I have been reading the thread and would like to suggest that along with all the many plausible and intelligent points that have been brought out in it that a major cause could be simply time....

I know as I have grown older and my responsibilities have morphed in all directions and my experience with life have ever grown that I find myself passing judgments on games in ways that in my youth...(I'm hardly old but I was a ATARI 2600, 5200,7800 baby.  Then of course moving into Nintendo, Sega and the rest as they say is history.) I would never have done. I had games I liked and games I didn't but always I looked to the Horizon with.....longing and hope.

I have a nine year old son and he plays the 360, PS3 and our Computer all the time. (leaving the Wii alone mostly I know, I know I'm raising a hard core gamer it seems) I see myself reflected in his joy, anger and general excitement about games. Still when I compare myself today to him........I must admit I have become jaded......I don't blame anyone really. There has been crap for years......and moving forward I'm sure we will have more and more. (On a side note the crap for the Wii is mind numbingly awesome in its variety and scope! Good stuff too but the shovel-ware is plentiful.)

Games look more awesome than they ever have. Still I find myself playing and buying them....... but not being moved by them, inspired to play and play.I just wonder were the passion went.....and if that more than anything is the real issue? I will give you an example.....My son yesterday spent 5 hours playing Halo 3 & 2 Switching between them and while he was doing that he had drug the portable computer over by his chair and was looking up maps and videos of the game too! I still play and enjoy but somewhere along the line I lost that....

So I suppose the point I'm making in this diatribe is I don't doubt if developers care anymore. I wonder if I do? LOL.

I hope everyone has a great day!

This is what happens when *Pop* hits a genre of art..
Music was once great, now it's mostly about money.
Movies, same deal.
Poetry slipped under the radar and Died instead

And this list just goes on into infinity.
Simply put, as soon as you put money into art, it's ruined.
Heck hospitals with private finance? Good idea.....

Art should be an expression in aestethicly pleasing ways to convey a message that cannot be truly understood in any other medium.

"I want money" isn't art.

So all there's left to do for those of us who still give a rats hump about the pleasures of consuming art for the sake of the message, it's all about wading through alot of brown to find the shiny gold.

Originally posted by Erhun

I've noticed this over the past year, ALL games are getting worse. Not just the MMO's but console games are getting pretty pathetic too.

I've wondered why this is and this is the only thing I have come up with. The developers just don't care about making good games anymore. Everything is turning into money. "Let's make a game that brings in a lot of money!" What happened to "Let's make a cool game"

Been going through MMO's for 6-7 years now and they are getting worse. I'm upset and I'm sad. Why can't they go back to making good games which will just bring them money instead of focusing completely on money.

What happened to make all this happen?

Agree/Disagree? Why or why not?

Agreed.

I think it is no brainer especially when one looks at recent crop of MMO's - POTBS, AoC, WAR, TR, and VG a bit before. All were overhyped, all underdelivered (albeit at different levels) and all are continued to be peddled under compunded justification of - it will get better given more time / what do you expect for $15 per month.

In my opinion we are on a downward spiral and we still didn't hit the bottom. Sad thing is that this isn't limited just to MMOs but it is present in a wider world. Cash for quality has been replaced with cash for hype that replaces quality. In other words it is all form without content.

I have been thinking about this hard as of late. I think what I am about to say can be applied to every industry. You have products come out for years, they get stale, then one company does something different, better, and they make something fantastic, they do it right, they make art. It's a hit, then for the next few years all the other companies copy it, watering it down to the point of exhaustion.

At the moment were exhausted, were looking for the next company brave enough to do something original for the first time, not just take the WOW formula and add a couple of minor tweaks and call it amazing.

Originally posted by Mequellios

Originally posted by dhayes68

Its the price of success. Once WoW showed the world how much money could be made, the shareholders took over. I doubt developers have much control or say over the final product anymore.

See, it used to be developers developed, publishers would buy and publish.  Now publishers hire/buy developers.

 

This is one of the most valid statements I've seen in this thread so far.

Ty.

You see it all the time in movies/tv. a great movie or show comes out. Next 2 to 5 years industry vomits out bad clones till someone else scores a hit doing something different and it starts all over again.

This is a perfect example of capitalism running amuck.  It's not enough that companies make a profit, they demand huge profits.  Free Market my ass.  Free to screw over the cosumer, you betcha.  These pukes want their multi-million dollar bonuses and they'll do what  ever it takes to get them.  They do that by cutting corners, reducing quality and as a result they can reduce manpower.  They call it efficiency, I call it greed.  Did anyone ever notice that most if not all sins can be broken down into greed in some form or another?  Even if you're not religious, you can't view greed as a good thing.  It taints everything it touches.

