Have you ever become displeased with the videogame industry?

[Keatah]

Have you ever become displeased with the videogame industry? I have. On two occasions.

 

The most recent issue is present-day, the continual need to be on-line to play anything and increasing lack of depth of more and more titles.

 

Back in the day, I was rather quite happy with the state of affairs. Only becoming disappointed when companies started re-issuing hardware under guise of something new. Or making pointless versions of something just to satisfy the marketing department.

 

This means the re-issuance of Atari's 8-bit lineup and the 5200, essentially an 8-bit minus the keyboard, OS, and BASIC. I also had similar feeling about the Commodore Plus-4. I felt duped and taken for the ride. The 5200 games were exactly the same as the computer versions.

 

 

[godslabrat]

Like yourself, I had two major points of disappointment with the industry, the latter of which continues today.

 

The first was the rapid introduction and then discontinuing of the Virtual Boy. While I understand why it rubbed a lot of customers the wrong way, I felt it represented a *true* 3D experience that was more inventive than the polygonal systems that followed shortly afterward. I feel this was a missed opportunity.

 

The second time I grew annoyed with the industry began with the modern (PS3 and onward) concept of selling games in pieces via DLC, combined with games that were useless offline. These practices pushed me out of modern gaming almost entirely.

 

Either of these complaints pale in comparison to how I feel about the rise of the "gamer lifestyle", and using that label to self-identify. But that's not really the industry, it's more millennials eager to find ways to define themselves.

[Tanooki]

- When multiplayer started ruining the single player experience over different genres.

- HDD being used as a crutch for unfinished game releases

- DLC being abused to sell partial games as they have zero day up sell stuff to complete the package (or worse like Capcom hiding it on the disc.)

- Digital being slowly forced upon is with a EULA on it basically saying you are borrowing the game for an indeterminate time yet calling it a BUY/Purchase.

- Digital crushing the ability to sell certain games at all as a physical product.

 

You'll notice all this stuff are 21st century problems that kind of snowballed from one into the next.

 

That's really about it.

[Pixelboy]

What annoys me is not so much the industry in the "commercial" sense of the word, but rather the evolution of the gaming platforms over the years.

 

For instance, my puny brain raised on the ColecoVision, NES and Super-NES controllers can't handle today's game pads with thirty-twelve buttons. Actually, I can do it with practice, but it will take me a loooong time to get used to that many buttons, and don't get me started on manipulating analog thumb-thingies with both thumbs simultaneously. It took me over a week to get used to the Game Cube controller when I first played Metroid Prime, and I was yelling at the stupid controller through most of that time. But once I mastered the controls, I found the game really fun.

 

More recently, the complicated (and unconfigurable!) control system in Metroid Samus Returns on 3DS truly ruined the fun factor of the game for me. I haven't finished Samus Returns yet, and I know I will get back to it eventually (because it's really not a bad game) but I'm certainly in no hurry to fight against those overly complicated controls again.

 

Then there's the push for gaming on tablets in the last decade. If gunking up a touch screen with my fingers isn't bad enough (yuk!) the control scheme in most tablet games is simplified to work with a single finger, which makes me long for a proper joystick as a more direct and fluid interface, regardless of how fun the tablet game actually is.

 

The Wii's Wiimote was a big hit with grandma who could finally play bowling with her grand kids, but myself, I found that controller rather cumbersome to use, even with my relatively big hands. Again, it left me wanting to go back to the 8-bit and 16-bit systems of yesteryear, with controllers I could actually use comfortably.

 

I left "modern" consoles behind years ago, so I haven't experienced the dreadful era of DLC you have to pay for, aside from a few little things on the 3DS eShop. I'm not totally against DLC, but you better give me content that's worth purchasing if you want my money. I've seen so much pay-for-junk in recent years that it makes me want to stay away from current consoles.

 

Another thing that I find disheartening about the industry is the reliance on milking game genres dry. Really, how many first-person shooters do we need? There are lots of good ones with cool unfolding stories and impressive visuals, but it feels to me like the industry used first-person shooters to let the brains of modern players get accustomed to controllers with tons of buttons, and now they're stuck with making more FPSes in order to keep those skilled (hardcore) players interested, because there aren't a lot of other gaming genres that require a lot of buttons to play.

