The Day the Gaming Died.

[JP Dogberry]

In fact, I did notice I was getting older. It's my Birthday today, and I wish it was further away. I'm not happy enough with my life at the moment to have a birthday.

That said, I bought myself the Illuminati card game as a Birthday present to myself. Can't wait to play it.

[Entsuropi]

That's a pretty cool game. We play it every so often in my RPG group.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yes, Entropy would be proud. Last time i played that game I was the Cthulu faction and I won.

[Tredlador]

This kid in EB tried to sell me a magazine that would detail everything I would need to know, plus more!, about STAR WARS:  Empire at War. Stupidly, he who knows more than any text ever produced to compliment a STAR WARS game for PC, bought it. I lost the receipt.
Point is: the lowest common denominator in the gaming community rules, and rules fiercely. They are illiterate, with the attention span of a flea, no,.. a dead flea, and where gaming was beginning to offer sophisticated methods of warfare, (for example), we got swamped by loads of generic crap, games with the life-span of a flea, a starving flea at that. And all delivered to gaming stores, because these brainless, these orc-ish and lowest common denominators have too much pocket-money. I say we start mugging these kids in the park before they can get to a game store. If crap games don't sell, maybe I won't waste so much time looking for a new, good game.
I mean, Thank God! Gamers connect online, and that reviewers are generally of the school of old, and that neither pull a punch when giving a game the thumbs-down-don't-bother-with-this-one. And thank God, developers listen, and seem to be telling producers what is the next move.
But bad game development isn't all bad in RTS: sooner or later someone produces a fine game, it goes gold quickly, and a new bench-mark is set. I think this more or less happened considering everything that came out post Dune 2 to (in my opinion) the advent of games like Cossacks, Shogun and Homeworld, a point from which some excellent games have emerged. I mean, look at Medieval II: TW. Cor blimey!
RTS gaming is a last bastion of Corp Gamers, and should never succumb to the exploits of greed, unless they know what RTS gamers want.

[Entsuropi]

Cry me a river formed from your mis-informed and uninteresting diatribe.

[Spriggan]

That post hurt my brain.

[Archon]

Way to start out in the middle of a story that nobody has any knowledge of, so that everything you say is way out of context. Way to also throw around figurative language to defend a point that you say is the moral of a story that nobody understands. Also, make sure that you don't use any examples of what you are talking about, only vague references that aren't relevant to your main point. Also, way to resurrect a long forsaken thread. Keep up the good work.

[Oseleon]

I have to disagree with the E
The death of the Video game WAS brought on by it's own success.  
When the big companies started to see it as a billion dollar business  the EAs and Vivendis of the world steped in and took over.  Their goal was to produce games that appeal to the largest market share.  Instead of the old idea to make games that the developers thought were fun.  

Studios like looking Glass were absorbed and killed.  Companies you used to trust were preasured by their publishers to get to market by X date so they started putting out incomplete product (See KOTORII)

Meanwhile the publishers started using media Focus groups to determine what players wanted (the decision for SWGs NGE came out of this)

The Game was taken from the Nerd Niches and given to the people that used to beat up the Nerds.  

Madden- This is the worst example.  EA now owns Exclusive rights to the NFL... 0 Competition... 0 reason to improve.  

And EA is trying to push the Maden style yearly "Update" into other areas too.  UT, UT2k2, UT2K3, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlifield 2142,

Innovation is something the little guy dues... But it is getting harder and harder to be a littleguy.  
I see the peak of PC games at 1998.  After that its been a downward slide that is gaining momentum.  

No I almost hope for an implosion so the game will be a project for the small-time enthusiast again instead of the mega-companies

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't see this gloom and doom you speak of. Are we still gettign games we like?

Yes

Do we think htey're the best thing every on the face of the planet suprassing in coolness allthings up to and including sliced bread?

No

But then, when I was a kid, Strech Armstrong was the coolest thing ever. your perception is colored by the horizons you can see.

I see game improvement all the time, not just in graphics but alterations to game play, controls, and story.

Yeah, so a lot of people like Madden. A lot of people like Britney Spears too. That doesn't mean that Rush is going to stop selling albums that make Atlantic more than enough money to keep paying for their studio time, CD design costs, and tours.

Disney puts out a lot of crap, but that doesn't keep them from distributing Miyazaki films.

