What's happening with the new games?

Hello everyone,

i just wanted to share my concerns about this. I am an old player, from the first generation of computer gamers to be more accurate, and i always enjoy it, discovering new games, new stuff, etc, but lately i'm quite disapointed at hwere are the game industry going to... i will try to explain the best i can.

Hardware related, did the game industry programmers forgot how to do their job? nowadays all i see is more hardware req. and less code programming, comeon guys, do your job! I have games 15 years old that makes a 1500% better use of the computere resources than nowadays games.

Playability related, some time ago there used to be games suitable for everyone, difficulty levels that actually worked, etc; nowadays i see games are made either for morons or for hardcore geeks? I'm fine with a whole keyboard mapped plus mouse and a joystick if you like, that's not what i mean, i mean about content.

MMORPG's.... what's the deal with all PVP oriented now???? I was checking mmorpg's the other day with a couple of friends, we wanted to play something new online taking advantage of our vacations and we found out that there are basically no PVE mmo's anymore?? All what we've found were either ancient or so bad that we had nightmares about them... and i mean about quality. In several days of searching we couldn0t find anything we haven't already played (and got tired of). Everything now is PVP/PK, like if a whole world full of enemies of all kinds were not enough people seem to need to focus on killing eachother... I've even seen myself good games compeltelly ruioed after they added PVP to them (i mean about oldie mmorpgs here)

Multiplayer, what happened to the LAN possibility? Almost none of the new games is able to play multiplayer on LAN, those that has multiplayer mode are online... like if everyone had a T1 connection to play...

Online Content... wtf i do not want to have to connect my gaimg comp to the internet to play a stand alone game! I do not have trouble with extra content, as long as they don't do like dragon age... DA2 is like 1/3 of what DAO was in playtime hours for the base retail version, just a rip off.

All Online, that's what i find when i search for new games, all is going towards online gaming, i like to go to the game store, purchase a box with the game and manuals inside, go home install and enjoy as it pleases me. But no, everyday are more and more the online games and less and lesser the true stand alone games.

Well, sorry about all this, but i had it inside and was consuming me from the guts, i thought the best place to share these thoughts could be here. I'm sure there are a few more things that me and my friends find disgusting about the newer games but either i don't recall them now or cannot shape them properly in english (that's not my languaje)

It's almost fun... i find myself more and more oftenly playing old games everytime instead of new ones, same happens to my friends, no wonder why...

Thanks for reading.

...As long as there are brainwashed fanboys that buy everything, there will be cheaters among the game development communities...

Dragon Age 2 - dumbed down Dragon Age Origins

Mass Effect 2 - dumbed down Mass Effect 1

I have lost and continue to lose respect for BioWare...but who cares what i think? So long there are people who will buy any game out there, no matter how bad or how cheated we should be feeling...devs are going to continue create and publishers release.. Money talks...

...As long as there are brainwashed fanboys that buy everything, there will be cheaters among the game development communities...

Dragon Age 2 - dumbed down Dragon Age Origins

Mass Effect 2 - dumbed down Mass Effect 1

I have lost and continue to lose respect for BioWare...but who cares what i think? So long there are people who will buy any game out there, no matter how bad or how cheated we should be feeling...devs are going to continue create and publishers release.. Money talks...

EvilSelf

[QUOTE="EvilSelf"]

...As long as there are brainwashed fanboys that buy everything, there will be cheaters among the game development communities...

Dragon Age 2 - dumbed down Dragon Age Origins

Mass Effect 2 - dumbed down Mass Effect 1

I have lost and continue to lose respect for BioWare...but who cares what i think? So long there are people who will buy any game out there, no matter how bad or how cheated we should be feeling...devs are going to continue create and publishers release.. Money talks...

valium88

Thank you! Amen!

New games are often "dumbed" down in favor of being released sooner and more profits.

one word: PIRACY!evildead6789

Piracy is forcing games to be dumbed down. Why didn't I think of that??:roll:

I am an old gamer as well, first started on a TI-99 and have played on just about every system ever since, and I also find the new trends in game development disturbing.

