the state of modern gaming

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scotland
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Video gaming: Right Track or Wrong Track?

Postby scotland » November 12th, 2016, 4:22 pm

When you look at the list of top selling video games, its a bit tricky to know what's missing, like digital downloads and mobile games. 2016 is as much of the year of Pokemon Go, as it will be Doom or Uncharted 4 or Destiny: The Taken King or the sports games that are perennially on the charts. The Nintendo NES Classic Mini is enjoying a moment in the sun from older gamers looking for an HD retro fix. Disney Infinity was closed down this year. Nintendo is moving into mobile gaming. Facebook gaming seems to have dimmed. Motion controllers are pretty much gone. Focus is moving toward 4k and eventually VR.

Much of gaming is focused on violent games, competitive games, online games. Nintendo, the bastion of family friendly ware, needs a solid selling console in the Switch to remain as relevant as they have been. Microsoft seems to be moving toward a convergence of PC gaming and console gaming. Are women gamers or older gamers being well leveraged for entertainment, or is the gaming industry wise to continue to focus on younger male gamers, who open up their wallets?

Is video gaming on the right track or wrong track moving forward?

CharlieR
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the state of modern gaming

Postby CharlieR » November 21st, 2016, 8:49 am

There was a thread here about modern gaming being on the right track or not. I searched for the thread, and did not find it. Mods feel free to move this.

Anyways, I don’t necessarily like the way gaming is headed these days. I feel a little weird saying that because we all love games in general, but there just isn’t much that interests me these days.

I have a theory. One, I believe there isn’t as much variety as there was back then. Not owning a ps4 or xbox one, I could be wrong. I don’t pay close attention to all the new releases, but it just seems like every ps4 or Xbox one game released these days is a first person shooter, or some variation of it.

Overall, I think few retail games, unless they are made by Nintendo, will cater to the casual gamer in being a simple, fun experience. Those are usually saved for budget, downloadable titles, which seem to be a little offbeat and obscure.

I’m just thinking out loud, but it seems most games rely on big cinematics, online capability, and specs to show off the hardware, and seem to make gaming less about simple fun and more about the experience.

I mostly stick to old games, as they are more exciting, familiar, and fun for me.

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Rev
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Re: the state of modern gaming

Postby Rev » November 21st, 2016, 8:58 am

Honestly, I feel the same way for most new games however, budget and indie titles have given me new games to play that are both fun to pick up and play as well as offering a great experience. If you're more into older games anyway you would probably like a lot of these titles. I own probably 40 or so indie/budget titles for my ps4 and that is mostly all I care about collecting for the console right now. In addition most of these games take ten to twenty seconds max to begin running on my ps4 and don't really have any install time.

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Rookie1
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Re: the state of modern gaming

Postby Rookie1 » November 21st, 2016, 1:59 pm

The gaming industry is shadowing the movie industry (or maybe its the other way around?). Its just big budget shlock over and over and over and over and over. They just take the same formula and make it a million times a year. As it has been said, the indie scene is big right now because they are pumping out quality fun titles left and right. Not just retro-style games either, fully immersive AAA quality titles. Its a shame most are PC only.

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Atarifever
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Re: the state of modern gaming

Postby Atarifever » November 26th, 2016, 11:00 pm

I honestly don't know anything anymore. I remember being on here saying that the 360 and PS3 were no better than the Xbox and PS2, and talking about how I decided to sell my Wii because it didn't interest me. Well, there ended up being Xbox Live Arcade, PS+, The Last of Us, Gears of War, Xenoblade Chronicles, the Virtual Console getting Japan only games, flash sales, summer of arcade, etc. I obviously ended up rebuying the Wii, and it remains one of my favourite game consoles ever, and I have a PS3 for THIS Christmas, to go with my PSTV and PS+ membership.

I think the past generation had 3 incredible systems, with 3 distinct ecosystems, and support, even from the Nintendo console, lasting far, far longer than most consoles (you can still get new games for all 3 systems this Christmas, and all 3 online stores are still up and functioning 10+ years in). The real birth of indie games on consoles was this past generation, and again, each system saw some great exclusive indie content. Each of the console makers ended up tripping over themselves to bring the most niche possible title to their system apparently, with localization of past regional exclusives and small market segment games getting put out with surprising frequency.

All in all, last generation was a massive surprise, resulting in one very fun generation now in retrospect (even compared to my opinion a year or two ago). Thus, I'm going to try to not be too down on the negative trends I have seen emerge this generation, and assume it will all sort out like it did last generation. And, for the most part, it seems like most of them are working themselves out.

Pre-order culture and DLC vehicles have taken a beating with the likes of Evolve dying on the vine due to not enough focus on the game on the actual disk.

