were now expected to be higher than if they targeted the geek community alone. The hope perhaps has always been that the general public will become geeks themselves, and to some extent this has happened, but they still don't have the attitude of detail worship, genre reverence, that nerdy people develop as children. Thus the people who created the industry, geeks, without whom it wouldn't have existed, were driven from their own creation. Gaming is rarely for them anymore, barring odd games like Battlefleet Gothic: Armada or Doom Eternal. People who barely understood fantasy, history, occult horror and science fiction flooded the industry. Customers became those who don't care or notice details.

Who were some of these early nerds:

- Geeks with affinity for science fiction (created first person shooters, space sims, real time strategies and tactical games)
- Geeks with affinity for high fantasy (created role-playing games, adventure games and strategy games)
- Geeks with affinity for military vehicles or history (created tactical and strategic war games)
- Geeks with affinity for horror and heavy metal music (created first person shooters, horror and role-playing games)

Simultaneously, it was the developer's desire to 'elevate' their writing, appeal to 'literary' pretensions that introduced cynical deconstruction of joyful genres to gaming, and allowed the infiltration of the usual parasitic fake-fan crowd into another hobby. Much of the general public can only accept Game of Thrones, which is barely fantasy so much as medieval history, because most of them are incapable of the leap required to enjoy a richer canvas. Now things couldn't be earnest, gleeful, but had to adhere to the literary establishment's idea of what high art is; which in our present post-modern age essentially means sapping the joy out of everything fun and virile in favor of their ego-projected image of what is 'realistic'; because for people who can't just sit back and enjoy things like blasting demons apart (they ironically lack the emotional maturity and acceptance of themselves), taking joy in adventure is evidence of a moral problem, rather than a wholesome part of human existence as geeks instinctively understood.

Stopped reading after your attempt to shill for Doom Eternal. Fucking faggot; nuDoom is some of the worst shit there is, because it betrays its origins by pretending to be something which it is not: a great old-school FPS.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,870
Location
Eastern block
During the RPG drought which followed the Renaissance era, people were so desperate that they began accepting anything, any bread crumbs thrown their way no matter how pathetic and pitiful. Game has 3 races? No problem, gimme. Dumbed down character progression? I'll take it. Binary dialogue options? There is nothing else to play anyway.

This is how the erosion of standard occurred and it goes on to this day.
 

CabbageHead

Novice
Joined
Jan 10, 2021
Messages
41
I thought fork just want to shit on infinitron and talk about how shitty CY+6 video game industry is, how the fuck some people here read that and see it as an opportunity to masturbate about geeks “unbridled obsessive love” and literary high art. All video game is escapism don’t bring pretentious concept like literary high art and the classical world just to elevate your preferences.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom