Are newer game releases dumbed down? Is it now all about graphics and no gameplay

[Matthias]

Well i belive Kong highlighted most of the problems to the game industry that have happened over the past 6 - 8 years, but despite the talent drain on games some pretty good games have been made

Half life 1 (2 is not worth it, it suffers the very problems of fancy graphics but a really short game and no where near as good as half life)

Battle field 2 (even EA can make a good game once in a while)

Civ 2 and 4 (civ 3 is dreadfull but civ 4 feels like civ 2 in a way, and civ 2 still one of the best multiplayer games going)

The Movies (new but a really good game)

Football Manager 2006 (if you like Football AKA Soccer, then this is a must)

Heart of Iron 1 (2 is dreadfull to play after playing hoi 1)

there is a few other good games, but those are currently on my hard drive.

[VonWebb]

I really don't play Single Player games anymore. When I purchase a FPS style game, like COD:UO i am purchasing it for the Multi-Player environment only: that way I get the brains behind the player. It's all about the server you're playing on really. Are there a bunch of TKing brats? Or a bunch of 25-35 year old tactical thinkers? I too get bored with the

A-->B-->C linear gamestyle and am just waiting to be able to breach a hole in some wall, where ever the hell i want to and ambush enemy troops, rather then be told to what to do and be forded into enemy fire, but i can't shoot through that wooden door?!?!?!?!?. At least with multiplayer tactical realism I can get some kicks!

I am anxiously awaiting CMSF! I can't wait to see what they have cooked up; I was introduced with CMBB after researching WWII gaming. I wanted a diferrent sort of game. Unfortunately, my computer rarely gets booted into MacOS9 anymore. I might have to build a Windows machine just for the occasion. Why the hell not? Maybe work will have bought me a hot shot PC by then who knows. I might not be able to wait for the Macintosh release, who knows they might suprise us though....

sooner than later?

-Lon

[Dinger]

Alright, time for me to disagree about everything.

Nostalgia is a myth. There have always been bad games. And many of the games you remember as good you would not be able to tolerate today. The fact is that as gamers y'all have grown. Much of the current generation buying stuff does not have the experience you have, and therefore what looks derivative to use is in fact new to them. Or new enough.

So yeah, I remember playing all those great games. I also remember playing a bunch of crappy ones.

Still, it is true that the market has expanded -- and that expansion means that games have moved from the exclusive domain of enthusiasts with time and technical skill necessary to play them to the larger realm of the casual gamer. Or rather, consoles have gotten a lot better (and the last five years has not unsurprisingly seen an explosion in shelf space for console games).

But there are other factors at work, and they're not all exclusive to computer games.

Consider Brave New World. Written in an age where the mass-entertainment wonder was the "Talkies", Huxley has this exchange (Better to read it in context, I suppose):

"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History," he repeated slowly, "is bunk."

He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk–and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk–and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom–all were gone. Whisk–the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk …

"Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?" enquired the Assistant Predestinator. "I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it's marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects."

"That's why you're taught no history," the Controller was saying. "But now the time has come …"

The implication is the general disinterest for history, religion, and culture, in favor of technically superior simulations of reality. Or something like that. It's more or less the same whine we get today: games are picking fancy effects over substance; Tom Clancy novels substitute high-tech gadgetry for character development or exploration of the narrative; action movies spend millions trying to one-up one another for special effects.

I'll disagree with AH on this: sooner or later most of us tire of such things; but every year sees more 17-year-old males on the planet. The "technical race" has always been there, in whatever form of mass entertainment. Pretty art work, louder special effects, big bangs and stuff -- that's what sells a lot of video games.

as for the specific manifestation of such games, well that's a feedback loop created the games and the hardware.

Here's another example for you: the Roland D-50. Here's a digital synthesizer that came out in 1987 and can make all sorts of sounds, and allowed the use of sampling. But the easiest sounds to create (many of them presets) were "oohs" and "aahs" -- the result is that the popular music and soundtracks of the late 80s and early 90s are permeated with these soft tones, the laziest application of the D-50. You can spot it immediateley.

The lesson: hardware and APIs determine much the artistic production.

For PCs and consoles, that hardware and API is predominantly the video card and its associated code (directX, openGL). And these cards are built around a few very specific game types, and we can all guess what those are. Okay, for those of you who can't guess, think of FPSs in very confined spaces.

