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.
People keep saying that older systems and games selected for intelligence, but I don't think that's the case. Instead, it selected for people who were
introverted, socially outcast, and more comfortable with machines than human beings with
a wide range of intelligence.
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."
If it wasn't educational, he wouldn't need to learn anything to win. That sounds like self-deception, but attributing self-deception to low intelligence is a mistake. Highly intelligent people are better able to
rationalize away contrary evidence to uphold their biases than unintelligent people. Just look at the contemporary adherents of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault. All those years of education, but so very ignorant of
the world...
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.
That sounds like someone repeating a phrase he heard one of the cool kids say
without understanding what it means. Originally the phrase was in reference to time-wasting mechanics like simplistic fetch-quests, excess grinding for experience and items in RPGs, progression systems in multiplayer shooters (e.g.
Battlefield and
Titanfall), or a lack of a save-anywhere feature -- all content used to pad out the length of a game for the purposes of marketing or to induce players into paying hidden fees.
It's also possible that some marketing firm payed shills to seed discussion forums with comments that misuse the phrase
so that they could shift its meaning into something that is more friendly to a corporate agenda. That way in advertising they can say, "Our game respects your time," but what they really mean is, "We've streamlined away features to save costs and appeal to a casual audience." This kind of bait-&-switch is commonplace in marketing, and Reddit as a site is known for its astroturfing campaigns.
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.
Is your native language something other than English? There are good translations of the
Iliad and
Odyssey in English, and
Dracula was only written in 1897. I remember reading John Stuart Mill's
On Liberty as well as the US Constitution in sixth grade social studies without myself or the class having too much trouble, as well as a translation of the
Illiad and
Odyssey the next year. Have things really gotten that bad in schools?
I would say that reading the
Iliad is far more relevant today as compared to the time when I attended school, since there are
many contemporary authors that are seeking to create a new, Western mythology. These authors hope to use this new mythology as a means to control Western culture and direct public opinion towards completing the authors' desires. Fortunately, most of these authors are incompetent storytellers, but that's really a digression.
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).
Remember: a competent laborer with an essential skill can
negotiate his price. To a manager, the ideal worker is an interchangeable cog in their production machine. The main reason developers dropped the realistic style of the past is that it is far cheaper to hire unskilled labor to churn out generic, reproduceable illustrations. Western art simply got so bad that the anime-style, originally intended to be time-saving caricatures like the old Hanna-Barbera productions, began to exceed Western illustrators simply by maintaining a consistent level of quality. Of course, losing the competitive pressure from Western illustrators over the last decade or so has also lead to a slow decline in manga and anime quality.
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.
Harry Potter and
The Hunger Games did not destroy literature. Publishers did. See the
aforementioned Brandon Sanderson campaign, as well as the
Sad Puppies campaign. A lot of traditional publishers across media have been infiltrated and controlled by nepotistic ideologues, and competent authors are moving on to alternative methods of publishing, like Amazon self-publishing and Kickstarter. With a name like Brandon Sanderson lending legitimacy to these alternative publishers, traditional publishers will be forced to adapt or be strangled into irrelevancy.