Originally posted by Josher

The nostalgia curse strikes!!!  There are always loads of crap on the market as well as plenty of gems.  Do you know how much pure swill was shoveled out on the NES, SNES and GEN and 32-bit systems?  Same with the PC.  LOADS of crap.

Yup,those rose tinted goggles need to have a wipe over.

Who had a C64 or Spectrum back in the 80s? or an Amiga in 1990? there was a whole tonne of crap on those systems too. If anything,at least for the most part we have proper quality control now. The SNES was a parent to some really atrocious bullsh*t games in its time as well.

Theres stil plenty of decent stuff out right now,but theres also a lot of copycat and sequal stuff out most of which is garbage. For all your Fallout 3s theres 5 Hellgate londons. We're seeing a lot of innovation with stuff like the Wii and DS-though the Wii seems to be more of a family console-but still games like the sports titles and the FPS games are great. Puzzle quest is a very unusual title which is also a great game with a decent modding scene for the PC.

You should have a look into the indie gaming world if you want some really great games,theres a huge amount of gems out there you probably never knew exsisted. Frozzd,depths of peril,trials 2,cave story,karoshi 2.0,aveyond 2,Mr.Robot just to name a few.

MMOs on the other hand I completely agree. What a load of crap weve seen over the last few years,most of which seems to have been rushed out in the wake of WOW by companies desperate to cash in. Most of them think that to achieve this you must create an almost carbon copy of wow which of course will never work and has even less chance if you shove it out at 70% completion.

Originally posted by jimsmith08

Originally posted by Josher

The nostalgia curse strikes!!!  There are always loads of crap on the market as well as plenty of gems.  Do you know how much pure swill was shoveled out on the NES, SNES and GEN and 32-bit systems?  Same with the PC.  LOADS of crap.

 

Yup,those rose tinted goggles need to have a wipe over.

Who had a C64 or Spectrum back in the 80s? or an Amiga in 1990? there was a whole tonne of crap on those systems too. If anything,at least for the most part we have proper quality control now. The SNES was a parent to some really atrocious bullsh*t games in its time as well.

Theres stil plenty of decent stuff out right now,but theres also a lot of copycat and sequal stuff out most of which is garbage. For all your Fallout 3s theres 5 Hellgate londons. We're seeing a lot of innovation with stuff like the Wii and DS-though the Wii seems to be more of a family console-but still games like the sports titles and the FPS games are great. Puzzle quest is a very unusual title which is also a great game with a decent modding scene for the PC.

You should have a look into the indie gaming world if you want some really great games,theres a huge amount of gems out there you probably never knew exsisted. Frozzd,depths of peril,trials 2,cave story,karoshi 2.0,aveyond 2,Mr.Robot just to name a few.

MMOs on the other hand I completely agree. What a load of crap weve seen over the last few years,most of which seems to have been rushed out in the wake of WOW by companies desperate to cash in. Most of them think that to achieve this you must create an almost carbon copy of wow which of course will never work and has even less chance if you shove it out at 70% completion.

I agree that there has always been a lot of poor games being released but the problem I have it that the games these days that are decent do not seem to have any longevity.  In the past you could buy a game and it would last you for  months and by the time you were done with it there was always another to take it's place.  These days you buy a very high quality game and you finish it 2 days and there is nothing to play. 

Devs are not making enough games with replayability built into game design anymore.  They are making too many games that provide entertainment for a short timespan, some of these games are very good but once you have played through them that is it, they are becoming more like movies.  In the last few years have I found myself with nothing to play, this has never happend before in the 20+ years of my gaming life.  It's not that I am getting too old either as occaisonally I still get a game that has been built to the old standards of longetivity, it's just that there are not enough of them and this leaves large gaps with no game for me to play. 

This forces me to play more of the dross games that otherwise I would not have bothered with and it makes the overall quality appear to have gone down.

Maybe I should buy a console as that seems to be where the action is.

That's my theory anyway.

Originally posted by Gazimoff

You know, I find this thread slightly strange.

When I was a kid, I used to dream about making videogames. Brought up on a diet of Horace Goes Skiing, Fantasy World Dizzy, Sonic the Hedgehog and Doom probably does that to a person. In the end, I even picked my degree course around moving into the games industry (progra........

 

Yes I totally agree with this, that's a very accurate description of some of the problems.

Originally posted by Blodpls

Originally posted by jimsmith08

Originally posted by Josher

The nostalgia curse strikes!!!  There are always loads of crap on the market as well as plenty of gems.  Do you know how much pure swill was shoveled out on the NES, SNES and GEN and 32-bit systems?  Same with the PC.  LOADS of crap.

 

Yup,those rose tinted goggles need to have a wipe over.

