Why the decline will NEVER stop

[LordDenton]

Do you know why we still get the occasional good game these days? Because there are still developers out there who were actual PC gamers and loved the flexibility and complexity that comes with PC gaming.

When I was in college there was this junior level student who was a massive console gamer (played Halo and other console games in the lobby on his Xbox). One day I overhear him telling one of his friends that "after he graduates he wants to become a game designer".

And then it hit me... These are our future game developers! These Xbox gamers and simplistic game mechanic lovers are going to design all future games. Because, see, we will reach a point where developers who were once PC gamers will simply retire, and the only ones left will be those who grew up playing Halo and Gears of War.

Fuck, just thinking about this makes me sad.

 

[ever]

Why does it make you sad? If you care so deeply then attempt designing, programming and making games yourself.

It is more fun than just playing them ( not always, often times you want to bask in the glory of past giants )

If you have vision, and ideas please do not keep them from the world, but realize them.

 

[LordDenton]

Why does it make you sad? If you care so deeply then attempt designing, programming and making games yourself.

It is more fun than just playing them ( not always, often times you want to bask in the glory of past giants )

If you have vision, and ideas please do not keep them from the world, but realize them.

I do have a computer science degree and I think I do have the capability to create a game (I say "I think" because I've developed many programs, but never a game). But the games I envision... I simply cannot make on my own (or at least it would take me many, many years to finish one). And, unfortunately, I don't know any other programmers and/or writers with the same love for classic PC gaming as I do who I can team up with. Actually it's not just programmers. I literally don't know anyone else in real life who likes, say, Fallout 2.

 

[Achilles]

Well there are still a whole lot of PC gamers worldwide.

 

[ever]

I do have a computer science degree and I think I do have the capability to create a game (I say "I think" because I've developed many programs, but never a game). But the games I envision... I simply cannot make on my own (or at least it would take me many, many years to finish one). And, unfortunately, I don't know any other programmers and/or writers with the same love for classic PC gaming as I do who I can team up with. Actually it's not just programmers. I literally don't know anyone else in real life who likes, say, Fallout 2.

I suffer the same problem but the journey is the reward.

I made a pretty cool game after my first few weeks learning how to program. It was a pacman level editor where you could make your own pacman levels, set the ghost routes, then you could play them in a three dimensional ray casting engine with sprites. Very similar to wolfenstein. I developed it in literally two weeks. It was coded in Java. And looking back at it I think "how the fuck did I do that" since then I have just gone deeper and deeper into graphics programming to a fault, because to me if my game doesn't look better than anything else on the market, I've failed.

What I'm trying to say is you have to get the idea of "it has to be the best thing ever the first time" out of your head, and just make crap and try and sell it ( if you have money, who needs friends )but always sort of sticking to your goal.

Now if only I could take my own advice :D

 

[LordDenton]

Well there are still a whole lot of PC gamers worldwide.

But that's the thing. There aren't that many. For example, almost all my computer science classmates who played games were console gamers. Some were "PC gamers" but only played World of Warcraft or Diablo 2.

In my dorm everyone played console games. No exceptions. There were even campus-wide organized gaming tournaments once in a while. This would be perfect for PC games like Counter Strike, but no, their games included Halo, Madden, and MLB on Xbox.

Even Europe which is considered the last bastion of PC gaming is being slowly transformed into a console gaming cash cow. Take Piranha Bytes:

Gothic 1-3: PC exclusive masterpieces.
Risen: great game because primary platform was PC.
Risen 2: consoles are now as important as the PC. Game world is now split in multiple small portions and designed in such a way that consoles can handle it.

Then you have Jowood which butchers the Gothic name by making Arcania in a hope to please console and casual gamers.

Sorry, but the decline is affecting the entire world, not just the US.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Decline suggests change. Were there not bad games back then that were made solely for profit with no quality in mind?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Why does it make you sad? If you care so deeply then attempt designing, programming and making games yourself.

It is more fun than just playing them ( not always, often times you want to bask in the glory of past giants )

If you have vision, and ideas please do not keep them from the world, but realize them.

I do have a computer science degree and I think I do have the capability to create a game (I say "I think" because I've developed many programs, but never a game). But the games I envision... I simply cannot make on my own (or at least it would take me many, many years to finish one). And, unfortunately, I don't know any other programmers and/or writers with the same love for classic PC gaming as I do who I can team up with. Actually it's not just programmers. I literally don't know anyone else in real life who likes, say, Fallout 2.