However, I do have to disagree with hardware requirements. Back when games like Quake and X Wing vs. Tie Fighter were popular, Command and Conquer, Medal of Honor etc. It seemed that I was upgrading my PC all the time. Now I can build a decent PC for $600 that will last 2-3 years, maybe upgrading 1 or 2 parts along a 4 year path.

Once dual and quad core became standard, gaming upgrading has become kind of null really. With so many console ports now, most of our PC's are 2-3 generations ahead and have no problem running every game. The only games that I know of that can tax most gaming pc's out there are Metro 2033 and Total War: Shogun 2.

I remember when Half Life 2 and Doom 3 came out and everyone freaked because nobody had PC's built to run these kinds of games. I remember having to build again shortly thereafter when Battlefied 2 came out, and again when the Unreal 3 engine was released. I've run this rig now for 3 years, only upgrading because I could but because I needed to.

If anything requirements have gone down compared to what is out there on the market now. Mostly due to lack of innovation by developers and console porting. I have a feeling though that Battlefield 3 will be the next man responsible for these forums filling up with "OMG OMG I can't run this game?!?!" posts all over.

However, I do have to disagree with hardware requirements. Back when games like Quake and X Wing vs. Tie Fighter were popular, Command and Conquer, Medal of Honor etc. It seemed that I was upgrading my PC all the time. Now I can build a decent PC for $600 that will last 2-3 years, maybe upgrading 1 or 2 parts along a 4 year path.

Stratacoustix

Yeah I remember when I started building own gaming rigs back in 02 it seemed like I had to buy a new part every year to keep up with newer games. Video card here, memory there, then a new motherboard/cpu combo. The last few years however I have yet to see a need to upgrade some of the parts in my PC because games are not pushing the brink of technology anymore. I can play a game that came out yesterday with parts I purchased 2 yrs ago at max settings.

[QUOTE="evildead6789"]one word: PIRACY!anthonycg

Piracy is forcing games to be dumbed down. Why didn't I think of that??:roll:

Such a retarded point. Piracy doesnt affect it at all. If they are going to pirate it, they were never going to buy it. It's such a lame scapegoat.

All these games....Like Halo, Killzone, and the like. They mean nothing to me. I started playing games since 1992 and I first played Castle Wolffenstein. I enjoyed every generation. But PS3 has me stopped playing console games altogether. I just have mortal Kombat 9 reserved, and that's good enough for me.

Let me ask you, if there were no piracy involve, would Dragon Age 2 be better..???winrehs_007

piracy has been going on since someone build cartridges for game systems.

anyway back to topic games are getting dumbed down as the avergae gamer age is getting mroe childish.. the average console gamer is 12-15 and the pc isnt too far off so really would you expect them to be something complex anymore.. action games have become nothing more than quicktime events and fps's have matches that last 15-25 minutes IF THAT, sp's are down below the 15 hour mark for a number of genre's and getting your hands on games rated m for mature or t for teen though geting mroe strict is still relatively easy to do for anyone NOT legitimately allowed to be in thsoe age categories.. gaming is becoming childish in order to adapt to its audience.. which face it are hamsters at heart

would you expect the games to be any differnet?

Remember before when they release the same game but with new things added like Maps and missions and they only way to get them is to buy the full price game. Now instead they just have DLC.

piracy has been going on since someone build cartridges for game systems.

anyway back to topic games are getting dumbed down as the avergae gamer age is getting mroe childish.. the average console gamer is 12-15 and the pc isnt too far off so really would you expect them to be something complex anymore.. action games have become nothing more than quicktime events and fps's have matches that last 15-25 minutes IF THAT, sp's are down below the 15 hour mark for a number of genre's and getting your hands on games rated m for mature or t for teen though geting mroe strict is still relatively easy to do for anyone NOT legitimately allowed to be in thsoe age categories.. gaming is becoming childish in order to adapt to its audience.. which face it are hamsters at heart

would you expect the games to be any differnet?

ionusX

I've been gaming for 34 years and if you think that SP games don't boast more content then ever before, you're just plain wrong. Multiple difficulty settings and an avoidance of some of the cheap deaths, key hunts, limited continues and other length extending tricks that used to stretch out playtime perhaps mean that one could beat say, Gears of War in less time than it took to beat Ikari Warrior, but rest assured that Gears boasted a lot more content than Ikari did (I was a big fan of both games).

