Have you ever become displeased with the videogame industry?

[Zonie]

Everything after 16-bit. Everything.

[HoshiChiri]

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

I am curious about what retro gaming will look like in 20-25 in general becuase of these two things. Will people be collecting systems instead of games to dig through their hard drives for downloaded gems? What kind of crazy hacks and mods will exist? Not to facilitate newer displays like we do now, but to bypass internet checks for long-dead servers & let us move around game files in ways we were never intended to allow the harvesting of these digital-only goods. Either the loss of a generation's gaming will cause a backlash against digital only, or we'll see some copyright law-changing level stuff going on. I just hope my old teeth will still be able to eat popcorn & enjoy the show!

[Pixelboy]

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.

Well, where there's a will, there a way. But I expect that emulation will reach a "plateau" at a certain point, beyond which commercial game developers and publishers will step in to rehash old games on the future state-of-the-art gaming devices, either to capitalize on nostalgia, or simply to cash in on the historical notoriety of a given game.

 

Case in point:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU-TCsp8C00

 

Franchises like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, etc. etc. etc. will never be allowed to die and fall into oblivion. They are part of the cultural fabric of humanity now. However, as technology progresses and new generations of gamers come along, the old machines that were part of our youth will not really be a part of their youth. In the future, only the most hardcore retrogamers will bother to play Dragon Warrior on NES (probably via emulation) but a company may eventually buy the rights to the game, and create a remake which gamers will gladly purchase based on its historical significance alone.

 

Or imagine holographic technology developing to the point where you can step into a projection room (à la holodeck) with a controller, and see human-sized holograms of Ken and Ryu duking it out right in front of your eyes. If such technology happens, you can be sure that Capcom (or whoever else owns the right to the franchise) to bring back the Street Fighter series on it. And many players will much prefer playing the holographic version than the old originals on flat TV screens, on the barely-working original hardware.

 

Wanting to reproduce the original experience of original hardware as precisely as possible is caracteristic of our generation only. Just like how the younger "PlayStation generation" doesn't care much about the Atari 2600, future generations will be more interested in just playing games than protecting a legacy of hardware (although that will happen too, thanks to some dedicated tech-savvy people who will work to release emulators for future operating systems).

[Keatah]

Well, where there's a will, there a way. But I expect that emulation will reach a "plateau" at a certain point, beyond which commercial game developers and publishers will step in to rehash old games on the future state-of-the-art gaming devices, either to capitalize on nostalgia, or simply to cash in on the historical notoriety of a given game.

 

Franchises like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, etc. etc. etc. will never be allowed to die and fall into oblivion. They are part of the cultural fabric of humanity now. However, as technology progresses and new generations of gamers come along, the old machines that were part of our youth will not really be a part of their youth. In the future, only the most hardcore retrogamers will bother to play Dragon Warrior on NES (probably via emulation) but a company may eventually buy the rights to the game, and create a remake which gamers will gladly purchase based on its historical significance alone.

 

Cultural fabric of humanity? That's (IMHO) giving a lot of credit to those franchises. I'm afraid I don't see it that way. If anything is cultrual about videogames it would be the Pac-Man guy and entourage of ghosts. That seems to be the universally accepted symbol for videogames.

 

 

 

Wanting to reproduce the original experience of original hardware as precisely as possible is characteristic of our generation only. Just like how the younger "PlayStation generation" doesn't care much about the Atari 2600, future generations will be more interested in just playing games than protecting a legacy of hardware (although that will happen too, thanks to some dedicated tech-savvy people who will work to release emulators for future operating systems).

 

It's one of the reasons people dislike and avoid emulation so much. Emulation gets the game mechanics/rules/regulations down just fine. Far more often than not, being 100% accurate.. Just that the controller + display experience is of a different flavor.

 

It's a trade-off I have zero problems with, because, when I was a kid I always wanted an all-in-one videogame & arcade computer. And if some differences arise because my "super machine" operates this way or that way, then so be it.

 

Also, it's just fun to cozy up in the reading room on a sub-zero night with whatever emulator-game-controller-display I just happen to have. It's an all new experience. A better experience. Fresh. Convenience and reliability trump all!

