When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

General and high profile video game topics.
icepeople
Posts: 100
Joined: January 23rd, 2020, 2:33 pm

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby icepeople » August 14th, 2022, 1:22 am

I stopped buying games (and downloading free ones) when in-game purchases in their many forms started happening.

jon
Posts: 1562
Joined: April 9th, 2015, 4:30 pm

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby jon » August 14th, 2022, 10:34 am

Late 1995. Lovely entering the PS1 or you don’t like video games era. Check out a PS1 magazine I mean Gamepro from that time and on and see what I mean.

Cafeman
Posts: 331
Joined: July 27th, 2016, 8:28 am

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby Cafeman » August 14th, 2022, 4:50 pm

VideoGameCritic wrote:Lately I've been combing through a bunch of old game magazines and I detected a particular time when games suddenly started to become less appealing.


Well, spill the beans. When was it?

Was it when Shenmue 3 was released? :D

User avatar
DrLitch
Posts: 938
Joined: July 19th, 2017, 12:57 pm

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby DrLitch » August 14th, 2022, 7:34 pm

I lost interest in console gaming during the 7th gen. I am usually not a graphics elitist but the horrible graphics of the PS3/Xbox360 and screen tearing made some potentially decent games unplayable for me. I jumped back on board the console train in late 2016, thankfully, game graphics and performance had improved and I could actually enjoy games like Skyrim, Dragon Age Origins, and GTA V on a console. There are some ethical issues with the 8th/9th gen and the surging popularity of eSports or online competitive action has left me behind. Some genres are a little lightweight nowadays but there are other genres that are better now than they ever have been.

With costs of silicon and CPU's/GPU's, it looks inevitable that gaming for many of us will jump the shark once Sony and Microsoft go all in on cloud gaming and we stream all content with consoles phased out. You subscribe to Sony or Microsoft online and stream away. Your physical Switch or PS4/PS5 collection will be the last. Hope I am wrong.

User avatar
VideoGameCritic
Site Admin
Posts: 18102
Joined: April 1st, 2015, 7:23 pm

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby VideoGameCritic » August 15th, 2022, 7:20 pm

Well, it's all subjective of course, but I was always a big fan of video game magazines which served as kind of a barometer.

I noticed that the fun factor of these magazines dropped precipitously around the time the Xbox hit the market around 2001. Granted, this was also when the PS2 and GameCube arrived, and the Dreamcast died.

At this time suddenly the market began catering to the older, more sophisticated PC computer crowd. Instead of being shallow but fun, the magazines started getting really in-depth and boring. Screenshots were starting to look more brown and gray, like a Christopher Nolan movie.

Pick up a GamePro magazine from 1993 and compare it with one from 2003. There's no comparison as to which you'd rather read.

So in my opinion gaming jumped the sharp around the death of the Dreamcast and birth of Xbox. Gaming still remains fun today, but I think it hit its pinnacle around that timeframe. Agree?

ThePixelatedGenocide
Posts: 1232
Joined: April 29th, 2015, 9:06 pm

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » August 16th, 2022, 1:33 am

VideoGameCritic wrote:So in my opinion gaming jumped the sharp around the death of the Dreamcast and birth of Xbox. Gaming still remains fun today, but I think it hit its pinnacle around that timeframe. Agree?


I think it depends on genre. The fighting game genre jumped the shark with Capcom Fighting Evolution. The arcade brawler with Final Fight Streetwise. The shmup with Otomedius. Sports sims with...well, the sharks have filed a PFA against EA.

Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever once seemed a death sentence for arcade inspired FPS games. (AKA Doom clones. Boomer Shooters. Etc.)

The maze chase game jumped the shark with Pac-Man and ET on the Atari 2600.

Generally, the industry chases trends and floods any new market it finds. It's great if you're a fan of the hot genre of the moment, but eventually something high profile will go spectacularly wrong, or the industry will simply bury a sub-par product in order to confirm their belief that a once hot genre has breathed its last.

And then everyone agrees that the industry has changed forever, and it's time to for us all to move on.

So nevermind Pac-Man CE, Doom 2016, Crimson Clover, Streets of Rage IV + River City Girls + Double Dragon Neon + Shredder's Revenge...

Nevermind how good a modern Mortal Kombat can be.

And that the best ever Afterburner and Outrun both appeared after Sega left the console market.

If it's not a AAA sandbox, or filled with an RNG gambling mechanic, does it even count as a real game?

Well, yes. Those things didn't even exist in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Not unless you count Double Dragon III in the arcades and anyone who had access to pre-rendered assets.

Every single time I look at the digital stores, I see a flood of games we would have killed to own in the past. And thanks to ridiculous bargains, I own games that I haven't even played yet. Games that I very much want to play, but there's other games I've already started and haven't finished yet.

And these aren't all long games, either.

Anyways, I can't disagree more that a game's value is weighed entirely by playtime. And even in the NES era, you could find games like Ultima IV, if you wanted to deep dive into an entire other world.

