Were video games really better in the 90s/early 2000s, or is it just nostalgia?

Were video games really better in the 90s/early 2000s, or is it just nostalgia?

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Technological improvement produced consistent awe if you grew up with a Nintendo. You were in a constant state of being blown away by new shit. Old games mostly suck nuts.

More innovation, more new ideas. We get some of the same stuff, but it's not as new. Occasionally you'll see a new IP impress you, but it's not the same these days.

Vidyas, such as any other medium of form of art__, is a product of it's time. If you prefer a certain period of time, then games from that time will be better for you.

guy on the right looks like one of the proclaimers

You had more games that just tried to be games instead of money machines. Yes you still have games being made today that are in the same spirit of having a good time like EDF but then you have shit like BF2 with the insane cost of heroes.

The state of the industry was absolutely better. MMOs were an amazing new genre, games still had paper manuals, no DLC, no e-sports, little to no political correctness (Jack Thompson was a joke by the end of the '90s), publishers were happy take risks on interesting independent companies with out buying and destroying them.

We were optimistic and it wasn't just about the highest numbers and most profit.

Lot more bold steps in game and level design proper too, so even if you're someone like me that doesn't care much for technical prowess but cares about good game design, the period was still much better. I mean it's sad that Prey might be one of the best games of 2017, and the best we have to say about it is that it's a rehash of games 20 years older which cannot even manage to do better - barely as good.

Only game-design related thing that made significant leaps in the 2010s is UI.

Back then the only "interactive experiences" were shitty FMV games that were completely ignored, not every other AAA game.

Having played games since the 80s, I can tell you this:

Back then, because the hobby was less mainstream and the market was way smaller, companies and professionals who wanted to create videogames were committed to trying to deliver a finished product of high quality in hopes that they can make enough money to turn a profit and keep the business going.

They also loved videogames enough to devote their careers to them, despite the business being nowhere near as lucrative as it is now.

Nowadays, because games are so much more accessible and because the industry has grown so much, you get far too many business people, who have no idea about what makes games good, trying to turn around quick, flawed products, in order to cash in.

A culture of "patching" and DLC has evolved from that, which essentially fixes or adds to an initial unfinished product.

On the other hand, making games is also easier than ever, due to the rise of steam and the mobile market, so you get a myriad of games from new developers, most of which are of questionable quality.

TL;DR Yes, games were really better in the 90s/00s, because the people making the games were better.

>Were video games really better in the 90s/early 2000s

Well, there were mainstream releases that weren't shooters.

Also kinda reminds me of Carmack.

Depends on genre. We unfortunately don’t get stuff like Jagged Alliance 2 or Thief 1/2 anymore, but on the other hand we still get fun and innovative games every year, despite what Sup Forums says, many of them being stuff that had no equivalents back in the day. For example, I’m having a damn good time with Factorio and Hitman 2016 now, and there were no comparable games back then.

Is nostalgia a factor? Not always, as some of those ’90s classics are still so good that there’s practically nothing to surpass them in their genre. But often it is, as people are always more easily impressionable when they’re kids and teenagers, it’s inevietable that games don’t woo you so throughly when you have already played hundreds of them already. I know perfectly well that some of those games I enjoyed in my childhood would make no positive impression to me if I actually played them first time today with all the vidya experience I have now. Also, people often tend to only remember the good stuff from ’90’s, completely forgetting all these shit that existed.

Well, the problem is that we slowly transitioned from an enthusiast market to a bona fide industry, with all the bad it entails.

at least they are all single player games

and i dont play multiplayer trash anymore

there were a lot of shit games and a lot of great games, one difference being most of the shit games weren't shit on purpose

nostalgia.

I also really hope that people would be nostalgic only in the positive sense: nothing’s wrong with remembering the games you loved fondly, but when one gets obsessed about the idea of chasing the enjoyment you got out of vidya as kid, it’s something that is bound to leave you disappointed. ”Because I don’t enjoy video games nowadays as much as I enjoyed them when I was 12, all new vidya is shit” is an attitude that does nothing positive to anyone. You will never enjoy games as much as you enjoyed them back then, no matter how good they are.

>More innovation, more new ideas.
This, basically. Lower frequency of games that "feel" the same. This is both a good and a bad thing.

>You will never enjoy games as much as you enjoyed them back then, no matter how good they are
Sounds like an excuse an underaged faggot would make in order to defend his meme shit.

>Hitman 2016
>no comparable games back then

Hitman: Blood Money?

