Chatterbox: Video Games

First of all, thank you for answering my question! ^_^

Indeed, that's pretty normal, I believe—both with regards to gaming and just in general.

I think that part of it is that—aside from particularly horrible things—we tend to remember positive experiences more than negative ones, especially as time wears on.

(And we also, I think, tend to remember the aspects of ourselves that we see as positive more than those that we see as negative.)

As a result, our perspective of the past tends to become more rosy the further back it recedes.

Combine that with the newness of everything to a child, and the freedom to play, and the slower perception of time—and perhaps other things besides—and I daresay that childhood can genuinely come with some incredible experiences.

Ah, I'm sorry to read it! :(

Conversely, that's pretty cool, and I'm glad for you! ^_^

I would certainly agree with that, I do believe!

This doesn't really argue against your point, but I'm reminded that one of my favourite old game series (Quest for Glory) has a type of gameplay that I feel to be pretty rare, and that I'd love to see more of: RPG-driven point-and-click puzzling.

That is, the player's choice of character-class and abilities determines what solutions there are to many of the game's point-and-click puzzles. And indeed, in some cases it even determines what puzzles are presented at all.

(What's more, it has an unusual approach to combat, at least in the first four games, and the first three especially.)

It's a really cool blend of RPG and point-and-click that I feel one so seldom sees.

Aaaaaah... no it's not. ^^;

That is, indie developers are currently going through a pretty terrible funding crunch, I believe.

Where just a year or so ago lots of projects were being funded, I'm hearing now that projects are losing funding, and far fewer are gaining it.

This might not be visible to the audience right now, as I daresay that one primarily sees released projects—being those that are at or near completion, and which thus will tend to have gained their funding some time ago. But I suspect that it will become a little more apparent with time.

Which brings me to...

Right now I believe that we're actually in a post-bubble collapse.

You yourself mentioned layoffs at large studios—and I'm told that we've seen more in this year thus far than in last year at all, if I recall correctly.

The thing is, during COVID game development surged—understandably, I feel. Lots and lots of projects gained funding, and new studios and publishers popped up.

But COVID wasn't forever, and so the surge formed a bubble.

And now that the worst of COVID has passed, now that people are allowed out, and allowed to gather, and so on, the demand is, I presume, just not the same.

So the bubble burst, and companies are finding themselves with rather less money to offer, and rather more risk in taking on new projects...

I know that I have at least one old game that is my "comfort game": something simple, and light, and delightful, and of childhood, and which provides a bit of comfort in difficult times.

Indeed, that can be a difficulty.

(For example, a project that I'm currently working on was initially inspired by wanting to replay an old game—Wazzal—and finding that it no longer worked on my modern(-ish) computer.)

I will say, this is one of the nice things about GOG: they provide old games in such a way that they (generally) work on modern computers!

Not to mention projects like SCUMMVM, DOSBox, Exult (for Ultima), and other such projects besides!

I actually had a Game Boy Camera.

I was unaware that the indie scene was being hit as well. But that makes sense - a lot of indies that aren't able to pay for their own development need to get their money from somewhere, and if the industry is being hit as a whole, then that would affect that funding.

It looks like there are a few forces going on:

• The big budget games are not always sustainable, costing ludicrous amounts of money to make, that can be very difficult to make back. I don't see why Marvel's Spider-Man 2 cost $300 million to make. It's built off of the previous two Spider-Man games, taking place in the same world and having a lot of the same graphics, level design and gameplay mechanics. Yes, they built up the world with additional locations, but that cost looks absurd to me.
• Live service games are crashing. Some are successful. The networking effect basically says that people will go where other people already are, and since live service games make their money by getting people to stick around for the social aspect, then spend it on outfits to show off socially, these games can only succeed if the players are staying there. And much like with social networks, there are only so many that people will use.
  • At the same time, big companies are chasing that live service money, thinking that somehow, their game will be The One that will catch on and grab all those players. We're at the point where Warner Bros. watched a live service game flop, while the open world single player Hogwarts Legacy, which sold 22 million copies in less than a year, and their response is to say they're going all-in on live service games anyway because one of their franchises has to do well! I predict failure here.
• As you said, COVID is less of a big deal than before. Heck, with all the vaccines, my mom got it and it was gone in a week. People are going outside more and gaming less. So there's that as well.