You guys make it sound like some sort of cultural invasion. "The jocks like games! Now they suck!" Give me a break. A jock can like something you do and it doesn't change the nature of the thing. If you allow that to color your vision, you're at *least* as bad as they are in terms of hating things different than you.

Even if the "popular games" are crap, I've seen no evidence that small time gamers are disappearing completely. Even if they're pushed out of the mass market, as you apocalyptically prophecy, they'll find other means. Much like indie music has. It's already started. A lot of fun games and social forums are available online.

[Oseleon]

Babylon 5 - Into The Fire
Star Wars Galaxies: NGE
Halo to the Console
Looking Glass Software
Duke Nukem Forever
Any Lucas Arts product in the past 3 years
Any non-Valve Sierra Project in the last 5 years
Doom3

Where we used to have good stuff comming out every few weeks, Now I only see a few islands in the desolation

I used to trust Sierra - Not anymore
I used to trust LA - Not Anymore
Activision?
Acclaim?
Microprose?
Origin?

Who do I trust now?
Valve is ok 50/50
Blizzard makes their customers happy, but none of their stuff appeals to me
Raven can put together a short but compotent FPS
Bioware is good for RPGs

Islands in the desolation

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

so... this is based entirely on your tastes.

also, I'm confused by the structure of your statements. could you clarify?

[Linternet]

The ratio of good/crappy games has remained pretty much the same over the years.  Here are a few I've played that I've found excellent and were NOT made by developers on your "good list":

Far Cry.
Freedom Fighters
Grand Theft Auto: San andreas.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Galactic Civilizations 2.
Guild Wars

Point is the EA's and Vivendis have been around for a long time and the hits keep coming in spite of them.  You may long for the days of the Original Half-Life and Baulder's Gate but in 5 years you'll long for today.

[PixelFish]

I don't think that video games are dead. I do, however, think that a lot of them seem to be stuck in some extended adolescence.

Casual gaming, as I see it, isn't a death knell for the industry, any more than indy comics killed the superhero genre. (They haven't, I mean.) If anything, it brought more gamers in, people who considered themselves gamers despite their obvious lack of nerdhood. When I attended the Women in Gaming* conference this spring in San Francisco, the statistics on women who gamed casually were pretty interesting. (I wish I could find my notebook from that. Linden Labs and some other companies were running numbers off right and left.) A fair number of college-educated, professional women considered themselves casual gamers. They were attracted to games that allowed them to game in small chunks of time, and which would also allow them to feel that they were being educated while they were being entertained. It's not your sweaty, t-shirted, teenaged male that a lot of people view as the gaming demographic--but that's a lot of people who don't necessarily pick up a first person shooter or an RTS, but consider themselves gamers.

Ditto for Madden. Much as I dislike the Madden titles, and EA for putting out what seem to be essentially next years expansion pack as a new game, they bring a lot of people into the gaming fold. A guy might pick up Madden for the Xbox, and then pick up UC2 or Halo or some other game when he gets bored of his football. (Or he might not. It might not be to his taste.)

(BTW, when exactly did we have good stuff coming out every few weeks? Is it possible you are conflating all the great games from your childhood into a period of a few months?)

Yeah, the mega corporations CAN BE part of the problem. I've seen what happens when design by commitee occurs. It ain't pretty. Design by focus group? Ditto. You end up with some bland stuff.

But then too the mega corporations still need the smaller companies to produce games for their platforms. And occasionally new platforms come along. (And sometimes when they do, they fall flat on their face. Did anybody see the horror that was the N-Gage?) In short, the industry is always changing. Sure, it's not the blissful summer when you first discovered Diablo or Quake or Civilization (hey, I have my favourites too!) but new games with new twists on old good ideas are often coming out. And sometimes, if we're really lucky, an amazing brand new idea emerges from the ether and generates a whole new genre.


* conference link http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/past_events/feb06.html

** Someday very soon, I will figure out the BB code you guys have here.

[Spriggan]

The BB tag code we use is what 90% of all forums use, in fact I can't remember the last time I visited a forum that didn't use these.

[PixelFish]

Yeah, I was just looking about for the handy guide and somehow missing it. There's usually a pop-up link next to the reply panel somewhere, but I'm am not finding it.