e46198 No.16055666
Hey /v/, I'm working on article on the state of modern gaming and the bad practices it employs. One section I want to cover is the general idea that game libraries are getting worse each generation. Specifically, for the purposes of the article, that's defined as:
lower total number of high quality games [e.g. "classics"]
The argument is that we should consider emulating past games more strongly, and modern games should be compared to them, not just other games from their same generation. Now, do you have any idea how I can semi objectively determine the number of "classics" of each generation/system? I can't simply use a meta-analysis of journalist or user reviews because they're contemporaneous to the game's release (and the standards for each generation can be presumed to lower along with the average quality; a PS2 era 10 is much different standard than a PS3 era 10).
What I need is reviews in *retrospect* or some kind of cult classics database. There's of course v's recommended wiki, but that was *also* produced contemporary to the last two generations, and the standards for inclusion for those systems are visibly lower compared to the pages on past systems.
99af2a No.16055672
Satan your idea is retarded and easily disproven so much so that all of its favorers need to ignore any evidence of the contrary. It's utter stupidity and reeks of desperation in its insistence. Any meaningful metrics tracking this are literally stacked against you and you have no argument that will hold any water.
Basically get that asian girl away from that ketchup, bad shit always starts that way.
c6c82b No.16055682
You're going to have to defend your position against >muh graphics, which can be measured with objective metrics (polygon count, etc.), and assert why something subjective like how fun a game is can be considered shit. Not that it's impossible, but it is difficult to argue with relativistic faggots on subjective topics because they are much like the soyboy whiteknighting faggot who will insist that the hot blonde you consider a 10 is actually an 1, and if you call him out on it he'll retreat to "but muh subjectivity! It's just like, your opinion man!"
In real life, you deal with faggotry like that by throwing them into the bog, but you can't do that on the internet, so just be aware that you have to deal with people who literally think a piece of shit floating in the toilet is art.
7fe586 No.16055686
>>16055672
^I'm with
Also OP having a cuckchan filename makes me even more suspicious
94c421 No.16055702
Why don’t you objectively measure my dubs, OP?
c6c82b No.16055714
>>16055702
You objectively failed, now back on topic. Yep, games sure are shit today. Yup. *sips beer*
94c421 No.16055723
>>16055714
>*sips beer*
Why don’t you take OP with you back to cuckchan
e46198 No.16055726
>>16055682
I'm aware. This is the weakest section of my article, and I'm just trying to figure out if there might be a way to give some credence to the claim, otherwise I'll cut it out.
A large part of the argument is that graphics shouldn't be considered much in evaluating a game for a variety of reasons. The basic thesis is if you make the effort to dismiss "good graphics", there's nothing to give new games the ability to enforce a consumer hardware treadmill, and due to bad practices in the industry - and general lack of innovation/lower quality (this is the weak subjective section) - and the easy availability of a large library good games from the past, there's not much reason not to simply reject new games and return to classics; no longer wasting your money on unnecessary hardware and forgettable games.
356997 No.16055733
i think a lot of modern vidya is influenced by the fact the new generation is kind of conditioned for instant gratitude and and reward. like mobile games, where it's constantly giving you freemium in the tutorial and for daily logins to hook you, then when its not enough it coerces the player to give real currency.
most kids may think the concept of dark souls is cool but wont actually play it because the reward is less likely than the punishment, they want the cool end game gear and the pleasure of beating a game without a difficulty factor, while the majority of people who do like those type of games are busy with work / college / being a parent that they just can't dedicate as much time to gaming anymore
so games get dumbed down, oversimplified, and rushed out to see how much money they can make with what little effort.
just my thoughts
e46198 No.16055746
>>16055723
>>16055686
>implying 4chan is the only imageboard with UNIX filenaming
jim still pig farming IPs and tripfaggot mark censoring to protect devs for that reddit audience?
63d448 No.16055766
>>16055746
>jim still pig farming IPs and tripfaggot mark censoring
Yes.
d09bba No.16055773
>>16055746
>Implying 13 digits is standard for UTC
>>>/cuckchan/
90deb5 No.16055798
>>16055666
It's actually easy to start. I would cite team sizes and price differences.
b5a2c8 No.16055813
Modern monetization and comparison with older games is a must
Also check Examined Life of Gaming
61df16 No.16055817
when Games As Service destroys Single Player experiences
2de380 No.16055834
>take old game mechanics
>analyze what they mean and their implications
>now analyze modern game mechanics
>profit
should be really fucking easy considering most games are trying to scam you into buying lootboxes these days.
dc070a No.16055844
>>16055834
>modern game mechanics
3774aa No.16055853
The way I'd measure whether a car is a "classic" is by asking oldfags if they remember them and whether they remember them fondly.
Reminder that picking a 2018 game for "game of the year" awards was next to impossible.
a4d10e No.16055915
While there are clearly shit trends popular in the industry driving bad game design. I would also argue that games aren't generally getting worst but rather you just don't remember all the trash form when you where younger and have selective memory for the good things. This is also known as the Golden Age fallacy. This pheromone explains why back during the PS2 area people though it was the low point of gaming, yet many of those same people now look back on PS2 as the high water mark.
e46198 No.16055964
>>16055817
yep. and removing offline multiplayer is just a tool to force people to pay for their internet subscriptions and buy more systems, while also greatly shortening the lifespan of the game.
>>16055915
expected argument, but the point is to take a long-term look, e.g. if we imagine yourself 20 years from now, which games are worth playing? It's pretty easy to admit you'll find many, many more in the PS2, PS1 or SNES systems alone than you'll find in the entire last or current gen.
It's not a question of the gem:forgettable ratio but gem:generation.
