New Generation of Gamers

I’m a video gamer that was born in the 1980s. I would consider the new generation of gaming more of a ponzi scheme; recycled game play with content deliberately removed so the consumer is forced to shell out more cash for it. The whole Download content, micro-transactions, pay-as-you-play method is atrocious - more or less the elephant in the room for contemporary gamers. Although I consider myself a gamer I have very little interest in the seventh, and current generation of systems and games. The last console I bought was the Microsoft Xbox 360 solely for arcade ports of my favorite series.

I agree that the current gen of games is mostly trash; many awful indie cash-grab clones and Pay-to-Win titles, plus AAA disasters, endless sequels; many of the big studios just do a yearly release of the same game over and over again (like the COD series) without changing the formula, and then dumping endless DLC packs to suck every last cent out of little Timmy’s mother’s credit card.
However I think it’s similar to the film or the music industry. If you glance over it, it looks like a mess. But if you dig much deeper, if you look below the surface and really dig for the gems you’ll find that there’s actually many brilliant games; though granted they are becoming harder to find.
I bought a PS4 a year ago and I’ve only found two games worth playing on the system, my PS4 mostly collects dust in the corner. But on PC there’s a wide selection of great masterpieces, especially titles released this year. Keep your eyes peeled and don’t give up hope; many of the great games coming out atm are indie titles. And there still are a couple bigger studios who have great artistic vision, ignoring the siren song of F2P and microtransactions and instead developing unique and ground-breaking digital experiences.

It is funny, I kind of feel like we are living in a gaming golden age. We can get anything we want. Old classics. New retro style indies. Blockbuster games. Small studio gems. There is so very much out there that it is sometimes overwhelming. Not all of it is good, but given there is so much to chose from there is probably more solidly amazing games available than I could play in my lifetime.

We are! So many options, basically the last 30 years of gold to chose from. There’s plenty of crap too but even that can be fun from a game developer stand point. I like to play subpar games to see what they did well and not so well. If you can take the good and improve the bad, then you might have a decent game. I haven’t made a game yet but I learned a little programming, 3d art, and basic game design.

There are lots of great indie mobile games. I could probably list a dozen or so and many are being ported to PC like The Room. The games are generally shorter but I haven’t paid more than $5 for a title, and some are free with no ads.

2 Likes

I’m 27 but didn’t start gaming 'til 1999 really, and trying to look at games before that… yikes. It’s the hideous art (so many clashing awful neon colors help my eyes) and the terrible midi music. And a lot of older games are harder, without much in the way of tutorials. But I know some games are praised as being classic gems and I load them up and just… yikes. If they remastered some of these games, I’d probably love them. But… maybe I’m a snob. :smirk:

1 Like

On one hand maybe you haven’t found the classic game that suits your tastes. On the other, maybe your tastes are better suited for a later era of games. Who knows. What I do know is that there are so many great games available today that you cannot go wrong.

In respect to enjoying older classics, I do think that the era you started playing games may have an impact on one’s taste in game aesthetics, mechanics, etc. There are quite a large number of old 8 bit games that I love, but recognize as difficult games to get into as a contemporary gamer who has far more variety available than we did when 8 bit home console titles were pretty much the only thing available other than arcade machines. As a result, I agree that remakes are often a great way to experience older classics. While not an 8-bit era game, I really enjoy that Insomniac updated Ratchet & Clank. As much as I love the original game, the mechanics and controls are sorely out of date, and relatively a pain to deal with. The reboot brings the original story (for the most part) to a new audience as well as letting players with nostalgia for the original to re-experience it in an improved form. While I am for checking out the classics, remakes are a wonderful thing.

A lot of it is about gameplay…like 90%. If a game looks and sounds like crap and the gameplay is crap then you know, it sucks. But if you can look past the aesthetics and tinny music (which I still love) and game play is spot on for games like frogger, pac man, mario, tetris…etc I could list hundreds, then you have a great game and will have an awesome experience.

Maybe I don’t see it from your perspective. I’m 32 and grew up with NES and DOS games and gamed from basically 1988 on. Games for those platforms looked great at the time because I didn’t have any comparison, besides arcade of course. When we got a new system I played that a lot but still went back to my roots. Now I associate classic gaming 8 bit, 16 bit whichever with my awesome childhood, that’s why I enjoy fixing NES consoles, modding, cleaning and playing. It’s not just playing a game with primitive graphics, it’s reliving a wonderful chapter in my life.

