Here's why modern gaming suuuuucks.
Here's why modern gaming suuuuucks.
So when I was a kid in the 80s, I would always get SUPER excited for getting a new game.
We'd get in the car, drive to Toys R Us, and in the video game section was basically an homage to Nintendo. So much so that the descriptors at the end of the isles didn't say "video games", it said "Nintendo". Sure, they sold Sega and Atari too.....but it was the Nintendo isle.
So you'd pick your game, and on the drive home you would flip through your new game manual. Remember game manuals??? You'd learn all about this new world. Who was this "Zelda" if the main character was a boy??? What kind of world was this??? It looks HUGE!!!! DO YOU SEE ALL THESE DIFFERENT ENEMIES???
Finally (after like 10 minutes), you'd get home. You'd race to the door, only for you to realize that you need dad to unlock the door. Now, dad was probably walking at a normal pace, but to a hyper 6 year old excited to play with his new toy, he may as well have been a dried out turtle. Or a sloth.
FINALLY he opens the front door, and you go rushing to the TV. You put the cartridge in, and you're ready to play. You turn the power on, and you're already at the name screen. After you put in the name "Dork", because you're an edgy 80s kid, you're already in front of a cave. Oh god.....what's in there??? How do I fight monsters??? THE BUTTONS DO NOTHING!!! Oh god, oh god, here we go, we're going in the cave.....
And you all know how it plays out from there.
These days, it's a bit different. These days a game gets announced and you wait for release day. Then you turn on your console, and you buy the game. Now you gotta wait for an hour for it to download. Thats assuming your console doesn't need an update. So now you're waiting.....and waiting.....and waiting.......
Eventually it's all done, and you boot the game up, but theres a day 1 update. So more waiting. FINALLY after an hour and a half it's done.
So you boot it up, and you don't get that same sense of wonderment. It's because todays games have been done to death. Every game is a post appocolytic shooter where the emphisis is on online play. So now you already know what you're getting, and you gotta wait again for online lobbies to start.
And when Nintendo released the Super Nintendo it was a radical jump in performance in every sense on a platform that was revolutionary to start with. It was must have technology.
Now, 50% of PS4 users haven't upgraded to a newer system. And why? Because the PS5 looks like a slight visual upgrade in apperance, and zero upgrade in performance. Games look and feel mostly the same as they would on PS4. And the games are all the same. Microtransactions, unimaginative plots, forgetable characters, sequals reboots prequals. We're seeing the same franchises, with the same characters doing the same things for 30 years. Mario is still saving the princess for Bowser. At this point, Peach is just LETTING herself get kidnapped. Zelda is going to save Link now in the new game.....which would be a new concept, playing as Zelda, except Shiek was Zelda the whole time. Oops, spoilers on a 26 year old game.
Breath of the Wild had that samr sense of childhood wonder. But only if you actively avoided online discussions, youtube videos, social media. It was a barrage of avoiding spoilers, but I did it, and March 3rd 2017 was GLORIOUS. It's also the last time I felt that need to get a new console.
I regretted buying a PS4, but for some stupid reason I bought a PS5 this year. I regret it. I see no system seller.
And thats another thing. Why can't the games give you the option to play from disc, rather than install everything? Most games are like 50-100gb. It eats up storage REAL quick. Now you gotta decide "ok, which games do I want to delete, and which am I going to use soon?
Theres NO reason for me to justify 45gb on my hard drive for the PS4 version of Madden 19, when all I do is play exhibition. But I also don't want to delete it, and reinstall it every few months on the off chance I want yo play 20 minutes of 1 game.
Sure, maybe Madden diehards get use out of that 45gb. I do not. I don't play season. I do give a shit about those madden cards. I only play exhibition, 1 game, maybe once every 4 months. Same with NHL. Same with MLB.
Why must I take up like 200gb for games I play casually and sparingly, and almost ALWAYS have to sit through an update before I throw the ball? I don't even care about roster updates. Unless they're on Cleveland's team, I don't know any of these players. I don't give a shit that Joe Whatshisname used to play for Chicago, but now he plays in New York.
