Decline When did decline start to you?

[Ash]

2006/7. Gears of War, Oblivion, Assassins Creed, Tomb Raider: Legend, Bioshock, Dead Rising, Need for Speed: Pro Street, Final Fantasy 12, Just Cause, Saint's Row, Black, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Kane & Lynch the list goes on.

All of a sudden games just weren't good anymore. The game design was ultra-retarded and insulting. It was like publishers conspired in agreement together to make games utterly mindless, and paid off journos to say their trash was true art. These titles were lauded and ultra-popular, and I was just left scratching my head how anyone could enjoy something so boring. Then as the years went by and more and more this continued, I got angrier and angrier. Business practices got scummier, more and more devs joined the soulless selling out, mobile gaming became huge, my passion was raped.

Today, things are worse in some ways (e.g business practices), slightly better in others (some AAA aren't so declined in design), but the damage is done.

In the three or so years prior to 2006 there was obvious indicators of decline (shit like Deus Ex: Invisible War), but it wasn't industry-wide and there was still plenty great games being made. 2006 was the obvious turning point, especially with the release of the Xbox 360.

I got so angry I decided "I'll show these zero-integrity pieces of shit and the dumbass audience who consume your trash" and set out to make GMDX for Deus Ex. That was mostly a waste of time. It was ignored for so long until I realised that marketing was all that really mattered and pushed hard with that.

 

[agentorange]

2006/7. Gears of War, Oblivion, Assassins Creed, Tomb Raider: Legend, Bioshock, Dead Rising, Need for Speed: Pro Street, Final Fantasy 12, Just Cause, Saint's Row, Black, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Kane & Lynch the list goes on.

How the fuck does Dead Rising fit in that list. It's a very unique game with a strict time limit that casuals whined about until the series was progressively drained of all personality and gameplay depth through the sequels. It's a textbook example of a series that suffered decline, but the first game is anything but.

 

[Ash]

Glad you otherwise agree with everything I said. Perhaps I was unfair to judge that game, I never did play much of it. Maybe I'll try again some day.

 

[hoothoot]

Lootboxes, microtransactions, idle games, clicker games. Regardless of taste/genre this is when games went from games to wretched dopamine drips pushed by vampires. Probably if you looked at charts of sales of games and shit you would be able to see exactly where the decline of gaming started and actually, how do you do that?

 

[Nutmeg]

we didn't care

We did though.

I still do.

Spoiler

Emulated

CRTs for life.

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

Whoa, where do you even get CRTs these days?

 

[Jarpie]

You forgot the demise of Commodore in 1994.

That was actually a major turning point. I switched to the PC in '92 because new games for the Amiga had dried up, and I was a bit shocked because the PC was in many ways a step back. Later I was surprised how many games were eventually ported to the Amiga though. But they came years too late and also suffered because the Amiga had a much higher resolution but only 8 Mhz. Games that were ported like Indianapolis 500 looked better but stuttered badly. And it was the same story with many of the flight sims at the time. Look how badly Red Baron stuttered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4wmsLytJxU

VGA was already superior to OCS and ECS chipsets, only AGA was comparable but it was released two years too late. On pure computing power, PC was ahead of Amiga 500 by 1990-1991, and if I remember correctly, stock Amiga 1200 was comparable to maybe 386. I don't think Amiga had higher resolution, on NTSC Amiga-games run at 320x200 and in PAL 320x256, but at the cost of speed/fps. Unless the game was made for PAL specifically, the graphics were just stretched to fit the higher resolution and as I said, they ran slower than on NTSC hardware.

 

[mondblut]

VGA was already superior to OCS and ECS chipsets, only AGA was comparable but it was released two years too late.

Games didn't catch up with VGA mode until 1990 or so. PC gaming was stuck with EGA while Amiga was already basking in 256 (or at least 64) color glory. Just compare Pool of Radiance or Dragon Wars between the two.

 

[Jarpie]

VGA was already superior to OCS and ECS chipsets, only AGA was comparable but it was released two years too late.

Games didn't catch up with VGA mode until 1990 or so. PC gaming was stuck with EGA while Amiga was already basking in 256 (or at least 64) color glory. Just compare Pool of Radiance or Dragon Wars between the two.