Anyway, I’m rambling. But like you I do enjoy a modern graphics game. I picked up a PS3 a few months ago and have been blown away but how amazing my games look. And I admit, I play those games more than my NES games, mostly because they’re new to me. But if someone asked me to choose new or old, I have to go with old classics.

My advice, give the classics another chance. Sit down and play for an hour. If you start to enjoy it, then you just broadened your game palette. If not, that’s cool too. There are so many games out there.

I think for some the aesthetic of 8-bit is exactly what they enjoy. I think some 8-bit games made brilliant use of the limits of the technology that the aesthetic itself is absolutely astounding. That said, if the aesthetic of the era isn’t pleasing to a person I can believe it would be difficult to enjoy games from that period. Just as one could dislike impressionist paintings despite their recognized status in art history.

However, if we are talking about the period from 1990 to 1999 and the height of 16-bit, that is a different story. There is no helping a person who doesn’t enjoy the brilliant colour palate, sound and presentation of 16-bit SNES and Genesis games :wink:

I completely agree. I wasn’t saying I don’t like the look of 8 bit graphics, in fact I love it. I was just suggesting if someone could look past what they are having a hard time appreciating then there are other features they would like. I even love Atari graphics!

But yeah, if you can’t enjoy 8 bit or 16 bit graphics then I don’t know what to say…

1 Like

That’s kind of what I was hitting on. Given it is an aesthetic it is tied to taste and enjoyment. Just as we all have preferences for different aesthetics in other forms of art, some may enjoy 8-bit and 16-bit while others detest it. I appreciate 8-bit because I grew up with it. I enjoy it aesthetically and for nostalgia reasons. But I absolutely love the 16-bit aesthetic. I cannot shake how much I love the look of 16-bit games. I have noticed that I have a definite tendency to gravitate toward Super Mario World style levels in Mario Maker over everything else. The three other styles are equally enjoyable, but I love mixture of rich colours and bit-graphics of Super Mario World over everything else. I love the new Super Mario 3D World with a passion, and aesthetically it looks gorgeous. But I still want to play Super Mario World on my SNES. And this extends beyond simple nostalgia because I also love new games that are in the style of 16-bit. But for others such an aesthetic may have no appeal, which is understandable. Even with the aspect of nostalgia some people do not miss the graphics of the 8- and 16-bit era. They prefer other aesthetic game styles. With that in mind these people may enjoy aspects of a game if they can ignore the aesthetic they dislike. But ignoring an aesthetic is difficult. I have trouble playing some early polygonal 3D games. As much as some are classics, their aesthetic is just too off putting. I either want pre 3D 16-bit graphics, or later refined 3D that starts in the PS2/Gamecube era. While there are PS and N64 games that I enjoy, I enjoy them mostly for mechanical quality and the nostalgia I associate with them. Mario 64: great game, but painful to look at. Silent Hill: amazing game, but I would kill for a remake running on a contemporary rendering engine. So I can definitely understand wanting remakes of classic games that allow me avoid having to forgive or look past the aging elements that limit my desire to play the classic game itself.

1 Like

I see what you mean and agree. It’s like someone who doesn’t like a painting, kind like what you were saying, but someone tells them to look at it anyway because the frame is nice. Maybe a bad analogy but either way, I am not phased by simple graphics but I know a lot of people are. Even bad graphics don’t bother me as long as the game is good. It just makes it easier to enjoy if you actually like what you’re looking at.

On the flip side, there are tons of terrible games with breathtaking graphics. There needs to be a balance.

For me Shovel Knight is an awesome example of beautiful 8 bit style graphics with perfect game play. Then there’s Fez, Super Meat Boy, Swords and Sworcery. All great retro style games.

1 Like

Those are all some amazing games. I agree totally.