>>16055929
Considered that, but it's colored by traits related to remakes. Some games are great but simply wouldn't benefit from a remake. Or are great but not good fit for the current system's market. Others are already accessible available as ports everywhere, e.g. old mario games on any nintendo system. Finally, its biased towards older games as not enough time has passed to really consider remaking last gen games.
It's easy enough to apply the subjective measure, "can you imagine people emulating and talking about this game 20 years from now?" and come to a fairly consistent standard. I can't think of any way to determine this based on available data. Obviously, it would be possible to simply just survey that question to a bunch of games of all the generations, but that's not practical both in getting a realistic sample audience and unbiased sample of each gen's libraries.
99128d No.16055983
>>16055666
>I'm working on article on the state of modern gaming and the bad practices it employs
You're going to find whatever you're looking for, with or without any help.
Do you want to find bad games to write an article about how it's getting worse? You'll find plenty of examples.
Do you want to find good games and write about how there's still quality to find? You'll also find plenty of examples.
In the end, it's your own bias that dictates what you're going to find and write about. Just consider that you've already decided what the results of your findings are going to be, you're just looking for corroboration.
Nevermind that you're never going to find a list of all videogames available in a specific year so you can work with that.
Nevermind that (almost) all videogames are permanently available the second they enter the market, which means past titles would end up counting against current ones since you can still play them.
Nevermind Sturgeon's Law being a natural consequence of a medium getting more and more interest in it.
Nevermind the current outrage culture making recent shit games more visible than older shitgames.
Nevermind that you're talking about "current trends" but at the same time you're looking for "classics". Tell me when have you ever seen a "classic" from last year.
You're just looking to write fear porn for faggots that read more about bad videogames than actually play good ones, all because it's profitable to talk about bad videogames.
Worse than that, you think your article somehow helps, delivering a pungent critique to the market that Devs will surely read, take seriously, and improve because of it. But likely you know that's not gonna happen, the clicks you'll get on your article are all the motivation you need.
Can't blame you too much though. The faggots that like to talk about shit all the time and keep your shitty practices lucrative are just as much to blame, though.
eb78d5 No.16056049
>>16055983
Nobody needs your shit you useless nigger. You have nothing. You didn't refute him or do anything except act superior for shitting on someone for having a position and trying to do something.
1d5f1c No.16056135
>>16055682
>graphics
>objective
A turd with 5 trillion polygons and 64K textures with tessellation and raytracing is still a turd.
dc070a No.16056144
>>16056135
>those graphics
>that chromatic abberation
>DoF
>all those post processing effects
christ, is there good methods to reduce bloat and filler in the graphics and reduce polycounts?
a955d8 No.16056148
>>16055726
>>16055666
You need to present evidence that the average gamer or whatever will understand. That usually means images. You can make infographs showing the relationships between new games and old games. A popular one from several years ago was the image comparing a Doom map to a CoD4 map. However, that particular example is somewhat weak because the games are marketed differently (Doom was never about muh cinematic experience even in its worst moments).
I'd advise choosing a few specific franchises and making infographs that compare the older games to the newer. That will make the comparison more striking since its the same franchise. Mario might be a good choice for a start, since Mario 3 had some sweet ass design compared to babby easy recent games.
Think about franchises where they took mechanic X or level Y and put it in the next game, except it's objectively simplified or less interesting, and capitalize on that.
a955d8 No.16056157
>>16055983
You realize that culture is a continuously shifting amorphous blob, right? Every time someone writes an article that is read by more than a few people the idea catches on. But despite everything that's happened in the past decade, you discount the power of mass media (or "memes"). Seems you haven't been paying attention.
8be99c No.16056361
>>16055844
A microtransaction IS a game mechanic!
I'll take my shekels now.
f70a69 No.16056453
9b84e7 where the fuck do you think you are and why are you too retarded to sage?
You can embed multiple webms in a single post, you know.
f70a69 No.16056463
>>16056416
>13 minutes
Jesus. You really are a retard.
dc070a No.16056464
>>16056416
>games are so bad nowadays that gaylo 3 or even modern warfare are more enjoyable experiences
how did it get so bad?
efafda No.16056479
944944 No.16056534
>>16055666
okay satan
number of classics per year over the length of the game generation, number of classics released by publishers per year
a primary reason youll probably find is development cost, compare the number of Hit/classic games during the early to mid 90s during Japans great recession no less, the majority of which are home console versions of arcade games developed on their very own propietary hardware or licensed hardware sets like neogeo or home game cartrideges vs the eyewatering costs today to simply just have something downloaded as a file or burned to a disc thats gonna have a day 1 50gb update and is still not even a stable version of the game that doesnt crash, developers dont even have to worry about creating hardware yet they need 100s of millions of dollars
a4d10e No.16056650
>>16055964
I am not saying that their aren't bad game design trends effecting the market. For example games take longer to produce and they are more expensive to produce so executives force developers to play it safe. That one example alone of R&D cost explains why their is less of a particular thing.
I am just staying that their has always been a sea of shit video games in all eras and it only takes hindsight and time to sort out the good from the ugly. I remember when PC gaming was a sea of garbage in the 90's, they weren't called "indie" games back then but in all intent and purpose they where the equivalent shovel ware trash. For every Super Mario Brothers there was a Super Giana Sisters, The Wand of Gamelon or Hotel Mario. While caught up in the intoxicating smugness of cynicism it really easy to see only the bad and filter out the good games. In fact I hated the N64 and PS1 when they where new systems because it was such a huge shift in game design form the SNES era. I only appreciate PS1 and N64 in hindsight and I know I'm not alone in this experience.