I just want to pop in the disc, and play. No bullshit.
I wish Madden 95 worked on the SNES classic. It's the last SNES version that Cleveland had a team.
But instead now, every single game comes with forced bullshit
My friend, I think you need to join us indie gamers, especially on PC. DRM free, minimal updates, small installs, high novelty and weirdness factors. I barely play anything "AAA" anymore and definitely nothing that does Games as a Service.
I gotta agree here. Every game doesn't feel the same if you don't constrain yourself to the world of overhyped overmonetized AAA slop.
In my library I have a game about running an alternate-history navy sitting next to one about being a scrapper in space. The next one over is about terraforming a planet with your own labor. Then there's a pure-bred Igavania next to a quirky game about power washing.
Sure, there are multiplayer titles in there as well but virtually none that even bother with anti-cheat bullshit because coop beats competitive in my opinion.
(For the record, I do own overhyped AAA slop but it's nowhere near the majority of what I play.)
What are your favorite indie games?
You do not miss old games. You miss being a careless happy kid.
You can easily ignore the whole corporate AAA games-as-a-service bullshit.
There was never a better time to be an indie gamer. Arcade, platformer, racing, RPG, shooter. You can find a GOTY contender in each category under 5 USD each year.
Exactly this. For me it becomes obvious, when I play older games. Sure, A Link to the Past is still a gem, Super Metroid or SMB3, too. But many of those older games, we have fond memories of, kind of suck today. Just a bit, they are still fun. But the magic is gone. Saw that with Sands of Time a few weeks ago. Then the System Shock Remake came and gave that sense of wonder back.
Downloads are no problem. Disk space is cheaper then ever. Go have fun discussing games on Lemmy while waiting for the download, watch a Video about it or whatever. It is just harder to have fun, because we have sooo much to choose from and because some of us became old grumpy farts (myself included).
First, you are way older now. You cannot compare any experience in your life to that when you were a kid
And second?
But seriously: in a way, you're right. New games don't appeal to me. The kind of "child wonder" I get nowadays is by playing games that are similar to the ones I used to play when younger. Fantasy consoles have pretty much an endless supply of these games, and I enjoy discovering new, interesting ones. No spending, no gigabytes of data.
As soon as consoles required to be "always online," I was out.
I mean, you're 40 now (or close to it). A lot of your nostalgia is also wrapped up in being 5. I too was an 80s kid but if the market hadn't changed your reaction would. You probably aren't sitting under a blanket learning the names in Dave the Diver. You have an income now so you probably wouldn't just wait till your parents bought you Hades 2. You're probably not running around with your friends right now pretending to be Helldivers. Games have changed but so have you. The Indie market is carrying the torch of these bygone days. A lot of the stuff you want wouldn't have the same impact on you today. I am however watching my own children glom into game characters. My daughter loves Mario and Mega Man without going to Blockbuster to rent the cartridges.
(Btw madden 95 does work on the SNES classic, they're pretty easy to jail break and fill with your own ROMs)
People are writing a lot of things that I agree with, but I want to chime in with two points.
The first, which one or two other commenters have touched on, is that in 2024 we have approximately 50 years of content already in existence. There's no need to limit ourselves to what's been released in the last 12 months. Classic books, music, plays, and movies stay popular for decades or centuries. Why feel shamed out of playing old games by 12-year-olds and the megacorps?
The second thing is, yes, try indie games, and IMO the best place to find them is for PCs on itch.io. Forget 95% of what's marketed as "indie" on consoles.
You're playing the wrong games if you think modern games are all the same. Buy a half decent mini PC, install Steam, and play indie games.
There are even a ton of retro games on Steam. Not vintage, but retro. New games with old school graphics and appeal, like The Messenger.
Spoiler
Definitely don't search for Madden NFL 95 SNES ROMS
Steam Deck OLED is pretty awesome. Microsoft-free PC in your hands.
Anyway it's all about DRM.
You will own nothing and you will love it. /S
You can give your steam info to your loved one and accidentally forgot to tell them when you die 🥹.
Or there's always GoG.
I've been🖥️ PC/Linux 🐧 only since 2019, no regrets.
