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Can modern gamers get into old crpg's?

Self-Ejected

Zizka

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jan 15, 2020
Messages
429
Hell, I'll even make it multiple choice and round up allowing you to play Scavengers of the Mutant World instead.

I’ll play through it if you gift me a steam key for Deathloop after. Deal? :positive:
 

V17

Educated
Joined
Feb 24, 2022
Messages
266
I'd be interested to know the absolute numbers of people who played old RPGs then and people who appreciate them now.
Surely the ratio of idiots among people who play games in general is massively higher than in the 90s since it became a mainstream hobby, but I think it's possible that the absolute number of people who like actually good games is still higher than it used to be.

That said I sometimes read reddit against my better judgement, and even on the less idiotic subreddits like patientgamers, which focuses on games that aren't completely new and isn't filled with kids, the people are fucking stupid. Just yesterday some people there were shitting on Kingdom Come because they thought it was too complicated and difficult. One of them quit during one of the first subquests where you're supposed to get money from a guy who owes your dad, and the guy refuses to pay and beats you up, because "I don't want to spend my time trying to learn controls in a time-sensitive minigame that lasts only a few seconds. That is neither fun nor educational for me." (speaking about the fistfight itself)
If that's isn't dumb enough, it's actually possible to not lose the fight or solve the quest in other ways. But you have to think for a bit.

There are also more and more people who "hate when games don't respect their time", which generally means any game that's marginally difficult and has a danger of having to replay anything. So instead of playing good games with the little time they have they choose to play simplistic handholdy crap instead. Logic.
 

Arvennios

Novice
Joined
Jan 17, 2017
Messages
46
There is old and too old, my personal cutoff (barely) is the NES, mostly for short gaming sessions and nostalgia trips without any commitment or mental investment, I can't stand anything older than VGA/256 colors graphics as far as the more involving games such as C-RPGS and adventure games are concerned, a decent interface with mouse controls is the bare minimum as well. It's impossible to experience emotional attachment to a character that looks merely like an "X" on a dark background, it's way too abstract to allow for any kind of immersion. I'd rather read a book, or play a text-only "CYOA" for the added interactivity and agency. Free time is a premium commodity these days, I am no longer a kid with months long holidays every year, if complexity isn't kept at a reasonable level and the learning curve is too steep, I won't even bother.

Video games *do* get obsolete, as technology advances and tastes evolve, and at a much higher rate than other mediums such as movies, books or music, there's a reason why remakes are so popular and appeal to the masses.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Something overlooked is that old non-console games are just completely alien to people who didn't grow up with them due to the lack of any form of design/UX standards or conformity. Console games tend to be much better in this regard thanks to the certification process required, which is why you see e.g., Chrono Trigger pop up on many top game lists to this day. Anyone who has played a video game can pick up and play most Nintendo-approved NES/SNES games.

OTOH, the lack of enforced conformity I mentioned also helped move the genres forward rather than stagnate. Developers were much more free to experiment in design.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
Old games are still great, better than new games. Yes, I'm an old man living on pure nostalgia, even for games I never played as a kid. No, I don't care, modern games mostly all sucks to me. :positive:
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,476
Something overlooked is that old non-console games are just completely alien to people who didn't grow up with them due to the lack of any form of design/UX standards or conformity. Console games tend to be much better in this regard thanks to the certification process required, which is why you see e.g., Chrono Trigger pop up on many top game lists to this day. Anyone who has played a video game can pick up and play most Nintendo-approved NES/SNES games.

OTOH, the lack of enforced conformity I mentioned also helped move the genres forward rather than stagnate. Developers were much more free to experiment in design.
I would say that applies more to computer games released in the latter half of the '80s and the first half of the '90s. Even on computers in the early '80s a great deal were simple enough that you could pick up and play them today. It helps that outside of DOS machines, most computers came with joysticks, so most games utilized that. In fact, the only system in which you would have serious problems playing a game from today would be the Intellivision and possibly Colecovision, which both had considerably complex controllers.
Of course, none of these were RPGs.
 

RaggleFraggle

Ask me about VTM
Joined
Mar 23, 2022
Messages
990
All but the simplest media eventually becomes outdated as cultures and languages change. We still play chess and even sennet, but good luck reading and appreciating the Iliad nowadays. Even the original Dracula novel has issues with outdated styles despite the character’s popularity.

This is even worse with video games because they’re the most rapidly evolving medium to date and they’re far more interactive than any other medium. Very few games age gracefully. Most are going to display graphical and/or gameplay issues within a decade, and that’s assuming they’re compatible with your system. It’s the worst for PC games because they don’t lend themselves to emulation like consoles do. While DOSBox helps you play DOS games, post-DOS games are going to run into issues due to outdated APIs and a simple lack of future proofing.

Some games age gracefully. Some games can be run today using special container software. Some games get remastered or remade. Some games get preserved on GOG. But a lot of games don’t. Compared to books or film, games are much harder to preserve in a playable format. To add insult to injury, the rights holders all too often aren’t interested in preserving them for posterity. They don’t get much profit out of it.

This is one of the reasons why I endorse reforming copyright.
 