In that case, perhaps the Golden Age of gaming was the late 2010s with the sudden explosion of the indie scene and release of the Switch, and the rapid diversifying of the games themselves and who is buying them. Either way, that Golden Age has left us with what we're living through now, which is tons of variety and tons of gamers. It's awesome, even with the issues that are currently going on.

Oh, and on the subject of nostalgia, another example of a game that gives me the same feel as a childhood game, is... Spider-Man: Miles Morales reminding me of the Atari computer game Agent USA. Why? Because both games more or less simulated a city that felt alive. They did it in different ways, with Agent USA having a real-time clock (that ran at absolute real time except when riding a train to other cities), and people walking around, as well as twelve different times of day represented with different color palettes ranging from very similar to drastically different. Miles Morales did it with people walking around, cars driving, weather (snow or not snow) and time of day (frozen in place, but selectable from four in the post-game). As a kid, I loved to see the trains come and go, people walk around, and time of day slowly change in Agent USA. I probably would have loved watching the sheer aliveness of the city in Miles Morales as well if that were possible back then.

Regarding the "Golden Age", I'm not sure that there was—or will be—just one.

I've seen, for example, people cite certain years in the late 90s as something along the lines of the "greatest year in gaming", due to certain significant and well-remembered titles coming out at the time.

And ultimately, I think that in part the placement of the "Golden Age" will depend on just want you value: variety of AAA games; innovation in mechanics; the availability of indie games; the heyday of a particular genre; etc. etc.

And, well, while we might be in a crash now, that doesn't mean that good things will never come again. ^_^

I'm using the term "Golden Age" to refer not to quality (which is personal opinion) but period of rapid growth.

It's like the "Golden Age of Animation." I don't think anyone except nostalgic older people think that Looney Tunes and Disney shorts and Woody Woodpecker were the best cartoons ever made. But they were created at a time when cartoons were exploding in popularity due to being packaged with movies, forcing people to see them regardless of whether or not they wanted to. Hence, rapid growth. A golden age.

I don't think Golden Age can really be used to refer to something so recent. The phrase "Golden Age" itself was first used to describe a utopian per-agricultural age that a Greek poet described as existing at the start of human history, and going from there it generally refers to a period of time that's at the start of whatever it being talked about. The Golden Age of animation isn't called that because it has the best cartoons or the most growth in the animation industry, it's called that because it's first period of time when animation really existed as an medium and everyone was still pioneering the basic techniques of it. Similar thing with the Golden Age of comic books, it's not necessarily the best comic books or when the most where being published, it's just the era when American comic books and superheroes were being pioneered into a thing and all the early tropes were being made.

For the metaphor to work with video games, the Golden Age would need to be either the 70s or 80s.

Ah yeah, I was actually thinking that gaming did have its first Golden Age in the late 70s and through the 80s. Video arcades were huge in the early 80s, and the NES in the second half of the 80s (released in Japan in 1983, North America in 1985, and catching on in the late 80s) made gaming not mainstream necessarily, but a lot more popular.

For myself, I'm not sure that I'd hail "rapid growth" as something inherently desirable.

Myself, I might suggest a perhaps-more-neutral term—something like a "boom era", or some such things.

"Rapid growth" and "boom era" mean the same thing. A boom era is a period of rapid growth.

... Which is why I'm suggesting it as a term for a period of rapid growth, yes.

We've established that "Golden Age" doesn't really fit—it means something else. And further, I've said that I'm not convinced of the idea of giving a positive-leaning term to such a period.

So, I'm suggesting a term that does fit—that has the appropriate meaning—and that is more neutral in its connotations.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 8th 2024 at 11:41:07 AM

I honestly feel like "boom era" sounds very much like a good thing, while "rapid growth" sounds more neutral since it's simply describing what happened.

Heh.

I think ArsThaumaturgis is saying to use "boom era" in place of "golden age", not in place of "rapid growth".

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Mar 8th 2024 at 9:16:54 AM

If that's the case, yeah, that makes sense.

Makes me think the Golden Age of Animation likewise could be called the Boom Era of Animation. Because the time of Follow the Leader cartoons all trying to copy Disney while failing to copy what made Disney's cartoons good, and all using the same types of art styles and such, isn't a "golden age" to me, now that we're living in the time of such cartoons as The Owl House, Sonic Prime (well, I hated the third season but the first two were good), Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, or even back in the 2000s, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and movies such as The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

Those cartoons just weren't made during a boom era, so even if I think they're better than what got made during the so-called Golden Age, they're not part of any such Golden Age.

