Decline Gaming 2004 vs Gaming 2024 Comparison

[anvi]

I think people are splitting hairs. This image encapsulates what I'm trying to say:

If you were lived through the 2000s, you saw a lot of different trends and changes go back and forth. However, if you lived through the 2010s you probably lived through the homogenization of everything. From music, to movies, games and even fashion started to look very oddly the same. Creativity went to die in the previous decade and only very recently there's been a recovery of that.

True but if you lived through the 90s you would be even more horrified by the 2010s. And even the 2000s stuff would show signs of decline.

Also those memes are console game focused. PC gaming reached far higher peaks than consoles ever could have dreamt of. And the decline was far bigger. Post 2000.

 

[anvi]

Consoles themselves were a big part of the decline. They dragged the standards down a lot.

PC games were on a whole other level. Fade to Black, Gabriel Knight, Freespace, System Shock, Tribes, Unreal Tournament, Rainbow 6, Syndicate, Hidden & Dangerous, Frontier Elite, Baldur's Gate, Civilization, Duke 3D, Alone in the Dark, Dune, Eye of the Beholder, Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation, Dungeon Keeper, Fallout, Simcity 2000, Apache Havoc, Terranova, Delta Force, Castles, Tie Fighter, Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Master of Orion, etc. etc. The peaks of PC gaming was so high that all of post mid 2000's was a steep decline.

 

[Lemming42]

If you were lived through the 2000s, you saw a lot of different trends and changes go back and forth. However, if you lived through the 2010s you probably lived through the homogenization of everything. From music, to movies, games and even fashion started to look very oddly the same. Creativity went to die in the previous decade and only very recently there's been a recovery of that.

I'm not sure, gaming in the 2010s (especially the later part of the decade) seems almost self-evidently more creative than the mid and late 2000s to me.

Today resembles the 1990s in the sense that a wider variety of people are making games, and they're making the type of games they personally want to play, often by themselves or with very small teams. This echoes the nature of the 1980s and 90s gaming scene, where some lunatic like Peter Molyneux or Roberta Williams or Chris Roberts or Lori Ann Cole or John Carmack would wake up one morning with an idea in their head and it'd be a finished and released game six months later. Or even the interactive fiction scene of the 80s, where the most random people with the most absurd yet spectacular ideas would inexplicably find themselves writing for videogames, and you'd end up with some weird unknown woman with laser-focused autism coming up with the most excellently batshit plot you've ever seen in a game.

The 2000s was an age where larger publishers started to dominate and, combined with the effects of consolisation and cultural malaise in general, you can pretty clearly see the dramatic negative effect this had on the quality of games and the imagination of videogame writing - gone were the esoteric fantasy and sci-fi worlds of the 90s, in came brown and grey military shooters and "dark, gritty" bullshit. If you were lucky, you got some non-edgy fantasy, but it was always dopey goofy shit like Oblivion or Fable or Sacred or Two fucking Worlds.

I think the "are games ART???" era from around 2008, where people were trying to force Roger Ebert to play Braid as if anyone gives a shit what he thinks, was actually my least favourite era for gaming ever. AAA games sucked and most of the first wave of indie devs who were meant to be coming to save us were arseholes like Phil Fish who were not only insufferable artists, but also made bad games.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The "games are art" or "games should be more like movies" crowd has always been there, that sort of comment was being thrown around when describing Sierra adventures from the 80s. It was just part of the whole penis envy thing that engulfed gaming for a long while. It's died down because cinema in general is crap nowadays and the art form is truly dying, or at least Hollywood is. Plus, like with most things in culture, people seem more interested in new stuff coming from South Korea, Japan or even China as opposed to anything being made in the west, so it's a moot point to try to equate games to Hollywood type cinema.

 

[Silverfish]

Expansion packs were great, it was a whole new bunch of content for a decent price. DLC ruined anything

"You don't understand, changing the name of a business practice was disastrous."

 

[S.torch]

Today resembles the 1990s in the sense that a wider variety of people are making games, and they're making the type of games they personally want to play, often by themselves or with very small teams. This echoes the nature of the 1980s and 90s gaming scene, where some lunatic like Peter Molyneux or Roberta Williams or Chris Roberts or Lori Ann Cole or John Carmack would wake up one morning with an idea in their head and it'd be a finished and released game six months later. Or even the interactive fiction scene of the 80s, where the most random people with the most absurd yet spectacular ideas would inexplicably find themselves writing for videogames, and you'd end up with some weird unknown woman with laser-focused autism coming up with the most excellently batshit plot you've ever seen in a game.

I agree with this. Today is easier to create your own game and publish it as a lone wolf. And that's good. However, we're in 2025. It took half a decade for things to start changing for real.

In general, I think 2010s will be seen as a decade were a ton of IPs, franchises and brands just died or committed suicide trying to persecute the "modern audience".

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Today resembles the 1990s in the sense that a wider variety of people are making games, and they're making the type of games they personally want to play, often by themselves or with very small teams. This echoes the nature of the 1980s and 90s gaming scene, where some lunatic like Peter Molyneux or Roberta Williams or Chris Roberts or Lori Ann Cole or John Carmack would wake up one morning with an idea in their head and it'd be a finished and released game six months later. Or even the interactive fiction scene of the 80s, where the most random people with the most absurd yet spectacular ideas would inexplicably find themselves writing for videogames, and you'd end up with some weird unknown woman with laser-focused autism coming up with the most excellently batshit plot you've ever seen in a game.

I agree with this. Today is easier to create your own game and publish it as a lone wolf. And that's good. However, we're in 2025. It took half a decade for things to start changing for real.

In general, I think 2010s will be seen as a decade were a ton of IPs, franchises and brands just died or committed suicide trying to persecute the "modern audience".