944944 No.16056652
>>16056650
gran tourismo took 5 years, it started development years before it even had a devkit
1d5f1c No.16056659
>>16056650
>Giana Sisters
>trash
a4d10e No.16056660
>>16056652
and it aged like spoiled milk. But if that trivia helps you sleep at night then fine by me I'm going to go play Nioh and Demon's souls.
860c8c No.16056722
>>16056408
>13.29 MB
>webm
>2:46
>that low bitrate for everything
what the fuck is this shit?
55ebe3 No.16056755
>>16055666
Jewish infiltration.
dd1721 No.16056785
>>16056659
It's trash alright.
f9d2c9 No.16056807
You can point to the pioneers of the genres never being truly surpassed or any games achieving the level of true greatness that those games accomplished.
We flat-out do not have the same kind of masterpieces we used to for the most part.
There has never been another Doom, another Starcraft/C&C/Warcraft, another Diablo, another Ys, Another Zelda, another Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario, another Castlevania or Metroid or Deus Ex or Ultima or Wizardry for their genres. (And I don't mean more franchise games or clones, I mean what those games did for their genres)
Most of what is "created as new" is usually derived from something else. For example, mobas were just derived from custom games in WC3 and Starcraft 1. Battle Royale was derived and created from mods of other shit.
e46198 No.16056867
Redrafting, as I guessed it would be too contentious to make a qualitative judgement on modern games. I think it would better to focus on technical aspects that can be pointed out demonstrating game design being hurt by (uniquely contemporary) financial concerns.
Financial Exploitation Take Precedence Over Good Game Design
* Employment of insidious casino-MMO design keep players addicted by exploiting reward-behavior instincts over rewarding game design.
* Elimination of local multiplayer artificially limits the lifespan of the product in favor of forcing more copies, systems and internet subscription fees to be sold.
* DLC, Season pass and Subscription based models results in games being released with content partially-completed, forcing players to pay for the rest of the content
* Game as a Service ……
What can you add? Not sure what copy to cover for GaaS, it's bad in a lot of ways. "Dumbing down games to be more accessible" is the most common criticism laid out but it's too vague and subjective unless I can find some validating evidence.
note this is separate from a section that focuses on post-development consumer-hostile marketing practices, e.g. DRM, vendor-locking, artificial exclusivity etc.
>>16056650
I understand, but it's besides the point. As I said, the ratio isn't "classics:trash" but "classics:generation".
>>16055983
I'm well aware this is an act of propaganda and I'm confident in my ability to influence things towards the better. The only *actually* important thing is coining words that describe the embedded concepts make their way into the vernacular, and providing a reference page for the arguments and position presented.
55ebe3 No.16056996
Evolve was a great game; people just perceived it as bad because they like gabe newell's cock in their mouth.
55ebe3 No.16057015
>>16057004
How's that autism?
8642ea No.16057076
>>16055686
>People STILL don't have the script to bring back unix timestamp filenames
wew lad
2a24ec No.16057092
>>16056416
This video sums up why people liked Bungie. They don't make original games, they just know how to polish things. Halo 3 was polished as much as any game ever could be. Even if you want to mock Halo, you have to respect that Bungie knew how to make A GAME, if not The Game you want it to be. 343 are just modern liberals based on JJ Abram's playbook of "it only matters if they feel something, what that feeling is or why doesn't matter".
f9d2c9 No.16057102
>>16057004
I don't know who that faggot was, but I have a friend who can vouch that there was a good game and defvelopers in Evolve that unfortunately got fucked over
2a24ec No.16057138
>>16056807
Every game you listed there is just as derivative as the modern CoD releases. Doom was not the first FPS, Starcraft not the first RTS etc. Those games weren't even the best games in their genres at the time in many cases. They were just the most mainstream games of the time. This creates a problem with discussing a true classic. Is Zelda really a classic or is it just the game all the Amerimutts grew up with on the NES due to a marketing campaign and it's length? Same for Metroid. Is Sonic a classic or was it just a well put together platformer in a market full of platformers for the last decade?
>>16057102
Evolve was a deeply flawed design from day 1. There is no way you can balance a giant monster VS 4 players. There's no way to balance it where both sides have an even chance to win. Either a monster will be broken or underpowered. A team who stick together should beat a solo player by design. Unless the monsters too powerful for them to stop. There's no good medium point here.
55ebe3 No.16057158
>>16057102
The two middlemost images aren't even the same guy as in the first and fourth, and furthermore, that's not even the guy's DA page.
>>16057138
Except that's false. Evolve was balanced perfectly fine. The only real problem was the Wraith; People bitched and cried about it's balance, but they had sub-par hours, only enough time so that they could refund it and bitch about it on sockpuppet accounts.
The game was unbelivably deep and strategic; Trying to advertise it to dudebro chads and casuals was idiotic, when it was closer to a strategy game than a traditional shooter.
Running around like an idiot was a surefire way to fail when there was so much observation and planning required.
2K fucked the title. And people will continue to smear the game due to some cosmetic DLC even though it was utter brilliance.
Insta-Dome was a horrible design choice.
c796aa No.16057165
>>16055666
>One section I want to cover is the general idea that game libraries are getting worse each generation.
94-05 was a great period for video games but it's really hard to compare other gens due to how much has the industry changed since. do you really think the 3rd or 4th generation are better overall compared to the 7th gen?
>>16056807
>any Diablo
>any Ys
>any Zelda
>any Sonic
>Starcraft or Warcraft
>masterpieces
wew lad, good games sure but masterpieces?
55ebe3 No.16057175
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>16057158
Like, okay. Ever play Subnautica?
The game's original design was basically that before Subnautica was even a thing.
Sadly Take-Jew removed most of the evidence of their fuckery. But there's still videos of it's existence.
THQ would of produced a literal masterpeice that was perfection.
