The Golden Age Fallacy

[Flojomojo]

Perhaps naively, I always thought it went without saying that treatises on the glory of retro games are by nature rooted in personal perspective and are therefore subjective.

 

Of course -- where you sit is where you stand. Parents always like their music better than that of their kids (and vice versa). Times of carefree youth are more fun than carrying around debts, responsibilities, and health problems.

 

Maybe it's not so much a "fallacy" as a "universal truth."

 

I do not think I'd want to live forever ... there's only so much small talk a person can stand in a normal lifetime.

[+Random Terrain]

Back in the early 1980s, programmers were inventing game genres. It was truly more exciting than today because you really didn't know what might be next. Now all you can hope for is better graphics and more control over the game (for example, being able to build houses in Fallout 4 with individual pieces instead of the crap choices we had in Skyrim with an add-on).

 

For a good part of the 1980s, arcades were full of machines that were much better than what you could have at home. If you wanted to play the latest and greatest, you had to go to an arcade. A big room full of new arcade games and pinball machines with excited wide-eyed people roaming around could be more fun than sitting on your ass at home. If you can find an arcade today it will probably be filled with kiddie crap and things like Deal or No Deal machines that spit out tickets so grandma can buy little Timmy a plastic duck.

 

You can't even find a proper Skee-Ball machine. You're stuck with light and fluffy versions of Skee-Ball that had to be made much shorter because the pampered rugrats and teens of today are too weak to roll a ball beyond the length of an iPhone without passing out.

[zzip]

Back in the early 1980s, programmers were inventing game genres. It was truly more exciting than today because you really didn't know what might be next. Now all you can hope for is better graphics and more control over the game (for example, being able to build houses in Fallout 4 with individual pieces instead of the crap choices we had in Skyrim with an add-on).

Yes, I miss this aspect, there were some unique and crazy games created.

 

We do see this to some extent today in the indie scene

[Tanooki]

I miss it too, so it's not entirely a fallacy to say the golden age was better. It depends on how you define better. If it's just about eye candy and ear candy, damn right it is. But if you step back to the 90s PC for instance or even late 80s. All those genres we really love these days, most of them got there start there, or at least a practical start given what game consoles were capable of between 77-82 anyway. You never knew who would make the next new genre, or a truly unique take on one which would spawn a new genre or stand alone sub-genre (RPG vs T or SRPGs, etc for instance.) Yes the arcade had a few locked in, but quarter munchers were kind of limited on how to hose away your pocket of quarters while the PC was not. If it didn't exist, you could maybe figure it out and code it, or find someone who did it at school or on some BBS and copy that floppy.

 

A semi-good way to think of it, everyone shat all over the Wii when it came out for being SD and waggle, but look how it took. It's not that motion genre wasn't there before or pointer mechanics, but it did them in a unique way on a TV that hadn't been really attempted yet (while on a PC with a mouse it was normal) so it was appealing to people. That kind of appeal is what happened 20 years earlier except it wasn't doing it again better, it was doing IT the first time. That's why you have all these 80s IPs still around or classic genres propped up in the 80s that still stand -- they were not only firsts but damn good firsts that still stand the test of time that outside of audio and visuals really in some cases have not advanced all that far other than smoothing out some rougher edges.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

When it comes to video games there's always going to be things to complain about no matter what time period you examine, though for me personally determining when (if there ever was) the "best" time period for gaming was really comes down to finding a balance between two factors: Game variety and game delivery method.

 

The current modern age of gaming is certainly the best for variety, since more games exist now than have ever existed before and whether through physical game compilations, hardware based backwards compatibility, or digital downloads all the modern systems offer some way to play their respective companies' classics of olde.

 

What keeps the modern age of gaming from being golden to me though are the game delivery methods that are currently in vogue. Digital downloads, game installations, games being released unfinished because they can always be patched later via online download, DLC, mandatory online connectivity, lack of paper instruction manuals, and so on all hamper the simplicity of use that console gamers have enjoyed in the past. Being able to just pop in a cartridge or disc, power on the system, and play your game is what has always made playing video games on consoles more attractive than computers for a great many people.