- 🎮 #BazziteLife 🕹️
Big fan of this solution. Switch emulation is also pretty great on the steam deck and gets rid of most of the modern grossness (always on, obtrusive DRM, etc) that comes with playing on they physical device.
Grew in that age too. Just cause you are playing games that are shitty doesn't mean games are shitty now. The game market is bigger than it's ever been. Game has forced online play and microtransactions? Don't buy it.
There was tons of absolute garbage in the 80s. There's tons of great stuff now. If you've lost your sense of discovery that seems more like a you thing than a "games are bad now" thing.
P.S. go play Tunic if you haven't already.
You’re getting so many responses that are just “have you tried indie games?” or trying to dispel the rose-colored glasses. I suspect it’s because of the headline saying modern gaming sucks, which I think can be pretty objectively disproven.
That said, I can tell you about my experiment. I’ve instituted a program with my 12 year old stepson where he can earn marbles through chores and other tasks, and he can trade those marbles in for retro games I find in local stores and flea markets. One of the things he can also buy for a very low price is a downloaded retro magazine from retromags.com - he can ask for an issue with a particular topic in it and I’ll find one and send it to him. He isn’t really very internet savvy yet, so he’s not likely to hit up IGN for info or anything.
The result of this so far (only a few weeks in) has been serious excitement and engagement. He has access to Xbox Series and PS5 consoles, but getting to own physical games and accessories (we play them on a Retron 3 HD console) has motivated him more than I’ve seen almost anything else do. He keeps asking me if Street Fighter 2 will come to the “store” anytime soon because of my stories of how badly I wanted that game as a kid his age. Little does he know that for Christmas he’ll be getting an excellent condition, complete in box copy of Street Fighter 2: Special Championship Edition for the Genesis. He’s gonna flip.
The upshot of all this is that I really do think there was a certain magic to the experience back then. I’m doing my damnedest to recreate that magic for him, and so far it’s at least kinda working!
This is a nice story. I like this. My parents would occasionally buy me games, but it was mostly once or twice a year, and they never got excited for my excitement. They would just complain that all I do is play video games. Meanwhile all dad did was watch sports, and all mom did was watch news.
But somehow I'M an asshole 7 year old for not playing outside, and being glued to the tv all day! I'm ranting, but yes, 40 year old me is still pissed at my parents.
Getting back on track, I think it's adorable how you not only engage with your kid, and teach him the value of earning things. And participate with your kid.
Makes me wonder if you were a fan of the aki wrestling games on N64. There's a definate depth to those games that you don't find in todays wrestling games. AEW tried......but I feel like their third game they might start getting it right. For reference, they've only made 1 game, and it took 4 years to make.
Your experience from 80s is similar to my experience now with Switch games (it's not the same only because I'm not a kid). Download times do suck but I have a really simple solution for them: I simply do something else until it's finished. And there are great games that don't take much space space on your storage, Balatro is first one that comes to mind.
"Every game is a post appocolytic shooter where the emphasis is on online play"
Buys the same game 15 times
Complains that it's the same game again
Have you tried not doing that
Oh, I haven't bought ANY of them. I dislike the whole genre as a whole. Never played a Halo a day in my life. Last the only 2 shooters I ever played were Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Both on N64. Neither of which is anything I described.
I generally stay away from things like online play. I don't have PS+ or Nintendo Online, and I've never owned an XBox of any kind.
That doesn't mean however that I don't see that this is the direction the industry headed 20 years ago, and hasn't looked back. They keep making call of duty, and all these other shooters because that's what people buy. OTHER people make it popular, not me.
There’s a lot of games that do very well that don’t fall into your stereotypes.
Sure, CoD sells the best. That doesn’t mean Disco Elysium sucks though, or Citizen Sleeper, or Stardew Valley, or Sekiro, or Psychonauts 2, or Hollow Knight, or any number of great games. Games that were impossible when manufacture was monopolized by Nintendo’s cartel, or when cartridges were required and made games cost $60 in 1995.