2K just wanted a cashin asap and forced them to restart the game's development and finish it in one year. They pulled an Electronic Arts.
2a24ec No.16057209
>>16057158
I played Evolve at release and it's later "fixes". The game wasn't even close to fine. The PC version had a broken monster because mouse aiming made it so much better than on console. The entire gameplay "loop" was boring. Every match went roughly like this.
>Hunters spawn
>Hunt monster who runs away while feeding
>If monster is found at stage 1 it will die
>Stage 2 will probably escape if players aren't good
>Stage 3 monster wins.
The chances of finding the monster was more random luck than any sort of skill. Made especially bad because the hunters had to work as a team to win so you couldn't split up to hunt down the monster then come together. You either stuck together or it killed you when it found you.
>>16055666
It sounds like you have an agenda you want to push but don't know why you have that agenda. You think modern games are worse than classic games but you don't know why. Which means something has told you this rather than it's something you figured out for yourself. There are still good games this generation, RE2 remake is one of the best survival horror games ever released. Arguably games like Far Cry are the wet dreams of people who played old SNES fantasy adventure games for world exploration. You say modern games are worse but don't know why. Mean while you have grown and changed as a person over time, so your attraction to games has also changed. You have nostalgia for what you grew up with and a dislike for what people are growing up with today.
A lot of the classic games released also sucked, many of them much worse than modern games do. The shovelware problem was around then as it is today, the commodore 64 has more game titles than any other system and it's full of complete shit. If we compare the entire C64 library to the PS3 library what sort of good to bad ratio will both come up with? The industry hasn't really changed that much and it's just added DLC on top of it, which we used to buy as expansion packs or straight up sequels with about the same amount of changes to the base game. It's hard to say CoD whatever we're on now is a bad game objectively. If we're 10 years of CoD fatigue but the gameplay is still as good as it was for CoD4 then we're going to hate it but it's not a bad game. How can you be objective about that? You can't review it on merit alone because you can't experience that merit through your filter.
A better article would be why any one wants an objective opinion to begin with. I don't care if Fighting game 3 is the objective best game ever made if I don't like fighting games. I want to find a reviewer who loves Dick sucker 5 as much as I do and recommends me other games like Dick sucker 5. Then I have a guy who can help me find what I want. Being objective is worthless to me because no one is objective in their lives. We have things we like and things we don't like. Matching them up gets you better recommendations then comparing Street fighter 2 to Mario kart. If I'm in a shop wanting to buy either having one be "objectively better" doesn't help me decide if I want a fighting game or a racing game more.
cceb04 No.16057223
>>16057158
>Evolve was balanced perfectly fine
>trying to kill the invisible medic is like trying to find a needle in a haystack
>killing the other hunters is meaningless
>if you don't find the invisible medic super quickly, you're dead
>on the other hand, if the hunters have the Medic that isn't invisible, they'll be dead in seconds because the monster can just go full vore on her ass and she can't do shit about it
Played about 15 hours' worth of it, either as Medic or as the Monster. The difference between Invisimedic and EASYTOKILLINSTANTLYmedic were as big as a lvl 1 Monster vs a lvl 3 Monster.
2a24ec No.16057227
>>16057175
That prototype looks exactly like a prototype of the finish game. It's blander and a bit slower but all the core problems are still there.
5c5941 No.16057343
>>16055666
Satan, write something about absurdly big game sizes. If there's no upper limit for info packing in the broadband net era, then there's no debugging, quality control, deeper thought and artistry in the making
e59446 No.16057345
>>16057209
>>16057223
Completely false, but you being so wrong amuses me.
f70a69 No.16057401
cceb04 No.16057478
>>16057345
Oh please, all the invisible medic had to do for his team to win was not die and then go revive the other hunters who did die. Tier 2 and 3 monsters were able to kill hunters super quickly once they caught them. Invisible medic was hard to catch, not-invinsible medic was easy to catch.
Most of Evolve's issues were due to pacing. The hunters needed to have an easier time tracking the monster down, but the dome needed to last a shorter amount of time. Basically change the game from "monster tries to hide until tier 3" to "monster tries to survive until tier 3". This then puts an immense amount of pressure on the monster to be stealthy as fuck, and on the hunters to be on fucking point with the tracking. Another issue was the difference between hunter roles. What we had was the damage dealer, the healer, the trapper, and the utility. What the game needed was the healer, the tracker, the trapper, and the utility. Each class would have the different hunters have different amounts of damage output and utility. So invisibility faggot medic would deal next to no dmg whatsoever, the healy medic would do moderate amounts of dmg, and the grenade launcher medic would do lots of dmg but low healing (AKA sucks at the job but hurts the monster more). One tracker would have an easier time following the monster (the bitch with the pet), one would have an easier time finding its general position, and one would let the hunters see the monster easier during battle by making it glow. Trappers would have their domes vary in size/duration, the ones with the shittier domes would be a greater hindrance to the monster during the fights, the ones with great domes would be less useful in the fight. And of course, you wouldn't know what the other team picked until you ran into each other. The monster wouldn't know if the other team had the bloodhound pet riding its ass or if it was safe to hunt and eat a bit more greedily because the hunters didn't know exactly where the monster was. But that whole system would also have required the monsters to be different, so that hunters trying to find a kraken would have to play very differently than hunters trying to find a behemoth or a wraith. Wraith would have an easier time getting to tier 3 since it'd be hard to track down and even if you forced it into fights it could run and hide inside the dome, but it wouldn't be that much bigger of a threat compared to tier 1. Behemoth would be a breeze to follow but if you let it get to tier 3, it would've been instantly game over.
In any case, the game was a fucking mess balance wise. Which is a shame because asymmetrical PvP can be a ton of fun.