 

The good thing is that there's been an effort by the industry to go back to its roots and provide simpler gaming experiences that provide good clean fun. But there are so many different platforms to keep up with that I'm left ignoring most of them just because my free time is better spent focussing on specific gaming options. And for me, that mostly equates to retrogaming with good ol' classic controllers.

[+x=usr(1536)]

When arcade gaming devolved into endless cycles of repeating the same gameplay formulae (driving, fighting, bullet hell shooters, etc.) only with improved graphics every few months, that was my first round of disillusionment with the videogame industry.

 

Round 2 came about when those formulae ended up becoming SOP for computer and console games.

 

I don't mind games that fall into particular categories, but I do mind repackaging the exact same idea over and over and being expected to open my wallet for each iteration.

[icemanxp300]

Who hasn't. I was not happy w/Nintendo dropping the price on the 3DS after I paid the inflated price.... well I didn't actually pay, back then I was trading tons of stuff into a local game store for credit. I traded so much stuff they had to give me multiple gift cards. They said they needed to make a special diamond club membership just for me lol.

 

I was more so pissed over the roms they gave us as a thank-you for paying their high prices. Here take these 20 roms for games you already own. I guess it was a better gift to people who didn't have a huge game collection already. On the bright side yay I am an ambassador owner.

 

That leads me to my real disappointment, digital media. If it doesn't come in physical form they can shove it up their ass. Nintendo really sucks especially w/this tying your membership to console crap. Get a Nintendo Wii w/20 games and input your ID and lose all those games. Such BS.

 

It blows my mind people are willing to buy digital games, they can't resell/trade/do anything with just to save $10. Owell new stuff is not for me so these fools can spend their money however they want I guess.

[Osgeld]

When arcade gaming devolved into endless cycles of repeating the same gameplay formulae

 

oh you mean day zero, why are you here then

[+x=usr(1536)]

oh you mean day zero, why are you here then

I'm just here for the tacos. And only the tacos.

[Austin]

The second time I grew annoyed with the industry began with the modern (PS3 and onward) concept of selling games in pieces via DLC, combined with games that were useless offline. These practices pushed me out of modern gaming almost entirely.

 

This is probably the thing that turned me off the industry the most, particularly when certain companies began becoming completely dishonest and housing some of that DLC on the discs you purchased (Capcom, I'm looking at you).

[BassGuitari]

I guess I'd have to care about it to be displeased with it. It stopped being interesting years ago.

[high voltage]

When USA gave away the video game industry to Japan

[BackInTimeSime]

The last 6 months has been the first time I have stopped and started to really consider the cost of new titles... The reality is we have seen pretty much a 50% jump in cost for a "complete and full game" and the result is one or even two new games a month has changed to one so far this year... Guess it all comes down to value, and I am finding it hard to find enough value in a lot of new titles. Not saying they aint amazing, they are... but £90 amazing

[KeeperofLindblum]

The #1 item that always sticks in my brain...

When I bought Marvel Vs Capcom 3 at launch and then 8 months later they re-released a Remix/Plus version of the game with exclusive characters and stages that you couldn't add to the base game.

 

DLC can be done right. Microtransactions can be justified if the base game was free.

 

 

 

Beyond that... I'm kinda disappointed that the industry seems to be really trying to cash in the "nostalgia" craze with generally lackluster, half-assed, or money grabby collections or games.

[82-T/A]

Have you ever become displeased with the videogame industry? I have. On two occasions.

 

The most recent issue is present-day, the continual need to be on-line to play anything and increasing lack of depth of more and more titles.

 

Back in the day, I was rather quite happy with the state of affairs. Only becoming disappointed when companies started re-issuing hardware under guise of something new. Or making pointless versions of something just to satisfy the marketing department.

