Why does modern gaming suck?

[Anonymous]

[NamerOfStars]

1. Ballooning budgets make it necessary to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. This forces companies to sand off rough edges to not offend people, as well as limit the pool of cultural references to the most common and obvious, making everything bland as hell. At the time of its release, Wing Commander 3 was the most expensive video game ever made- understandable, given its use of state-of-the-art graphics and A-list actors for the FMV sequences. Adjusting for inflation, its budget was...$9.5 million, about what the coverage Call of Duty project spends on Doritos alone.

2. Political messaging. The fear of offending people has spread to an extent that has absolutely crippled art, and even art forms intended purely for recreation. I, as a Catholic, did not approve of Piss Christ, but I simply rolled my eyes and moved on; I just wouldn't go se it. I certainly didn't call for anyone to be fired over it- and as an American, I'd defend the artist from those who sought to. Freedom of expression isn't just for ideas I like. This attitude is sadly rare these days. I knew that Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 was in trouble when I read that the lead writer was Cara Ellison. I thought "No, they wouldn't be THAT stupid; it's just someone with the same name!", but it wasn't. Well, maybe she's turned over a new leaf, and is willing to work on a World of Darkness game, with all its gritty, bitter misery, that takes no care of feelings, and- oh, her first big announcement was bragging about how you can choose your character's pronouns? And that you're not limited to "he" and "she"? Now, aside from wasting space with voice files, it's not like that's going to do tremendous damage (and if you're playing a Tzimisce, it's not even inappropriate), but in terms of what you're prioritizing in development, it's a sign of disaster. And lo, the whole dev team was fired and the project handed to another company. When it was announced that the Saints Row franchise was getting a reboot, I was disappointed to see that changes had been made for "sensitive" players: for example, the franchise features a tire and car modification place called "Rim Jobs", which the new devs announced would be changed to "Jim Rob's", because the original was inappropriate. Well, of course it was; it was a Saints Row game. This is a franchise where in one mission, you're helping a crooked real estate agent manipulate property values by driving a septic truck around spraying liquid poop on a housing development, and in the next, you're desperately chasing a truck that's keel-hauling one of your crew members, reaching and stopping it only to realize he's too far gone and mercy killing him with a bullet to the head. These are cruel, immoral gangbangers, and emphatically NOT nice and polite people. There's nothing wrong with saying "I'm too mature for Saints Row" and making a different game. Why don't they? Well...

3. Reliance on established names cripples innovation. Great news! Nintendo's announcing a new console! Guess what its games are going to be! Oh, wait, you don't have to; it's going to be a new Mario, a new Zelda, a new Kirby, and if you're lucky, a new Metroid or Star Fox. Something NEW? Heaven forfend; we've got to stick to the formula! Let's hop back thirty years, and take a look at ANOTHER long-running franchise- and I mean a literal look- to see how innovation progresses when the formula hasn't been written yet. This is from Ultima V, a game about exploring what happens when virtues get enshrined as absolute sociological goals:

or maybe fungal pod people

well, that has better colors and a somewhat sharper tileset, but is basically the same, but here's Ultima VI, a game about prejudice, conflicting social philosophies, personal sacrifice, and hiring prostitutes for lesbian encounters with halberd-wielding mice:

And YOU thought I was joking!

And here's VII, a murder mystery in a fantasy world going through an industrial revolution:

you can't see it in the screenshot, but those candles FLICKER

Every installment was in an entirely new engine, made from the ground up; that's why Ultima VII, part 2 wasn't called Ultima VIII; it was in VII's engine. The actual Ultima VIII... look, here's the picture. Don't ask me to think about it; I'll just get sad:

And finally IX, a game that you should only play if you're desperate to know how you can simultaneously want to cry AND punch something:

Look at the changes in engine and graphics quality, and remember that the only gap between games longer than two years was between VIII and IX.

[NamerOfStars]

4. Targeting the casual audience. There's nothing inherently wrong with only playing games casually; it's not like there's a deep story to, say, Tetris, and it's still fun. But to whatever extent games are an art form, it has to be deep- in story, mechanics, atmosphere, etc. Ever hear of the Dwarven Shotgun? It's a base defense trick from Dwarf Fortress. You build a line of cart rails from your mine to the entrance of your base, then you load a minecart with heavy stones. When an attack comes and breaches your outer defenses, you push the cart forward- when it hits the end of the rail, it tips over, spilling its contents, and with enough speed, FLINGING them outward; in this case, into the invaders. It wasn't intended by the designer; it's a consequence of the elaborate physics engine. Do you think someone just screwing around on their phone to kill time before a meeting is going to think of trying something like that? But remember: Grim Fandango was a flop. Candy Crush made enough money to buy Scotland. The biggest profits come from appealing to the biggest audience, and since that makes the game very bland, you need to hook people. Modern mass-market games are often just Skinner boxes, and very precisely engineered ones, too.

[drummerdude25]

Corporate greed… trying to engineer profits and an addicted fanbase over making a legitimately good game.

Business executives dictating what the game has to be, when they have no idea what even makes a quality, fun video game in the first place…

It’s insane, some of these games are practically on-rails experiences where your ability or skill is like almost seen as a bad thing for player retention, so you’re essentially nerfed in real time. The game just caps you at a certain level and then seeks to match you in a way to keep you winning and losing at a statistically “optimal” rate. Because that’s “fun” right?

It needs to change.

[systemsareyo]

I haven't gamed on a console since at least 2010-11, likely the Wii was my last, and the last time gamed on a PC computer was a fairly brand new PC computer in 2009 or 2011 playing GTA IV (4) and man were those graphics crystal clear and sharp imagery. Ah well, I got older and less interested in gaming as I was never a fan of "lots of controller buttons" like XBox or GameCube (though I appreciate how cool purple looked). 😅

[systemsareyo]

And I was never really a Halo man or a Call of Duty man. Just seemed boring after a while and also, I probably didn't care much for missions. I prefer that old saying "I like doing my own thing" of a bad attention span 😌🥱

[Asker]

And a lot of the games need to be appropriately optimized. Technology, in general, has been terrible in recent times. For example, the smartphone has been perfected. The technology is finished. But they add silly features like making the phone fold, and you have all these tech YouTubers hyping up garbage phones that only slightly improve the older models.

Many graphics cards can still improve along with the games, but they try to create games with minimal effort to save money. No one is as passionate about making video games, music, etc. The most fun I had gaming was back in the PS2 days when tons of creative developers were passionate about gaming. Then, in the 2010s, it started to spark a fire back into me, but now it's not the same anymore.

[RebelinSteel]

It doesn’t, some brilliant games out there. One of the problems is the number of streaming places that push games, Steam, Epic, EA sports, etc etc. There have always been crap games, just with streaming services you see them more often and get fooled by the advertising and hype around them.

[Astarlessnightsky]

It doesn't, every year has some absolutely brilliant games and some terrible ones.

[yo_denz_735]

Particularly for mobile games, I'll say too many microtransactions and ads.

Though on PC and console gaming, I'd wager that games in general are getting more and more complicated.

[systemsareyo]

And or the eventual, if ever eventual, demise of PC tower computers (or even eventually laptops) would make the 'gaming cinematic experience' eventually feel as you've stated already about mobiling: it's just not the same, like the good old days.

[tfan1]

Overcomplex controls. I thought the snes was pushing it but look at n64 GameCube, ps1, ps2, ps3, ps4, ps5, Xbox series, etc. even Nintendo Switch is complex.

[zagor]

Missile Command and Ms. Pacman are still out there...

[shortster]

Absolutely