I have three guys who like Fallout in my class. I can't talk with two of them because I hate them for following alien ideologies and I kinda can't talk with the remaining one about games since he bought a fagbox and it turned out that he likes DA2. Weird stuff because I talked with him a lot on these topics during the first few months of the last school year.

In my previous school I knew one guy who liked Fallout and similar cRPGs and we talked on every pause every day about that stuff. At certain points we basically started talking about the same fucking stuff practically every day and somehow it was still enjoyable . It's almost like religion .

 

[procrastinator]

While third world countries exist, there will be people who can only afford to have a cheap PC, but not a gaming console
: x

 

[Excommunicator]

You are correct that the "crop" is currently in the process of being fully replaced by a whole new type of seed that will grow up knowing absolutely nothing of the games we grew up with. The generation following generation Y (what do they call them, generation Z?) are already removed from these games, but it will take another generation before these particular people are in the position of making games for themselves. Even the youngest designers of today still have (brief) very early experiences with the games from before the "industry revolution", or the "decline" as we mostly call it.

Perhaps fortunately, the very first generations of professional game developers (85-95) are actually not that old yet, so they will still be around for a number of decades, and in that presence they will hopefully be able to pass some things on to the new designer generations who have no experience at all from last century. We all know kids rarely listen to older people, but there may just be a few who are entertaining enough to catch the ears of the new youngins. Then again, who from that era is still around that is worth listening to? I can't think of any who haven't declined in their offerings.

But it is going to get much worse before it gets better. Just imagine it, very soon there will be an entire generation that is once-removed from ANY interaction with the games and the way our games were before the industry had fully transformed into what it is now (perhaps "pre-Oblivion" might be seen as a very significant turning point, for example). It will be the ONLY game history these generations understand first-hand. This will continue to happen until that generation gives way to a new one (maybe second, maybe third) who are unfamiliar with the way games were made two or so generations before them. They will start trying to change the landscape and "innovate" in their own ways (as young folk do, when trying to make their mark in a world already conquered) and will rediscover older philosophies, believing that they have had new original ideas (which is what we need them to believe in order for them to run with it). But because they will only know these simple linear movie games, they won't recognise the characteristics of earlier games as "old fashioned". That will help them adjust to the idea (again).

This is a phenomena we can see in the modern evolution of music, although it won't be quite as fluid in the game industry as the music industry is, but hopefully more integral.

The role of the PC, on the other hand, well it will most likely grow again with all of this streaming and cloud crap, but probably decline again some time after once consoles start to integrate those capabilities (things like taking your console home without buying any games at all, plugging it in, connecting to Microsoft store with your electronic credit/CC, buying any game you want while you're still at home and playing it immediately then and there without all the other process).



And for the record, I have never owned any kind of console and have no intention of ever getting one.

 

[someone else]

Console gaming isn't what it used to be. Those were some awesome NES and SEGA days. My memories of Atari are less positive.

 

[Achilles]

Even Europe which is considered the last bastion of PC gaming is being slowly transformed into a console gaming cash cow. Take Piranha Bytes:

That's just publisher pressure.Even if PB's home country is Germany, they still have to sell their game at the US and UK markets, both of which are console territory. Publishers are just greedy and developers are lazy. They want to maximise their profit with the least amount of effort, hence multiplatform games.

 

[lisac2k]

Then you have Jowood which butchers the Gothic name by making Arcania in a hope to please console and casual gamers.

The motives quoted may need some clarification. The JoWoodmen and -frauen never had tact needed to stay in the business. They were suits, and it simply wasn't enough to keep them swimming in the pool with sharks. There was hardly a wish to please someone [console gamers]; what they tried is to follow the trend and hope for the best, which would (probably, not certainly) provide them with the reviving injection of exchange stock points for their cadaver... which in the end became wormfood, no matter the effort.

You can't blame the businessman for his (death) wish to stay in the business, but you can blame him for making it more business and less entertainment, which JoWood constantly did - and which other big game companies tend to do more and more each day.

Sometimes, when I read interviews with the people currently being 'successful' in the gaming business, talking about their titles which are sold in millions of copies, I sometimes do feel a certain paranoia in their words, a fear that they'll live up to the day where they'll be the Woodmen. But we all know it won't happen any soon, right? There will always be something to make a business of: a romanceable NPC, a hero whose perilous adventures conquer the hearts of those enslaved by neoliberalism, a social network game for the neighbour...

