The missing element, what are modern games missing?

[KingConnor]

Wow you guys sound so pessimistic. I’m enjoying the vast majority of games im playing in recent years.
What games are you playing that you are hating so much?

Ive recently just completed Smash Bros Ultimate on Switch (it has a shortish story mode), and the ending had my spine tingling.
Last year I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Switch and it was honestly one the best games I’ve ever played! In recent years I’ve had a number of Pokémon games that have been great, as well as Zelda and Mario games.

I honestly dont don’t know what you guys are expecting. Maybe you are idolising childhood memories and thinking things were better then and now stuff isn’t as good rather than stuff not being as good

[ryan_]

To me the simplest answer is authorship, and a reason to exist.

Games used to be made either by teams small enough to carry a singular vision, or by teams that were run by a person who held the vision. Now production is such a behemoth that vision is heavily decentralized, and production teams try to employ flat hierarchies that actively prevent one person from owning the vision. The result is that games are made by focus group testing and data crunching.

Since they have no human author, they fundamentally have nothing to say, no emotionality, no depth, strict adherence to derivation, and therefore no value as a piece of media.

In short, they are fast food. Shaped like food, gives you calories, but no nutritional value.

I think this is partially because corporatization in the early to mid 2000s caused most companies to advance business people and engineers beyond their true value, and now we have the games that business people and engineers produce when they have the final say.

[Chompy Said]

Difficulty that isn't associated with poor camera, etc.

[Mike]

I miss the cartoony games of yesteryear like Spyro and Crash and Banjo, Wind Waker, Rayman 2
The remakes prove what modern technology can do with a cartoony art style.

I like the resurgence of them
Ratchet and Clank, A Hat in Time, Yooka Laylee

This.. and the suspension of disbelief which comes along with it.

Video games should take you out of "this" world and into another.. instead of trying to make the game as "Realistic" as possible. Sometimes realism is good like Gran Turismo, where realism was the main selling point. But now, when every other game is set on Planet Earth it all looks really boring. Also, too many history based games out there - how many WWII based games do we need? Medal of Honor (the first one) came out over 20 years ago...

If I wanted a life-like hi def ultra realistic rendering of Planet Earth...I would go outside

[Baron Baldric]

The missing element, what are The Witcher 3 and Doom 2016 missing?

[Erebus]

I agree for the most part but I would like to add that challenge and dumbing down are also big things wrong with modern gaming.

[Aidy]

The missing element, what are The Witcher 3 and Doom 2016 missing?

What was missing from The Witcher was grinding and the ability to do quests in any order you want so it feels less linear. Before you say you can do them in any order, you have to do them in a fairly rigid order if you want to get experience from them.

[Baron Baldric]

This post is about old games vs modern games, what game are you comparing to The Witcher?

[Aidy]

I'm not comparing it to anything, just saying what was missing (IMEO)

[TheDorkyDane]

I think that is just the side effect of gaming becoming a million dollar business honestly.

Back in the day, with the first Tomb Raider and stuff, you literately just had a handful of dudes sitting in a room making a game and it took them a year. That meant if the game failed, the loses wouldn't be that great.

Now these big games as HUNDREDS of people working on them for YEARS and the production value is at the millions, which makes any potential loses that much bigger. Thusly it becomes the same as with hollywood.
Each and every game will be a huge money gamble, and investors rather place a safe bet, so they will go for the safer option. The bigger the game, the bigger the money, the less likely it is to take any risks, it is a business.

How-ever, all that wonder and originality you are looking for... Well... Indies.

Indies are now the games that has a handful of dudes finding together and make their concept become a reality, works of passion. So yeah, you're just looking the wrong way, the indie scene is booming and there are a lot of very interesting and wondrous game on that marked. You just have to look for them.

