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.

Decline is gaming officially over

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,170
Yeah Tetris I'm not quite sure either. It was in the Soviet Union however. The idea "Games can't exist under communism". FUCKIN TETRIS?

Like i said, it was made by one guy in his spare time.

That's not the same as making a game that requires a full team, years of development and tons of resources to make.
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
1,954
Location
Harare
RPG Wokedex
Yeah Tetris I'm not quite sure either. It was in the Soviet Union however. The idea "Games can't exist under communism". FUCKIN TETRIS?

Like i said, it was made by one guy in his spare time.

That's not the same as making a game that requires a full team, years of development and tons of resources to make.

No no, dude. Tetris wasn't made by one guy. It was made by the Soviet Union. That's why all the royalties went to the Soviet Union and not Pajitnov, who didn't see a penny from the game until 1996. Talk about an incentive for creativity!
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
for me it ended in 2006 when Oblivion came out

Playing Oblivion for the first time was indeed .. special (I was a sucker and had indeed ordered the super duper collectors version) and in fact, I never played it a second time but I had also ordered GalCiv 2 and ended up playing that quite a lot.

Coming from Morrowind and the hype it was just very hard to accept that so much suck was even possible.

It's very hard to say what this Oblivion thing even was (it was certainly not a Morrowind successor) or how someone could come up with such a monstrosity. I nearly quit already during the prison escape, I almost puked on the keyboard. The closest I can think of is that they had to make a wedding cake that is gigantic and fills the entire hall but the ingredients must only cost 10$ so it is basically made out of dog shit mixed with horse shit. Then millions of people started eating it and making mmm, aaaah that is the best cake there ever was. And there we are now in 2021 and people still believe Oblivion was the defining moment of their gaming life.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Yeah Tetris I'm not quite sure either. It was in the Soviet Union however. The idea "Games can't exist under communism". FUCKIN TETRIS?
I can't stand the argument "b-b-but Tetris!!!!", as if it was some massive outlier or technical achievement. It was a rather simplistic puzzle game popular for the same reason candycrush is popular on Android.

The first version of Tetris as we would recognize it(that is, not the version using brackets and spaces) was released for the IBM PC in 1986.
Here's a list of notable RPGs that released before/same year Tetris was released on the Electronika 60 in 1984:
  • Dunjonquest: Morloc's Tower
  • Dunjonquest: The Datestones of Ryn
  • Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai
  • Akalabeth: World of Doom
  • Rogue: The Adventure Game
  • Dunjonquest: Upper Reaches of Apshai
  • Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
  • Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
  • Dungeons of Daggorath
  • Sword of Fargoal
  • Telengard
  • Tunnels of Doom
  • Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress
  • Wizardry Scenario #2: The Knight of Diamonds
  • Dunjonquest: Gateway to Apshai
  • Moria
  • Ultima III: Exodus
  • Wizardry Scenario 3: Legacy of Llylgamyn
  • Adventure Construction Set: Rivers of Light
  • Hack
  • Lords of Midnight
  • Questron
  • Sword of Kadash
  • Zyll
BREAK: Tetris is first developed for the Electronika 60 at this point.
  • Alternate Reality: The City
  • AutoDuel
  • Lords of Midnight 2: Doomdark's Revenge
  • Mandragore
  • Master of Magic, The
  • Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony
  • Phantasie I: Jelnoa's Chapter
  • Sorderon's Shadow
  • Sword & Sorcery
  • Tales of the Unknown: Volume I - The Bard's Tale
  • Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
  • Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight, The
  • Might and Magic: Book I: Secret of the Inner Sanctum
  • Phantasie II
  • Rings of Zilfin
  • Shard of Spring
  • Starflight
  • Wizard's Crown
  • Wrath of Denethenor
BREAK: Tetris is released for the IBM PC.

The argument that video games wouldn't exist under communism exists because it's fucking true. There would only be games made by people in their spare time. For those of you saying "wow, great! Indie games!" -- lolno, devs work on those as fulltime jobs, not spare time projects. Go take a look at Codex's top 101, only a handful of them would exist if that. And those likely wouldn't exist because the inspiration for them probably wouldn't have ever been made.