Who had a C64 or Spectrum back in the 80s? or an Amiga in 1990? there was a whole tonne of crap on those systems too. If anything,at least for the most part we have proper quality control now. The SNES was a parent to some really atrocious bullsh*t games in its time as well.

Theres stil plenty of decent stuff out right now,but theres also a lot of copycat and sequal stuff out most of which is garbage. For all your Fallout 3s theres 5 Hellgate londons. We're seeing a lot of innovation with stuff like the Wii and DS-though the Wii seems to be more of a family console-but still games like the sports titles and the FPS games are great. Puzzle quest is a very unusual title which is also a great game with a decent modding scene for the PC.

You should have a look into the indie gaming world if you want some really great games,theres a huge amount of gems out there you probably never knew exsisted. Frozzd,depths of peril,trials 2,cave story,karoshi 2.0,aveyond 2,Mr.Robot just to name a few.

MMOs on the other hand I completely agree. What a load of crap weve seen over the last few years,most of which seems to have been rushed out in the wake of WOW by companies desperate to cash in. Most of them think that to achieve this you must create an almost carbon copy of wow which of course will never work and has even less chance if you shove it out at 70% completion.

I agree that there has always been a lot of poor games being released but the problem I have it that the games these days that are decent do not seem to have any longevity.  In the past you could buy a game and it would last you for  months and by the time you were done with it there was always another to take it's place.  These days you buy a very high quality game and you finish it 2 days and there is nothing to play. 

Devs are not making enough games with replayability built into game design anymore.  They are making too many games that provide entertainment for a short timespan, some of these games are very good but once you have played through them that is it, they are becoming more like movies.  In the last few years have I found myself with nothing to play, this has never happend before in the 20+ years of my gaming life.  It's not that I am getting too old either as occaisonally I still get a game that has been built to the old standards of longetivity, it's just that there are not enough of them and this leaves large gaps with no game for me to play. 

This forces me to play more of the dross games that otherwise I would not have bothered with and it makes the overall quality appear to have gone down.

Maybe I should buy a console as that seems to be where the action is.

That's my theory anyway.

Actually, you were probably younger with more time on your hands, so you replayed games more often.  Also as a kid, you're more easily entertained.  Your critieria for good gaming has probably gone up over the years.  As you grow older you have less patience for not playing something truly enjoyable.  You probably played a lot of crap back then, but it all gets mixed up as happy memories.  Also, NO internet to influence you.  Thats my better theory=)   

Originally posted by Blodpls

Originally posted by Gazimoff

You know, I find this thread slightly strange.

When I was a kid, I used to dream about making videogames. Brought up on a diet of Horace Goes Skiing, Fantasy World Dizzy, Sonic the Hedgehog and Doom probably does that to a person. In the end, I even picked my degree course around moving into the games industry (progra........

 

 

Yes I totally agree with this, that's a very accurate description of some of the problems.

Thanks, although maybe I should learn to cut to the chase instead of waffling on like some grandad in a rocking chair...

I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with my own post now. It totally slipped my mind that the developers are being run by shareholders.

But games are going down the drain lately. For example which I didn't want to put in, the new Prince of Persia game, have any of you played that? It's terrible absolutely nothing good about it. I returned it 3 days later after beating it.

Maybe we are expecting more from games, but that doesn't change the fact that games are getting worse. At least people used to FINISH the game before releasing it, I haven't seen that happen in so so long even on console games now.

Yeah there are still good games coming out, but they are getting rarer and rarer than ever. Sorry but halo is crap, there is absolutely nothing appealing about a 12 year old screaming and blowing out my speakers because of that (Yes that happened).

It's been a year now that I've had my 360 and I've kept these few games: Left 4 Dead, Forza 2, Mirror's Edge, GRID, Fable 2, CoD WaW, Rainbow 6 vegas 2, and Rock Band. I've gone through many more than that but only kept those few.

My PC game list has increased drastically over the past year and a half, Most of them I will still play occasionally, the ones I don't I'm not even sure where the box is.

So I'm going to say this as my last statement thinking things through after reading what all of you have said.

I think games are becoming to easy, to repetative and making the older gamers less pleased. I have yet to see anyone from the age of 1-16 complain about any games out yet. so maybe we just out grew it all.

The main problem is that to make any game, you need either a lot of dedicated people who will put in hours of work at no cost, or you need a lot of money. While not impossible, it's hard to get a team together willing to work for nothing, that are able to make something of a high enough quality to stand out for people to try.

The people making the games as their jobs, they need to get funding from somewhere, to make the game, be it from sales of a previous game, or more likely, from publishers investing in an idea.

