I guess I must be getting older, I also felt that 1990-97 possibily 98 were the golden age of console gaming. The majority of my favorite games came out in that time bracket ( Snes, Star Control2 , Xcom,). We got to see the great sega V Nintendo wars.
Of course we got all the excellent video game movies, like the super mario brothers movie :)
But all the shit you can do nowadays. In oblivion you can spend 300 hours and not hit all of the content. Anything is a weapon in DR. Designers are free to go buck wild.
Everyone knows the real golden age of gaming is fourteen.
Yeah. Most people’s golden ages of gaming look a lot like the years they discovered videogames as kids. Games these days just don’t affect them the same way. They must have gotten worse?
Not sure what you mean by “ubiquitous” in this context. I actually liked games when they were less ubiquitous and, as you say, “the club was more tight-knit.”
I look back fondly on all those old games I played and think they were more creative because, at the time, they were more fresh. So much that we pass off with a yawn these days seemed new and exciting then because, well, it was new and exciting then. That’s not really the case anymore.
It’s a lot like movies and popular music. The old paradigms for both are so completely tired and boring. Everything’s done according to formula; more or less by rote–even the stuff that’s supposed to be “underground,” “avant-garde,” or “experimental.” There’s just no fun or interest in that. (When I say “everything,” I don’t mean absolutely everything, just by and large or for the most part). Games, instead of seeming “created,” seem more like they’re assembled these days from a smorgasbord of preexisting parts–take your rag doll physics module from shelf 1, mix in a little RTS-standard gameplay from shelf 2, plug in some bloom-effect code from shelf 3, etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, this has all been said before. I just wanted to pipe up for the forty-something crowd and say that not all of us agree that the new stuff is more fun or exciting. It may be “better” in some dry, technical sense, but the magic is long gone from computer gaming.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
“So yeah, this is the golden age. And every few years will be the new golden age until the rapid technological progress planes off (if it ever does). To some people, they will view the years just after that inflection point as the new golden age. To each their own.”
The games are better in many ways, but the game industry has moved away from some kinds of games many of us like to play. I mentioned them previously – turn-based games are few and far between, as are tactical party-based RPGs. Space sims? Nearly extinct. Adventure games like Monkey Island? Same. So if you like those kinds games and gameplay, this doesn’t seem like a golden age. To me it’s more like the Age of Chrome and Polish and Bells and Whistles.
Well not to rain on your parade or anything, but people have been making that same claim for years now. Every time a new level of graphics comes out, (whether it be 3d or 2d or color), someone is always saying these games are just prettied up and have lost the goodness of the older games.
If you really can’t see that good games are still coming out…I don’t know. What games each person likes is a pretty damn subjective thing, but as a gamer, I’m still in gamer heaven and I started playing games 20 years ago.
P.S. - will someone please tell Obsidan and those Candanian guys that party RPGs are passe now…cause they just won’t quit making them. :P
No, the golden age of gaming was 1982-1988.
The golden age of gaming is when you first discovered gaming. Or at least when it’s associated with all sorts of other good things in your life.
The Gamecube was the golden age of gaming. And now it’s almost over.
Nonsense, the wii will usher in a platinum age.
Greetings:
Not new and exciting to you. To people who’ve never had these experiences, they’re just as new and exciting as when you first discovered them, only prettier and easier to get access to.
Yep. I’d also take “jaded”.
Best,
Michael.
Well, I think it’s the best it’s ever been - but there are a lot of things about how games used to be that I miss. And, of course, a lot of things that I hope stay dead forever.
Golden Age = 8-bit. It’s that’s simple.
Do we even define games in terms of “bits” any more? 16-bit seemed to be the last era in which game technology was defined in those terms. I remember hearing some talk of 32-bit, bit it didn’t really catch on. How many bits are there in an Xbox 360?
I never said good games aren’t coming out. I said that some of the kinds of games they used to make they don’t make anymore, or don’t make many of them anymore. I’m not talking about old vs. new, but about genres that don’t exist much anymore.
It seems to me with those statements you’re saying gaming is less… And I don’t agree. That’s me point.
I just wanted to point out that this is my favorite typo, because it makes the writer sound piratey.
I don’t know about a golden age, but I do know games don’t surprise me as much as they did in the 90’s. Thief, System Shock, Myth, Zork Nemesis, Homeworld, Planescape: Torment, Age of Empires, Baldur’s Gate, Quake, Fallout, Dungeon Keeper, Red Alert… These felt much fresher to me than much of what’s come since. These days I’m getting some of that same buzz from games I play on my Nintendo DS, but there have been very few surprising PC games for me over the last 5-6 years.
Right, it isn’t about graphics, which are always nice to have. But the genre’s Mark was talking about above really seem to be pretty much dead. Turn based games? Very rare these days. Tactical party based RPG’s (think SSI’s gold box games) pretty much dead. The X-Com/JA2 genre - pretty much dead. Space Sims - pretty much dead. Flight Sims are few and far between. All of these types of games are pretty much gone. While there are some very small indy games of these types, and the occasional Civilization, these genres are just not there any more.
Now if you really like 3rd person action games, action RPG’s, MMORPG’s, or Japanese RPG’s - then yes, I can see how this is your golden age. This is not an argument that there aren’t good new games - or that these games aren’t great fun but simply that certain types of games simply don’t get made these days. And for me - that’s a pity. I don’t think it is simple nostalgia, otherwise I’d be pining for the c64 classics, rather than X-com.
The PC’s golden age is definitely over, but I’m not convinced gaming as a whole is on the decline. A lot of the stuff Nintendo is doing with the DS and Microsoft is doing with Live are pretty cool, and the Wii isn’t even out yet. Now, do I miss the sense of amazement I had the first time I played Red Alert or Fallout? Of course. But that has less to do with gaming than it does with me. When I first played Red Alert, I’d never seen anything like it. Not because it wasn’t derivative but because I hadn’t played its predecessors.