Games were made to trial out new concepts and explore gameplay mechanics. Profit was the main driver obviously, but the selling model was based on a complete product. This meant most bonus content was free (such as through demo disks on gaming magazines), and expansions were actual full games. This meant innovation and products had to have quality if you wanted a long term market presence.


Today games are made solely to churn a profit. This means that the mentality is a "quick-win lowest hanging fruit" model. You can blame casual gaming for this such as Peggle/Candy Crush etc which really helped solidify the Micro-Transaction payment. Game design therefore has shifted from the original model to this "see what we can sell" model because market presence and

Surprisingly The Indie scene and MMO Expansion development is more like traditional model.

The only genre that was better 10+ years ago that we will never get back are MMOs. Before WoW made billions dollars MMOs were all sandboxes. There was no internet culture. You never really knew what kind of players you'd find logging in.

Now days all major titles are powered by big data, every monster kill is recorded and graphed. Every time you go idle or log off, the designers make note. They only want full control over your experience.

My bad, it's 2006... probably a bit late for the defined period.
Point still stands for previous game I guess.

there were a lot more 'firsts' in gaming at the time. hence that made gaming feel fresh. nowadays a lot of gaming is refinement, not as many radical ideas floating around just fun ones. personally i have so many good games to play that it means my backlog keeps growing. never had that problem back then though because i had to wait a long time between the good releases.

Came in 2006, I’d consider it as modern era of vidya. For me, the cutting point between ”old” and ”new” is 2000, although I know that it is completely subjective where that line lies.

Think about this for a moment: when you played a game as a kid, you were unfamiliar with the genres and the technology. You had (almost) nothing to compare anything to, everything was new, you didn’t recognize the cliches. But now? You can’t play anything without comparing it to something else, you are completely familiar with all the cliches of your favorite genres, you have already experieced all the usual gameplay mechanics. Nothing can surprise you anymore.

Is it really a wonder that it’s hard to get so excited about games when you’ve already seen it all so many times? Also, it’s probably harder to focus on vidya at all without thinking about some other stuff you have to do outside vidya - no such problems as a kid, no jobs or other real duties besides the trivial school homework.

Yup, datamining and minmaxing everything is one of those things I hate the most in modern multiplayer vidya. There’s no real sense of experimenting or exploration anymore when everyone just copies the ”big boys” to be as efficient as possible. However, this is less about the games themselves and more about the people playing them.

Fun and challenging. Yep, it was better.

Everything made after 2007 has been shit that only casualfags and retards can enjoy. Fuck off to neofag or plebbit if you actually like playing anything made after that, or even better, kill yourself.

Neither. People who hate themselves claim that things in their childhood were better, back when they didn't think about anything.

>Were video games really better in the 90s/early 2000s, or is it just nostalgia?
>or is it just nostalgia?

Why can't people understand that every generation, every year, has had its good and bad in regards to gaming? Some years there was more good then bad. Others there was more bad then good.

This is too simplistic of a question. It would be better to address questions asked instead rather than one very general question. So in general I say yes games were better back then. Now if this triggers people then they should just ask questions that I can answer more in depth.

user, look me in the eye and tell me vidya wasn't better back then.

There’s no denying that, but then again it’s inevietable that innovating gets harder year by year when more and more games get released. Of course, doesn’t change the fact that it is disappointing how many big studios want just to play it safe every time.

Why does carmack look buff in that one? His forearm is like almost as big as his face.

Overall, yes. Video games actually seemed like video games, and not just "feelings" or "experiences".

youtube.com/watch?v=8tN_TPTIrYs

I can completely agree that all the lootbox stuff going on with AAA vidya is horrible shit, but I still hate it when people label all modern vidya as shit because of ”hurrdurr its just all Battlefront and CoD” now. Not saying that modern gaming is necessarily better or even the same quality as older vidya, but to be fair one has to look at modern vidya beneath the surface too, not just at what sells the most.

its about the same, you just only remember the good games from that time.
try to recall how much shovelware was being put in store shelves, especially during the early 2000. it was crazy compared to now

>a gorgeous Star Wars FPS
What's the issue exactly? As a kid today I would shit my pants in excitement.

>being a shit-eater
Kill yourself.

Answer the question.

What's sad is that EVEN in the most reiterative designs, the games haven't progressed much in general. I mean compare Alpha Centauri to Civilization: Beyond Earth to take one example.
I understand the scale of design jumps getting smaller as we map more and more of the territory. I have a harder time forgiving the already mapped zones getting *worse* over time for so many genres and games.