Also, according to the ESA, the average gamer is 34 and kids gaming is great for two reasons.

1) In my experience, idiocy hasn't been tied to age (cloaked behind a shield of anonymity, some people like to be jerks).

2) Lots of kids interested in gaming translates into lots of incoming game designers, some of whom willhave great original game concepts(nods towards thatgamcecompany). This is especially important in gaming because older designers tend to get tied to franchises because most core gamers pay more attention to franchises than the people who create them. Miyamoto is the industry's most respected designer, but if he makes a non-Mario game and Joe Smoe makes a Mario game, the Mario game will outsell Miyamoto's game.

Right now there are so many talented teams out there making games its ridiculous. I remember when there used to be months between games worth playing, nowadays there are multiple quality games hitting every month.

Last but not least, I don't see why you view childish games as a bad thing. I love M rated games as much as the next guy, but my favorite series this gen is LBP (the community has done amazing things and I've spent countless hours playing with my kids). I don't ask, expect or want all designers to cleave to the same tone or art ****or difficulty level. There are many pathways to fun.

[QUOTE="EvilSelf"]

...As long as there are brainwashed fanboys that buy everything, there will be cheaters among the game development communities...

Dragon Age 2 - dumbed down Dragon Age Origins

Mass Effect 2 - dumbed down Mass Effect 1

I have lost and continue to lose respect for BioWare...but who cares what i think? So long there are people who will buy any game out there, no matter how bad or how cheated we should be feeling...devs are going to continue create and publishers release.. Money talks...

valium88

one word: PIRACY!evildead6789

[QUOTE="valium88"][QUOTE="EvilSelf"]

...As long as there are brainwashed fanboys that buy everything, there will be cheaters among the game development communities...

Dragon Age 2 - dumbed down Dragon Age Origins

Mass Effect 2 - dumbed down Mass Effect 1

I have lost and continue to lose respect for BioWare...but who cares what i think? So long there are people who will buy any game out there, no matter how bad or how cheated we should be feeling...devs are going to continue create and publishers release.. Money talks...

Elann2008

Let me ask you, if there were no piracy involve, would Dragon Age 2 be better..???winrehs_007

[QUOTE="valium88"][QUOTE="EvilSelf"]

...As long as there are brainwashed fanboys that buy everything, there will be cheaters among the game development communities...

Dragon Age 2 - dumbed down Dragon Age Origins

Mass Effect 2 - dumbed down Mass Effect 1

I have lost and continue to lose respect for BioWare...but who cares what i think? So long there are people who will buy any game out there, no matter how bad or how cheated we should be feeling...devs are going to continue create and publishers release.. Money talks...

Elann2008

Yeah and it looks like you completely missed the point ;).

But yeah, games are getting dumbed down in favor of mass profits. That's why I'm totally digging the indy games scene lately, innovativity and originality are to be found there, not so much at the mainstream developers anymore, unfortunately.

Honestly, everyone, thank you!!

I was really affraid that i would be trolled and burn on a stake for saying what i've said, but i see i'm not alone in seeing things from this perspective, it was really refreshing reading the replies.

I would like to answer a few things but wont extend much on it^^

One thing that amazed me was to see people who started playing so long ago and also still remember the first game played. For me it was the Senku on an IBM system 34, at the same time spent sometime with a tri-dimensional tic-tac-toe (tri-dimensional as in 3 platforms one over the other, not as in graphics since those computers only had text mode) and the hangman which i later translated to spanish for the IBM system 36 (programmed in RPG... funny how that acronim turned out to be one of my favorite genres of games).

Console games and age.... well, there are two factors because i do not like consoles: 1st the blisters on the fingertips lol, 2nd because the average age for console gamers here is between 4 and 16 years so when you go to the game store all you find are gemes appealing to those ages.