So, combining these, if you want to appeal to your core demographic, you make games that look and feel the best. If you play to the strengths of the video cards, you achieve this much easier and with much better results.

Two other details:

hellfish likes "Dynamic Campaigns." I don't always think they're a good idea. Take SHIII: the dynamic campaign is a snore, nor is it very dynamic (just a list of months and patrol areas): go to sector, patrol for 24 hours, come home. "Dynamic campaigns" fail because they operate within "expected" limits. Learn the rules of the campaign, and nothing will surprise you that much. Your sub's engine never breaks on its own, leaving you adrift, until your genius mechanic rigs up a solution involving disassembling a torpedo and the observation periscope.

Scripting can be done badly too, but some combination in between works best for me.

Consider the fate of the companies/teams that made your favorite games. Way too many of them were just breaking even (the developers would call it "Earning an honest living") until adverse business forces pushed them to a point where they had to sell to one of the big boys. Sometimes those

"adverse business forces" can be summarized by the expression "Version 2.0". X-com was fun, and the sequel (or two) based on the original engine was neat. But X-Com:Apocalypse was an abortion of a 2.0 game that failed because the developers overestimated what they could achieve, and got half of it done.

Most innovative games are really quite dull to play.

[Josh Coady]

Originally posted by Pvt. Ryan:

I certainly got my money's worth from Morrowind, and I expect that the next release in the series will be even better. But everyone wants awesome graphics and a price under $40. That doesn't leave much room in the budget for the actual game.

I agree. Oblivion is looking great. The Morrowind games are a little too open ended for my tastes though.

You should also check out Kinghts of the Old Republic and Silent Storm.

[M1A1TC]

Both of those are awesome games

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Dinger:

(snipped)

Alright, time for me to disagree about everything.

Fair enough.

Nostalgia is a myth. There have always been bad games. And many of the games you remember as good you would not be able to tolerate today. The fact is that as gamers y'all have grown. Much of the current generation buying stuff does not have the experience you have, and therefore what looks derivative to use is in fact new to them. Or new enough….

I agree, there have always been bad games however there used to be titles I would look forward to several times a year. The past few years it seems there has been nothing but RTS and FPS. I left FPS after DOOM and before Quake. I left RTS after Command and Conquer/Red Alert.

I still load and play those titles you claim “people would not be able to tolerate today”. X-COM is on my hard drive with a game in progress and I truly enjoyed the “Wildfire” mod of Jagged Alliance II. I searched Underdogs yesterday and found X-COM Apocalypse (my nephew has my copy), it was a game I enjoyed and played to its conclusion. I plan to download it the next time I go by my son’s house (I am stuck on dial-up). He is playing Civ II and Fallout II these days BTW…

So I strongly disagree with some of your points and take issue with you trying to speak for many others but yourself. However I do find your personal opinion and some of your points valid such as market share and today’s games catering to the “twitch” crowd. Which if I was permitted a guess would venture to say that you are not to far removed from age wise.

So yeah, I remember playing all those great games. I also remember playing a bunch of crappy ones.

There were always crappy games. That is why I used to subscribe to Computer Gaming World and Computer Game’s Digest (?) (I can’t remember the correct name). I stopped both because they became so ad infested (CGW) that it made it difficult to find the articles. Until the second one, whose (true name?) escapes me for the moment went bad and became paper thin I had very good luck in avoiding bad games and found games to anticipate.

Still, it is true that the market has expanded -- and that expansion means that games have moved from the exclusive domain of enthusiasts with time and technical skill necessary to play them to the larger realm of the casual gamer.

That makes sense.

But X-Com:Apocalypse was an abortion of a 2.0 game that failed because the developers overestimated what they could achieve, and got half of it done.

As above. Replaying Apocalypse interests me more today then the new X-COM release.

Most innovative games are really quite dull to play.

I certainly lost you with that comment there…I am certainly pleased I tried innovative games such as Wolfenstein/Doom, Jagged Alliance, Fallout, X-COM, Steel Panthers and Combat Mission and I still many of them instead of making new purchases.

Maybe it is Strategy Games that are no longer being made that I am missing?

I keep hearing about Knights of the Old Republic. Is it a FPS or RTS?

