Is gaming right now what you thought it would be?

[chef-borjan]

Why expected continually improvements and innovations in such areas as gameplay, interactivity, immersion, complexity etc? Are novels 'improving' in such ways year on year? Or are today's novels basically the same level as those of the 1950s or 1900s? In gaming, the hardware improves rapidly - which drives rapid improvements in the visuals - as we've seen. But it doesn't follow that other areas of gaming should improve similarly just because rendering performance improves.

Just as novels have reached the limits of their platform (arguably a century+ ago), maybe those aspects of gameplay, interactivity, immersion, complexity are also approaching their limits. Sure there'll be some (subjective) improvements with future hardware improvements, but don't expect games a decade from now to be dramatically more 'fun' than those of today, just as today's games aren't dramatically more fun than those of 2010 despite huge hardware advances.

I still haven’t had time to reply properly, but this nails a big part of it. I don’t think people are looking at this from a game design perspective.

sure you can programme in the ability for everything to be set alight and break quests.. but is that a fun game?

The mechanics/technologies people are asking for here are interesting, but how many of you can come up with an entirely new game system that will be balanced and enjoyable? Seriously, try it now. You’ll realise you come up with something that is ‘just’ Far Cry, or Counter Strike or WoW.

The underlying theory of what a game is has been explored for centuries now. I’m not saying something new can’t come along, I’m just saying it’s not easy.

 

[The_Arbiter]

Games have definitely not reached their potential peak imo. I have never really thought about the gaming future previously, i did take a big decade long break though. The future from now seems a bit bleak, big corps, DRM and subscription only services filled with DLC.

I think many games are close to amazing but fall flat somewhere, with many not being fixed, adapted on, the idea carried on, etc.

The big one for me is Halo. H3 had great single player, true ranking, casual playlists, and hugely indepth custom games. It had some issues, such as weapon balancing, and had room to be expanded on a bit, that time never came.

Skyrim. Level scaling addressed from Oblivion. But poor combat mechanics. Weak in other areas depending on who you ask.

STALKER. 2 of the games are arguably solid in the atmospheric and characteristic areas. Poor poor optimisation. Stalker 2 due in the next few years.

Command & Conquer and RTS. A genre that lost its way, and just got lost. Lots of mechanics never done before are up for development. Mix RTS and FPS together, with or without competitive team play. Better AI development is always needed in RTS.

SWBF. A remaster gone wrong, very very wrong.

COD. Still no ranking system last time i checked. Is this a game or netflix series

The list is endless.

I recently played Gothic 3. Nice game. Shame about the unforgivable mechanics. It seems 4 games on the developer still just can't grasp fight mechanics according to reviews. But yet their latest Elex game looks fairly unique.

I think with 1 off classic games done right there's plenty of room for more fun. Take Doom 2016 for example there. Done, dusted, now let's move on to the next. A real Duke Nukem Forever? There's room for new characters and environments, plenty of music composers ready for employment, just paired with the classic formulas from whatever genre you want.

Where has turn based RPGs gone? And why does it seem many RPGs are stuck with real life style worlds and characters now? Probably not true but feels it.

 

[Wizzfizz]

Gaming has lost its way in so many ways and new games such as CP just fall so far from what they should have been. Too much talk (hype) and not enough delivery on what was promised.

Hardware is also crushing the urge to bother. I mean £1500 for a top spec GPU hoping to god you get just 60 FPS at 4K is just a joke.

Consoles are where it’s at for me when I want to sit back and relax and play; at a fraction of the cost.

 

[AWPC]

Time, money & greed are why! Technically you can make pretty much anything nowadays but the cost to make it look appealing is where most of the budget goes. Gameplay is far down the list of tick boxes the producers & financial backers require. Next gen consoles are just watered down PC's they cannot even handle 4K 60 FPS with HDR still! PC gamers have gotten used to console ports in higher resolutions as that is all most modern games on PC are now. If PC had been the target platform all along games would visually at least be evolving more than they do.
Until these tired formula's fail financially expect more of the same as the games industry like Hollywood movie industry is built on the same tired formulas and only changes when the financial results are lacking

 

[Randomface74]

yeah games blow now. too much greed.

 

[clv101]

yeah games blow now. too much greed.

Fortunately, just like 19th century literature, old games are still available to play.

 

[The_Arbiter]

Fortunately, just like 19th century literature, old games are still available to play.

Often with high resolution support and community patches and fixes

My browsing of next game to play has been mostly older games. Got to love those sub £10 classics.

 

[Randomface74]

yep, replaying pokemon fire red atm

 

[npjnpj]

If AAA games were the only choice nowadays, I probably wouldn't be playing games any more.
But as graphics don't mean a damn thing to me, I have some old (very) favourites, and the Pc indie game scene is bursting with so many original ideas, that I'm still as thrilled with these games as I was decades ago when I first started gaming.

 

[Naff8000]

If Hollywood is any benchmark then consumers have lost their way, these big film and game studios wouldn't be making this drab if it didn't sell.

 

[Old Man]

Overall with increased prices for games (and quality of course), upgrading pc's and lack of free time
it is making things harder to justify using the pc for recreation.

 

[Minstadave]

Im pretty happy at the moment. Nice upgrade this year from 3900X/1080 to 5900X/3070 cost about £500 with the sale of the older parts.

Loads of free games, sunk many hours into Warzone with the big standout being cross play so can play with friends who have consoles. Picked up some great titles off Epic Game Store for free and loaded up 3 years of MS Game Pass cheaply.

Dipped my toe into VR with the Quest 2 and enjoying that one with this years Humble VR Bundle.

Switch is still going strong and my daughter and wife drunk serious time into Animal Crossing and plenty of Mario Kart.