Gaming is not immune from dialectics. It too exists in a tension between contradictions. It is both terrible, and wonderful, as it was during the golden age you are highlighting from the past, when games cost far more money and were available to far fewer people. When there was no way for one person (Stardew) or two (Hollow Knight) to be able to make and distribute an entire game without submitting themselves to subservience under a publisher.
Most modern AAA games sucks. Mainly because majority of them have started to go with the online only bullcrap when it is not even necessary. Not to mention that trend too where games are sold half baked with the rest of the game being delivered later as separate to purchase DLC(s).
I have already embraced Indies. Fun fact: Baldurs Gate 3 is an indie game (although the quality is very much an AAA game and also some argueably saying it is not because Larian is a large private company that independently publishes their games)
It's easy to forget the negatives involved here (or some you maybe never knew as a kid). Games used to be very expensive for 80's kids. Adjusting for inflation, you can get two full-priced AAA games now for what A Link to the Past cost in 1992. It's part of the reason there's so much more choice now. Also, games came with manuals because they were so strapped for storage space that they couldn't put tutorials and instructions in the games themselves. Kids that rented games or purchased them secondhand often didn't have the manuals available, so they'd get stuck (before Internet info access).
I agree with the others that you should look into PC gaming; aside from the occasional live service game, I've only ever updated my games when I want to. In general, indies are a good way to go to mitigate many (if not all) of the issues brought up, but so are quality PC ports. For example, I just bought Trails through Daybreak from GOG, which so far looks like something I'll never have to update, I can be in the game action within literally four seconds of launching it, and it's mine forever.
That's setting aside all the value considerations like access to mods, full control of your save storage, getting to play with the gamepad of your choice, supporting small devs/publishers, etc. Even without diving into indie gaming, there are tons of quality AA titles around, too. Compared to a console, It's trivial to offset the larger hardware costs with cheaper games.
Yes with inflation games are proportionately less, but let's also not forget that wages have stagnated while inflation has ballooned. People literally aren't earning much than they were in the 90s (well, the average person, the inflation money has gone to the dragons). The price of games relative to mean wage is fairly consistent IIRC.
But yeah everything else is pretty true. And we all look back on games as kids with rose colored glasses. I remember when majoras mask was photorealistic to me almost!
In the US, since the conversation began with an American retailer? No. The larger trend in this reference window--since the early 90's--is flat wage growth versus inflation (productivity has increased massively, but the implications of that are a whole other conversation). There was a recent, brief period of inflation outpacing wages as a result of the pandemic, but that trend has also since reversed to a small degree. New fast food hires weren't making $15 an hour in 1992. There's been wage growth, just closely in-line with inflation over the long term. It's an apples-to-apples comparison here, unusually so.
Video games are dramatically less expensive now to purchase than they were in the fourth gen. It's easy to see why, too; the marginal cost of a cartridge-based game was substantial, owing to a relatively complex manufacturing process. That marginal cost dropped substantially with disc media (with a corresponding drop in game prices at retail), and then again to near zero with digital distribution.
Excuse me, I wasn't paying attention, too busy playing Stardew Valley
tl;dr: "Growing up sucks because it makes everything look the same old."
I mean... yeah. That is why you have to stop wishing for "the same old" over and over again and embrace the new. And yes, I (also) think DRM has no other purpose than to hinder performance.
t. am (also) a 80's "kid".
In the '80s, we had to travel > 40 minutes each way. I could afford a game maybe once every month or two, but I ended up getting more into D&D instead and spending my money on those books (both game books and novels).
When Blockbuster got games for rent, that was great because my town actually had one and it was only about 15-20 minutes each way.
I mostly stuck to computer gaming into the '90s, though. I played a gamecube or N64 a couple of times, but never really got into it (and we certainly couldn't afford to buy them). It was still kinda the same deal for computer games, though; do I have enough RAM for this? Can my Amiga work with a RAM expansion? I guess there were less things, but they still existed. Probably on the C64 as well, but I remember that less.
I do miss the manuals, though; that's for sure.
Permanently Deleted
did anyone else break the plastic on their new game and stick their nose in it and inhale that brain damaging chemically new game smell?
God that was better than heroine for me.