Poor kids of today...

[lemmy101]

We've all got this great nostalgia rich past of crappy graphics C64 games that set your kiddie imagination on fire, point-and-click adventures that you fondly remember, and if you play again you realize a lot of them haven't aged a bit... then the AGS community, of like-minded people who miss those days, relive them, talk about them, and maybe (like binky and I) pretend they're making games in them.

But what about your young kid of today, that bypassed all that? What have they got to feel nostalgic about in ten years time?

Are we going to see a GTACS (Grand-Theft-Auto-Clone Studio) where people all band together and make freeware games involving nicking cars? What cars are you going to have in yours? Can you smash people's heads in with bricks? No? Rubbish...

Or howabout a FPSS? How rubbishis that? "I've decided to go with the...Doom 3 interface... erm that's WSAD and mouse button to fire. Only mine is set in... wild west! What weapons are you going to have in YOUR game? I thought I'd have a shot-gun. Whoopie!

How lame. Any youngsters want to air their fury at the lack of nostalgic potential in anything that has come out since the Playstation 1?

[Mr Flibble]

The generation of which I am part of only in body (ie. in my mind I'm an 80s'o'phile) is going to be badly lacking culture in years to come.

I've noticed a very sad distinction as well. Whenever I talk to people up to and including the age of 17 I find them to be very dull, mindless, MTV watching people who yell a lot.

Go one year higher, and you find intelligent people who quote Douglas Adams in everyday life and watch Monty Python's Flying Circus.

I'm just glad that I can appreciate the nostalgia of things that went before. I know a lot of people who wouldn't touch anything pre-ps2. I know people who didn't know that games ever weren't 3D. Its a rather depressing state of affairs.

[monkey0506]

Go one year higher, and you find intelligent people who quote Douglas Adams in everyday life

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly past." - Douglas Adams, on deadlines



And I love the older consoles! PS2 may have been my first, but when I was a kid I always wanted a SNES (in fact, we got one once, but didn't have the right cable to connect it to our T.V., so my mom sold it...but I kept the games in hope that I would be able to play them...I never was able...until...emulation of games you own is legal right? )

[CaptainBinky]

Also, you can't escape the fact that when we were kids, computers came with manuals with how to poke around with them and do cool things. Like program the sound chip, or poke the joystick etc. So the upshot of it all was, you could play a game and think "I wonder how they made that", pick up your manual, type a few of the examples in and the next thing you know, you're writing (admittedly crap) games.

It's no coincidence that there are an awful lot of very talented (games) programmers around now who started like this.

Nowadays, you buy a PC and it's unlikely to come with Visual Studio pre-installed. Or worse, you've got a PS2 which doesn't even have a keyboard. So of course, you've got the power to make games (there are things like AGS about after all), but it's hardly training you to become a games programmer (unless you write plugins and are already a programmer).

So the route into coding now seems to be University which strikes me as a much more sterile way of learning than poking around with a C64 and making it do whizzy things.

[monkey0506]

So the route into coding now seems to be University which strikes me as a much more sterile way of learning than poking around with a C64 and making it do whizzy things.

I like to poke around with CJ and make him do whizzy things. And of course the engine itself.

[lemmy101]

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly past." - Douglas Adams, on deadlines

Hehe I love the way the tagline of that quote stipulates what Douggie was actually talking about in that quote..

"Spanners! He's talking about spanners, I think!... What, no, he's talking about deadlines! "

[Helm]

Go one year higher, and you find intelligent people who quote Douglas Adams in everyday life and watch Monty Python's Flying Circus.

As if this is the epitome of culture!

[SSH]

When you get to my age, you quote Proust in everyday life and watch Newsnight

[Mr Flibble]

As if this is the epitome of culture!

I'm surrounded by people who say "lol" when they aren't laughing, think Jackass is amusing, and have read fewer books than I've written sonnets....  you've got to aim for culture in small steps.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think the main issue facing the game industry is that they've come to rely on 3D to provide all the depth for a game.  I mean wow, it's 3D!  Isn't that deep?  3D explosions, 3D piles of gore flying in realtime and sticking to things.  ISN'T THAT ENOUGH?  The answer for most of the new generation, sadly, is yes.  Look at film.  Is Hollywood any different, really?  Bigger explosions, now in 100% CGI so it looks fake but more massive and cheaper than a real explosion.  These industries tend to latch onto new technology wholeheartedly while abandoning methods that, while old, tend to be better (or worth including).  Take animatronics, a fantastic medium for creating often lifelike creations--all but abandoned with the advent of CGI's glossy and obviously fake looking creations (you could compare this to rotoscoping I suppose).  I think that both industries should see the merits of what came before rather than abandon them for the next new thing, but it's not going to happen. 

[CaptainBinky]

I think it's quite easy to blame the "industry", but it's the game buying market (i.e. us) that's as much to blame. Were it not for the incessant lapping up of sequels, gore, and polygons over gameplay then maybe there'd be a bit more range to choose from. Fact of the matter is the majority of people are woo'd by whizzy graphics and some techy specs.

The only reasurring thing to me is the success of the DS over the PSP. Of course, you could put this all down to price-point, and if that is the case then I'd be disappointed. I'd like to think it was because the games were more interesting and varied. Go Wii!

[PureGhostGR]

I feel relieved that I am not the only one with these thoughts.

