Thread 11910615

Not trying to start crap, but can we objectively pinpoint all the things that make older games better than newer games? The cutoff will be around the 7th gen like the stickies rules.

As I've been tackling the backlog I just find myself enjoying them more and actually compelled to finish them and it'd be nice to put into words why.

Biggest one is that hardware limitations enabled creative solutions.

>>11910626
But they weren't hardware limitations at the time :)

>>11910663
Generally speaking we all agree retro games are better here.

>>11910626
>>11910615 (OP)
I think devs just had more freedom and time to both polish and experiment with their games, also developing games was easier and cheaper.

Stupid shit like muh graphics and voice acting increasing budgets ruined gaming, there is a reason why the best and biggest libraries are the nes, ps1 and ps2, because they were easy and cheap to develop for so almost anyone could jump in make a game

>>11910671
I still have a hard time watching old Game Center episodes for that reason. You see when the development teams were around 10-20 passionate people who were making what would eventually be the milked to death franchises of today.

one big one for me is that the simpler technology meant that dev teams were smaller and more intimate, and typically more passionate about the process and ensuring the quality of the final product.

there are a lot of people in game dev today that are passionate about games, but when your team is 200, 300, 400+ people in size, you have less control - and less say - over the state of the final project, and it all just becomes more of a general job.

>>11910686
Even old games had this problem though. Tons of games had two or more disjointed gameplay modes crudely taped together and it's obvious that they came from different teams working at crossed purposes.

>>11910686
>>11910696
Shit, that was a half-baked line of thought

>>11910664
>do NOT interrupt the circlejerk

>>11910615 (OP)
The attitude was different all around

In the 80's and 90's I find that for the most part the attitude was just "let's just have some fun!".
By the 00's it was already over and it was all about being "mature" or "edgy" or "serious". Story in games started to matter a lot more in the 6th gen for instance.

Basically the 90's was childhood (fun is all that mattered), the 00's was teenagehood (stupidity under the guise of "we mature now!"), and anything after that is just retardatation.

>>11910856
I got a soft spot for that 2000's hot topic edge. Can't really be compared to today's try hard edgy writing in games.

>>11910671
/thread

>>11910615 (OP)
Soul = for the sake of creativity
Soulless = for the sake of money only
Good example of soul is Quake, just guys who like metal making a game all about this aesthetic and merging gothic with hi tech because why not
Good example of soulless is most mobile games, their artwork is so generic it could be done by AI, and the gameplay is braindead shit entirely made to bring profit.
Ultimately, EVERY game today has to consider profit first. Mobile games are a race to the bottom. AAA games cost way too much, they need all kinds of monetization to be profitable, and are too corporate to allow any risk/creativity, it's all guys in suits and outsourced sweatshops.
Old games were good because they got away with selling indie-tier games for full price. No one wants to talk about how jarpig were basically an RPG Maker game sold for $120 in today's money.

>>11912882
>Ultimately, EVERY game today has to consider profit first.
Eh, I would argue that some indie games don't, especially the ones that are still releasing on retro systems. They can't completely ignore profits of course even if they run a kickstarter since it's unlikely that alone will cover all the development costs, but if they were putting profits first they would not be bothering with the restriction of making it run on retro consoles at all, and especially not producing cartridges of it.

>>11910664
I don't. A lot of my favorite games are older games and I think well made retro games have qualities that still make them good games today, all nostalgia aside. But I don't know about the blanket "old good new bad" mentality. It feels like taking a preference and trying to make it a definitive fact.

I grew up in the shit-tier "we don't even know what we're doing yet" pre-Atari era. I've played it all, I've seen it all. And I'm being honest, some shit just got better. The Batman games I had on the C64 and NES aren't as good as the Arkham games. They just aren't. I still like Doom but I don't necessarily think it's the best FPS ever made.

If you ask me shit just peaks at specific times and sometimes stuff has already peaked, sometimes it peaked a long time ago and sometimes it' peaking now. But it depends on what you're talking about. Arcades peaked in the mid 80's. Platformers probably peaked in the late 80's / early 90's. Squaresoft RPG's peaked in the PS1 era (personal opinion). The Metal gear franchise peaked on the PS2. Capeshit games probably just peaked with the PS3/PS4 era. The current gen doesn't seem to have much going for it but maybe in retrospect this will be the peak coombait era because of all the gacha shit that came out before the nanny state killed the internet

There's no era of gaming with nothing to offer and none where *everything* was good or bad. It depends on what you want and what you like. Get off my lawn.