Not that everything is bad. Some cool games are still being made - 2017 is probaly the best year we've had in a long while. But overall, I do think we have it worse on many respects.
Hell per my comment up-thread, look at Prey.

But he has a point, actually. If you were a kid now, you would just see it as an awesome Star Wars themed shooter that looks absolutely gorgeous, not realizing how scummy it actually is. Of course, it’s true that the games we played as kids didn’t have microtransactions, but it outlines the point that kids usually don’t see the bad things about the games as well as someone with experience does.

Imagine an age where only smart people could use computers.

That was the target audience. So the games could be more sophisticated.

It's just hard not to think about the flagrant greed of the industry in this day and age. I know it's always been about money, but the current practices seem much more cancerous. I can't think of a game back in the day, other than a few MMOs, where I would be spending an upwards of $1000. Even the Japanese game industry has succumb to this trash, at least on phones/tablets. It's depressing to think about.

I don't know, maybe I am just sounding like an old man here. Perhaps things aren't all that worse and I just miss the old days. I'm feeling sad today. Not because of this shit mind you.

>Imagine an age where only smart people could use computers.
Never happened on this planet.

>Technological improvement produced consistent awe, period.
Fixed
It was exponential progression all around.
Now let's see where we've gone from 2008-2017. Oh, yeah.

You tell me
>Chrono Trigger
>Perfect Dark
>Ocarina of Time
>Doom
>Quake
>Half Life
>Secret of Mana
>Final Fantasy VI
>Banjo Kazooie
>Crash Bandicoot 2
>Daggerfall
>Yoshi's Island
>Super Mario World

The fact that you focused on it being gorgeous rather than name anything significantly good from a a game-design standpoint says it all, really.

As I kid, I don't think I would even be able to afford Battlefront 2.

Kids care more about brilliant graphics, booming sounds and the Star Wars IP. Still not seeing the issue really. Not like it plays like shit or anything anyway.

Hardware limitations forced innovation creating an overall more memorable game.

Consider how games from then created their own culture which still survives, such as Zelda.

Did you not have parents?

I actually completely agree on you that greedy shit like that feels unbelievably slimy, but I just try to focus on the games I like instead of focusing on the ones that I wouldn’t like. Too many in Sup Forums spend too much time thinking about games they wouldn’t like either way instead of being happy about the good games we get.

Not to say that one isn’t allowed to criticize shitty practices, but Sup Forums really is too focused on negative side of the scale.

>I know it's always been about money

Bull-fucking-shit?
Call me fucking old, but I remember when the market was a bunch of programmers trading their floppies in plastic bags. And certainly, they were glad to make money, but to most it was about creating stuff.
Hell even right now, the industry scumbags are all about the money, certainly, but they make so much of it by abusing kids fresh out of school that just want to *create* something and are willing to be underpaid and treated like shit to do so.

It’s not about what one would focus on now, it’s about what one would think as a kid. And yes, they would just see and enjoy the gorgeous shell of it instead of realizing anything about the depth of gameplay or lack of it.

I had a single mother who was living from paycheck to paycheck. We could barely afford vidya for Christmas, let alone this shit. It was a miracle I could even get an N64 in 1997, along with Super Mario 64.

Depends when you entered video games and your view on them. From people that only consume modern games then they seem more difficult and less accessible to play the first time, more so with games in the 16-bit era and beforehand. That is amusing though since a lot of those games are suppose to be pick-up and play types and often have simple control schemes compared to games of today. People today think they always need to progress otherwise the game is too frustrating so there are auto saves or reduced difficulty that is more in tune with what that audience wants so they don't end up repeating sections over and over and possibly start from level 1 when they get the eventual game over. Not only that but people today think games should be long, and often think a game beaten within ten hours from start to finish is short. They focus too much on money per hour rather than the quality of the game itself and from moment to moment in the game. Traversing open empty fields is getting more bang for your buck time wise, but not entertainment wise in actually doing something interesting within the ga

Well, don't get me wrong. I do think a lot of good games have come out this year. I thoroughly enjoyed BOTW, Sonic Mania, Cuphead, Odyssey, and Samus Returns. I do still enjoy vidya mind you. I like it. I just wish this kind of trash didn't exist.