The only game I am looking forward to today is CM:SF, CMC and a couple others that BFC is producing. I at least feel confident that I will get my money's worth with their products.

[ November 14, 2005, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Abbott ]

[M1A1TC]

"I keep hearing about Knights of the Old Republic. Is it a FPS or RTS?"

Nether, its a RPG. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a great RPG.It was game of the year for 2003

http://www.lucasarts.com/products/swkotor/

[hellfish]

KOTOR is a role playing game. Not bad actually, and pretty addictive even if, like me, you don't really care for Star Wars. I wouldn't call it revolutionary or anything...

[M1A1TC]

I liked that you could pause the action, give orders to party members, then unpause.

It was game of the year for 2003, so Id call that pretty revolutionery

[Abbott]

Thanks guys! I will look into both of them! I think I will go buy Knights of the Old Republic today, I have seen it on the shelf. I have not heard of Kotor before but

Bioware has made some good titles, I will check their website.

[M1A1TC]

Yeah, both KOTOR 1 and 2 are great games. Try Silent Storm as well. Good squad tactical action with completely destroyable enviroments set in ww2

[Josh Coady]

Originally posted by Abbott:

Thanks guys! I will look into both of them! I think I will go buy Knights of the Old Republic today, I have seen it on the shelf. I have not heard of Kotor before but

Bioware has made some good titles, I will check their website.

KOTOR is simply [K]nights [O]f [T]he [O]ld [R]epublic

It's set 4000 years before the movies and has a better than average plot.

[hellfish]

Just because a game is GOTY doesn't make it revolutionary - just a great game.

I wouldn't be suprised in Doom3 or HL2 made some GOTY lists this year, even though I wouldn't consider either of them revolutionary. Technological evolutions of previous games, yes, but not a new form of gameplay or genre.

[juan_gigante]

I think that HL2 was on the top of pretty much every GOTY list.

[Dinger]

Bah, I'd probably still play X-Com or SimCity today. I could play a season of Earl Weaver Baseball with my crew. And crap, I'm probably in the top 5 in all time The Perfect General/TPG2 hours wasted (A big shout out to the other 4, BTW). But could I do Karateka again? Arctic Fox? This were great games for me at the time -- but I don't see myself tolerating them now. It's not that every "old game" is intolerable; but most of them are things you do once in your life.

Likewise for innovation. Let me take an example that's a little uncharacteristic (because it was so damn good), but might get the point across: Maxis' Robosport.

At the time I was an Amiga owner. But if there ever were a game that would make me buy a Mac, this was it. Y'all from the CM crowd know many of the features: a single or MP turn-based strategy game, that could be played on one computer or networked. Each player (up to 4) controlled 1-8 robots with specific abilities (MG, burst, rifle and Missile -- and all had grenades). You'd give the robots orders for each minute of gameplay -- things like "Move Here", "Cover this Arc", "Shoot at this target", and it would compile a film. You'd watch the film and get your contacts, plus ? on suspected contacts. The graphics were cool and the special effects rocked.

In general it was an innovative game; unlike most innovative games it had a future.

But the game itself was a failure. Why? Well, it wasn't really fun. See, the robots would follow your moves as you ordered them, regardless of threat. So you couldn't suppress and maneuver. Suppress didn't work and maneuver got you killed. So the guy who did the least inevitably won. Or that's how I remember it.

Plus, there were very few maps, and they were all of the "symmetrical deathmatch" variety (until some guy at Maxis took pity on us and slipped us a copy of their map editor).

Basically, innovation means trying something new, and breaking the rules of the canon. At times, this brings out really fresh gameplay, and a classic for all times. Often, the wrong rules are broken, and the thing ends up boring or masturbatory, or, in the best case, appealling to a very limited group. By a limited group, I mean like the ones who would appreciate the supply and artillery/air coordination sims I joked about in another thread -- great ideas for military training simulations; boring as heck for most gamers. Can you imagine "SEAD Fire Mission Simulator" ever hitting the Gamespot top ten? (If that happens, I'm buying everyone in this thread a beer, by the way)

[Wisbech_lad]

Dominions II not bad.

KotorI was good, very good, but in a "watch the film" sort of way (follow the plot) Luckily, it was a good plot - better than most of the films.

Morrowind I never actually finished the plot - but I enjoyed ne'ertheless.