IF, however, you are particularly fond of Candy Crush, Cookie Clicker, and Cut the Rope... then maybe games under communism would be appealing to you.
 
Last edited:

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
There were already home computers in the Soviet bloc, did you guys even know that? And some poor suckers bought them, who had no one who could send them a C-64.

They were not even more expensive (todays equivalent of a couple hundred bucks) just slow as fuck. They had games of the type, land the Eagle on the Moon "type how much brake propellant to use" then it would calculate your height, speed and so on. Of course Pong and such stuff.

You could also get any game for the C-64, people sold diskettes with games on them. There was no risk of prosecution except you got a game that was banned. I remember Red Storm Rising was allegedly criminalized by the Stasi. But I had it so it was not hard to get either.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
There were already home computers in the Soviet bloc, did you guys even know that? And some poor suckers bought them, who had no one who could send them a C-64.

They were not even more expensive (todays equivalent of a couple hundred bucks) just slow as fuck. They had games of the type, land the Eagle on the Moon "type how much brake propellant to use" then it would calculate your height, speed and so on. Of course Pong and such stuff.

You could also get any game for the C-64, people sold diskettes with games on them. There was no risk of prosecution except you got a game that was banned. I remember Red Storm Rising was allegedly criminalized by the Stasi. But I had it so it was not hard to get either.
"we could get capitalist games under communism therefore communism had games" lol
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
Do you know anything about "communism" at all?

First of all there wasn't even communism.

This is a homecomputer made in East Germany. It was shit, but it was like a C-64 that was 50 times slower.

ac1_heimcomputer_1_.jpg
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
You shouldn't be surprised when people suddenly respond to you in discussion boards.

This is a homecomputer made in East Germany. It was shit, but it was like a C-64 that was 50 times slower.
Wow... the true power of gommunism...

What do you even want to say? you put g in from of communism?

Of course there were games. The computers were only monochrome and I cant say they had much graphical capabilities at all, but you could play games on them and people did.
 

The Dopamine Cleric

Prospernaut
Shitposter
Joined
Oct 11, 2015
Messages
1,162
Communism doesn't exist.

Should communism exist?

It will never exist.

What do you mean?

I mean it will never exist.

Did it exist in the past?

No.
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
1,954
Location
Harare
RPG Wokedex
You shouldn't be surprised when people suddenly respond to you in discussion boards.

This is a homecomputer made in East Germany. It was shit, but it was like a C-64 that was 50 times slower.
Wow... the true power of gommunism...

What do you even want to say? you put g in from of communism?

Of course there were games. The computers were only monochrome and I cant say they had much graphical capabilities at all, but you could play games on them and people did.

I'm assuming you lived there at the time and aren't talking out of your ass (because I'm naive like that).

What other notable game got made in the Soviet block back then? And did the government agency for software ever actually distribute games? Or was there some other form of game distribution that didn't just boil down to selling pirated games from the West?
 

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,437
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
Looking at the shitshow of Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty Vanguard, three recent high profile games that have had disastrous launches, one wonders whether there might be some truth to this. (It's even been happening for a few years - Fallout 76, Anthem, ME: Andromeda.)

It looks like games are increasingly poorly made even on just a technical level, never mind the woke conformity; to the point that even their intended audience (e.g. the Angry Joe consoomer types) are getting pissed off.
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
@samuraigaiden I don't know notable games because I had a C-128 and we laughed about those people.

And did the government agency for software ever actually distribute games? Or was there some other form of game distribution that didn't just boil down to selling pirated games from the West?

But I do know that they had their own computer scene. I remember that the broadcasted games over the radio. That means at the end of a weekly radio programme about home computers, the last 20 minutes would be nothing but weird frequencies and everyone could record the latest game and then put it in a datasette.