14d1d0 No.16058229
I think you should bring up how there is a direct corralation between decline of quality and popularity of a medium. You don't need much evidence to point out how big industries have been becoming progressively worse due to the fact that at some point love and passion get overshadowed by greedy people in suits. Then you could pull up some interviews about people speaking up against terrible working conditions in the industry (something I keep seeing more and more of recently). Afterwards give the reader an insight into how videogames used to get made, with love and passion. An example I like to pull up for that is the game "Toilet Tycoon", which was made during a time where realizing your shitty idea was more important than income. You could also give an insight into how indiegames are made nowadays.
ccf9bf No.16058282
>>16055915
You can completely ignore all trash from all generations. Just compare the number of good games made between, say, 1998-2008 and the ones made between 2008-2018. Not only will you find that the 1998-2008 period produced a greater quantity of good games than the 2008-2018 period, but that the best games made in that period exceed the best games of the latter period in terms of quality as well.
c1e17b No.16058370
>lower total number of high quality games [e.g. "classics"]
This is impossible because a game has to be a certain amount of time old before it can even be considered a "classic". That would be like going to a classic car convention, noting that all the cars around are from the 60's thru the 80's, and assuming that means no cars made after that time have been any good at all. More to the point, with video games, "classics" are often judged as such simply because they were seminal or groundbreaking in some way, not because they were necessarily the best. Super Mario 1 is THE classic even if 2 (Lost Levels for the non-Nips) is mostly just a straight difficulty jump, and 3 is better in basically every single way. Super Mario 64 is considering THE classic because of the jump to 3D being so huge, even if it's pretty buggy and messy and ugly by the standards of slightly newer games. Most game franchises hit their "sweet spot" around the middle, but it's almost always the first entry that is the "classic".
It's just a stupid metric, is what I mean. And you're not going to find many objective ways to measure any kind of video game that isn't an industry scam technique (like polygon count or "play time" or whatever else). And most of what you'll find will, sadly (or hilariously) contradict what you're trying to prove. Like how vastly more kids per capita are playing Fortnite than ever played Doom or Quake, and vastly more people would report being "satisfied" with their games now than they would have 20 years ago (mostly because there is a larger selection and a lot more genres so people can find exactly what tickles their autism). You're in a lose-lose situation.
e39ce9 No.16058403
>>16055733
>mobile games
>instant gratification
Don't mobile games typically have shit like
>Wait 5 hours for your building to be complete!
690e50 No.16058457
>>16058403
or you can drop some coin for gems to pre purchase a chance to instantly complete one of the preliminary building quests
c8c2e1 No.16058774
>>16055666
You can't use reviews for historical comparison of videogames. It just doesn't work, and you should know better.
There are no schools of game critique or even of game development theory itself. This might sound wrong at first, but you can quickly see that nobody will bother describing games in terms of what twitch, tactical, and strategic decisions the player makes. Game advertisers (journalists) don't compare games to prior art or even write apologia for why every game released is multiple steps back from previous masterpieces - they always write about things that have nothing to do with whether a game is fun or even beautiful.
Without even a simple set of theories that can be used to make predictions about how a game will play out, you can't say anything substantial about any game other than
"it has more art budget than the last one I guess",
"they spent a lot of money on an orchestral soundtrack so it must be higher class even if it doesn't have any emotional resonance with me or anyone I know",
"wow, there are gender neutral bathrooms, I guess I'm supposed to say that's a good thing this year".
If game advertiser shitrags are writing more positive reviews now than they did 20 years ago, or vice versa, it just tells you about the changing relationship between the sponsors, publishers, and "game journalists" - nothing about any game is ever revealed.
Games can be analyzed objectively - but only by actually describing and understanding their mechanics and how those mechanics interact. A game where you can pick up any enemy's gun and use it against his compatriots means the game must have similar rules for play for the player character and the non player characters. A game where the player has passively regenerating health will be stupid, ugly, and have unrealistic maps that are reduced to light gun shooter corridors without the need for places to hide and bandage up, use health packs, or take control of a medic in the party to stabilize the wounded character.
By describing the actual systems in games and building up a great enough library of examples of the tradeoffs made in game rulesets, it would be possible to objectively critique any game without needing to ever say "I just like it" or "if you don't like it, don't play it".
Without a supporting school of real game theory (not larping by internet attention whores pretending to be critics by aping common criticisms of films, books, and music) you can't even describe the problem of games becoming objectively worse and less fun over time. (((A certain group of people who love debasement and bringing ruin to beauty))) will do absolutely everything they can to stop you from naming the microtransaction problem, saying that things that draw the player's attention and manipulate addictive personalities to spend money are not fun, and so on. After all, if you could describe the exact differences between the set of rules in a game where you can pay to win and a game where you have fair competition between sporting, competitive players, it would hurt the sensitivities of gaming's most profitable demographic. Without the language to describe the problem, it can't even be imagined, and the lovers of debasement and ruin win.
>>16056807
Fanboy retard. Listing overmarketed games that killed their respective genres w/ lowered quality and worse game design, dooming all imitators, is the opposite of naming masterpieces. Besides, Castlevania is a shit game that nobody could seriously say they enjoy it in light of better games. Maybe if you said Symphony of the night or one of the handheld games you would sound like you had a genuine opinion.
>>16057158
Anyone with half a dick and two fifths of a brain knew that evolve was going to be shit. 1v4 has a huge gap in objective power between well coordinated combos executed by 4 dudes on voice chat who have actually written game plans and 4 schlubs who won't talk to each other in matchmaker queues. The monster has no coordination power gap, so if it's strong enough that it can evenly match a football team handed gamepads, it will always win against matchmaker players. If matchmaker players can ever win against the monster, the monster is so weak that it can never win against a coordinated team.