I have a big preference for "sandbox" games that are what you make of it - rather than ones that hold you by the hand. E.g. UrbanDead is holding my attention for months - and it is a very simple game. The head designer of Nintendo has alot to say about the role of imagination in games (but for a younger age range...)

All time list. Very much driven by nostalgia, the first game in a certain genre that grabs you is likely the one you will remember

Elite (BBC Micro version)

Red Storm Rising/ F19 Stealth Bomber

Tetris

X-com 1

Civ1

MoO

CM series

First V for Victory game (Utah Beach)

Homeworld (only RTS that I liked)

I've never got into MoRPGs due time/ inclination. But I get the feeling that when I am retired (25 years or so), online game communities will be as important social networks as the local bridge club used to be.

[ November 15, 2005, 12:56 AM: Message edited by: Wisbech_lad ]

[Thomm]

Syndicate Wars has to be mentioned in this thread!

Boy, that game had it all years ago: destructible terrain, real-time lighting, nuclear hand grenades, you name it ...

If only somebody had made a wargame like that!

Best regards,

Thomm

[C'Rogers]

Try Silent Storm as well.

I think in many ways the CM series ruined Silent Storm for me. I go/you go just seemed so outdated. If it was simulataneous or real time I would of really enjoyed it.

But the fully destructible enviroement was very cool (and in my opinion the next big 'leap' in FPS to be made).

[Sixxkiller]

Damn you guys sure whine a lot.

Games have always been the same. There are good, there are bad. There are good games here on BFC that you guys have missed.

Go download the demo for Down in Flames. Its not a RTS, but its got WWII, Planes, Campaigns, Cards, and Beer. Also its on a continuous ladder so you can always try to be the best.

And from most of the comments here, its easy enough for you to understand.

Oh BTW its BYOB.....You supply the beer (but you cant whine about that since you choose the brand!)

-Ray

[M1A1TC]

How about Full Spectrum Warrior? I know it wasnt perfect, but it was fun game anyway

I liked Neverwinter Nights, and NN2 will be good I bet

[Mace]

Originally posted by Abbott:

That is why I used to subscribe to Computer Gaming World and Computer Game’s Digest (?) (I can’t remember the correct name).

Could the second magazine be "Strategy Games" or "Strategy Gamer", something like that?

Both were excellent magazines in their halcyon days, and helped a lot in deciding what to buy, and what to avoid.

[Vedric]

Check out Civil War: Bull Run from Mad Minute Games. A very well made and playable tactical american civil war game. Its their first release and is hugely impressive. No scenario seems to ever play the same. The AI is totally non-scripted. I expect great things from these guys. Lacks a bit of depth when it comes to troop type but it's an early engagement within the ACW and accurate. You can take command of a regiment through division to full army command. Overall, some refinement could be made but it is completely playable in a very good way and I consider myself anal when it comes to playability and refinement. I started with pong forgive me.

Vedric

"Omg spearmen have attack bonuses against horse archers" -Random Civ4 quote

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Mace:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Abbott:

That is why I used to subscribe to Computer Gaming World and Computer Game’s Digest (?) (I can’t remember the correct name).

Could the second magazine be "Strategy Games" or "Strategy Gamer", something like that?

Both were excellent magazines in their halcyon days, and helped a lot in deciding what to buy, and what to avoid. </font>

[SgtMuhammed]

Yeah it seems that all the gaming mags have adopted the "all FPS all the time" philosophy. If the game requires thought it might get a 70 or 80 rating but even the most vanilla FPS is assured an 85 or better.

One thing to consider when you think of the things still on your hard drive, would you think those games were as good if you were just buying them. There are games that I absolutly love because I know how good they are (European Air War is still my favorite flight sim) but if I bought them today for the first time I would probably think them way to simplistic.

Another thing to remember is that these are all just our personal opinions. There is no need to act as though we are spouting facts here.

[Dinger]

I don't want to hear anyone's personal opinions.

Yes, there's a lot of nostalgia and a lot of subjective judgments swimming around this thread, but that doesn't reduce it all to the level of "just personal opinion". I'd rather read reasoned arguments about what constitutes a "dumbed down" game, and how the "graphics arms race" expresses itself in terms of video game design. These can and often are interpretations based on evidence, not mere curmudgeonly whining about a lost golden age.