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I have three guys who like Fallout in my class. I can't talk with two of them because I hate them for following alien ideologies and I kinda can't talk with the remaining one about games since he bought a fagbox and it turned out that he likes DA2.

You write off people entirely based on small stuff like that...?

I mean I'm pretty judgmental but even I wouldn't write people off entirely based on one or two consoletard traits.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I have three guys who like Fallout in my class. I can't talk with two of them because I hate them for following alien ideologies and I kinda can't talk with the remaining one about games since he bought a fagbox and it turned out that he likes DA2.

You write off people entirely based on small stuff like that...?

I didn't write him off. I just don't talk with him about games.

 

[shihonage]

I don't write people off either. I Jehovah Witness them about Fallout and expose the patterns in the games they enjoy, until they start seeing just one game wearing different skins.

Then they accuse me of poisoning their fun, and I say, "you're welcome".

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I say, "you're welcome".

start an shooter games review site

fps codex

 

[shihonage]

I had an xtremely edgy review site in 1996.

No more.

 

[Gragt]

It's also the most optimized Win95 game I've ever seen (IMHO). It actually runs like it's a DOS game.

Good times.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS YOU SOUND LIKE YOU ARE KINDA BEING ASSHOLES

I DONT THINK LESS OF ANYONE IF THEY ARENT INTO OLD SCHOOL CRPGS I JUST DONT TALK WITH THEM ABOUT IT

I ALSO REALIZE MANY PEOPLE DONT HAVE TIME TO PLAY WITH GAMES THAT HAVE A STEEP LEARNING CURVE CAUSE THEY HAVE OTHER FUCKING SHIT TO DO IN LIFE

BROS I GUARANTEE THERE ARE LOTS OF STUPID PRICKS THAT ALL OF YOU KNOW THAT THINK YOU ARE STUPID BECAUSE YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC ON THE RADIO OR BECAUSE YOU DONT WATCH FRENCH INDIE CINEMA OR BECAUSE YOU WILL EAT FOOD THAT ISNT FANCY ENOUGH OR WHATEVER

NONE OF YOU FUCKS ARE SMARTER BECAUSE YOU LIKE MORE SOPHISTICED GAMES BROS

BROS THIS FORUM IS A HOTBED OF ADOLESCENT ANGST I AM SORRY BROS YOU ARE NOT UNIQUE AND SPECIALL PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THE VIDEO GAMES YOU PLAY

 

[sgc_meltdown]

might I remind you all that blobert is a generally a very nice fellow who errs on the side of the ineffable human spirit and thinks david gaider is secretly keeping it real and not believing his own party line about the great bioware rpg revolution

with that said blobert you shouldn't really need to keep watchdogging these threads I mean who the hell doesn't notice half the codex is assholes whether you account for good taste or use someone's cursory five minute shift of clanging the decline alarm his way as a pretext for telling everyone to get some perspective and another meaning to life in that order of difficulty and hyperbolic quixoticism

 

[Excidium]

BLOBERT is a great poster, when he's not sounding like a broken record:

LOLOL CODEX WHY YOU HATE CONSOLES IF YOU PLAY CONSOLE PORTS!!!?? BROS USE YOUR BRIAN/

LOLO BROS YOU ARE ALL IMMATURE I HAVE A WIFE AND KID COVERED IN SHIT HEAD TO TOE STOP WHINING ABOUT POINTLESS SHIT!!?!

 

[sea]

You write off people entirely based on small stuff like that...?

I mean I'm pretty judgmental but even I wouldn't write people off entirely based on one or two consoletard traits.

Most people who are into console games enjoy them but rarely take them too seriously or think too deeply - and if they do, hey, it's just a game, right? To some degree you're always going to be "that guy" but it's occasionally difficult to straddle the line between genuinely educating and getting people to think more, and just being a fucking jerk. I've had friends that I've steered in better directions, but others just don't give enough of a shit and there's little you can do - like getting someone to stop watching Michael Bay films, if they like 'splosions, they like 'splosions, and the discussion sort of ends there. I guess you just have to have tact when you tell them that Fallout 3 is akin to desecrating your own mother's corpse.

 

[MetalCraze]

start an shooter games review site

fps codex

We have RPG Codex for that.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

start an shooter games review site

fps codex

We have RPG Codex for that.

Zing!