Is gaming going downhill?

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Well, sometime before I read 500 endings for Fallout 3?

 

[evertonfan]

I think the 10,000 endings is a bit far fetched; even by Fallout's standards!

It will be a beast of a game though.

 

[zimrahil]

I think the 10,000 endings is a bit far fetched; even by Fallout's standards!

I agree- imagine all that development time being wasted on the endings when it could be used elsewhere (improving gameplay etc)

 

[MasterBlaster76]

I think the 10,000 endings is a bit far fetched; even by Fallout's standards!

It will be a beast of a game though.

True, they're probably exaggerating, but as you said, it will be a beast of a game.

MasterBlaster76 added 2 Minutes and 26 Seconds later...

I like online play, I find it more satisfying when you can outwit another human rather than pre-programmed AI, but the matches where you get two players/teams trying to use proper tactics to win rather than glitches are few and far between.
I have played loads of matches on FIFA, I can only remember about 5 or 6 where I have played a proper football fan who plays the game properly, and those games were fun, but I can't be bothered to go on it now because I can't be sure whether the person is a twat before I play them (most of the time they use top teams and have usernames with no capital letters though...) and I can't be bothered to spend ages looking for someone to play who plays fair. To be honest, the game is really boring when you play single player or when you play one of the online twats, which is 99% of the time.

Some really advanced AI that acts like the real thing, bans for online twats, games with no glitches to exploit (meaning tactics are needed) are needed to make sports games fun again.

I agree about value for money too, you go into a game shop and almost everything is £35+, and most of them are just silly little arcade games or just the typical shooters, there's no imagination involved in any of the new games.I wonder how they came to the conclusion that there will be that many endings... They won't have a cutscene/message for each of the 10,000 endings. Anyway, anything more than two endings is more than most games, GTA IV only had two.

I like online play as well, but that's no reason for the devs to keep skimping on singleplayer content.

 

[Kev]

Here's how I see things gaming wise.

Firstly there is a problem with expectations these days, we all know computers can display jaw dropping graphics and should process huge amounts of data in the blink of an eye, so we expect games to be fantastic. Go back a few years and we were blown away by far less impressive stuff. Think of it like watching a sci-fi film. Older films have just rubbish special effects compared to their modern day counterparts, but when we first watched the older films we thought their effects were stunning.

Secondly, development of games is driven by marketing departments and focus groups these days, its all about the money. Go back to gaming's origins and the games were created by people who loved the games they were writing, these days gaming companies are huge most probably with programmers hired in on short term deals.

Lastly price must come into it. £40 odd for a game is a bit on the steep side. I know it costs a lot to do all these fancy graphics but when it's not too many years ago that games were £10 (doubt anyone here remembers £1.99 for the budget titles). Take C07, no way EA spent as much money on it as they did one of their flagship titles, but they still slap on the same price tag, thats gotta leave you upset.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

£1.99 for the budget titles....yes, I remember (shows how bloody old I am!!!). That was back in the days of the Acorn Electron/BBC Micro. The most you'd pay for a game was £5. Obviously, the gfx were awful, but the gameplay was great. Very simplistic, but also very addictive and it was rare to be disappointed with a game. Of course, it did happen occasionally...

MasterBlaster76 added 0 Minutes and 49 Seconds later...

Here's how I see things gaming wise.

Firstly there is a problem with expectations these days, we all know computers can display jaw dropping graphics and should process huge amounts of data in the blink of an eye, so we expect games to be fantastic. Go back a few years and we were blown away by far less impressive stuff. Think of it like watching a sci-fi film. Older films have just rubbish special effects compared to their modern day counterparts, but when we first watched the older films we thought their effects were stunning.

Secondly, development of games is driven by marketing departments and focus groups these days, its all about the money. Go back to gaming's origins and the games were created by people who loved the games they were writing, these days gaming companies are huge most probably with programmers hired in on short term deals.

Lastly price must come into it. £40 odd for a game is a bit on the steep side. I know it costs a lot to do all these fancy graphics but when it's not too many years ago that games were £10 (doubt anyone here remembers £1.99 for the budget titles). Take C07, no way EA spent as much money on it as they did one of their flagship titles, but they still slap on the same price tag, thats gotta leave you upset.

Yeps and they do the same with these stupid one-off tournament games that'll only last you about a month.

 

[Kev]

The thing is Gaming Companies a bit like the Film Studios have worked out that the general public are in general a bunch of muppets. They will buy the same product over and over and over, so why take a risk and do something new and different when you can make plenty of cash by re-hashing the same old product?

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Yes, therein lies the problem.

 

[evertonfan]

You can't blame the gaming companies for overpricing. If we're consistantly willing to pay for these games then they have no reason to lower the price. I do agree though, £50 quid for a game is a rip off. Especially when you pay 50 notes for MGS4 on the Friday and complete it on the Sunday. The gaming retailers annoy me as well; whenever i've completed a game I trade it in and I took MGS4 back no less than 4 days after i'd finished with it from the same store I bought it from. I payed 50 quid for it and when I went to trade it in they offered me £17. Ridiculous as it was in exactly the same condition as when I bought it. It still had all the stickers and labels on it as well; they could have put it straight back on the shelves and got away with selling it as brand new. So I put it on eBay and got 43 quid for it.

 

[Deleted member 9102]

Edit: Chris Gayle

 

[zimrahil]

The thing is Gaming Companies a bit like the Film Studios have worked out that the general public are in general a bunch of muppets. They will buy the same product over and over and over, so why take a risk and do something new and different when you can make plenty of cash by re-hashing the same old product?

Well this is quite simply the best post I have read this year. In fact I like it so much it is now my signature and Kev's usertitle reflects my feelings

 

[usy]

Another thing a person could argue is that are the gamers going downhill, they are not the same gamers that were there around 10/15 years ago, who wanted to spend little time on their Atari box, and get off it. Now days, these guys are like stuck to it, maybe because the games have got more lengthy?

Or are the game developers going downhill? The job maybe is abit more professionalised, with amount of money got in?