It won't because profits will be mentioned. The 2020s might be more like it, like Mass Effect Andromeda vs the original trilogy for instance.

 

[anvi]

Expansion packs were great, it was a whole new bunch of content for a decent price. DLC ruined anything

"You don't understand, changing the name of a business practice was disastrous."

It's not about the name it's about the level of respect between developer and gamer. Gamers used to be discerning. Developers used to pack a lot into an expansion and games because they had to. Then gaming became mainstream and full of morons, and they tried selling armor for a horse for real money as DLC. And instead of being horrified by the idea, idiots bought it. So almost overnight every developer started releasing games half made and selling bits as DLC. eg: Arma 2 and Arma 3. And a million others.

You think that's wrong?

 

[Silverfish]

You think that's wrong?

Yeah.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

You can find as many good games as ever today

Highly debatable. What is not debatable though is you don't get as many absolutely top quality games. I'm loving indie gaming but not too many would make my top 100, even fewer my top 50, and almost certainly none in my top 10. But you're right about fragmentation....maybe I just need to play some of the indies you have played? Got a top 5?

Unlike Lemming42, I'd assert that the general quality of games in recent years has been far worse than during the golden age, but it has been an improvement over the immediately preceding era, and not only for RPGs, which emerged from the 'wasteland' era into an age of hemi-semi-demi-renaissance before descending again. Some top games from the previous 15 years (which just misses Demon's Souls from 2009, a game ignored by most Codexers simply for being a console-exclusive, but an incredible game that created its own sub-sub-genre of CPGs), not limited to indies (in italics; 8 of 13 entries):

• Dark Souls (2011), Codex GotY 2012
• Trine 2 (2011), a charming little puzzle-platformer, as with its predecessor from 2009
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (2012/2013), Codex GotY 2016
• Legend of Grimrock (2012)
• Dragon's Crown (2013), a console-exclusive beat-'em-up with RPG elements
• Legend of Grimrock II (2014)
• Apotheon (2015), an action-platformer with a distinctive art-style
• Salt & Sanctuary (2016), a 2D version of a Souls-like
• Hollow Knight (2017), a Metroidvania with a distinctive art-style
• Kenshi (2018)
• Wasteland 3 (2020), Codex GotY
• Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children (2020), will probably be the game of the decade
• Jagged Alliance 3 (2023), Codex GotY

 

[anvi]

You think that's wrong?

Yeah.

Why?

 

[Gerrard]

- Oblivion (2006)

bruh

I played Oblivion in the original Xbox 360 when it came out. It was the first RPG I ever played and had a lot of fun with it. I know the game has flaws but I don't really see this idea that it was the worst thing ever that happened. It has a cozy atmosphere, nice exploration and some of the best questlines still not matched neither in Morrowind nor Skyrim, like the Dark Brotherhood.

I'd add Mirror's Edge to that pile, still holds up visually and it came out in 2008.

Oh fuck, I completely forgot about Mirror's Edge. This game was ahead of its time. I know this is repeated often, but I decided to give it another go and I was impressed by how atmospheric and stylish it was: the music, the surreal city, the futuristic ambience, the story being rock solid despite having a low presence of cutscenes or dialog. Even the use of 2D animated cutscenes was a cool choice, toppled with the dystopian plot of the government being an authoritative hellhole that keep secrets from their population was very in tone with the 2000s, ideas like the ones presented in the Matrix and Deus Ex were still popular in people's head. The direction was also spectacular.



This game came out 16 years ago and is still the best representation of an urban environment, in which you can move with absolute freedom. The adrenaline that jumped when the persecution starts was insane.

The whole "think for yourself" gave a lot personality to the stuff created in this period.

Mirror's Edge is old enough to induce brainfog, especially given that the game itself is rather short. I've tried replaying it recently and didn't have much fun, mostly because of the janky ass long jump sections and 'combat arenas' which are depressingly limiting in how you run the fuck away from the cops.

I'm already so tired of people that started recently dickriding its graphics too.
Here are your "realistic" and "better than modern games" graphics, sir.

All the environmental shadows and lighting are static and pre-baked into lightmaps with a custom solution (I think UE3 Lighmass was added later than ME was made), so there's no way to make the resolution of these shadows higher. Only character shadows are real shadows, and in the tutorial the guide girl doesn't even cast one.

 

[Lemming42]

Mirror's Edge always looked great to me, maybe more a case of strong visual direction than technical aspects. I do remember turning PhysX on back in the day, having the game screech to a halt, but still being impressed that the tarp on the scaffolding could get torn apart by helicopter gunfire.

There's a bit where you go down a big storm drain and into an area with green walls and they're all slimy and damp with water and the effect used for that looks superb even today.

Mirror's Edge is old enough to induce brainfog, especially given that the game itself is rather short. I've tried replaying it recently and didn't have much fun, mostly because of the janky ass long jump sections and 'combat arenas' which are depressingly limiting in how you run the fuck away from the cops.

The combat is simplistic but you can slide across the ground and drive your foot up into people's groins, which never stops being funny. I always do the game with zero kills (or zero firearms shots, at least) and the chain move where you can kick people in the balls then knee them in the face while they're hunched over is pretty much the only way to get through some of the later segments.

 

[Silverfish]

Why?

Gamers were never discerning and horse armor's impact on online content distribution is negligible.

 

[JarlFrank]

All the environmental shadows and lighting are static and pre-baked into lightmaps with a custom solution (I think UE3 Lighmass was added later than ME was made), so there's no way to make the resolution of these shadows higher. Only character shadows are real shadows, and in the tutorial the guide girl doesn't even cast one.

Who the fuck cares about shadow resolution, the game looks good because it chose a cool style and stuck to it, not because of any technical aspects.