This is a fantastic thread and well worth reading. I should keep up with the forums more. :slight_smile:

I watched this last night. its worth sharing here. It really makes me think and i thought it was worth watching:

He makes some interesting points about the evolution of the Elder Scrolls, but no doubt this is relevant to the evolution of the fallout franchise as well. Especially concerning some very consistent criticisms of F4 (Haven’t played myself, just briefly read opinionated conclusions on it)

I like old and new games and do not discriminate on age or aesthetic, but i find these days i just am not willing to accept a good challenge and prefer to cheat rather than try or ‘work for it’. According to this video i am more like the spoiled youngster in that regard. (I would think @Torgo is maybe the guy that made the video, but there is no australian accent. lol)

However, young generation gamers and old generation still look for exploits and play with the system. I read the funniest thing the other day on reddit someone (i’m just going to guess this was a child) had collected a ton of loot in skyrim and just threw it on the floor in their house. Then they made a big pile of it and eventually it would cause gameplay and ultimately stability issues. just google image ‘skyrim hoarders’ and you will see lots of people doing this. it never occured to me to keep stuff outside of containers. Can you imagine a pile of junk so big you can’t leave the house ? I never even imagined doing that…

Said gamer then tried to ‘fix’ his problem in an equally interesting way. he would take trips down to the local lake/pond and dump the junk in the water. Apparently this landfill somehow corrupted the game at some point. It almost sounds like your typical internet fake story but i can believe this being a game breaking activity in a static cell (or before cell refresh occurs) water physics added to the mix could do it too, everyone and their dog knows how janky havok is. geez! I have to give this story the benefit of the doubt :slight_smile:

I think looking for exploits is one of the more common threads that might unite us all. But geez do they take different forms and interpretations across generations and genres: Whether it is an old school gamer who is literally looking for any way out of some impossible problem in a very merciless RPG that doesnt accept mistakes (as is described in that video) or a Dark Souls player looking to exploit a boss, or a casual gamer looking to exploit another player in COD, or a kid trying to protect his house from the creepers or just trying to figure out a way to clean up their room in Skyrim by dumping their loot in the lake. Or a damn cheater such as myself. We are all trying to figure something out.

I didnt really realize how much the years have changed me and my sense of what a game is or should be until i watched that video. I imagine a lot of people are like me and are currently also these weird hybrids now as well who now either arent interested, aren’t willing or cant afford to commit the time to the kinds of things they did when they were kids when they would toil for weeks on a game like Shadowgate, Dragon Warrior, Metroid, Torment, Wizardry, and ultimately win and feel an immense sense of satisfaction or find some kind of an exploit in some way or another that was equally exhilrating, maybe the thrill of not even knowing what the exploit was. Imagine button mashing in frustration only to unknowinlgy unlock the konami code, or plugging in gibberish throug hthe game genie in hopes of getting something good… This is more or less how cheats were discovered. lol Are these old experiences that are essentially lost forever? should they be revisited and new gamers have to walk 40 miles through snow in the morning etc. to somehow feel a reward for the effort? even if it’s finding cheats rather than scanning memory for things to exploit or googling it? lol

Indeed game genie is a good subject. For the most part i’d blatantly cheat (and still do with cheat engine) but i’d also try to discover stuff, plugging in random letters hoping for something. usually that wouldnt work, But oh the exhilration when it did work. Sometimes you’d have something and not know what, or sometimes it would be a blessing and a curse. and of course i was not really able to figure out how to alter things or test things scientifically. people still do this, but in new contexts. but these days we ban them from steam like Heretics. especially if they succeed lol.

Now having said all this. How’d minecraft get so popular with kids? From what I gather is seems like the most popular game kids play online (or was anyway) along with runequest! Neither of those games are power fantasy really and they are rather tedious and IMO pretty hard and have some very frustrating moments. I found minecraft Very engrossing is that enough to win a young audience over? Maybe that can be enough to just win anyone.

that’s another though about this general idea of old games beating new ones. you had smaller production studios back then and for the most part there was totally not a lot of business in it. if you made anything at all then god bless you. my understanding is people who made the game were doing it for fun. DOOM certainly wasn’t planned (my interpretetation is you would see someone who made a game as literally the dungeon masters and they enjoyed toying with whoever might play what they were making and get off on it in a pseudo-sadistic way) another aspect of this was that these small production studios (especially if it was ONE person like the guy who did Another World) you’d have a very strong, consistent and spirited vision. Basically art. That kind of thing that can inspire anyone including someone young. This isnt so common now, even with good games that are well done and the designers themselves actually play their own games themselves, to make sure they are fun that seems to be as good as it gets and the most one can hope for is something fun. I find the inspirational element is a bit rare now. and you certianly dont see a unity of vision of a huge AAA studio that ads tons of content all over the place and tries to string it together. (There is no better example to mock than bethesda with their all around jankiness in everything from inconsistent and out of context dialogue and NPC behavior to lore that isnt even compatible among itself if you dig deep enough) Due to technical limitations the means to express onself were also fairly limited. So to play a game and feel immersion in it you were really deep into whatever this designer did and took in every detail. I think the way games are made in this sense is far greater than the aesthetic impressions it makes. I also think that this is why some of us love 16 bit games so much. With the 16 bit style of sprite art we had the perfect means to express. We even had voice synthesis. Compare that to 8 bit art and there is still some abstraction and limitiations that (maybe it is personal) limits expression, but the 16 bit capabilities of those systems allow for pretty much anything, if you have a vision or a voice.