PS2-Era was the absolute best time for games, this is objective fact.
>many series got their foot in the door on the PS1, and already knew what they needed to improve, this plus better tech lead to many fantastic sequels (silent hill 2/3, MGS 2/3, etc.)
>technology was finally able to deliver big, complex, good-looking 3D games
>gaming was big enough that companies were willing to put lots of effort and manpower into them, but not so big that games were billion dollar affairs where you need to appeal to everyone to break even
>because of this there were still tons of weird little games like Destroy All Humans that would never be made today except as a cynical indie meme game

except that Thief and Jagged Alliance were pretty much AAA games in their respective genres, while Factorio is an indie game.

That sucks. Plenty of kids who like Star Wars will have parents that can get them the game though.

Well, you are right. I've been playing vidya since..... 1992, 1993? The early '90s, and it did feel like there was more passion for the craft itself. The industry was certainly less bloated.

I think there's good and bad games being made all of the time.
I'd rather not get into broad generalizations because you will always find examples that counter them.

You're all fucking wrong. Not everyone working at game companies, even the larger ones like EA, are just about the money. That is super bullshit. These games still have a ton of effort put into them.

I don't think so, as a kid I loathed most Star Wars game because they were shit. Hell we openly mocked them at school when discussing games and having been offered the latest Star wars cash-in was enough to be teased about.
Later, when they started getting decent-to-good games was another story I guess.

Thing is, I come from a time when you could hardly wow me with graphical prowess. So It probably doesn't apply. I was already an adult in the 90s/early 00s. The nostalgia argument doesn't really gel with me.

Eh, I'd say fourth gen was relatively the same. 2D gaming was pretty much at its absolute best, third parties were on their best behavior, there was a lot of competition, Sega was still doing relatively well. Many genres were pretty much perfected or at least becoming pretty awesome. It was the birth of good FPSs like Doom.

I like to think of the 6th gen as a second renaissance, a resurgence of the industry. Or a second golden age.

I certainly hope so since that is him

Why are you quoting me when I AM saying producing people are not all about the money?

I liked Star Wars games, it's just that they were too hard. Lucas Arts made them nearly impossible to beat. Super Star Wars was frustrating as all hell.

youtube.com/watch?v=NnsGbd8WMNg

Huge /vr/ fag, let me explain my love for them and the style.

Games like Doom, Quake, Daikatana, and Hexen were ambitious as fuck. They all tried to do things other games haven't done before in the same package.

Doom stripped the bullshit out of the formula from Wolfenstein, and added way bigger levels.

Quake did the same, but added more unique enemies, and added unique art direction, and of course, 3D graphics.

Daikatana did sort of the same as Quake, but also blended RPG elements and a heavy story as well.

Hexen was also heavy on RPG elements, but had a huge interconnected world, puzzles, and a shitton more. It felt like a huge, sprawling adventure.

Now name at least 4 games today that have come out recently that are FPSs that are as unique as these.

The problem is that the games back in the day weren't just throwing shit in a hat to see if they could be as original as possible (STRAFE, Battleborn, etc) but actually putting games together with a formula with intent on creating something solid that people can enjoy and get into.

Compare the new prey to, say, battleborn, and you'll see exactly what I mean. Video games were better because people weren't adding in shit as a press point to get more sales. They were passion projects made by people who wanted to make damn good games. Sure people got rich and some even wanted to get rich, but the big thing about creating games was that it was a hobby (Wolfenstein, Doom) or because they wanted to make something big, and amazing to wow people (95% of whatever Tom Hall and John Romero touched that wasn't related to Wolf or Doom, or Quake in Romero's case)

Go read Masters of Doom, and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

2D gaming was at it's best but 3D was still in it's infancy and it showed. I just feel like PS2 was the point where games could have the same, or at least similar scope and production value as they do today but before everything went to shit with DLC and whatnot.

I'm not saying every person working in the industry is a scumbag, but I do recognize the fact that game companies themselves have gotten more greedy, and they are asking for too much. I think consumers even realize this to a certain degree, hence the harsh backlash against SBF2.

youtube.com/watch?v=A6TmTv6deTI

Games were originally made by a small team of passionate nerds. Now they are part of a corporate cycle that makes money to justify their existence.

Had a c64/atari/nes/snes and skipped the n64/ps1 era to go full PC during mid-late 90's. Going from shitty composite tv to vga crt was a game changer for me. Skipped most of gen 6th consoles because PC offered better picture quality and also better multiplats, exclusives and mods.