[Flojomojo]

If anything is cultural about videogames it would be the Pac-Man guy and entourage of ghosts. That seems to be the universally accepted symbol for videogames.

 

Can't emulate THIS crazy thing I played recently!

 

[zylon]

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.

 

I felt the same way about the 360 when that was new, but gave in and bought one. Yes, there's a lot of stuff I'd lose when the servers stop supporting it, but there's also a ton of great stuff on it in either physical form, or in offline playable downloads. In truth, it's become one of my favorite systems ever.

[Tanooki]

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.....

Already done on both accounts, and for one EA got their asses handed to them over it with those goddamned lootcrate gambling shitboxes they did for Star Wars Battlefront 2 being the pinnacle new level of greed with such things. Mobile gave us the microtransaction which expanded into that digital blackmail/harassment scheme.

 

The other, google mobile games for consoles. They're happening now too. In some cases they just take that paid aspect and make it like an RPG XP earning thing but at a far faster pace to be fair so you're not re-running stages like 50x to get the power ups needed if you're too cheap to pay their fee for a bag of coins/stars(whatever.) Skyforce Reloaded going to Nintendo Switch, Sony whatever else is an example of that. There are others though that don't do anything to enhance the experience, so you just have a thin touch game for a set price with nothing made better to try and shove off that mobile gloss to it too. It will clearly end up being a mixed bag probably testing to see how far they can push their luck with it one way (enhanced) or the other (vanilla.)

[Osgeld]

Already done on both accounts, and for one EA got their asses handed to them over it with those goddamned lootcrate gambling shitboxes they did for Star Wars Battlefront 2 being the pinnacle new level of greed with such things.

 

sad thing is, this is not by a longshot the first time EA has had their asses handed to them, and what was their punishment after the backlash, their share prices went up about 10 bucks

 

those shitboxes and all the ragehate did nothing, welcome to life son

[0078265317]

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.

Well maybe not a penny. But lots of wii games are under 5 bucks now. So. After switch 2.0 comes out we will see.

[Jim Pez]

yes back when companies released consoles in japan a year before they released them in america and all the idiots were selling import systems for outrageous money.

[Flojomojo]

Well maybe not a penny. But lots of wii games are under 5 bucks now. So. After switch 2.0 comes out we will see.

Buzzword alert

If you're "price sensitive" (cheap, or a kid) there's always mobile gaming. The "race to the bottom" worked its magic to the extreme there -- few enough people wanted to pay for games that now he vast majority of stuff is what Nintendo likes to call "free to start."

[Tanooki]

At least with the Nintendo free to start stuff, other than world 1 being free on Super Mario Run all their other stuff is so well balanced you never feel the pressing need to ever pay at all to enjoy the likes of Animal Crossing or Fire Emblem as it's balanced well if you're not some crack head addict with a huge impatience streak as you can do enough time every day to get much accomplished. A rarity within that circle where they try and troll whales the hardest to rob them blind to make up much of their profits.

[keepdreamin]

I'm not sure if this counts as "Videogame industry", I'll say it does. Rumor has it VGA now has competition in the Game Grading business.

 

Just what the hobby needs. Loose carts getting condition rated like baseball cards.

 

Would be easy to blame the parties involved, but they are simply answering when the game hoarders come a knockin'

 

If people didn't send their games in for this nonsense, it wouldn't be a thing.

[mbd30]

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.

 

 

The Colecovision controller has more buttons than most modern game pads.

 

SNES pad has almost the same number of buttons as a modern game pad.

Edited April 2, 2018 by mbd30

[Keatah]

 

The Colecovision controller has more buttons than most modern game pads.

 

In a sense it doesn't, because the 12 buttons serve 1 function. Whereas on a modern controller, each button or dodad controls something different for each different game. Much more to memorize, and no visual cues like an overlay either..

[Flojomojo]

I guess ... but there are some conventions that are common across all games. A to select, B to go back, right trigger to accelerate/fire, left trigger for brake/aiming, left stick to move, right stick to aim, etc.

 

There's enough standardization that I have trouble going between PC/Xbox/Playstation and Nintendo, which has A/B/X/Y in different locations.