Piracy... hard topic there... i live in a country where piracy is not punished (it doesn't mean it is not illegal) and here most people look at you with strange eyes when you have an original software, but it is kind of a cultural thing, people should learn that if they do not pay for an original game then the companies developing them wont be able to pay for the dev teams, hence there wont be new games. What i had to learn by force (because one dollar here is worth over 4 times what it is worth in the US) is to first try the game and then buy it, never purchase a game withing the launch week, wait to read the reviews and then make the mistakes of buying it anyways just like hapened with DA2 rofl

As i always say about music discs and films, if there wouldn0t be piracy then it would be cheaper to purchase originals since they would sell much more than they do now, and i'm sure the same would happen to games, just in another way, games are not "that" expensinve in rough numbers, but they may have more budget to improve the development and content, and maybe even the coding itself to better use the nowadays computers resources (even maybe develop non-windows games!!)

Well, i said it wouldn't be too long and i'm not accomplishing with that already, thanks again for all the replies :)

I've felt pretty bitter this generation concerning some of the games being released. There are only a few games I could name of the top of my head such as MGS4, Gears of War, LittleBigPlanet, Uncharted as games that blew me away... I could name a handful from the previous generation. I look back on it now, last generation had so many great franchises, and new ones too. C'mon how about a Kingdom Hearts 3!

Last generation just blew me away. Even though Ocarina of Time blew me away, I'd probably say The Wind Waker was a better game to me(just my opinion). I could probably name a lot of great games last generation such as:

Resident Evil 4

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Metal Gear Solid 2, and 3

Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Panzer Dragoon Orta

Ninja Gaiden

Grand Theft Auto III, and Vice City

Soul Calibur

Metroid Prime

Halo Combat Evolved

Gran Turismo 3

Final Fantasy X

God of War

Tekken 5

Forza Motorsport

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Max Payne

Shenmue

Suikoden III

Devil May Cry

Just to name a few... heck don't even get me started on the 5th generation systems!

Definitely have to agree with a loss of focus on quality sp storylines. A quick bonus for me though, is that it is giving me a chance to go back a play some of the games I missed first time round. Currently that is The Longest Journey.

As for new gen games one that I really enjoyed even though it was short, and had a limited story was Mirrors Edge. Something with a bit of innovation in the gameplay (something that I think is starting to pick up a bit more again, well hopefully). Might not have been worth its RRP, but for under 20 quid its amazing.

I find thabig name company are being innovative.

3 word answer ---> CALL OF DUTY:(

Hello everyone,

i just wanted to share my concerns about this. I am an old player, from the first generation of computer gamers to be more accurate, and i always enjoy it, discovering new games, new stuff, etc, but lately i'm quite disapointed at hwere are the game industry going to... i will try to explain the best i can.

Hardware related, did the game industry programmers forgot how to do their job? nowadays all i see is more hardware req. and less code programming, comeon guys, do your job! I have games 15 years old that makes a 1500% better use of the computere resources than nowadays games.

Playability related, some time ago there used to be games suitable for everyone, difficulty levels that actually worked, etc; nowadays i see games are made either for morons or for hardcore geeks? I'm fine with a whole keyboard mapped plus mouse and a joystick if you like, that's not what i mean, i mean about content.

MMORPG's.... what's the deal with all PVP oriented now???? I was checking mmorpg's the other day with a couple of friends, we wanted to play something new online taking advantage of our vacations and we found out that there are basically no PVE mmo's anymore?? All what we've found were either ancient or so bad that we had nightmares about them... and i mean about quality. In several days of searching we couldn0t find anything we haven't already played (and got tired of). Everything now is PVP/PK, like if a whole world full of enemies of all kinds were not enough people seem to need to focus on killing eachother... I've even seen myself good games compeltelly ruioed after they added PVP to them (i mean about oldie mmorpgs here)

Multiplayer, what happened to the LAN possibility? Almost none of the new games is able to play multiplayer on LAN, those that has multiplayer mode are online... like if everyone had a T1 connection to play...

Online Content... wtf i do not want to have to connect my gaimg comp to the internet to play a stand alone game! I do not have trouble with extra content, as long as they don't do like dragon age... DA2 is like 1/3 of what DAO was in playtime hours for the base retail version, just a rip off.