The publishers however care very little about trying to break into new areas, so the majority of them will fund the copycat games the market is rapidly filling up with, instead of daring to try something new. Sure, a few of the copycat games have different directions they take the format in, look at the difference between games like daoc, wow and lotro for example, all games that have their roots in similar places, but branched in different ways. This type of development though is getting very common, and the branches getting less and less.

As to what can stop it, well, people not buying the same old crap with new sparkly graphics. Not going to happen though, sadly, so I think we're pretty much stuck with it, and just need to keep an eye more on the smaller people in the industry.

Its all a matter of taste ofcorse but, last few good games for me and i mean realy good top notch.

Bioshock brilliant

Fallout 3 come close becouse of mods avaible.

And for mmo's i hope Darkfall.

These games above  all these years got my intrest sinds 2002, morrowind and ac2.

Consoles i dont bother im a pc gamer last time ive played a console game was on my dreamcast PSO, sinds then its only pc.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by sanicek

I have to agree, games simply turned mainstream, are about big money and are made for mindless salivating masses. Computer games were at their best in the 1997-2000 era I believe, genres defined in the decade before that each got several quality games taking it to almost perfection. After that the clone era began, combining random engine with trash content and gameplay for a quick buck. Most sequels simplified things.

 

This is nothing more than a case of nostalgia run amok.

The late 90s were a disaster for games. Developers had just discovered how to make things 3D, and many of them rushed off madly to do so. In their rush to get 3D graphics in place, they often neglected gameplay. Often they even neglected graphics, by failing to consider how to let players see what's going on well enough to make a decent game of it.

Looking back, I can't find a single truly great game that was released in that time span. Civilization 2 was very good, I guess. Red Alert was pretty good. But great? No. There had been great games released before (albeit generally for consoles), and there have been great games released since, but the late 90s was a terrible time for gaming.

 

Are you on crack?

The Myth series

X-Com: UFO Defense "Enemy Unknown"

Doom

Quake

Everquest

Starcraft

Warcraft

Eye of The Beholder 1+2

Resident Evil

Dungeon Keeper

The list goes on and on and on

As soon as somebody brings up CoD4 as a great game i feel like banging my head against the wall. The game took a day and a half to complete only to be put back on the shelf again. It's extremely linear, fast to complete and the multiplayer part are plagued with aimbots and wallhacks, which admittedly plagues all online FPS games.

CoD4 is a prime example of selling the brainless masses a product based purely on graphics. The game does look great but it has zero replayabillty and is extremely linear. That's basically how i judge a good game. Something i would want to play again. CoD4 never.

 The 90's where the peak of good gaming experiences and great games. I want something new with the same quality and thought put into it. Screw directx10 compatible games. Who cares about that when the content isn't there

Give me a time machine and a memory eraser and i will be happy.

Well if the developers out there are gamers too wouldn't you think some of them would eventually try to make a game even at the cost of some money and put their time into it? Yeah it may take forever to get the game done, but if it's the money issue then maybe people need to worry less about money and start investing time into something they care about.

I'm going into the IT field because it's something I actually care about. I want to do something like tech support. I put time into it now and don't get paid anything and it's nothing I can put on a resume as experience. It may be considered a total waste of time, but it's what I enjoy doing. I have no problem working for free on some things if it helps me learn something or it's something I enjoy. Yeah you need to make some money, but there's also the part of enjoying it.

Do the teams really enjoy making these awful games? If not, then why are they doing it other than pay the rent and bills? Why can't they work on something people would enjoy in free time, it might bring them money later on and if it doesn't then they quite possible made a game at least some of us would enjoy.

I'm seeing a lot of people saying to take a look at some of the really small teams making games. I've seen some of them but never got around to trying any. I'm going to start doing that maybe there will be something there to enjoy.

yeah thats right and i agree with you, but be fair to them also cause they're just doing their job... its how you make money....

Developers still care, but they are driven by the suits who control the purse strings and are encouraged to follow models that have proven successful in the past due to the high cost it takes to develop them.

IMO, games like VG, AOC, WAR and TR all suffered from the same issue, in each case the people financing the effort decided it was time to ship the game and make money and cut the cash drain, even though most of the development teams would have preferred more time.

its not all the developers fault.  Alot of the blame for the current lackluster game industry is thanks to financers whom pull the purse strings.  Developers pitch their game ideas...groups invest but somehow worm their way into having a say in the product.  They grow impatient and give deadlines for the game release..and then wont let the developers acutally make their game.  The fiancers are too afraid to go for inovation..no they want to use WoW formats..because its been a money maker in thepast.  The financers are too afraid of risk to let developers take the time to make that "WoW killer".  In all honesty..I dont see the draw of WoW.  I played for a month and was less than impressed..seemed more like a mind numbing grindfest but that is just my opinion.