How terribly bad of the next-decade generation from ours to have shifted into loving things that lack content or meaning. Everything has become about selling the wrapping and selling it FAST.

You cannot ignore the fact that sadly this world runs on money, and what sells the most, is what defines the market.

Of course you know as well as I do, that these things sell well because they are made fast and they are incredibly well promoted. You cannot promote easily to someone the lasting memory of something exceptional, but you can sell something that promises excitement, danger, violence, domination, sensuality, pleasure and fake self-esteem for only 29.99.

The focus of the market has become the need to address the real life desires of teens, more than anything else. Games have slowly become strange substitutes of real life for most of these kids, especially focused on creating the illusion of building self-esteem.

I have been a gamer since.. forever and as much as love the process of playing a good game, I cannot help but wonder what will happen to this next generation that lives 24/7 inside a FPS, MMORPG or On-line Strategy game.

Edit: Spelling.

[ManicMatt]

When I was still making my AGS game(That's in limbo), I let my cousin's nine year old daughter play the game made so far.

She loved it.

So there is hope for these games yet for the next generation, but we have to do the exposing ourselves!

[veryweirdguy]

* veryweirdguy skims over that last post.

Expose yourself to nine year olds. Got it.

[LimpingFish]

I played my first arcade game (Galaxian) when I was six.

And look at me now!

...

[Pumaman]

I like to poke around with CJ and make him do whizzy things.

Hey, that's AGA's job!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Read my post more carefully, Binky.  I think it was clear in indicating that the games of today are what kids of today are willing to play.  However, (and this is important), consumer likes do not guide the market as much as some people seem to think.  There is this constant effort by companies to steer people towards a fad (this has been going on since at least the existence of television).  They may be aware of what you like, but frankly they'd rather you liked this instead.  Some companies of course cater to what is currently 'popular'.  By this I mean trends they perceive to be occurring, whether real or not, and in their way try to egg them on and take advantage.  The trend after the Doom explosion was of course FPS's.  One was successful so why not two?  Three?  Five hundred?  The market is so saturated with 3D games with 1D stories now that some people just don't know what else there is.  People my age (the very old) know games from a time when the focus wasn't graphics but gameplay and the kind of depth only a well-conceived game can provide.  This is not largely what this generation has been exposed to, however, and many only see what they are exposed to by popular opinion, commercials, and peers.  So yes, certainly, consumers have a stake in what is produced, but companies often spot perceived trends and saturate the market, overplaying their hands and steering consumers toward what is more profitable to the company.

[fred]

I think you're right that advertising and marketing is almost as important as the actual quality of the games - actually this is probably the case with most products and commodities today. Most developers are taking only small steps, providing 90% recognition and 10% innovation or unique sales points with every new game published. Anything else is considered too risky. In a way this is a self-perpetuating process, since in order to get into the business these days, you must prove that you absolutely love the current state of computer games and are willing to mindlessly mimic their style or humbly elaborate on it. And while doing it, you must convince everyody that you're actually being highly innovative and introducing the next big thing. But you're also right that trends do shift occassionally, so that suddenly everybody is mimicking a new style or genre, like 3d, FPS or physics-based gameplay. It's kind of ridiculous witnessing the whole industry turning around and chasing the latest buzz-words like that, but I guess it's commercial reality. Still, whatever the technology or state of the media, it can be used skillfully or less so. And still, even in the industry, miracles occasionally happen. What matters is what people really get from your game, and luckily all people aren't as stupid as some people in the industry portray them or would like them to be. Not in my experience, at least.

[MrColossal]

I would like to know what percentage of the games from the past are less about money/graphics and more about making an enjoyable game, in your opinion progz. I mean thousands and thousands of games came out in the 80s and 90s and thousands and thousands come out now, what's the difference? Are there amazing games from the 80s? Yessir! 90s? You got it! 2000's? Sure thing! Are there shit derivative games that mean little to anyone from all these eras? Yes. So what's the difference? What has changed?

Games being all about graphics isn't a new developement because of 3d models. Look at ads for the commodore 64 over the Atari. Look at boxes to Sierra games calling the games 3d as if it ment something. This isn't new and little has changed. Look at the growth of game graphics. People were trying to make graphics better, not because they thought "This'd be neat! Let's develop better graphics because people will like looking at them!" it was "Let's have better graphics and make our competitor's software look like shit.

Also:

" Take animatronics, a fantastic medium for creating often lifelike creations--all but abandoned with the advent of CGI's glossy and obviously fake looking creations (you could compare this to rotoscoping I suppose). Ã, "

This is a very awkward statement. You say that animatronics creates "often lifelike creations." Often? So it doesn't always look lifelike? That reminds me an awful lot of current CGI. Hmmmmm. Again, maybe things haven't changed at all.

[fred]

The big differences are that current day graphics are impossible to beat (technologically, not artistically) from your garage studio - big studios just hire more people -Ã,  and that there are more games published every year than earlier on, and a still smaller percentage of those claim a still larger percentage of the profit. So yes, offbeat projects that can really compete are increasingly rare.

Besides, we were all excited by the tech advances in graphics untill around 1996, but in my opinion other areas are seriously lacking behind graphics now. The more photo-realistic graphics become, the more obvious the need of more sophisticated AI and player interaction - games today are like watching badly directed movies with near-retarded or zombie actors (at least outside of the cutscenes). Maybe that's what is meant by graphics taking focus from gameplay and other important factorsÃ,