 

I'm happy there's a "video game industry" at all, and we aren't just playing thinly-disguised interactive advertisements. There's an enormous diversity of product out there, literally something for everyone, I think.

[Pixelboy]

The Colecovision controller has more buttons than most modern game pads.

No, that comparison doesn't work. You're meant to press only one keypad key at a time, always with the same finger (index or thumb) and you can usually look down at the controller to make sure you're pressing the correct key. It's not like today's controllers where all fingers are implicated, which implies a higher level of dexterity.

 

SNES pad has almost the same number of buttons as a modern game pad.

Fair comparison, I guess, but many Super-NES games didn't rely continuously on the shoulder buttons, just like they didn't rely continuously on the START and SELECT buttons. That's why the number of buttons on the Super-NES controller was less of a bother, at least for me.

[Tanooki]

Eh the SNES controller is a little short by the 2nd set of L/R buttons for a modern pad, but it's close (lacking the 2 central analog sticks the Dual Shock aped directly for much of the rest.)

[mbd30]

I remember the SNES being a big step up in controller complexity at the time, compared to the NES and Genesis.

 

You could easily forget which button was which. There were games like Star Fox that used all the buttons.

[82-T/A]

 

Can't emulate THIS crazy thing I played recently!

 

 

 

Hah!!! That thing is awesome!

[Osgeld]

 

 

Hah!!! That thing is awesome!

 

ya I already love air hockey, that just takes the best part and dumps epic all over it

[supercoupe91]

I truly believe the 7th gen was the absolute worst. It introduced DLC along with patches and updates giving companies free reign to release incomplete broken junk. Not to mention, everything to come out seemed to be clones of GTA or COD anyway. Can't stand digital-only games either. While most of these issues still exist, I feel it has improved mostly due to physical versions of Indie games as these are about the only way we can get complete games on disc with some variety.

[high voltage]

I truly believe the 7th gen was the absolute worst. It introduced DLC along with patches and updates giving companies free reign to release incomplete broken junk. Not to mention, everything to come out seemed to be clones of GTA or COD anyway. Can't stand digital-only games either. While most of these issues still exist, I feel it has improved mostly due to physical versions of Indie games as these are about the only way we can get complete games on disc with some variety.

 

It's really the 8th Gen, because the stupido Wiki still put Atari VCS and Atari 5200/Vectrex/Coleco in the same Gen.

 

Edited April 3, 2018 by high voltage

[zzip]

The times I have been most displeased:

 

1. NES era - I really resented this system. First it felt like a huge step backwards because we were moving onto 16-bit gaming at the time. Also it took all the fun out of "hanging out with friends playing videogames". It used to be competitive- you die and pass the joystick. Nope with the NES and games like SMB, people's turns went on for ever because of the ridiculous number of free lives and continues these games gave out. We'd sit there bored out of our skulls watching one or two people hog the console for extended periods of time.

 

2. The move to 3D "Blob" games. We were getting gorgeous 2D and isometric games, so of course the developers decided everything needed to be 3D on weak hardware. We started getting a bunch of ugly 3D blobby games, PCs would struggle running 3D Games unless you shelled out big bucks for the latest 3D accelerators. I like 3D gaming today now that we are over that hurdle

 

3. PC gaming in the 00s - Buggy, crashy, problem after problem that you often had to fix yourself. It got to the point I stopped buying games because I expected them to fail and bought my first console in many many years.

[HoshiChiri]

 

It's really the 8th Gen, because the stupido Wiki still put Atari VCS and Atari 5200/Vectrex/Coleco in the same Gen.

 

 

It's not stupid, it's historical condensation. You can only have so many bullet points in your 'history of all videogames', so over time as new iterations come up, old ones mush together. You could probably break the pre-Nintendo era into 3 chunks if you wanted, but most people won't give any of it much time anyway, so it's easier to lump it all together as 'pre-crash' and call it good. You can actually see people starting to run the 8 and 16 bit eras together nowadays too. It's all about current relevance, otherwise we could easily just do 4 generations: pre-crash, cartridge, CD & internet.