Nah bro.
I remember the loads of shareware games.
I remember tons of freeware games.
I remember games that came clean and polished. I remember spending thousands of hours playing zelda on snes but don't recall a single game crash.
I remember when you didn't have to pay to unlock extra content. Just unlocked it by playing.
I remember when atari tried to capitalize on a the popularity of a movie and dumped out a steamy pile of E.T. that nearly killed the entire industry.

The truth it's they were better.

My view on it is, both are the two best generations of video games, for different reasons. They're pretty much the pinnacle of 2D and 3D. I've always viewed both as two different golden ages of video games. Certainly, the sixth generation was the last good one. After that, everything went to shit.

That depends. Which of the two choices offer PEPSIMAN?

Just how old are you senpai? I was born in 87, so I wasn't around for the crash. Though I've heard stories.

AAA games were better because they focused on innovation instead of catering to the lowest common denominator
Video games are just as good now, its just that indie games have stepped into the spotlight. Two indie devs can do today with a budget of $5 and a pizza what took a team of codemonkeys a full budget 25 odd years ago

Eh, I liked Cool Spot better.

i dunno my parents stopped buying me video games after nes so i just pirated shit when we finally got a shitty computer in 1996
i wasn't a well behaved child

I've been playing a lot of games from the 90s and the 00s, replaying some from my childhood and playing games I've never touched before, and I can say that I've been having more fun playing them than most of the games I've played that have come out over the last few years. There have been a few games I've truly enjoyed that have come out recently, but most of them were just not memorable and some of them were a chore to play.

Video games were actually video games back then

>I wasn't around for the crash
Not him, but look up "video games 1982", "video games 1983" and "video games 1984". The crash was really not visible to people who just enjoyed playing video games. Only industry folks noticed.

Old enough.
I wasn't old enough to play but I was old enough to hear the older kids speak of the evil. One could say American greed killed video games but Japanese passion revived it.

So is it safe to say American greed is killing it a second time?

no, because people are actually buying lootboxes

You all are retarded as fuck if you think games werent buggy messes. BTW only 9 dollars a minute to get some tips.

80s is where most of the ideas were formed. 90's is where most of those ideas were expanded and experimented with, 00s is where some of those ideas were killed and some of the ideas maximized to their fullest extent, 10's and today is where the ideas that works are molded more to make them more appealing to everyone. It is also the decade where most of the ideas have already been done and the only thing to maximize is the graphics. 2020's is where we see the "gambling-fication" of gaming and we are already seeing it now with random skin sellers, loot boxes and more.

Goddammit. Well elder user, to be honest, part of me wishes there was a crash to reset the industry. But I know that it's not possible at this point, because it's too big to fail.

AAA games had a lot more variety back then.
Cheat codes, easter eggs, and unlockables were more common.
Japanese games had fun jazzy soundtracks.
Games where you were faced with a mystery stayed mysterious since the internet wasn't as big back then.

But I'll admit we have come a long way in terms of controls and online features.

>long way in terms of controls
What controls? Most of the controls or control schemes we have today have been seen as early as the early 90's.
>online features.
There are already online games as early as the late 80s. Maybe online features splattered with awesome graphics.

Even if western vidya industry crashed, it’s only a matter of time before nips extend their gachashit from mobile games to console games. East or west, we’re fucked on that regard.

Oh yeah, gachashit. I forgot about that. Fuck this gay earth, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Another user here, let's say I'm old enough that my first console was a Magnavox Odyssey2 and leave it at that.
One thing you have to understand is that the crash was also not perceived the same at all depending on where you lived. In Europe it was barely a scratch. and even then, it's mostly enthusiasts that new about it. There wasn't much of a mass market and news channels as we have today about it.

There's never going to be a crash similar to the old one. The market is far too different today. Saturation of the market is happening, but has very different consequences. If anything, you can tie the desire to diversified income sources in the market right now as a way to escape its consequences by publishers.

AAA will die soon.

The soul of gaming is dying. Consumerism though. You have people who have no issue paying out for every slimy money hungry tactic the industry tries. You have other people making excuses for every slimy money hungry tactic the industry tries.

I seriously would not be surprised if the future resembles demo keys. Pay dull price for what ammounts to a demo, then pay more and more to unlock basically the whole game

Not judging by 2017

>early access games

>The soul of gaming is dying.
Sorry you feel that way. Meanwhile I've had a blast with RE7, Breath of the Wild, PUBG, Prey, Cuphead, and Divinity 2 this year. There's also a bunch of games I haven't even tried yet but want to.