Let’s take a look at hotline miami. It has the retro aesthetic sure, but it is also a very simplistic game. However, it was prettty immersive to me as I played it despite a (lets be honest) somewhat cheesy story and very reptitive mechanical arcade play. But in playing it, one can’t help but become attuned to every detail in order to survive. so the less is more thing can really work well in this regard, and if the designer actually is an artist or has a vision then that is a compatible vechicle for expression even if the message is a bit hokey or cobbled. Another memorable game for me was Phantasy Star IV. The cutscenes and video effects really did woo me, it had a run of the mill JRPG story but the presentation was a top notch thanks to that 16 bit art, the game itself is also simplistic and that kind of trance-like repeittion common to the JRPG in this era. (I seem to like my JRPGs where i really just zone out into like that.)

For the time being I am agreeing with torgo that indie devs make better games hands down than big studios, but that’s because you simply cant have a huge vision without these damn hiccups. I love bethesda and what they do (except horse armor for 5 bucks) but there is a huge difference that inevitably come out in any big project versus something small and you can hear it in music too. the historical context of art in games might largely be lost but that doesnt mean games cant be fun or even that games cant be good. It also doesnt mean that there is reason to feel guilty for playing these games that are fun but are not really art, lol. Maybe the AAA thing will die down at some point, at least become more managed to have smaller teams working on more consistent bits. I Dont think the AAA vehicle is a downward spiral where mixed media goes the way of Zalgo. Sometimes, but not always.

2 Likes

Dead conversation, I know, but I thought I could provide some neat insight into this since I realized while reading this thread that I am part of a different generation of gamers than most on this thread. I’m 24 years old, so I’m not “new” to gaming by any means, but my first console was the N64, but most of my childhood was spent on the original Xbox. I never really played the super classic 8-bit and 16-bit games as a child.

Now with that all out of the way, let me say this. I LOVE old video games, but they’ve just been are so damn hard to get a hold of unless I go out of my way to look for ways to play them. I think the two biggest issues standing in the way of new gamers and old classics is awareness and accessibility. Most kids just flat out don’t know about a lot of classics unless they have gamer parents who exposed them to them at a young age.

Secondly, even if they were interested, most don’t have the time and money to track down old consoles just so I can play a few old classics. Thankfully things like Steam and Nintendo’s virtual console make it a lot easier to track down some classics, but others are still elusive. But the truth is most kids won’t play these games unless they’re like me and goes out of their way to seek out cheap and affordable ways to play classics. And most kids aren’t willing to do that.

But I’m convinced younger kids can definitely enjoy older games. Like others said in this thread, a timeless classic will always be fun. And the rise of indie games recently shows that not all kids are mindlessly attracted to the newest and shiniest graphics. They want unique and engaging game-play, which is what a lot of these new indie games provide and it’s also what a lot of classics provide as well. That’s why I love classics. It’s like a huge untapped gold mine of “new” games for me to get lost in. A lot of other kids today would fall in love with them too if they just A.) Were aware of them and B.) Had easy access to them

1 Like

Sorry to just now respond to you. I agree, and actually didn’t even think about how a person’s access to a game and before that their awareness of a game could affect perception. I was thinking of a parent who introduces a kid to an NES game or something like that. But if the parent is in their 30’s and introduces a, lets say 5 year old to a game then they are already providing the awareness and access. Example given: if I had a child and let said child play my Zelda on my raspberry pi then the kid would have one of their first memories of video games as I had when I was six. For you it would be introducing a N64 game (I’m assuming you would introduce a game from the generation you’re most fond of). Or you could have them play some earlier classics since you enjoy those as well.

I also believe a younger kid could enjoy an older game despite graphics. I believe that was one of my points about old games but game play usually beats out graphics, and a lot of new games adopt older styles of visuals.

1 Like

My three year old adores classic Mega Man, so much that she wants to be Mega Man for Halloween. I don’t think there’s anything that really prevents people from liking these old games, especially the ones that age well.

2 Likes