My Thoughts on Modern Games

[Anonymous]

Ok I want to make something clear, First I have no real disrespect towards anyone or anything, I understand that some things are done for a reason, or more. Know that what I am stating is my opinion and mine alone, It DOES NOT represent the opinion of ANYONE ELSE.

With that stated I shall proceed.

While I’m not against how modern games are made, I am against a few things, I will start with an example using my #1 favourite game Doom (1993).

On December 10th 1993, the legendary First Person Shooter Doom was released to the world, for Dos, Windows 95 and 98 (later on). Back then the PC port came first, then console ports which were dummed down so the game was able to be played on that console. It also pushed Hardware companies to make better tech to run the game. Many 90’s games did this which is why tech was getting better every year and in big jumps. Nowadays, tech only makes small jumps, and game devs make games that are built to run the same, no matter what port. This in my opinion limits the game devs, and even then pc ports of newer games are not made to push hardware to the point where they are unplayable so hardware companies make bigger jumps in tech to run the games at a playable framerate.

Modern games seem to bend to the constraints of todays tech which to me is very unacceptable. If i were to make a game I WOULD make sure it requires some next level tech to be played at a decent framerate. This would push hardware companies to make better tech because players will complain that their current tech can't play the game at a decent framerate and they want to see some tech that CAN run the game at a decent framerate. In this day and age, games dont push hardware, the hardware limits what the devs can do.

[Frosteh]

PC games used to be a lot different, they were made by gamers for gamers and had a lot of depth and complexity. They were made for the PC platform and because PCs can have a wide range of hardware configurations they came with a wide range of graphics options to scale quality vs performance.

Back in the day the console platforms had nothing to do with PC development, the hardware was just too different and specialized to easily port games, so the 2 remained very separate.

Once we got to the microsoft/sony days of consoles, they became a lot more like PCs, in fact they were mostly just PCs in a fancy case running 90% PC hardware with some marginally customized graphics chips.

This allowed a lot of the large engine builders to make engines that supported both PC and console, things like the unreal engine, crytek engine, source engine, they all got upgrades to support multi platforms. Now developers with a single code base could reach a lot more people at once.

The problem is that developers are lazy and they don't want to tailor their game to each platform uniquely, they want to write 1 size fits all. That means all the constraints of the console platform, such as low end hardware, gets applied to the PC platform. You also get a lot of other problems, games that are balanced around controller input, auto aim, low FOV, capped frame rates, bad optimization, , mouse acceleration, autosaves, the list goes on and on.

Also the quality of games has dropped, the console gamers have shorter attention spans and have way more casual players who just want to do something for 20 mins. So a lot of the more hardcore RPGs and games that typically had a lot of depth and complexity, end up a lot more simple.

Typically though, the PC ecosystem will always find a way to spend that additional rendering power we have. A single GTX1080 has 5x more rendering power than a PS4, we can spend that on things like running 4k native, or VR applications that require high refresh rates, we can use 144hz monitors or we can do triple screen, etc.

It's just a shame we can't do much about the AAA gaming industry, all we can really do is things like back kickstarters of games we used to know and love and continue to avoid modern rubbish.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

I would argue that the PC gaming still pushes the state of the art for the consumer market. While most video games sold are for consoles, more *hardcore* gamers prefer to play on a PC. That is, the folks who actually make use of advanced technology are still driving the market.

It's also an issue of timing. The company I work for makes some of the components in a typical gaming rig, and our product development timeline is 5 years on average. That means it takes us 5 years to go from inception to a sellable retail packaged product.

It's going to be similar for Microsoft and Sony. They know what their next console will be, how it'll work and what its capabilities are. They're sharing that information with the likes of Electronic Arts and Bethesda, who are developing software to run on those platforms. Consumerism in the PC gaming market is driving their expectations of what customers will want in that time frame.

I guess what I'm saying is that just because you don't see it, that doesn't mean gaming technology isn't being driven forward in the console market.

[sketchy]

I don't agree with any of that.
The main difference now is that the process of creating a game (or any piece of software) is being made much, much simpler. Game development used to require a lot of real low-level programming, but then we got DirectX and OpenGL which took care of a lot of the graphics and audio side of things, and now we have accessible game engines like Unity 3D which simplify things even more - but they all come with additional overheads.
So while computers are getting faster and faster, and the level of sophistication of games isn't increasing at the same rate, the amount of time, effort and skill required to develop them is dropping rapidly.

[myTake Owner]

To each their own when it comes down to it, i personally would prefer games that push current hardware to a point where it takes the next gen of tech to run the game

[JudgmentDay]

Got any framerate comparison videos between systems? I generally prefer PC simply because back in the day Mods and free community made content is the thing, but these days we constantly get micro-transactions with the DLC business model which I grew tired of. And speaking of Doom, there's shit tons of free mods, levels, etc. from the community fanbase, enhancements such as source ports made newer and even better mods possible. It's just something that will never die since it's forever expandable by it's community.

[sovetskii13]

I don't play video games these days, but sometimes I do wish to grab some of my old games to play. Remind myself of my childhood. Unfortunately, all of them are not compatible with today's hardware. My games date back to Windows 95/98 and XP. I tried different methods to make them work after reading how to do it, but nothing worked. New tech is supposed to support old stuff. Not anymore. So all the CD's are just sitting under my bed in their cases 😓

[TheWombRaider]

Ultima Online, Half life, I played pc games in the 90 and early 2000 back then it took skill. NOw its all team gay newbie friendly can't loot people and shit its all lame games. now.