Amiga 1200 was released in late 1992, and first great VGA games were released in 1990, like Wing Commander. OCS and ECS were 32 colors, not 64, it's true that Amiga was ahead of PC graphically till VGA hit it off in 1990, and that's when the balance shifted IMO, and that's why Amiga 1200/AGA was two years too late. Amiga didn't really have many "inclined" games as far as crpgs, strategy games etc are concerned if you look at the games made exclusively for Amiga, most were action games in some form or another. A lot of the ports from PC were lazy, either they ran like shit and/or didn't even use the capabilities to their advantage, for example, Ultima 5 port for Amiga is fucking horrible piece of shit, just one song plays during the game and keyboard input was buggy as fuck. People IMO tend to look at Amiga with too much through rose-tinted glasses.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The best version of Pool of Radiance was the Amiga one.

 

[Jarpie]

The best version of Pool of Radiance was the Amiga one.

Yeah, I'd say based on what I've seen, for every superior Amiga-port there are at least two or three lazy or mediocre ones. Wasn't Amiga-version of Pool of Radiance made a few years after the PC and C64 one?

And get to the topic...I'd say that the decline started with Sony's Playstation, and I've argued this before. At least where I live, Sony brought credibility with Playstation, "If big electronics company like Sony will make gaming console, it's not just for the kids and manchildren!", and I wouldn't be surprised if Playstation is part of the reason why Microsoft wanted to make their own abomination and leech the PC developers.

 

[Lemming42]

Tomb Raider Legend really was a turning point. The Tomb Raider series had already died under Core Design's leadership, but I remember when Legend came out, I was really struck by just how fucking dumbed down it was. Tomb Raider made for literal babies, or perhaps unusually intelligent pigs.

Climb-on-anything system replaced by magnetically attaching to specific ledges. Big levels to explore replaced with linear corridors leading to the occasional (boring) larger area. Mastering the controls replaced with fucking QTEs. Bad combat in the originals replaced with somehow even worse combat that goes on forever. And then there's the very 2006-style shit like the motorbike segments, and the rather lengthy cutscenes for a plot that literally nobody gives the remotest fuck about.

Oblivion and Tomb Raider Legend in the same year was a major, major red flag that something had gone tits up in the gaming industry. Both were games that heavily stripped away the things that made their predecessors good (although less so in Oblivion's case, perhaps), and both met with universal critical acclaim.

 

[Ash]

Fun fact: Tomb Raider Legend's lead designer was Doug church of Looking Glass. System Shock/Ultima Underworld.

 

[Tehdagah]

2006/7. Gears of War, Oblivion, Assassins Creed, Tomb Raider: Legend, Bioshock, Dead Rising, Need for Speed: Pro Street, Final Fantasy 12, Just Cause, Saint's Row, Black, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Kane & Lynch the list goes on.

How the fuck does Dead Rising fit in that list. It's a very unique game with a strict time limit that casuals whined about until the series was progressively drained of all personality and gameplay depth through the sequels. It's a textbook example of a series that suffered decline, but the first game is anything but.

Dead Rising 1 has abysmal AI companions. The game is a prototype for the vastly superior and more polished sequels.

 

[Jarpie]

Lilura are you just gonna impotently cryrage or do you have actual arguments to make?

 

[502]

For me it was when consoles started trying to play PC like games so basically with the release of the original Xbox and Halo. Almost everything wrong with PC gaming today is rooted in consoles.

If we're talking about the ongoing state and not the previous crises and fuck ups in 80's or 90's, Microsoft's DirectXbox and the multiplatform development from then on is indeed the single biggest culprit. They pushed consolitis as a good thing. Simple controls, terrible interfaces, lack of choice and agency designed for controllers, televisions and consoles. Of course compromise is a slippery slope and one by one games butcher micromanagement in the name of accessibility and we have what we have.

The rest is about human nature, technology, etc.

 

[Ash]

The thing is console games went to absolute shit at the same time too. Ignoring many great multiplat games and only using exclusives as examples, Castlevania SoTN became Castlevania Lord of Shadows. Turok became Turok (Reboot). Parasite Eve became The Third Birthday. There is a big difference in the complexity and required attention between these games. Everything. Every good franchise PC or console raped before my very eyes.
I've never attributed the decline as a "muh consoles" thing as many here seem to do, but rather industry-wide selling out. That line of thinking is false. The decline is just more noticeable on PC because there was more complexity that "needed" to be streamlined for mass consumption, as well as PC becoming an afterthought simply because consoles had a larger userbase.

 

[Semiurge]

When the ill-begotten Playstation 1 appeared.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

2006/7. Gears of War, Oblivion, Assassins Creed, Tomb Raider: Legend, Bioshock, Dead Rising, Need for Speed: Pro Street, Final Fantasy 12, Just Cause, Saint's Row, Black, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Kane & Lynch the list goes on.