 

This means the re-issuance of Atari's 8-bit lineup and the 5200, essentially an 8-bit minus the keyboard, OS, and BASIC. I also had similar feeling about the Commodore Plus-4. I felt duped and taken for the ride. The 5200 games were exactly the same as the computer versions.

 

 

 

 

I suppose it comes down to "compared to when?" Back in the mid 1980s and through perhaps 2000... those were the days that I actually played Video games. Most of which was on computer, rather than a console.

 

Over the past few decades... the industry is made up of essentially 4 or 5 big companies, with the two biggest being EA and Activision. You know how it goes, and we've talked about it ad-nauseum... but basically those two guys have gobbled up all the competition. But the "industry" today... is easily the most diverse it's ever been.

 

I didn't like DRM, and mostly still don't. But I've been warming up to GOG and Steam over the past few years... and I have lots of games that I "own", and have the installer for... but don't have physical media for.

 

Anyway... EA and Activision don't rule the world anymore. Distribution is all digital now, and that was the biggest asset they had. Now, any schmuck can write a game and put it up on GOG or Steam.

 

The good news is... there are tons... I mean TONS of games that are available now, that likely would never have even made it to production years ago because they wouldn't have gotten past the power-brokers (EA and Activision). Now... they're all on Steam and GOG. The bad news is... there's also a ton more crappy games, which means you have to spend a bit more time wading through them.

 

 

I do so miss the days of when I could walk into a Microcenter, CompUSA, Egg-Head Software, or even (for those who remember) SoftwareCity, and look at the game boxes, with all their brilliant designs and stuff... and buy the game. Those days are over... and they'll never come back.

 

Neither will Speed Vision, BBSing, Gator Gum, Radio Shack, Pontiac, or all the other stuff each of us have come to remember that we miss.

[Tanooki]

There is one kind of benefit, but it was more done I think last gen than this one. Game of the Year Edition.

If you're patient enough to wait a year, you get the truly final bug fixed releases of the games and all the added fluff they ripped out off over (and not) back when it came out and for usually around 2/3 of the price of the original incomplete game. Buy day one, you get a game with added DLC for maybe another $10-20 on top of the $60 price to get it (at the time) all which should have just been in there. Then a few legit pack(s) come later which is fair entirely much like Nintendo with Zelda and their months of dragged out bundles they did that the right way.

 

Last gen thanks to my large disinterest in the toxic online atmosphere of console games I skipped a lot of games (Uncharted franchise aside) with my PS3 and waited things out. I'd get the Mass Effect 2 GOTY, God of War GOTY, etc releases 6-12mo after the fact and they would set me back $40 vs $60 + DLC bundles later. I think the industry caught on to that loss, no so much done anymore which blows, so now I rely on Steam/GoG and wait on a decent sale instead, and then there's Switch where you know what to expect as Nintendo rarely does sales.

[0078265317]

Have you ever become displeased with the videogame industry?

 

Yes. And when the games go on clearance for one penny I will be happy again.

[Tanooki]

Hope that's sarcasm as that's a bit harsh. I do agree some games seem to ask too much, then add to that when they take part of it out to sell as zero day DLC or already made timed planned out bits in the coming weeks/few months where that $60 game becomes $90+. Stuff like that, you wait for clearance offline or GoG/Steam 33-50%+ off sales to level the playing field.

[godslabrat]

When USA gave away the video game industry to Japan

Beh. That's when the good stuff started happening.

[HoshiChiri]

I'm honestly a bit annoyed at the onslaught of releases that come out these days. It's one thing when it's something like the Crash Bandicoot remake- but right now it seems like a game comes out as a day one version, limited edition, and standard release... then the goty/definitive edition a few months later... then an HD re-release/remake once the system cycle has turned another notch, repeating all of the previous variants.

 

For God's sake developers, MAKE SOMETHING NEW! I don't need to buy the same game for the umpteenth time! *stares squarely at Skyrim*

 

It honestly makes me want to skip getting ANY new games until after the next console generation hits, when I can minimize the odds of missing content due to not owning the newest, most content complete version of a game.