Finally finished Witcher 3 which is just a brilliant game and still beautiful today.

Pretty good all together.

 

[Unseul]

Quest 2 has given me a big oh wow moment. Right now I'm just fishing a lot with strangers and my dad, but the social aspect of actually seeing someone shaking their head or nodding, waving their arms etc makes it feel amazingly social. Haven't had a chance to play bigger games yet but I'm excited by them. Consoles and a lot of pc gaming has just felt like rehashed stuff without real improvement. Some games are fantastic but they tend to be smaller developers often without the graphics, just good ideas.

I too want to see factions fighting amongst themselves and worlds developing etc. Still one of the best experiences of ai I've had was the black and white creature. The quirks it could develop whilst training were hilarious and it could genuinely be left to get on with it's own thing. Could that not be implemented across many units now?

 

[chaparral]

Often with high resolution support and community patches and fixes

My browsing of next game to play has been mostly older games. Got to love those sub £10 classics.

Command & conquer remastered & Black Mesa is a few good ones

 

[chaparral]

Fortunately, just like 19th century literature, old games are still available to play.

I grow up playing many hours per day on one of these

 

[clv101]

I played a lot of Wing Commander I and II and X-Wing, TIE Fighter etc back in the nineties and they were GREAT! Went back to them last week... and they looked dire! Hard to overstate how poor 320x200 or whatever it was resolution is, 256 colours, 15 fps? And yet they were so much fun!

Fancy graphics do not a good game make!

 

[BowdonUK]

I think games have gone backwards. There aren't many games that bring something new to the table. Companies either copy other games ideas (the battle royale example) or they hit a winning formula one time and keep releasing nearly the same game over and over again (EA - Fifa).

I don't know the ages of any of you guys, but I'm old enough to remember the days of the limited storage of the cassette tape or cartridge, and the limited ram memory and graphics back in the day. Programmers had to be creative to stand out from the rest. These days not many do.

A good example is the area of mobile gaming. Back in the day of the older computers like the C64, Spectrum, then Amiga and Atari ST there were some awesome games all very small in size and requiring a small amount of graphic power compared to these days. Yet as any games maker made a mobile game that even equals the best games of the past? I'm not aware of any developer specifically making mobile games that as made something unique and isn't a cash dumper or a copy/paste of another game.

I remember when the CD was becoming popular as a game storage media. We'd gone from having limited storage to 100's of Mb's on a CD to use. I remember people worried that in the future would games just fill up the more storage with lots of flashy graphics and forget the game play? It seems like they were right.

We've never really got a massive social MMO yet, Second Life as come close yet no mainstream company as stepped up to the mark. I would say that gaming is catering to kids, but even that would be insulting the intelligence of the kids!

Gaming is very frustrating these days because there is no new ideas. Most gaming companies seem to be unwilling to listen to the player base. Having interaction in a game is important. The best game in my opinion that was the biggest game world changer is Minecraft. Look at the millions of people still playing that game today. It doesn't have flashy graphics. Yet people are really invested in it. I would also add No Man's Sky is also the best technically built game.

I mean at the end of the day, what is the point in better graphic cards to play the same old tat?

Sorry to be a downer. But its frustrating that we have all the technology, massive storage, lots of ram, big powerhouse graphic cards yet the part letting us all down is the lack of creativity in the human brain.

If any games programmers are reading this then get your thinking hats on in ways you can make your games stand out from the rest. I think even if you get a near clone on some of the old games they would sell well.

 

[SPG]

I think the creativity is still on track, however the big DEV companies have hoodwinked everyone into to think everything needs to be shiney bling with top notch AI etc etc.

It needs to be a good game it's quite simple. (But decent sound matters though)

 

[iv-tecman]

Fortunately, just like 19th century literature, old games are still available to play.

Isn't that the truth. And not only PC games , obviously not allowed to promote such things but * cough * older consoles games on a decent spec PC are also playable, but native PC games, some from the 90s are great fun and often have patches and fixes to increase res, graphics and fix missing audio, like Quake II for example. Some great oldie games out there - so even if newer PC /game titles sorta suck, plenty of good old games to play

 

[Parky]

The bigger the industry became over the years the more companies have morphed into money making machines, rather than releasing meaningful or fun games first. There's so many franchises these days where the releases are on a cycle, stuck in aging engines essentially rehashing the same content over and over again with slight improvements. Things like Call of Duty, Assassins Creed and any of the sports games immediately spring to mind.

I don't doubt that there are many passionate teams of devs behind the makings of these games, but everything reeks of of the top suits testing the limits to see how little innovation they make, or how much microtransactions, DLC, Season pass, pre-order bonuses they can sneak in.

A lot of releases these days are a joke, many essentially using the launch of the game as a beta test to fix the issues they never bothered to solve, just so they can meet their release date in time for the holidays. Plus the cash grab early access stuff that a lot of games go for, only

Hell, some companies have even built a kind of expectation for this kind of stuff, Bethesda games are expected to be buggy messes at launch, but everybody still buys them and gives them way too much slack (Fallout 76 was probably an eye opener for some people). How long have they been using the same outdated engine for now?

I mean how many 'we're sorry, we'll do better next time' stories have there been over the years?

The problem is I think the more casual audience doesn't really care about this kind of thing, or at least not enough. It's been presented to them as the norm and has been accepted as such for the most part (outside of truly massive thing like Cyberpunk has been). There's just not enough voting with wallets to make any real change to things at the moment.

There are obviously exceptions to this, we still get some truly exceptional games being released, but as somebody who has been gaming for most of their life it's hard to peel away the nostalgia of the seemingly better old times (rose tinted glasses or not) and hold everything in a lower regard than maybe I should.