Kane & Lynch was good though.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

VGA was already superior to OCS and ECS chipsets, only AGA was comparable but it was released two years too late. On pure computing power, PC was ahead of Amiga 500 by 1990-1991, and if I remember correctly, stock Amiga 1200 was comparable to maybe 386. I don't think Amiga had higher resolution, on NTSC Amiga-games run at 320x200 and in PAL 320x256, but at the cost of speed/fps. Unless the game was made for PAL specifically, the graphics were just stretched to fit the higher resolution and as I said, they ran slower than on NTSC hardware.

The Commodore Amiga had a 'high-resolution' 16-color 640x400 mode and a 'low-resolution' 32-color 320x200 mode (for PAL, the resolutions were 640x512 an 320x256), which could be extended to 64 colors in EHB (Extra Half-Bright) mode that added a second set of 32 colors based on the first 32 colors but at half the brightness, all selected from a palette of 4096 colors (12-bit). HAM (Hold and Modify) mode was capable of displaying all 4096 colors on the screen simultaneously, but had various complications and was rarely used in games. The Amiga was vastly superior to the EGA graphical standard for IBM PCs and still superior to the VGA graphical standard in certain respects, but by 1990 a few games were released taking advantage of the larger number of colors available in VGA and the number rose rapidly over the next two years, putting the first-generation Amigas at an insurmountable disadvantage for gaming.

16-color high-resolution images from 1987:

EHB mode images from 1991:

HAM mode image from 1990:

 

[Ash]

2006/7. Gears of War, Oblivion, Assassins Creed, Tomb Raider: Legend, Bioshock, Dead Rising, Need for Speed: Pro Street, Final Fantasy 12, Just Cause, Saint's Row, Black, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Kane & Lynch the list goes on.

Kane & Lynch was good though.

You've got to be kidding. I beat that piece of shit game in one sitting (three hours perhaps?) and it was fucking torturous mindless cover shooter for brotards featuring edgy GTAV Trevor prototypes. And, this is the interesting part, the game journos actually rightfully trashed this one. Publisher didn't get the memo yet that you're supposed to bribe if you don't want your piece of shit game to face some form of accurate justice.

Even the Xbox360 scores are terrible: https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/kane-lynch-dead-men
relevant because 360 scoring had the lowest standards (of user and journo scoring).

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are merely trolling and don't have abysmal tastes.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

And, this is the interesting part, the game journos actually rightfully trashed this one.

makes you think

 

[Ash]

No it doesn't. Publisher didn't cough up score incliner bribe, and marketing team failed to create a hype machine that holds great sway over journo and dumbass masses opinion.

 

[Jarpie]

VGA was already superior to OCS and ECS chipsets, only AGA was comparable but it was released two years too late. On pure computing power, PC was ahead of Amiga 500 by 1990-1991, and if I remember correctly, stock Amiga 1200 was comparable to maybe 386. I don't think Amiga had higher resolution, on NTSC Amiga-games run at 320x200 and in PAL 320x256, but at the cost of speed/fps. Unless the game was made for PAL specifically, the graphics were just stretched to fit the higher resolution and as I said, they ran slower than on NTSC hardware.

The Commodore Amiga had a 'high-resolution' 16-color 640x400 mode and a 'low-resolution' 32-color 320x200 mode (for PAL, the resolutions were 640x512 an 320x256), which could be extended to 64 colors in EHB (Extra Half-Bright) mode that added a second set of 32 colors based on the first 32 colors but at half the brightness, all selected from a palette of 4096 colors (12-bit). HAM (Hold and Modify) mode was capable of displaying all 4096 colors on the screen simultaneously, but had various complications and was rarely used in games. The Amiga was vastly superior to the EGA graphical standard for IBM PCs and still superior to the VGA graphical standard in certain respects, but by 1990 a few games were released taking advantage of the larger number of colors available in VGA and the number rose rapidly over the next two years, putting the first-generation Amigas at an insurmountable disadvantage for gaming.

16-color high-resolution images from 1987:

EHB mode images from 1991:

HAM mode image from 1990:

Yeah, from what I remember, the edges tended to look blurry on HAM-modes, especially on CRTs. A few games also used interlaced mode so the resolution could be higher, at least Evil's Doom used those.

 

[Nito]

I think the beginning of the decline for me was 2006/7 with the release of the original Bioshock, which was a profound disappointment as I thought it was going to be the next big immersive sim, and then the following year with C&C3, marking the very tail end of RTS games outside of Starcraft.