Adult Swim Games published games on Steam are likely the next victims of WBD.

Yes, remove existing games and don't try to make money off them by continuing to sell them. Makes sense to me...

And WBD looks at Hogwarts Legacy selling Pokemon-level sales in a year, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a live service, flopping, and thinks that live service games are the thing to chase. Just great.

I hope this severely hurts their reputation with developers and makes companies not want to work with them.

Everything those guys do yells "idiot" or "asshole", really. No one that can read the room to be found.

I'm sure this is just because it's what I grew up with, but I really find that 8- and 16-bit games are much easier to play than more modern stuff. I feel like new games have too much going on and can be visually overwhelming at times.

I mean, I also grew up with the Playstation, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with 3D graphics, but PSX games were pretty basic compared to modern gaming. Some modern games I've played and greatly enjoyed, but a lot of them are way too much to process for me, especially if they involve reaction-based input (like combat).

I just prefer simple, pixel graphics and gameplay that's not too complex. Most games are too much for my silly brain and its sensory issues, which sucks, because it limits what I can play. At least there are a lot of good games from those eras out there, and I've hardly scratched the surface of what was available.

(Also, modern games are too damn expensive, but that's another issue entirely!)

Edited by Zazie122 on Mar 9th 2024 at 1:30:41 AM

Regarding the expensive aspect, there's oodles of indie games that are $10-20. Which is a lot less than games cost on the older consoles before downloadable titles became commonplace!

And there are many indie games that do, in fact, have the aspects you crave in games, be it simple gameplay or pixel art graphics.

Plus, modern games really aren't that expensive. Or at least, not much more.

The first game i ever bought was Ocarina of Time, in 1998, and it cost $60.

The most recent game i bought was FF 7 Rebirth, and it cost $69.99.

About ten bucks in a quarter of a century is really not that bad.

I miss Minecraft Story Mode, I only played the first season and missed my chance for the second.

& You're both correct. I've played a few good indie games that I've loved. It's a basic example, but I did really enjoy Stardew Valley, for example.

Part of the problem, however, is that I live in a country that puts a tax on games on top of GST. Digital copies are somewhat cheaper, but it's not unheard of for games to cost over US$75 here. And I don't really have the money to justify spending it on the more expensive side of games.

If I wanted to buy FF7 Rebirth (since it was mentioned as an example), it'd cost me NZ$135. That's US$83 — for the base digital edition. (I don't own a PS5, but that's what's listed on the store page.)

But a lot of it is to do with my sensory issues and finding a lot of games too overwhelming. I basically can't handle any level of combat, even in things like Stardew or, say, Minecraft. Which is entirely a personal problem, of course. It just means my choice of games is pretty limited and sometimes I don't even know what I feel like playing.

Like, I can't have the background music on in most games because I then don't take in any text and I easily forget what I'm supposed to be doing. With things like Pokemon it's fine since it's turn-based, but I can't play platform games with the music on. Or at least not very well.

But this is entirely because my brain's useless, not because developers are doing something wrong. I do agree about the expense thing, however.

Edited by Zazie122 on Mar 9th 2024 at 8:31:24 AM

Does Mortal Kombat still qualify as Americans Hate Tingle in Japan? I don't think MK is hilariously unpopular in Japan anymore. Keep seeing fanart of the fighting game franchise in Pixiv, out of all places.

I don't think it's unpopular as it's more the series is banned over there IIRC.

Not really banned, since that implies some kind of targeted government action, which there isn't any. The first 3 Mortal Kombats were released in Japan and got some attention but weren't super popular because they were generally considered janky compared to other popular fighting games and the gore wasn't a draw for as many people there as it was in other places. They stopped selling later games in Japan because it wasn't worth the investment, although Koei was planning to localize and publish Deadly Alliance, but its release got delayed and then plans fell through it and it was cancelled.

There's a good chance the more recent games wouldn't make it past CERO's standards for a game rating, which would make it effectively banned from consoles in Japan, although there's nothing stopping them from selling it on PC. Last I checked, the PC port on Steam was blocked in Japan, but my guess is that it's mostly because of the DLC guest characters and them not wanting to make sure they have the licensing rights for them in a country they're not selling the console ports in anyway.