>>16057209
I see someone else actually played evolve and then dropped it during the demo.
>>16058166
This desu.
daf23c No.16058792
>>16055672
basically this. more could be said, but let's better not.
690e50 No.16058954
c8c2e1 No.16059010
6e0193 No.16059158
OP here, thread basically confirmed my suspicion - there isn’t any good metric to believably measure the trend. I’m removing the subjective elements from the article as >>16055682 advises, to prevent dismissive handwaving. The discussion is interesting though so I won’t sage myself
>>16058774
>There are no schools of game critique or even of game development theory itself.
Actually this is untrue. There’s the academic field of “ludology” or game studies, with a small base of literature centered mainly around game narrative. The trouble is that games are a new enough medium that it never had a chance to form a real, formal school of design and criticism before being inundated with Marxist subjectivity nonsense. There’s some worthwhile commentary but it’s dragged down by the deconstructionist influence. Alexander Galloway is one of the better theorists.
>>16057209
>It sounds like you have an agenda you want to push but don't know why you have that agenda. You think modern games are worse than classic games but you don't know why. Which means something has told you this rather than it's something you figured out for yourself.
Couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s few left on neo-/v/ with the (now) extremist position I intend to advance. I didn’t mean to be “secretive” about what I was working on but i wasn’t expecting to field quieries on it, I’ll share it when it’s more polished; this thread was just borrowing from the hive mind to see if they could come up with something. In any case, if you actually believe the idiotic “taste is subjective!!” normalfag meme, and not that taste is partially subjective and that subjectivity is highly derived from external social factors-not some personal inherent “””taste””- you really should step and back and take a look at what *you* have considered for yourself and not simply received, because the argument falls apart in a few moments of actual consideration.
5d1af9 No.16059332
>>16059158
I understand your argument and it's deeply flawed no matter how you slice it. Tetris is a great game, no one can deny Tetris is a perfect game. It just simply is. It's a classic by any one's standards. The problem is I don't like Tetris, I don't enjoy puzzle games. The objective standard of classic and good mean nothing if I don't enjoy playing it.
The world isn't black and white where you can only ever get opinions from else where or within yourself. That's a bullshit cop out to say someone can't think for themselves because they know what they like and find people to recommend things they will also like. I can see a game trailer and think I will like it, I can see a review and think I will like it, I could watch a lets play as well. I can use multiple ways to come to my conclusions.
bac04b No.16059357
>>16055666
I mean you can just compare 4 games to prove games are getting worse
Devil May Cry, God of War, DmC, and Dad of Boy.
Devil May Cry was a truly ground breaking action game that practically invented it's genre. God of War 1 took inspiration from Devil May Cry, but it was still it's own unique things bringing things all of it's own to the table. QTE's while imperfect were intended to let you feel like your apart of the more complex animations that finish off enemies.
Years later we get the DmC Reboot, which seemed like it was the worst it could get, it abandoned everything that gave DMC it's long lasting appeal, instead of challenging but fair game with light hearted characters. The challenge was simplified to the point of being trival and it was so edgy all of the characters were impossible to like, if you weren't so young that you actually think there is nothing more to being cool then Drinking Swearing and Sex.
That being said DmC still tried to be a DMC game at it's core, just one with absolutely no subtlety or depth.
Dad of Boy on the other hand somehow went even further then DmC did. The game at it's core has so little to do with the classic God of War games you could remove Kratos from the story completely and practically nothing changes. Kratos is only in the game to get people to buy it because without him the game has no focus whatsoever. It's trying to be every single popular trend of the last 10 years all at once,and every trendy game it's trying to copy it does at an extremely surface level, making absolutely nothing about the game impressive, to anyone who is actually passionate about Video games
Say what you will about DmC but it still had the fundamentals of a DMC game in it's combat, making at least that part decent. nu God of War abandons it's own fundamentals and every thing the series's learned from a gameplay perspective over the years. so now it has nothing of it's own besides the iconography of Kratos and the blades of Chaos.
bac04b No.16059360
>>16059357
The only thing about games that has gotten better is the power of what can be handled graphically, but you can put as much power in a game as you want non of it will matter if the ones making the game have no passion or soul.
I have a theroy about why games have gotten worse, I mean it obliviously there are a million reasons why thing are the way they are, but to put it simply there has been no true innovation since the PS2 era.
The NES era was when games came back from being dead, so new ideas with 2D where happening everyday, The SNES era was when 2D games were perfected and masterpieces were being made all the time.
then the PS1 era had things go back to being experimental again, every game had it's own way of going about 3D
The PS2 era was when 3D was perfected and Masterpieces were once again being made all the time.
Since then things have simply stagnated. no true involution has broken forward since 3D so everything started being standardized, as soon as one game does something remotely unique such as Batman Arkham's freefow combat/predator stealth segments, or the Battle royal genre everyone jumps on to that trend. until it's bleeds dry.
It doesn't help that since games are more expensive to make it's harder to justify making taking risks, less risks means less new ideas which mean further stagnation
c8c2e1 No.16059520
>>16059158
Academics are spooks. It is worth remembering that there are entire fields of supposed academic study that serve no purpose and conduct no real research, often faking whatever they think will get them the most attention and social status at the time. See the reproducibility crisis in the social sciences, which even hit fields of study that involved actually administering drugs to human subjects and setting policy for their distribution and application in society at large.