 

So what would I consider to be the "Golden Age" of gaming? Well, it's going to be the time period when consoles had the greatest variety of games available and the most graphical power at their disposal; but before the rise of all those issues with modern gaming that I just went over. For home consoles that would be the PlayStation 2, original Xbox, GameCube, and Dreamcast era; and for handhelds it would be the Game Boy Advance through DS Lite timeframe. So figure around the years 2000 to 2004 for all the systems mentioned.

 

At that point in history consoles had the largest variety of games to choose from of any point prior to the rise of the modern game delivery system, but all the annoyances of modern gaming had yet to exist because online connectivity was never required for anything outside of a small handful of MMO RPGs. There were no update patches to download, no installing games to a system hard drive, no DLC, and none of the other issues that bug so many people about modern gaming. The early 2000's is when gaming was at it's best for me personally.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Jin

[82-T/A]

From reddit

 

Believing that the past is better than the present is not a new thing.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6dj7n8/til_that_the_golden_age_fallacy_believing_the/?utm_source=ifttt

 

 

Are the Redditers sure that that is what "Golden Age" means? I guess I'm wrong then, but I always took it to mean the "early era" of any technology or society where things progressed fairly smoothly, but everything was "new" so to speak, and it was more innovative.

 

So like... while we can all recognize that Atari 2600 games just totally suck compared to games like Mech Warrior 12 or whatever... games from the 2600-NES games were maybe the "Golden Era" of video games because everything seemed like a new concept.

 

I guess that's how I always meant it to be.

 

 

Like, with cars...

 

the "Golden Era" of cars, as I understand it... is from the 1930s through the end of the 1950s. These were cars where everything was very new and modern, sleek... there were less regulations, fewer cares in the world... so you could have a massive engine in a car that weighed 6,000+ pounds, and no one cared. Heh...

 

Clearly, a modern Corolla is a vastly superior car to a 1957 Chevy Biscayne... but... you know.

[mr_me]

The "golden age" when it comes to video games is the arcade games of the early 1980s. I don't think anyone refers to the home video games of the 1980s as the "golden age". And it was clear at the time, at least technology wise and culturally, that home video games took a back seat to the arcades (unless you were still in diapers in 1981).

[Flojomojo]

Are the Redditers sure that that is what "Golden Age" means? I guess I'm wrong then, but I always took it to mean the "early era" of any technology or society where things progressed fairly smoothly, but everything was "new" so to speak, and it was more innovative.

 

The link specifically calls it "good old days." I think it fits best as "whatever you liked when you were a teenager," but it's subject to interpretation.

[mr_me]

Another way of looking at it is in terms of prosperity and creative satisfaction. For developers, does any period compare to 1981/82. Golden ages are usually followed by a period of decline and are remembered favourably.

Edited June 1, 2017 by mr_me

[Bill Loguidice]

Unless the criteria are strictly defined, "Golden Age" are one of those overloaded terms. For instance, I consider right now the Golden Age of television. To me, quality, paired with related quantity, has never been higher. I also have no issue with considering right now the Golden Age of gaming considering all that we have available to us, new and old, and how accessible and affordable it all is. Again, though, that's all in how you define "Golden Age."

[FireStar]

I think the linked thread is more of referring to the phenomenon you see when you look at the youtube comments of any song that is more than 10 years old.

[mbd30]

 

The link specifically calls it "good old days." I think it fits best as "whatever you liked when you were a teenager," but it's subject to interpretation.

 

Just look at the Youtube comments section. There are plenty of young teens who comment about how much better things were before they were born and wish they were alive in the 60s, 70s or 80s.

[zzip]

Just look at the Youtube comments section. There are plenty of young teens who comment about how much better things were before they were born and wish they were alive in the 60s, 70s or 80s.

This is something that blew my mind. When I was a teen, pretty much everything older than the 1980s was just 'omg so outdated' the clothes, music, movies-- all of it!