Hace El Oso

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2020
Messages
3,114
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Bogotá
All but the simplest media eventually becomes outdated as cultures and languages change. We still play chess and even sennet, but good luck reading and appreciating the Iliad nowadays. Even the original Dracula novel has issues with outdated styles despite the character’s popularity.

:nocountryforshitposters:

For more than two and a half thousand years the Iliad and the Odyssey have been read, understood and appreciated, but now all of a sudden they’ve become outdated and incomprehensible? Well, I don’t disagree that to most younger people now they have become so, yes. But it’s their mental capacity that has shallowed, not the works that have suddenly changed.
I read both as part of my education (not to mention the epic of Gilgamesh which is far older) and until very recently that was the norm for any educated and motivated young man. It’s true that traditionally many games are forgotten with the passage of time (though quite a few stay with us) but there is no doubt that we are living through a cultural collapse. Games are only a canary in the mine here.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
All but the simplest media eventually becomes outdated as cultures and languages change. We still play chess and even sennet, but good luck reading and appreciating the Iliad nowadays. Even the original Dracula novel has issues with outdated styles despite the character’s popularity.

:nocountryforshitposters:

For more than two and a half thousand years the Iliad and the Odyssey have been read, understood and appreciated, but now all of a sudden they’ve become outdated and incomprehensible? Well, I don’t disagree that to most younger people now they have become so, yes. But it’s their mental capacity that has shallowed, not the works that have suddenly changed.
I read both as part of my education (not to mention the epic of Gilgamesh which is far older) and until very recently that was the norm for any educated and motivated young man. It’s true that traditionally many games are forgotten with the passage of time (though quite a few stay with us) but there is no doubt that we are living through a cultural collapse. Games are only a canary in the mine here.
Did you read the actual text or a translated one someone took liberties with when translating?
 

Hace El Oso

Arcane
Patron
Joined
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Messages
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Bogotá
Did you read the actual text or a translated one someone took liberties with when translating?

The actual text, the same with the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gallic Wars(quite a few of my schoolmates read it in Latin), etc. This wasn’t nearly such an issue decades ago, and even the printed texts we used were old at that point.

P.S. I searched for ‘translations of The Odyssey’ and was rewarded with articles about feminista re-imaginings of it. Cultural collapse.
 
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Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Yeah, i am going to be honest, while i haven't appreciated quite a few considered classic books, i do still enjoy Odyssey, Frankenstein and others, granted, i don't think high school tends to do a great job teaching kids how to enjoy reading, particularly classics, at least in my experience, but as people grow up they tend to try.

And people do read, i know there is a stereotype of people not reading nowadays, but book sales are constant, both in physical and digital forms, it's just that maybe people aren't exactly reading the greatest literature or non-fiction ever, but they still read...even if there is a depressingly big number of people who haven't read anything in years...there is still a reason why book publishing is alive and authors can survive even without writing best selling hits.
 
Joined
Feb 3, 2022
Messages
944
I think the usual presentation of CRPGs turns people away at first glance. The look of CRPGs doesn't jive with modern tastes. Isometric, 2D backgrounds, camera is distant from the characters and the action, character portraits done in an artstyle that hasn't been in vogue for well over 30 years, massive walls of text, character sheets that make you think you are still in the office looking at microsoft excel, and so on. People do judge books by their covers and presentation does matter. It's a death by a thousand cuts that makes it difficult for CRPGs to stay relevant in an era where you can play literally almost any game ever made with just a few clicks (and so many popular and/or great games you could never feasibly play them all), or be reading any book or watching any show you want, or doing anything else. And that's before getting into the actual game design of CRPGs.

The SaGA games (particularly SaGA Frontier) took the CRPG format and repackaged in a way that was more palatable. Dynamic camera angles that zoom in on the characters and the action and show you more of the environment. A more appealing artstyle (face the facts: kids want to learn how to draw anime, while the kings of 80s D&D art like Larry Elmore are only remembered by a dwindling few grognards). Stat screens aren't overcomplicated. Text is presented in 1 or 2 sentences at a time that are easy to digest. If the CRPG genre had adopted these ideas, they would be more appealing today, but they didn't and have thus faded into obscurity.
 

Skdursh

Savant
Joined
Nov 27, 2018
Messages
734
Location
Slavlandia
Pretty sure anyone born after 1999 is an actual retard. I think they started dumping estrogen and nanobots into the water supply sometime around 2000 and ever since then the only thing the modern generation knows is Twitter, charge they phone, simp, be pansexual, eat soy and cut off their genitals.
 

hackncrazy

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
415
Pretty sure anyone born after 1999 is an actual retard. I think they started dumping estrogen and nanobots into the water supply sometime around 2000 and ever since then the only thing the modern generation knows is Twitter, charge they phone, simp, be pansexual, eat soy and cut off their genitals.

I think a lot about what will be the state of gaming in, say, 20 years.

I feel like single player gaming will be 100% indie made. AAA companies probably will dump all their money and resources in microtransactions/games as service shit.
 