It should not be controversial in circles that actually play videogames to say that ludology does not involve the study of videogames and has produced only the most shallow and superficial discourse possible. Just being the first person to claim you're studying games doesn't mean the academic field is actually studying videogames. Even the dude you're offering up appears to be little more than a self-gratifying poet. Study in how to be a poser, no matter what you call it, is just poser studies.
e59446 No.16059621
>>16057478
autism and sub-100 hours detected
5d1af9 No.16059646
>>16059360
>The NES era was when games came back from being dead,
Hey fatty, put the burger down and get a clue. Games never even came close to dying just because one market fell through. The micro computer scene was at it's peak at that point and influenced many of Japan's later iconic developers. Your "it was unique and new" simply means you didn't pay attention to anything outside of the mainstream controls. The true innovative titles are not what you think they are, they're games like Doom. Which used academic theory papers to develop the tech. Not generic polygon game number 5.
5d1af9 No.16059678
>>16059520
Game play loops are being studied but games themselves cannot be studied as a genre because games as a genre don't exist. There's a documentary called VHS massacre about the decline of physical media. Jew Billy Bob from Monstervision points out that you can't define a film in any real term. Is a film on film, is it on DVD, VHS, digital? Is it a silent movie, is it using an orchestra for it's soundtrack or is it surround sound all in 1 package? The moment you try to define what a game is tomorrow some new tech will come along to destroy it. It's only been a generation since we gave up physical media. We went from light guns being popular to wiimotes being popular. Any study you do on games today will be worthless tomorrow. You really can't compare Pong to Shadow of the colossus. They're so completely different it's only an abstract comparison at best.
c8c2e1 No.16060046
>>16059678
You're retarded.
bac04b No.16060066
>>16059646
I'll admit that I'm no expert when it comes to the history of computers gaming, I do know that Europe basically had it's own unique market of computer games that the west never really saw. but that's not my point.
My basic point is we have long since passed the point where the art of making games in a 3D space has been mastered, and there hasn't been anything as ground breaking as the jump from 2D to 3D in so long things have stagnated dramatically over the last 2 generations.
e46198 No.16060102
>>16059332
An element of personal preference involved in an individual's reception of a title does not preclude its measurement against consistent criteria. Further, personal preference is not discreet as people tend to believe, as if it's just coming from your soul or something, its largely mediated by environmental factors that can theoretically be measured given enough processing power. There is no true subjectivity. There is no true objectivity either, but no one ever claimed there was where as subjectivity proponents seem to believe in the ultimatum. It's a populist misunderstanding of postmodern critical theory.
9bf9bb No.16061301
>>16055666
>What I need is reviews in *retrospect* or some kind of cult classics database. There's of course v's recommended wiki, but that was *also* produced contemporary to the last two generations, and the standards for inclusion for those systems are visibly lower compared to the pages on past systems. what a mess.
"I'm in". Actual retro gamer from the 80's, I'm fucking 40? So what are you going to do about this?
f70a69 No.16061333
>>16061301
Someone threw together a 8ch wiki, but it needed a lot of work and wasn't getting any traction. It can generally be assumed that such efforts will be quickly abandoned and a waste of time, but prove me wrong.
d08c3d No.16061738
>>16061333 (trips checked)
I hadn't heard of this wiki. Got a link?
01073e No.16066509
only the big wig publisher games are getting shit, dying a slow death. indie titles and the indiepocalypse is doing fine. new shit is coming again so the slim years of 2016-2018 are almost behind us.
2447ba No.16066856
Easy.
Average review scores have stayed more or less equal.
The average IQ has been in steady decline since at least the 00's.
Given that intelectually challenged people are more easibly pleased and less critical than clever people, and that review scores have stayed constant, this indicates that newer games can reach the same level of critical acclaim with less effort and polish than older games required. Therefore new games are inferior to older games. QED.
203a7e No.16066872
>>16055666
Hey shithead, you're supposed to use your research to discover your thesis, not the other way around.
dc070a No.16066889
so where did all these small studios go? i remeber there being way more middleware games you could pick up aswell as a few indies, more mods too. now its just the same shit from the same people, even the indies now are just pixelshit, low poly with a shit asthetic and VNs
675ef6 No.16066890
>>16055666
>Now, do you have any idea how I can semi objectively determine the number of "classics" of each generation/system?
Count the number of titles still talked, played, and fawned over today by older gamers. Everyone will have their subjective favorites but no one will deny that Diablo, Vice City, and Morrowind and Deus Ex were not classics alongside Chronotrigger and Super Mario Bros and a few other titles that a young person would enjoy today.
bc59cb No.16066907
>>16055773
Explain the -1 at the end. It happens here when saving multi-image pictures with UTC naming, but that only has the 10 digit UTC time, not the anti-collision stuff for when two people post at the same time that some other imageboards do like 4chan.
831b9c No.16066957
>>16055666
First you need to establish metrics for quality if you are going to argue that they are deteriorating in quality.
8bbb12 No.16067041
>>16066872
Why? Now he doesn't need to worry about reaching a conclusion that he doesn't want, he can just cherrypick examples and base his thesis on that.
5fa634 No.16067643
you could argue old games had more creative aesthetic and were to some extent more philosophical and less pleasure-maximization
68de00 No.16067675
>>16066907
>Explain the -1 at the end.
Some file browsers will automatically append digits if you try to save a duplicate file to a folder from a browser, rather than prompting you if you want to replace them like Explorer does. Have you never used anything except Windows?