 

Now I see kids wearing "Led Zeppelin" shirts and the like. I know a kid who's always sporting a Metallica shirt and dressing exactly like the Metallica fans from my high school- as if time stood still and fashions never changed. I don't remember kids in my high school dressing like a 50's greaser. Maybe there's always that one hipster in each school.

 

anyway kids today do seem to enjoy our pop culture more than we enjoyed our parents. Maybe there's something missing in today's pop culture?

[Flojomojo]

When we were kids, there weren't Target stores selling licensed names from 30 years ago like there are now. Marvel and DC superheroes, old bands, even Atari. I would guess there are more Atari shirts on shelves today than there ever were when Atari games were sold at retail. I certainly wouldn't have been able to buy a Led Zeppelin shirt at a box store.

 

You see that in YouTube comments? Perhaps we're not watching the same videos.

[+Random Terrain]

I've seen countless replies at YouTube where some kid will type something like "I love this 1980s song and I'm only 14." And somebody else will type something like "nobody cares" or "go kill yourself" or "stop saying how old you are."

[PhoenixMoonPatrol]

I feel the same about the 90's era,but still am conflicted.

I was a kid during the late 70's/80's so I saw Atari and Coleco come along,was an amazing time as a kid,loved it allot.

But then the 90's era where 3D came along,the Saturn,PSX,N64,so many new ideas in where it took gaming to a whole different level. Mario 64,Nights,Tomb Raider,to me I lean towards this era a tad more because it really shook things up for the hobby. Just a tad more than my sacred childhood of when I discovered Atari. Both I hold dearly for the hobby,but I guess I lean towards the 32 bit era,mainly because I grew up a Sega fanboy and the Saturn was my gateway to 3D arcade games from Sega,amazing time. Though again the Atari era was bliss too,damn I miss both eras allot. Little things like going to Montgomery Ward with your parents and running to the other side of the store to play Atari with the other kids when they had a console set up with the latest game to try out. I know Gamestop does that today but when you experience that as a kid and the hobby was new to you its a totally different experience.

I love all eras of gaming,but lean towards the 90's era types of games the most.

Edited June 3, 2017 by PhoenixMoonPatrol

[Schizophretard]

The "golden age" when it comes to video games is the arcade games of the early 1980s. I don't think anyone refers to the home video games of the 1980s as the "golden age". And it was clear at the time, at least technology wise and culturally, that home video games took a back seat to the arcades (unless you were still in diapers in 1981).

I think I would be in the unless group because when I first read the title of this thread video games coming into the home and not arcades came to mind. And yes, I was still in diapers because I was born in 1981.

 

The link specifically calls it "good old days." I think it fits best as "whatever you liked when you were a teenager," but it's subject to interpretation.

I don't think of what I liked when I was a teenager as the Golden Age but what I liked from the time I was in diapers. My teenage years felt more like the transition into the modern age with consoles like the PlayStation which still barely even feels retro. The good old days was when I was a child and not when life started to get complicated in my teenage years.

[enoofu]

Back in the early 1980s, programmers were inventing game genres. It was truly more exciting than today because you really didn't know what might be next. Now all you can hope for is better graphics and more control over the game (for example, being able to build houses in Fallout 4 with individual pieces instead of the crap choices we had in Skyrim with an add-on).

 

For a good part of the 1980s, arcades were full of machines that were much better than what you could have at home. If you wanted to play the latest and greatest, you had to go to an arcade. A big room full of new arcade games and pinball machines with excited wide-eyed people roaming around could be more fun than sitting on your ass at home. If you can find an arcade today it will probably be filled with kiddie crap and things like Deal or No Deal machines that spit out tickets so grandma can buy little Timmy a plastic duck.

 

You can't even find a proper Skee-Ball machine. You're stuck with light and fluffy versions of Skee-Ball that had to be made much shorter because the pampered rugrats and teens of today are too weak to roll a ball beyond the length of an iPhone without passing out.

 

Just seen a you tube video on Deal or No Deal kinda looks like a Pachinko machine without the pinball

[Flojomojo]

"We've always been afraid of technology"

https://www.axios.com/people-have-always-been-afraid-of-technology-2431759595.html