The 90s was the apex of coolness in gaming, right?

[RaggleFraggle]

B, Same applies to rule books and finding out of print stuff. Someone has a copy of Goblin rampage VS Elf hookers version 2.5 but you sure as fuck don't and never will. Unless some Grog decides to scan it and upload it online you cannot play some games because you can never read their rules.

Blame copyright law. People are scared of being sued for preserving out of print books. This has been a known issue for decades.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

B, Same applies to rule books and finding out of print stuff. Someone has a copy of Goblin rampage VS Elf hookers version 2.5 but you sure as fuck don't and never will. Unless some Grog decides to scan it and upload it online you cannot play some games because you can never read their rules.

Blame copyright law. People are scared of being sued for preserving out of print books. This has been a known issue for decades.

Never been a big issue with old tabletop stuff. There's so many online archives of old junk no one remembers

 

[RaggleFraggle]

B, Same applies to rule books and finding out of print stuff. Someone has a copy of Goblin rampage VS Elf hookers version 2.5 but you sure as fuck don't and never will. Unless some Grog decides to scan it and upload it online you cannot play some games because you can never read their rules.

Blame copyright law. People are scared of being sued for preserving out of print books. This has been a known issue for decades.

Never been a big issue with old tabletop stuff. There's so many online archives of old junk no one remembers

That is the issue. They’d remember it if the communities were allowed to preserve and share and remix the material, but copyright law gets in the way. Have you tried building a community around a dead IP like Star Frontiers or Star*Drive? Without the publishing rights, it’s impossible. There are still tiny communities for it, but they’re steadily shrinking to nothing.

Copyright terms are currently a century. This benefits nobody but ancient corporations like Disney. Terms need to be reduced to 20 or so years.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

B, Same applies to rule books and finding out of print stuff. Someone has a copy of Goblin rampage VS Elf hookers version 2.5 but you sure as fuck don't and never will. Unless some Grog decides to scan it and upload it online you cannot play some games because you can never read their rules.

Blame copyright law. People are scared of being sued for preserving out of print books. This has been a known issue for decades.

Never been a big issue with old tabletop stuff. There's so many online archives of old junk no one remembers

That is the issue. They’d remember it if the communities were allowed to preserve and share and remix the material, but copyright law gets in the way. Have you tried building a community around a dead IP like Star Frontiers or Star*Drive? Without the publishing rights, it’s impossible. There are still tiny communities for it, but they’re steadily shrinking to nothing.

Copyright terms are currently a century. This benefits nobody but ancient corporations like Disney. Terms need to be reduced to 20 or so years.

Check /tg/'s pdf share thread. Copyright has never stopped piracy.

 

[JamesDixon]

B, Same applies to rule books and finding out of print stuff. Someone has a copy of Goblin rampage VS Elf hookers version 2.5 but you sure as fuck don't and never will. Unless some Grog decides to scan it and upload it online you cannot play some games because you can never read their rules.

Blame copyright law. People are scared of being sued for preserving out of print books. This has been a known issue for decades.

Never been a big issue with old tabletop stuff. There's so many online archives of old junk no one remembers

That is the issue. They’d remember it if the communities were allowed to preserve and share and remix the material, but copyright law gets in the way. Have you tried building a community around a dead IP like Star Frontiers or Star*Drive? Without the publishing rights, it’s impossible. There are still tiny communities for it, but they’re steadily shrinking to nothing.

Copyright terms are currently a century. This benefits nobody but ancient corporations like Disney. Terms need to be reduced to 20 or so years.

WEG Star Wars is doing just fine and it's been out of print for over 20 years. Rules and game mechanics cannot be copyrighted only the setting stuff can be.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

There are tons of settings that are dead and it’s impossible to grow communities for because the fans don’t have the rights to the material. If they have communities, and many don’t, these are small and perpetually shrinking. Piracy doesn’t solve that problem and anyone who says so clearly hasn’t suffered this problem.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

There are tons of settings that are dead and it’s impossible to grow communities for because the fans don’t have the rights to the material. If they have communities, and many don’t, these are small and perpetually shrinking. Piracy doesn’t solve that problem and anyone who says so clearly hasn’t suffered this problem.

You have no clue what you're talking about and I'll give you a prime example.