3527a2 No.16068120
>>16067675
Greetings, newfag.
e46198 No.16069001
>>16061301
I'll share the manifesto I'm working on in a new OP in a few days. I'm just doing the last bits of polish. I don't want to share it now because I'm worried it'll get neutered with a gamergate label by any lurking journos. I know >optics, but it's designed for spread on the hacker news, reddit circuit for the most trickle down influence, the payload it's carrying is all oldfag /v/irgin ideals that we all already know. Impossible to tell if we'll hit the right keys to influence the zeitgeist but the best we can do is try.
e46198 No.16069007
>>16066872
>>16067041
Kek welcome to the propaganda game.
c1e17b No.16069764
>>16066856
>The average IQ has been in steady decline since at least the 00's
Got any sauce to go with those lying nuggets?
c07f0d No.16070148
>>16055666
I say this every time:
> 1998 is considered one of the, if not the best, year for all of gaming
> show a side by side image of all of the classics from 1998 versus all of the celebrated games in 2018
f70a69 No.16071226
81112c No.16071292
c1e17b No.16075048
>>16071292
Cute, but largely much less of a concern than the media is making it out to be. First of all, the drop is so small as to be within statistical margins of error (we're talking a point or two over decades). Second, it has a simple explanation. During the rapid rise of IQs during the 20th century (due to lots of a children suddenly being fed properly and going to school and shit) testing constantly had to be adjusted to keep the bell curve properly centered. This meant that a particular score would have gained a lower IQ measure the later the year a person took it. All this continual adjusting has resulted in a "rubber-band" effect now that IQs have leveled off as a result of society reaching a plateau of health and education.
And IQ still has extremely weak correlation with practical intelligence, so there's that. You may as well try to prove that video games are getting worse due to people's hair color.
e9c69a No.16076019
>>16069001
I hope that picture is ironic, by the way.
26df50 No.16076355
>>16055666
>Specifically, for the purposes of the article, that's defined as: lower total number of high quality games [e.g. "classics"]
Too vague. Like >>16066957 said, you need to define "quality" before you can talk about how it has lowered.in games of recent times.
I think a better way to do what you're trying to do would be to look at X amount of games with the highest all time sales for that generation/console (Although you might not want to use the word "classic" anymore, I think it would still be in tune with what you try to do), from the earliest games all the way to last gen, and compare them to each other in terms of difficulty progression (player skill required or how shallow a game is in its mechanical complexity), how much said game succeeds in what it tries to accomplish (the genre it falls into, refining rules of said genre or expanding on them with a new twist that becomes standard or creates a sub-genre), how few/many bugs or other mechanical issues there are with the games.
That's how I would do it I wanted to measure the quality of the biggest games over time.
>>16056867
Admitting your highest priority is "influencing" people to further your own agenda completely undoes any notion of objectivity or authority of the article you're writing.
I suggest you throw your article in the trash and trying again with as few assumptions as possible or abandon the goal of objectivity. I believe your initial challenge is decent and can be done in a proper manner with the right attitude, but the way you go about it makes your effort worthless to anyone who values truth over propaganda.
3da59c No.16076532
>>16055733
This tbh.
The decline of video games is a microcosm of culture's decline.
64217c No.16076831
>>16075048
>Cute,
yikes
>world nigger population has doubled in 30 years
<"that don't lower the average de the tests be wrong"
>>>/mental/
090603 No.16077268
>>16055726
I know this doesn't connect directly into what you're asking for OP but I would make a point to mention how buggy or outright broken most newer games are, even from AAA developers.
Various metrics concerning quality could be time played and even sales after launch. If you can dig through the data and show how modern games are forgotten before the year is over while older titles still get attention and sales, you might be able to make some arguments.
5c1631 No.16077476
One could argue the downfall of dedicated servers and rise of Matchmaking led to more games being seen as disposable. You can see it with how the Division lost most of its playerbase after 2 months because some new game came out and they just flocked to that.
With dedicated servers players are encouraged to create their own communities and as a result the lifespan of that game thrives for much longer. You can still find hundreds of people playing Counter Strike 1.6 to this day for that reason.
5c1631 No.16077490
>>16055733
I don't think this is anything new. It was seen back in the 90s that video games in general were instant gratification. As was TV. Instant gratification has been a thing since the dawn of time with prostitution and gambling.
People biologically are hardwired to not view experiences that you didn't have to work for as important which is why games that encourage instant gratification are forgotten a lot quicker.
da3815 No.16084554
>>16055666
>game journo
>asking for the bad practices in modern gaming
look no further than the closest mirror, faggot.
fuck fixing things, just burn everything, along with your job and your life especially.
things will be rebuilt, just without your ass around, which is a net positive in itself.
it's honestly the only solution, since retards never learn, as if they were capable of such thing, they wouldn't be retards in the first place.
GET OUT
>>16075048
France average IQ literally dropped by 4 point because of niggers.
Just happen that evolution doesn't magically stop at humans.
So stop with your creationist-tier bullshit you retarded mongrel.
>vidya getting worse because of hair color
but it does.
green haired colored retards with thick rim glass nose rings and ear gauges just display their uncanny ability to make poor life choices, and it spills onto anything they touch.
f88fee No.16084601
>>16075048
>You may as well try to prove that video games are getting worse due to people's hair color.
Neon hair color dyes are a deliberate choice on part of Feminists and SJWs, just like with (fake) granny glasses. Since they all try to match eachother's styles so that they always fit into the collective they are telltale signs of who they are. Even if hair color isn't a direct cause the people who are a direct cause use it to signal who they are.
4e0bac No.16084816
>>16056135
Wow, that vegetation looks awful. How do people who live on that island even live with themselves being surrounded by window panes made entirely of moss?
1b2161 No.16091573
>>16055666
>/v/'s recommended wiki
By the way, whoever is running that needs a good kick in the ass, because there are some pretty shitty games that oughn't to be there.
b6880b No.16091637
Sorry OP, but if you post something like this, you’ll be fired from you shitty games journalism gig. Just like I was. Go back to praising Overcuck or watever passes for journalism these days.
7cb398 No.16091833
>>16055666
Eat a dick, faggot.
>article
Journo piece of shit.
Heil hitler.