It was just some crap like short text adventures but it was funny. In fact I was working on some games at the time, and friends visited me to see if it was already finished (never got past the stage when I realized memory is limited)

The reason Tetris was made in USSR is most likely it was the ideal game for a computer that was really limited in terms of graphical performance.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Looking at the shitshow of Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty Vanguard, three recent high profile games that have had disastrous launches, one wonders whether there might be some truth to this. (It's even been happening for a few years - Fallout 76, Anthem, ME: Andromeda.)

It looks like games are increasingly poorly made even on just a technical level, never mind the woke conformity; to the point that even their intended audience (e.g. the Angry Joe consoomer types) are getting pissed off.
Video game studios hitting unmanageable sizes as they rapidly expand. Only a few developers seem capable of handling the massive overhead caused by employing so many people e.g., Rockstar. They mostly seem to be ones who expanded much more slowly compared to e.g., CDPR that ballooned in size over only a few years.
If wikipedia's sources are accurate(lol), CDProjekt was estimated to have about 230 employees in 2015, 700 by 2017, and 1,200 by 2019.
 

Azdul

Magister
Joined
Nov 3, 2011
Messages
3,331
Location
Langley, Virginia
Coming from Morrowind and the hype it was just very hard to accept that so much suck was even possible.
(...)
And there we are now in 2021 and people still believe Oblivion was the defining moment of their gaming life.
Coming from Daggerfall - it is almost comical how many things regressed in Morrowind - removed horse riding, levitation climbing and tons of other skills, really small world with tiny dungeons, terrible faces, stiff animations, almost non-existing game balance, small bestiary, obvious real world references (imperial soldiers wore Roman armor, Bretons had French names), retconning existing lore, terrible Dragonbreaks idea, short non-dynamic soundtrack ...

I was sure that other companies will take advantage of Bethesda downfall, correct Morrowind mistakes and create infinitely better games.

It took some time, but I've heard that ex - Black Isle guys are taking a shot at creating game in similar style - Awoved, Avowed or something like that. Finally someone will show Bethesda hacks how it should be done.
 
Last edited:

Ravielsk

Magister
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,514
I am going to play the devils advocate on this one. The regression that took place between Daggerfall -> Morrowind -> Oblivion was inevitable. Going from a pseudo 3D engine where actors are just a couple of sprites with only rudimentary collision detection to a fully 3D engine with fully animated actors has to take it toll somewhere. Lets also not forget that some of the stuff from Daggerfall was rather janky and in many ways it felt more like an exploit rather than a legit mechanic(like the climbing mechanic) and there was simply not enough time/money in the bank to make them more functional. These sorts of cuts are inevitable in the creative process, writers call it "killing your darlings".

The problem is that subsequently Bethesda learned only all the wrong lessons from the whole process and concluded that people want their games to be just very lazily made loot-a-thons. They kept stripping mechanics and replacing them with nothing to a point where FO76 is barely a game. Skyrim in particular is very annoying because basically half the problems that game suffers from are the direct consequence of Bethesda stripping away mechanics. Like they removed NPC disposition so as a direct result an entire class of items and utility had to fly out the window, whole quest stages where you need to convince someone to even talk with you had to be removed because... well because the minigame in Oblivion was not the best mini-game under the sun.

The second half is just them miss-using the remaining mechanics they have. Radiant quests for example could have been glorious if they were used properly to randomize regular quests objectives. So for example instead of the game telling you to go get The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller from a specific tomb a radiant quest would be generated where the horns location would be randomized. It could be placed in some nobles house that is otherwise hard to access, it could be stored in some guild hall or some dude could just have it on him. Hell, the first chunk of the quest could be all about asking in taverns about the horns location and then figuring out how to get it. Had they not removed NPC disposition, radiant quests would have been a great companion mechanic where if you cannot talk the NPC into cooperation you would just have to do some radiant quests for them.
There are so many ways in which the system could be utilized to enhance the game but instead its used as lazy filler after you finish major questlines, because obviously the best part of being guild master is doing the most menial jobs the guild has to offer. GG Todd.
 

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