Sometimes, I want to live a different life. Sometimes, I don't want to think about the motives of the Space Invaders.

No matter what you're looking for from gaming, there's good and there's bad and there's plenty in-between.

Unless we're talking about sports sims. The industry's greed has managed to completely wreck that one.

CharlieR
Posts: 429
Joined: April 23rd, 2016, 8:04 am

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby CharlieR » August 16th, 2022, 9:13 am

I'd say around this generation. I don't really think it has to do with age or anything, there just isn't a lot I'm interested in as far as new games. To be honest, I don't care at all about the Xbox series x or the ps5. I have basically the same thoughts on the PS4 and Xbox one. It seems developers focus more on how good a game can look, and how much better can it possibly look.

As far as not having a lot to be interested in, I'm mainly in to Nintendo, and for anyone that follows the Nintendo direct videos, there's little for me to be interested in. Is it just me, or are there way more RPG's announced by Nintendo than ever?

I've only bought one new game this year (not that I buy a lot of new games to begin with,) and that was Mario Strikers Battle League.

User avatar
ActRaiser
Posts: 1543
Joined: April 8th, 2015, 12:38 pm

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby ActRaiser » August 16th, 2022, 10:01 am

ThePixelatedGenocide wrote:
VideoGameCritic wrote:So in my opinion gaming jumped the sharp around the death of the Dreamcast and birth of Xbox. Gaming still remains fun today, but I think it hit its pinnacle around that timeframe. Agree?


I think it depends on genre. The fighting game genre jumped the shark with Capcom Fighting Evolution. The arcade brawler with Final Fight Streetwise. The shmup with Otomedius. Sports sims with...well, the sharks have filed a PFA against EA.

Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever once seemed a death sentence for arcade inspired FPS games. (AKA Doom clones. Boomer Shooters. Etc.)

The maze chase game jumped the shark with Pac-Man and ET on the Atari 2600.

Generally, the industry chases trends and floods any new market it finds. It's great if you're a fan of the hot genre of the moment, but eventually something high profile will go spectacularly wrong, or the industry will simply bury a sub-par product in order to confirm their belief that a once hot genre has breathed its last.

And then everyone agrees that the industry has changed forever, and it's time to for us all to move on.

So nevermind Pac-Man CE, Doom 2016, Crimson Clover, Streets of Rage IV + River City Girls + Double Dragon Neon + Shredder's Revenge...

Nevermind how good a modern Mortal Kombat can be.

And that the best ever Afterburner and Outrun both appeared after Sega left the console market.

If it's not a AAA sandbox, or filled with an RNG gambling mechanic, does it even count as a real game?

Well, yes. Those things didn't even exist in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Not unless you count Double Dragon III in the arcades and anyone who had access to pre-rendered assets.

Every single time I look at the digital stores, I see a flood of games we would have killed to own in the past. And thanks to ridiculous bargains, I own games that I haven't even played yet. Games that I very much want to play, but there's other games I've already started and haven't finished yet.

And these aren't all long games, either.

Anyways, I can't disagree more that a game's value is weighed entirely by playtime. And even in the NES era, you could find games like Ultima IV, if you wanted to deep dive into an entire other world.

Sometimes, I want to live a different life. Sometimes, I don't want to think about the motives of the Space Invaders.

No matter what you're looking for from gaming, there's good and there's bad and there's plenty in-between.

Unless we're talking about sports sims. The industry's greed has managed to completely wreck that one.


Well written. Plus 1 vote from me on this. The great thing about our hobby is the amount of choice available.

User avatar
travistouchdown
Posts: 206
Joined: August 6th, 2018, 10:15 am

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby travistouchdown » August 16th, 2022, 11:33 am

Basically before all the consoles hooked up to the internet and the online subsricption crap started. So the last great console from each manufacturer was:

Atari: Jaguar
Microsoft: Xbox
Nintendo: Wii
Sega: Dreamcast
Sony: Playstation 2

There are still some great games post these consoles (love Uncharted for example) but really gaming jumped the shark during the 7th Generation because of online requirements, subscriptions and micro-transactions. Also game companies have been less and less willing to try fun new concepts and instead go for sure thing blockbusters, just like we are seeing in the movie world.

finalRetro
Posts: 3
Joined: August 16th, 2022, 11:36 am

Re: When Did Gaming Jump the Shark?

Postby finalRetro » August 16th, 2022, 1:55 pm

Recently I went back to EGM from snes launch to playstation. The snes cd player getting cancelled is hard to overstate how bad it was I think. Earthbound 64 getting cancelled was also very terrible even if the franchise did peak in the 8bit era. Still to this day, I feel like the "ps5 pro" should just be the "nintendo playstation". So many of the classic franchises would have better been largely staying in the 8-32ish bit era. I think its legit to rank the zelda games in terms of quality simply by their chronology; and by any standard I have zelda 1 at the top.


Return to “Video Games General”