[+x=usr(1536)]

I'm honestly a bit annoyed at the onslaught of releases that come out these days. It's one thing when it's something like the Crash Bandicoot remake- but right now it seems like a game comes out as a day one version, limited edition, and standard release... then the goty/definitive edition a few months later... then an HD re-release/remake once the system cycle has turned another notch, repeating all of the previous variants.

Just take up modern pinball; it's nothing like that!

 

Oh, wait...

[high voltage]

Beh. That's when the good stuff started happening.

 

Oh you're one of them

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Just this past generation really. I never had much in the way of complaints until games started requiring online connectivity for day 1 patches to fix the mountain of bugs that should have been fixed before the games were released, paid DLC, and worst of all games that are only released digitally or require a digital download to install even if you own the disc.

 

I only got an Xbox One a couple weeks ago and not a day goes by that I don't think about reselling it just because I know it's going to be a useless paperweight in half a decade when Microsoft shuts down their Xbox One servers to focus their resources on whatever their new money maker is. It saddens me to know that the overwhelming majority of games from this console generation will be lost to the dustbin of history, never to be experienced again by gamers in the decades to come.

[+x=usr(1536)]

Just this past generation really. I never had much in the way of complaints until games started requiring online connectivity for day 1 patches to fix the mountain of bugs that should have been fixed before the games were released, paid DLC, and worst of all games that are only released digitally or require a digital download to install even if you own the disc.

 

I only got an Xbox One a couple weeks ago and not a day goes by that I don't think about reselling it just because I know it's going to be a useless paperweight in half a decade when Microsoft shuts down their Xbox One servers to focus their resources on whatever their new money maker is. It saddens me to know that the overwhelming majority of games from this console generation will be lost to the dustbin of history, never to be experienced again by gamers in the decades to come.

 

That's the thing: I have no issue with consoles (or games, depending on platform) being Internet-connected. In a modern context, there are a number of practical reasons for doing so.

 

But what I really dislike about it is, as you point out, the way that this leads to impermanence of the content. Doesn't matter if it's executable code, game assets, player data, or anything else: once it can only be useful if Someone Else's Computers (aka 'The Cloud') are there to support it, then you have zero control over the lifespan of your device and/or data.

 

It's going to be interesting to see what the emulation scene looks like in about 20 to 25 years from now. Up to about the PS2 era, there should be fairly decent coverage of both hardware platforms and the software that ran on them. But from approximately the PS3 onwards, expect to see less and less preserved software.

[Flojomojo]

I do so miss the days of when I could walk into a Microcenter, CompUSA, Egg-Head Software, or even (for those who remember) SoftwareCity, and look at the game boxes, with all their brilliant designs and stuff... and buy the game. Those days are over... and they'll never come back.

 

Neither will Speed Vision, BBSing, Gator Gum, Radio Shack, Pontiac, or all the other stuff each of us have come to remember that we miss.

Gator Gum ... the "thirst quenching gum" LOL LOL I haven't thought about that in a VERY long time!

 

Retail boxes were neat, though I confess I usually trashed them. :-( I bought a lot of junk I didn't need from those bargain bins, sold most of it on rec.games.video.something (marketplace?) and re-bought it all and more on GOG.

 

Another thing I would seek out was magazines with CD-ROMs bagged in, often from different countries (UK magazines are /still/ better than US ones). Even the largest demos distributed this way can be downloaded almost instantly nowadays. Demo and shareware seem quaint to me now, Neanderthal ancestors of free-to-play.

 

It's nice to be able to play just about anything, without care for system requirements or lengthy configuration nonsense. It's nice that PC games are usually just as reliable and often more technically proficient than console games

 

When I get back to a keyboard, maybe I'll make a ridiculously positive thread about all the good things surrounding "modern" game industry trends. I feel it's healthy to remember that what's good for us (low prices, for example) aren't healthy for the industry as a whole.

[enoofu]

Believe the worst issues is phone game mechanics being used in triple AAA games, such as buy X to get a instant advantage, or that someone wants to buy a 40-90 dollar game for a baseline freemium game

 

With smartphone and tablet gaming having $46.1 billion or almost half the game industry profit I believe the issue will just get worst.....