Microsoft's plans to end physical media backfired so bad they were relegated to second place every month until 4 months ago.

"The same old shooter" formula is so over with that Battlefield is in WW1 and Call of Duty is in freaking outer space.

DLC has begun to include mods and free updates so much it actually does appear customers will derive some value from updates and patches after all. Most surprisingly, publishers are starting to admit that continued content delivery, especially free, is making week one "do-or-die" sales a thing of the past. This allows them to derive continued sales AND less piracy from *gasp* free additional content for people who already bought the game. Who would have thought that (oh yeah, everyone, but at least now "everyone" includes publishers).

All in all, I'll have a half full glass (preferably of Canadian Rye Whiskey), and hope this generation ends up as great as the last one. Given the signs so far, it likely will.

Sut
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Re: the state of modern gaming

Postby Sut » November 27th, 2016, 3:08 am

Atarifever wrote:I honestly don't know anything anymore. I remember being on here saying that the 360 and PS3 were no better than the Xbox and PS2, and talking about how I decided to sell my Wii because it didn't interest me. Well, there ended up being Xbox Live Arcade, PS+, The Last of Us, Gears of War, Xenoblade Chronicles, the Virtual Console getting Japan only games, flash sales, summer of arcade, etc. I obviously ended up rebuying the Wii, and it remains one of my favourite game consoles ever, and I have a PS3 for THIS Christmas, to go with my PSTV and PS+ membership.

I think the past generation had 3 incredible systems, with 3 distinct ecosystems, and support, even from the Nintendo console, lasting far, far longer than most consoles (you can still get new games for all 3 systems this Christmas, and all 3 online stores are still up and functioning 10+ years in). The real birth of indie games on consoles was this past generation, and again, each system saw some great exclusive indie content. Each of the console makers ended up tripping over themselves to bring the most niche possible title to their system apparently, with localization of past regional exclusives and small market segment games getting put out with surprising frequency.

All in all, last generation was a massive surprise, resulting in one very fun generation now in retrospect (even compared to my opinion a year or two ago). Thus, I'm going to try to not be too down on the negative trends I have seen emerge this generation, and assume it will all sort out like it did last generation. And, for the most part, it seems like most of them are working themselves out.

Pre-order culture and DLC vehicles have taken a beating with the likes of Evolve dying on the vine due to not enough focus on the game on the actual disk.

Microsoft's plans to end physical media backfired so bad they were relegated to second place every month until 4 months ago.

"The same old shooter" formula is so over with that Battlefield is in WW1 and Call of Duty is in freaking outer space.

DLC has begun to include mods and free updates so much it actually does appear customers will derive some value from updates and patches after all. Most surprisingly, publishers are starting to admit that continued content delivery, especially free, is making week one "do-or-die" sales a thing of the past. This allows them to derive continued sales AND less piracy from *gasp* free additional content for people who already bought the game. Who would have thought that (oh yeah, everyone, but at least now "everyone" includes publishers).

All in all, I'll have a half full glass (preferably of Canadian Rye Whiskey), and hope this generation ends up as great as the last one. Given the signs so far, it likely will.


Every now and then someone writes a post that really resonates with me. Completely agree Atarifever great post.

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Rookie1
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Re: the state of modern gaming

Postby Rookie1 » November 28th, 2016, 6:36 am

Atarifever wrote:I honestly don't know anything anymore...

All in all, I'll have a half full glass (preferably of Canadian Rye Whiskey), and hope this generation ends up as great as the last one. Given the signs so far, it likely will.


For me, console gaming ended in the PS2 era. I feel like there was a huge shift from quality to substance. Its all about making a game look "beautiful" than the actual gameplay now. Yes, there are games that are fun to play. Arkham Asylum remains to be one of my favorite games of all time, but stuff like that seems to be few and far between these days IMO.

I will say that I love my PS3, but I cant remember the last time I actually played a game on it. Well, I take that back. After watching all the Doom live streams on Cinnemassacre over the last few weeks, I popped in Doom 3 the other day and my last save state was from January 2014 lol. And the only reason I bought that game was to get Original Doom games. In fact, 95% of the PS3 games I own, I bought because they are either compilations of retro games or have unlockable retro games (i.e. Doom 3 and Splaterhouse).

Back to what I was saying about PS2. So thats the generation when consoles became more than just consoles. They became entertainment centers. Games became bigger and more elaborate, relying on crazy graphics and/or massive open world epochs the likes of which we had never seen before. Once all of that wore off, I found myself not really liking much from that generation anymore. Heck I cant even think of a single PS2 game that I would like to revisit.

For me, the magic was lost in that generation.


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