[LotusPetal86]

Games these days are missing their passion and risk taking. Back in the 80's and 90's I remember games constantly taking risks. Sometimes this made them "weird", but in the best ways possible. Now it's like, "oh hey, let's make yet another pixelated retro game, but without the risk-taking of new ideas on how to make a game fun and memorable to play". Studios these days don't seem to want to take risks anymore. I don't see them doing something new in terms of graphics or gameplay. Everything seems to have to be either ultra realistic, or hipster-artsy fartsy. I know there are some exceptions, thank goodness, but games these days for the most part feel like an empty commodity because that's the kind of development going into them. Yearly releases that have little in the way of new ideas, and a bunch of microtransactions.

[MaxPar]

Instead of trying to reply to everyone's post in cooment form im going to lay it out here shirt and sweet as im strapped for time.

this is the EXACT same questions and arguments that get forwarded in the music industry. And im going to tell you what i tell them.

There is three tiers to an industry of this size

1 AAA (pop main stream) this is yor cods your fallouts your WoWs ect big boys in music this could be equated with taylor swift or kanye west
these guys are here to make money that it. they arnt artists they arnt passionate, they're rich. in music we precise this as the dumbing down of quality and "trends" and the like. We can safely ignore nearly everything here and not feel any less for it. If you like it THATS GREAT, but if you feel the industry has gone down hill well there's your culprit.

2 AA (Mid Level) in music you could see this as a band like the melvins or Brand New. In gaming this is your devolver your cd projekt ect. These guys ARE businesses and they will fuck up but generally speaking they have money AND passion and make good shit. most of this is worth atleast trying out but they take a long time. They wont come out with a game every year. They will have some odd choices. But overall the Quality will remain high

3 Inde (duh) This is were 90% of the innovation is, and also 90% of the garbage. In music this is going to be bands like crime in stereo and also the endless amount of bands like them that suck.
Sure SOME of them are good (Say Undertale) most of them suck (look at jim stirling's green light series.) However, wading through the proverbial flood of shit for the golden nuggets is a rather trying endeavor.


So what does this fairly obvious scale have to do with the seeming lack of quality in modern day gaming? Simple, In previous years the "AAA" industry was small and while still shoveled piles of shit (hi sonic and E.T) The industry was shaped like a pyramid much like every other industry. However, has gaming has grown we are instead heavily waited towards the top and bottom. The effect of this plus the much larger exposure the internet provides results in a seemingly large amount of shit and nothing else.

In reality though, much like music. Gaming has plenty of games at all levels of this scale are alive and well but get no attention. This is seen most strikingly in music where FOR YEARS now we've been waiting for the death of 'guitar music' and yet bands like parquet courts just found some mainstream recognition, indicating the long island punk scene is alive and well. What makes gaming different is the lack of games overall, comparatively music produces much more content. As well as the cost of development means that while there is an over abundance of jrpgs multiplayer fpses are comparatively rare.

This leads to the main point.
in the so called "clasic" era the lack of the internet and mainstream acceptance of gaming, meant innovation was required to succeed, but in the modern era CoD is profitble FIFA is profitble. And while the AA industry is still pumping out great content at the same rate it feels like its less in comparison.

To bring this to music, in the eighties there was a severe lack of diversity on the radio. Hair metal and MJ rained supreme, but in the nighties that was changed and the reality of the inde and underground scenes was reviled yet they still seemed very similar to everything else . However, in the mid 2000s because of the internet these scenes while more diverse than ever are harder to find.

Gaming is now just getting to the nineties. We see the levels clearly but due to costs and other factors the all seem the same.



Tl;Dr
Stop worrying about the "death" of the industry, sales are higher than ever, engagement is higher than ever. We just got some growing pains. So have fun with what you like secure in knowing that soon we will see our own little nirvana. (see what i did there )

[isturbo1984]

Is this all casuals do these days? Is bitch about games they don't play and cry about the few they do? You're jaded. Old? I'm old too. But I still play games. In the last three years, for every game you actually played and were disappointed with, I can name two I thoroughly enjoyed.