Halo had a 6mm wargame called ground command. It didn't do very well and eventually the game died when the company making it went out of business and the new owners didn't renew the rights. The community rallied round and made a fan version of the rulebook and started to release free STL files for models so people could print their own armies. There's a guy making his full time living off of sculpting Halo STL files because of it now. Microsoft, 343 and the original game creators are well aware it's happening and don't care.

Bloodbowl? Kept alive strictly due to fan support for well over a decade of neglect. Multiple new teams and fan rulebooks exist and eventually it convinced games workshop to pick it back up.

Mordheim is still dead except for fan creations. It still has an active and some what growing fanbase.

There's nothing to do with copyright stopping games from existing and becoming popular. There are plenty of games whole sale ripping stuff off left to do their own thing. Often it's these fan communities that enable companies to revive their own properties because the piracy crowd is so large. Didn't the 80's TMNT stuff get a kickstarter this year? No one cared about that, you had to pirate it.

 

[MerchantKing]

Yes. Games used to be good back in the 90's. Now they're garbage.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

There are tons of settings that are dead and it’s impossible to grow communities for because the fans don’t have the rights to the material. If they have communities, and many don’t, these are small and perpetually shrinking. Piracy doesn’t solve that problem and anyone who says so clearly hasn’t suffered this problem.

You have no clue what you're talking about and I'll give you a prime example.

Halo had a 6mm wargame called ground command. It didn't do very well and eventually the game died when the company making it went out of business and the new owners didn't renew the rights. The community rallied round and made a fan version of the rulebook and started to release free STL files for models so people could print their own armies. There's a guy making his full time living off of sculpting Halo STL files because of it now. Microsoft, 343 and the original game creators are well aware it's happening and don't care.

Bloodbowl? Kept alive strictly due to fan support for well over a decade of neglect. Multiple new teams and fan rulebooks exist and eventually it convinced games workshop to pick it back up.

Mordheim is still dead except for fan creations. It still has an active and some what growing fanbase.

There's nothing to do with copyright stopping games from existing and becoming popular. There are plenty of games whole sale ripping stuff off left to do their own thing. Often it's these fan communities that enable companies to revive their own properties because the piracy crowd is so large. Didn't the 80's TMNT stuff get a kickstarter this year? No one cared about that, you had to pirate it.

How does a handful of lucky fandoms disprove the mountains of unlucky ones? You yourself just said there are countless forgotten franchises sitting in pirate archives. You said you’re dependent on grog charity to scan old games. Now you’re contradicting yourself because you’re only interested in being right rather than actually addressing the problem. Stop being obsessed with being right and listen to what I actually said. Whether you believe it or not, there are numerous forgotten tabletop IPs and dwindling fandoms that cannot be revived unless copyright law is reformed.

Example: There was a kickstarter for Alternity a few years ago that quickly imploded and died once the writers and fans realized they didn’t actually have the rights to the original IPs. This was kickstarted by the original writers of the 1998 game, and they still failed because they couldn’t get the rights.

Another example: The 1997 rpg Everlasting was owned by Chipp Dobbs. He died years ago and his family who inherited the copyright is impossible to find. Only some of the pdfs are available on drivethrurpg. There’s no community for it anywhere. Sure, I could pirate the books, sell my own version, etc. But I would be opening myself to litigation from his heirs if they ever found out and decided to claim copyright infringement. The problem of orphaned works is a big problem with copyright.

Numerous PDFs over the years have been taken down by technical errors and the owners simply cannot be bothered to deal with that. Many of these people are hobbyists who have lives and can’t be expected to maintain the tech after decades. I spend a couple years trying to fix an issue with one 20-year old PDF on drivethru so that I wouldn’t have to pirate it to share it with others, but it never got fixed despite me sending multiple emails to tech support and the original writer who was selling it. It’s like they want it to only be available via piracy!

Some fandoms are lucky enough not to deal with that, but many more have those problems. “Just pirate it dude!” isn’t the solution. That’s an irrelevant band-aid fix for the cancer in our legal system. We need to cut out the damn cancer, not ignore it!

You can read about the problems in detail here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/

…and plenty of other essays.

I’ve already had so many numbskulls already tell me to “pirate the books, dude” as if that actually solves the problem. I’m done trying to explain this.

