201–210 of 335 posts
Why would anyone actually read this? Does this guy actually play video games?
Baldurs Gate 3? Hades 1/2? Poe? Last Epoch? Counter Strike? Schedule 1? iRacing? Literally can do this all day.
There’s always shit video games and there’s always fun video games.
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It's not like they were designed like that on purpose. It was a limitation of the technology of the time. If they could've made as many live service games back then, they would have. This comparison is also unfair for a couple more reasons: - It ignores the fact that when a game was released on CD back then... that's it. No updates. No patches. Nothing. You break it, that's it. Game ending bug that corrupts your save…
Not all of that is true. Who played with the un-updated CD version?
Old games being available has stopped enshittification and value extraction from VC and PE. The cost of new games has reached a point where that kind of capital is needed but the value extraction mechanisms these funding methods require don’t work when there’s competition from old games that allocate more value to the user. The hardware upgrade train stopped about 2019 too because more expensive hardware scarcely mak…
sadly true, it's almost comical how all other major game company can't seem to grasp why steam is so successful.
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Games from the 2010s I still see people playing: FTL, Celeste, Undertale, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, Stardew Valley… there are definitely survivors from the 2010s. Your list may be different from mine. Not counting any of the perennial games like League of Legends or Fortnite.
People are still playing EverQuest which is from 1999 and is still actively developed with new expansion packs coming out once a year. They have made a lot of changes to make it more friendly to solo players and small groups, and a lot of UI improvements, and you can play free with some limitations. Here's a comment [1] with more details on what EQ is like nowadays. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368588
The RPG genre has largely died. By that I mean we have Bethesda games (notably Skyrim and Fallon 3 and New Vegas were huge in their time) and that's... about it. Well, apart from Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect I guess. We used to have a bunch of other franchises. Bard's Tale, Wizardy, the TSR D&D games, Ultima Underworld, etc.
A lot of RPGs are now real-time games. A lot of people, myself included, prefer turn-based RPGs because they're more "chill". But that genre largely doesn't exist now. This is a problem in strategy games too where Civilization is really the last big holdout for turn-based strategy.
And personally I hate the Bethesda character system.
MMORPGs have had 2/3 standout successors: Everquest then World of Warcraft (and arguably FF14). The gaming landscape is littered with the corpses of EQ (then WoW) challengers. It's interesting to ponder why but also the challenges of this genre.
MMOs are seemingly built on a "vertical" progression model. That is, newe content occurs above existing content to give something new to existing players. But this creates a greater barrier to entry to new players. This means the game makes earlier content faster/easier but that makes previous content meaningless.
EQ recycled old content with TLP (Time Locked Progression) servers to relive previous expansions. WoW has followed suit in recent years, first with the release of Classic WoW (which was massively successful) and more recently with LTMs (limited time modes) of older expansions (eg Mists of Pandaria Remix).
But there are huge challenges to palying multiplayer persistent games and this has been true for the entire life of the genre. Trying to find people to play with that want to do the same thing is a challenge. EQ and WoW focus on raids, which involve getting 10-72 people to be at the same time and place to tackle content. That's a logistical nightmare and an anethema to casual play. So play has skewed more to the solo or casual player, which creates its own problems.
The big mistake challengers made is focusing on user-generated content, namely PvP (player-vs-player) content. Studios like this because, done right, it's an endless stream of content and it's realtively cheap content too. The problem? 90% of MMO players have zero interest in PvP and this is borne out by the abject failure of PvP MMOs as well as PvP partcipation in WoW.
I played EQ (starting in 1999) and, much later, WoW. I really don't know how you rescue this genre but I think you need to find a balance between persistence and seasonal content. That is, persistent game state becomes an albatross around your neck. But if you invalidate someone's effort with new seasonal items, it disincentivizes people grinding out that gear and content.
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Games from the 2010s I still see people playing: FTL, Celeste, Undertale, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, Stardew Valley… there are definitely survivors from the 2010s. Your list may be different from mine. Not counting any of the perennial games like League of Legends or Fortnite.
People are still playing EverQuest which is from 1999 and is still actively developed with new expansion packs coming out once a year. They have made a lot of changes to make it more friendly to solo players and small groups, and a lot of UI improvements, and you can play free with some limitations. Here's a comment [1] with more details on what EQ is like nowadays. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368588
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Like for example you can play every GameCube game that was ever released for the system. There's readily available archives you can download and well-known console mods available to play them. This kind of thing just isn't possible for newer games. Self-contained, offline, drm free (or at least breakable drm) will probably be immortal but that's a shrinking segment of games.
You can't play Phantasy Star Online for the GameCube anymore.
I hated the MSX blocky scroll while at the same time I envied the smooth scroll spectrum games had. Games also were hard and short, across all platforms, including the point and click ones. So, they were not so good, is only the nostalgia what makes them good.
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I don't think it is a generational thing or a lindy effect plain, and simple greed is what is killing modern day games. Eventually they become a never ending grind loop for battle passes, points, buy more points, cosmetics priced as full fledged titles, loot boxes, etc. etc. There is simply nothing to it, no depth, no cool mechanics, no story nothing, and once a player spent x amount of hours realizing that, you simp…
There are indie games without those in-app purchases that capture the spirit of the old games.
The article kinda dances around this point, but I think the largest reason "old games never die" is simply the old games mentioned were the good ones of their generation. Similar to the lindy effect[0] where shows that had been around a while were likely to stay around a while longer. The are the games good enough for people to host fan servers and make mods, and behind each good game there is a lot of forgotten stuf…
I don't think it is a generational thing or a lindy effect plain, and simple greed is what is killing modern day games. Eventually they become a never ending grind loop for battle passes, points, buy more points, cosmetics priced as full fledged titles, loot boxes, etc. etc. There is simply nothing to it, no depth, no cool mechanics, no story nothing, and once a player spent x amount of hours realizing that, you simp…
If this were true nobody would play the games? If people found no benefit or interest they wouldn’t play. Even if you think it’s literally just gambling, which I disagree with, people still find value in that even if it’s destructive.
> no depth
If this were true you couldn’t having skill based matchmaking. If there is no depth then everyone would be as good as everyone else. There would be no strategy to master.
> no cool mechanics
Subjective but I disagree.
> no story nothing
Chess has no story mode but it’s a game people still play. Why do video games need a story 100% of the time? I don’t get this critique.
> and once a player spent x amount of hours realizing that, you simply boot up 20 years old game, so you can have some dopamine rush again.
I disagree. Games today have learned from games of the past. I think most folks would find the mechanics of old games boring compared to games of today. I loved Super Mario 64 as a kid and bought it when they rereleased it for the Switch and found it so boring and infuriating (terrible controls) that I never finished the game. Same with Goldeneye — I played that game so much as a kid but there are so many better games with a similar gameplay loop today. I could probably find some fun in something like surf maps in CS1.6 but it wouldn’t hold my attention for very long.