I’m in the same boat as the OP. I’m drowning in awesome games and loving it. Makes me really really really want to retire early and do nothing but go through each and every game I have on Steam.
Shayit dude, I’m in my sixth decade of life now, gotta little bit of arthritis in my thumbs (but I came lately to console and handheld gaming anyway), and I’ll be goldurned if I will be looking longingly at any younguns (not men anyway). Instead I’ll be gaming until they pry the controller (or rodent) from my dead hands (no pain, no gain!). I dream of retiring or getting fired (my luck, neither will ever happen). Damn Tom Chick and his full time gaming ways!
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. We are heading/or in, another gaming golden age/renaissance. There has been barrage of innovative fun games recently. Not since the nineties has there been this much innovation in gameplay.
I’m excited for what the future holds. Graphics have got to the point where they no longer have the wow factor. Great for indies who can’t afford much in the way of art assets, but have all the time in the world to try new gameplay mechanics.
Indie games sprinkled with the occasional AAA title are certainly going to keep my gaming capacity filled to overflowing. My recent computer upgrade also means the AAA titles of the last 3 years or so were recently purchased during the Steam Summer Sale. During the prior two or three years I had become jaded without access to newer titles, but the Indie Scene was beginning to restore my faith. I have pretty much done a 180 in a matter of months and I really do not know how to go about prioritizing. As a perfect example, I have jumped from Realm of the Mad God to Rift to Dungeons of Dredmor to Dragon Age: Origins in the span of 2-3 weeks.
I could be happy with just one of those, but I am still trying to get to them, play Wizard 101 with my kids and squeeze in 9 or 10 other titles from the Summer Sale.
Yay PC gaming!
I love it. There seems to be a couple of forces that are really helping fill my gaming queue.
Because AAA HD graphics are so expensive to produce, it seems like devs with less deep pockets have to really innovate and concentrate on gameplay. Stuff like putting a more accessible experience on traditional roguelikes as in Dungeons of Dredmor or making deep procedurally generated 2D sandboxes like Terraria are hitting a sweet spot between gameplay and production values.
Cheap (well, fairly cheap) and reliable digital distribution methods give smaller outfits a viable way to compete with the big publishers. It wasn’t long ago that a game like Dredmor would’ve just been a low-budget jewel case game on a dusty back shelf. It would’ve been lucky to get a small write-up in one of the back columns of PC Gamer.
Furthermore, with the lack of delivery service like Steam, issues at release and without the additional content being added since release, growing pains may have completely sunk the game and reviewers would have had to put more emphasis on those drawbacks.
Today, gaming has become so much more Indie friendly that breaking from the mold can get the attention and rewards it deserves. Look at Terraria, had to be released early and has been improved consistently since release. Steamers have rewarded the developer by keeping it in the Top Ten for exponentially longer than I would have ever predicted.
There was a way to release games in the 90’s if you were an indie, shareware. But shareware died out and there had been a drought of innovative indie games until recently.
This is slightly off topic, but close to the mark. Now a days, I think I buy many more indy games then I do AAA’s. $60.00 may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but when compared to other digital entertainment forms you still have to consider your purchases more carefully. After the summer sale frenzy, and how much I actually ended up spending on games there I got to thinking. I wonder if AAA titles were significantly cheaper, say 30.00 instead of 60.00 would they sell twice as many of them? It is so much easier for me to impulse buy a 30.00 title then today’s full priced console prices.
Actually my current buying habits are more along the lines of:
[ul]
[li]Cool indy title in the 2-15 dollar range? don’t think twice about it. grab it. Even if I only spend a couple hours on it, It’s still not breaking the bank.[/li][li]AAA Title I am anticipating greatly: OK, plan on spending the money on this title, especially if it has replay value.[/li][li]AAA title that looks cool, but I’m not sure about: Gamefly. Maybe pick it up someday if it ends up in a red case, or in a Steam sale.[/li][/ul]
I am sure there is some psychology involved in this somewhere, since I probably spent well over 150.00 impulsively at Steam just this month…
Back on topic, my “too many cool games” list is daunting.
But even with shareware, getting the initial shareware portion out was still pretty dependent on a retail presence or some print marketing. For every success like Doom, there were dozens of shareware games that fizzled because they never got the attention.
Plus, patching is soooo much easier through Steam’s distribution as compared to the Shareware days. For gamers and, surely, for developers.
Maybe I am not the norm, but I used to get all my shareware titles off of FIDOnet and then Usenet. It was a fairly steady stream of cool shareware titles for awhile.
Put me in the in the golden age of gaming camp. And with GoG making those old classics playable again it’s even better. Boardgames are a part of this golden age also, there are more great boardgames out there than ever before.
Yes, Gods bless G.O.G.!
Tactics Ogre finally hit the $20 price I was waiting for, so I just got it. I didn’t need another game, but damnit, I wanted it! And yeah, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I still haven’t played Dead Space 2, Portal 2, Infamous 2, or Nier yet. I’m looking forward to Dead Island, Batman, Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed, and a few other games that are supposed to come out this year still. It’s just too much, frankly, and it makes it hard to just relax and enjoy whatever game I’m currently playing!
AND I’ve been playing HOMM3 again. Damn you, GOG!
I think you guys have convinced me that we are indeed in a new golden age of PC gaming. I kinda didn’t wanna believe it, but looking at the evidence – all the amazing indie titles, the growth of digital distribution and so on – I can now see that this might be one of the best times to be a PC gamer in many years. Brings a tear to my eye, it does…
Similar to you, I got a lot of shareware off BBSs.
While the market was smaller it was still possible to get your games out there on the cheap.
There are many fantastic new games in many genres.
However, for us combat flight sim fans, there hasn’t been a really good game in a decade now. :(
Ahem…
:D
<weeping sounds>
As a space combat sim fan, I wanna smack you in the mouth. ;) Let’s see, y’all have had Rise of Flight, Black Shark, Cliffs of Dover and the A-10 sim at least.
What have we had? The Tarr Chronicles? Hahahha. The Tomorrow War? Piece of shit. Darkstar One? Fucking joke. SpaceForce: Rogue Universe? Convoluted bundle of ass.
Last great space sim came out in 1999 (Freespace 2), nearly 12 years ago, so boo freaking hoo. :P
/bitter