Denim Destroyer

Learned
Joined
Mar 20, 2021
Messages
425
Location
Moonglow, Britannia
As someone who is likely on the younger end of the Codex user base, I will describe my experience trying to get people to play older (late 90s in this case) RPGs. Most of the people game while either being in a Discord call, listening to music, or drunk/high so their focus is not primarily on whatever it is they are playing. This leads to them consulting a walk-through or simply dropping the game whenever they become lost. Just getting people to play an older game is next to impossible with the only reliable method being a YouTuber they watch releasing a video covering it. Thief, System Shock, Baldur's Gate, all of these were games I praised yet my calls went unheard until some guy makes a video that spoils the whole thing while mentioned the most efficient way to play. Not that this matters as they quickly jump onto another a bandwagon after a week or maybe two if lucky. Ultimately a lot of the people I know play games because it is the current zeitgeist and often use phrases such as "I need to play this" or "I should beat that" because these people consume games out of obligation not for enjoyment.

Some people can get into older RPGs but by far your average modern gamer will not even consider touching something older if it is outside the current social trend.
 
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dacencora

Guest
Even the original Dracula novel has issues with outdated styles despite the character’s popularity.
:what:

I haven't finished it yet, but I've been reading it and I don't think it matches your description at all. In fact, I would say it's become one of my favorites because the writing is quite good. I love the style.

To answer OP, I am a fairly young guy (read: less than 10 years out of high school) and tbh the oldest game I could get into was Might and Magic I. Isles of Terra is a lot easier to get into (in fact, everything 1991 forward becomes much easier to get into). Wasteland I is also pretty cool but since I don't have the manual printed, the remaster is better for me (it's extremely faithful, for what it's worth and I don't enjoy reading the manual on a screen). I plan on playing The Bard's Tale at some point soon, and I will definitely play the remaster, rather than the original. My favorite RPGs are still the ones in the late 90s/early 2000s, probably. Also, to echo an earlier point, old school JRPGs tend to be pretty dope all around so yes they're probably easier for younger people to get into. I also like playing modern games.

Also though, my dad was in IT forever and so we had a bunch of PCs at home rather than consoles and we had some DOS games on floppies that I messed around with in like 2003ish because I liked the art on them lol. Bio Menace and Duke Nukem (the Appogee platformer, not the FPS) were the best and I played them a lot, so I guess I probably have a soft spot for EGA graphics.
 

perfectslumbers

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 24, 2021
Messages
1,198
As a gen Z'er who first got into CRPGS in 2020 when I played the first Baldur's Gate, I would say yes. I tried many more modern CRPG's before BG since I always loved fantasy novels, but BG is the one that clicked and taught me to enjoy the genre as a whole. Although considering the games people are talking about here Baldur's Gate probably isn't considered old, but as someone for whom Baldur's Gate was released before I was born, it feels very old to me.

Controls are the biggest barrier to me. BG is nice because it just plays like an RTS but older games that weren't mouse based are annoying to get into, lots of them feel like I'm put straight into the cockpit of a plane or something. Like Rusty said old console games on the other hand are much easier to deal with since the current controllers are just evolutions of the old simple ones. But as long as you approach the games with an open and curious mentality, and a willingness to push through when it feels boring or uncomfortable, it's not too bad and often rewarding. Whether it's fun or not is another question, Ultima Underworld was fun, The Gold Box games put me to sleep. I'll have to play Ultima.

Now if you give an old CRPG to a ten year old who's never played a video game before, they'll get into it much more easily.
 

wishbonetail

Learned
Joined
Oct 18, 2021
Messages
671
Even the original Dracula novel has issues with outdated styles despite the character’s popularity.
:what:

I haven't finished it yet, but I've been reading it and I don't think it matches your description at all. In fact, I would say it's become one of my favorites because the writing is quite good. I love the style.
Dunno about writing styles but those numerous blood transfusions is pretty silly stuff, because blood types havent been discovered yet. So in that regard book is pretty dated.
 
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TheSoul

Scholar
Joined
Jun 15, 2018
Messages
155
c8e.jpg


I used to think this image was an overreaction and that people could join who valued the hobby and had basic critical thinking. Eventually everyone I knew would keep praising new releases no matter how shit they were and found my home here. Most people I know are fine with the direction the industry is going in and think it's weird to be so negative about it. I also think it's the fault because of how people use the internet now. It feels much harder to discover games and when searching online, I feel like I have to sift through a lot of clickbait and spergs who make hour long monologues just to find decent discussion about the game. Twitch turned the hobby into white noise and encouraged people to become powertripping sociopaths.

Modern games will poison gaming the same way the hunger games and harry potter ruined literature and Disney and Netflix destroyed television. These new products will be considered the peak of the medium for future generations. I think they are being raised to have shit taste and will be unable to understand anything that doesn't offer instant gratification through exp, pretty textures, and regular dlc.
 

monilloman

Educated
Joined
Dec 30, 2021
Messages
65
I think they are being raised to have shit taste and will be unable to understand anything that doesn't offer instant gratification through exp, pretty textures, and regular dlc.

Don't forget perks because hey, is your 2022 release worth playing if it doesn't have +10%/15%/20% increased damage perks? :obviously:

:negative:
 

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