 

[Stella Brando]

 

[spookyheart]

it was pure perfection that and the 2000s, everything else went all downhill from here.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Not only gaming.

 

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

I think 90s was the only time gaming was cool. Although also in the 90s it was, "better to be dead than cool" so you can't really win in terms of coolness. But the 90s games are clearly leagues above everything that came after. And better TV, movies, music, even women looked better with natural hair and nice clothes. Now they all look like skanky whores with velcro eyebrows. Wtf

 

[Dark Souls II]

The complete list of games that were actually considered cool in the 90s:

1. Quake 3
2. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I think there was a lot of neat content in 2000s. The d20 OGL boom, d20 Modern, Chronicles of Darkness, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Nephilim: Revelation, Unisystem, plenty of indie games, etc.

It was around when the Great Recession hit in 2008 that things went to hell in a handbasket.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I would posit that the 1980s was the apex and the entire grunge movement shit all over things.

Kyuss is the apex of bands named after gods from rpg pantheon. Also, founded 1989.

OT: I like AiC a lot, but it's metal disguised as grunge.

 

[Kev Inkline]

The complete list of games that were actually considered cool in the 90s:

1. Quake 3
2. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

You must be so young you don't remember early nineties games. Also, Pro Skater 2 was released 2000.

 

[farastudemodand]

80s was better. The 90s started nose diving by 1995.

 

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

Yes, 90s is objectively the best decade for video games. I don't think it can be topped anytime soon.

I think it will get good again in the 2090s.

 

[FritzedProcess]

I think there was a lot of neat content in 2000s. The d20 OGL boom, d20 Modern, Chronicles of Darkness, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Nephilim: Revelation, Unisystem, plenty of indie games, etc.

It was around when the Great Recession hit in 2008 that things went to hell in a handbasket.

I think the d20 OGL boom was the main culprit of the decline from the mid-2000s onwards. It's fine for D&D and homebrews, but many companies got a hard-on for it and released d20 material in settings where the system was completely out of place (e.g.: Call of Cthulhu d20, Rokugan d20 -although this one was a D&D 3 sourcebook) because it's what's en vogue, so let's McDonaldize roleplaying and shit out a slew of d20 slop.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I think there was a lot of neat content in 2000s. The d20 OGL boom, d20 Modern, Chronicles of Darkness, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Nephilim: Revelation, Unisystem, plenty of indie games, etc.

It was around when the Great Recession hit in 2008 that things went to hell in a handbasket.

I think the d20 OGL boom was the main culprit of the decline from the mid-2000s onwards. It's fine for D&D and homebrews, but many companies got a hard-on for it and released d20 material in settings where the system was completely out of place (e.g.: Call of Cthulhu d20, Rokugan d20 -although this one was a D&D 3 sourcebook) because it's what's en vogue, so let's McDonaldize roleplaying and shit out a slew of d20 slop.

That’s true for anything. Sturgeon’s law and all. Most of the material made was for D&D anyway. Other major publishers didn’t adopt the OGL so there weren’t similar booms for other popular systems at the time.

But let’s be honest. d20 was the most popular system at the time and it was a sound marketing decision to sell to that market. A lot of players just refused to play anything else. That’s hardly publishers’ faults.

There were still other publishers making other systems. None of them were remotely as popular and none of them were using OGL.

 

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

We are in the 4th Turning according to Strauss & Howe's theory. Not a very good theory though and probably summed up better by the phrase, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” ― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain.

 

[JamesDixon]

I would posit that the 1980s was the apex and the entire grunge movement shit all over things.

Kyuss is the apex of bands named after gods from rpg pantheon. Also, founded 1989.

OT: I like AiC a lot, but it's metal disguised as grunge.

That's your opinion and welcome to it.

 

[Glop_dweller]

If a digital product disappears, then it means that it was a bad product.

Prey, Myth 1 & 2, Nolf 1 & 2 just to name a few.

Prey is on Steam, but they cannot sell any more of them.
(It should go without saying that I mean Prey from 2006.)

Spoiler

I could see VR arcades becoming a thing in the future.

 

[Thalstarion]

I liked the PS1 and PS2 era a lot. It definitely defined my taste in games, particularly horror games and RPG's. It's disheartening to think that we won't get new games like Shadow Hearts or Haunting Ground in the current era because they'd be seen as 'problematic'.