All Online, that's what i find when i search for new games, all is going towards online gaming, i like to go to the game store, purchase a box with the game and manuals inside, go home install and enjoy as it pleases me. But no, everyday are more and more the online games and less and lesser the true stand alone games.

Well, sorry about all this, but i had it inside and was consuming me from the guts, i thought the best place to share these thoughts could be here. I'm sure there are a few more things that me and my friends find disgusting about the newer games but either i don't recall them now or cannot shape them properly in english (that's not my languaje)

It's almost fun... i find myself more and more oftenly playing old games everytime instead of new ones, same happens to my friends, no wonder why...

Thanks for reading.

dragonmdq

I agree with you pretty much completely. I would be rich right now for the time I have spent arguing the pvp/pve issues if I were paid. As the squeaky wheel wins every time, game after game goes down hill. Amazing how always pvp effects the other 2/3 of game. Being level grind, killing critters etc. Or raiding and group play. The squeaky wheel wins, he hit me, he is op, change it,,,,,,yup changed, and worthless for the other 2/3 of the game from that point on.

Piracy has all kinds of forms. What it has done in killing games on pc, is the no co-op. Even right now I am pounding hard some company's with new releases coming out to give couch co-op play like the consoles, Give lan line use, forget the online crap, and the malware with it. Its been the devastation to all mmo's, never having control of their games. Nothing is more grand to enter a mmo the first time, and first message ya get is a gold spammer, or level spam. Though I am for particular outside plug-ins, that every individual fealsfor/againstat some level.Live chat, parsers, market, a number of things I am for, but also believe they should of been there in the first place. Really have gotten sick of all the cheats, speed macros, god modes etc. That gives us all the wonderful nerfs to everything else with false fixes, that is just a degrade togaming and fixes nothing of the plug-in problem.

Hardware, been there. Difference today is, you don't have to go get every single piece separate to make a proper machine. Now you can get the bundle. Until the day I die, I will never ever understand why everyone thinks a game must have the most latest push of graphics, and graphic cards. Almost shiver over some of the games and cards to run them, and going back 8 updates to get the one that would run right etc.

Enough people push, pcs might receive something sensible one day who knows. If consoles can have single game couch -co-op, pc's should get a two code disk or something for a lan line. Piracy in some of these cases I think has hurt the industry, not because of the piracy, but what they have done towards it. First thing someone is going to do when they find out only they have to buy two games at like $60, is get a pirated copy, or wait until they are like $5.

coop play... mate you've just hit the nail on the head!! With my friends we've been itching for a decent coop game to share together for long time and guess what, we always end playing the same 10+ years old games again and again and again doesn't that ring any bell in some developers head?

Someone (sorry, this forum does not show me previous posts while i'm typing this) asked what can we do about this? Well, first thing to do is exactly what we are doing right now, voice our opinions and insatisfaction in places like this very site, i can't think of a better site to talk about games than this one. It is well known that there are always people who share the same thoughts but for one reason or another don't start the roll, but when they know about it they can join the discussion and keep the wheel rolling.

Let's keep on!

3 word answer ---> CALL OF DUTY:(

spyd3r108

IDK hoe people can deny this. Do you think DS2, Bioshock 2, and dead rising 2 all put multiplayer in to be more like their predecessors which were actually good? No, they did it to get the cod fans to go, oh! look multiplayer! I'll do that!

The truth is though, people don't want cod clones. Why play a clone when you can have the real thing.

The only wierd things I've found are LAN but no local, LAN and online only but you can't used a second controller on any, and games constantly getting banned.

I stopped reading at, there is no PvE mmos...

Every game that sells well is the same old crap every year e.g. FPS, Sports and 'casual games'. Nintendo dont care about the gamers that got them to where they are now. I miss the mega drive, ps1/2 days :(Hackers90

This perfectly describes what Koei has become. Dynasty warriors, samurai warriors, orochi, gundam warriors, fist of north star warriors, troy warriors, etc. It used to make many gems (uncharted water, taikou risshiden, celtic tale: balor of evil eye, etc.), but it is all past. :(