/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5495112]

I'm interested to hear what you all think was the strength of retro game design, and where modern fails

[Anonymous No.5495118]

> the strength of retro game design
Nostalgia

> and where modern fails
No nostalgia

[Anonymous No.5495123]

>>5495112
New games don't fail. There's no need to hate on them like a contrarian kid.

When every video display had the same latency, games could be designed around them. Some new games just assume the player has low latency setup instead of catering to those playing on Vizios.

Also, limitations can force creativity.

and this >>5495118

[Anonymous No.5495124]

> the strength of retro game design
You were a kid.

> and where modern fails
You're an adult.

[Anonymous No.5495167]

This is a bit specific but whatever
realistic 3d graphics mean that the distances between locations drastically increased in modern (or non-/vr/) rpgs, which makes them really tedious for me because too much time is spent on simply walking from point A to point B
I miss overworlds, too bad they're seen as a hardware limitation rather than a design choice (same goes for pre-rendered backgrounds with fixed camera angles, which made every room in a game feel unique imo)

[Anonymous No.5495168]

>>5495124
stop samefagging with green text and 2 word replies.

[Anonymous No.5495170]

>>5495167
>distances between locations drastically increased in modern (or non-/vr/) rpgs, which makes them really tedious for me because too much time is spent on simply walking from point A to point B
I've heard, and I agree, is that the real problem is that there's no content filled into the gaps
Even Skyrim had collectible crafting items no matter where you went; but games like Outward represent the trend of vast stretches of emptiness for the sake of realism, a false idea of world building.
But I've heard Daggerfall was the start of that.
>I miss overworlds
What do they accomplish though?

[Anonymous No.5495181]

>>5495170
>crafting items
doesn't really make walking through these worlds all that exciting for me
>What do they accomplish though?
the feeling of being in a game world while cutting a lot of the fat and legwork

you know what, if you're making a huuuge world, at least give me a fast, free and fun method of transportation (no fuel or payment bullshit)
I think that would solve a lot of problems, it's probably why those GTA games are less painful than most open world games

[Anonymous No.5495187]

Overall I feel that the biggest problem with today's games is that they are too expensive. Relatively few titles that aren't sure to be profitable get made by the big publishers these days outside of the handheld market, which is still pretty decent.
I think the soft spot between technology and expense was the sixth generation. You had the technology to create games that would be straight-up impossible years prior, the budgets and development times were still reasonably small to allow for more niche titles to be made by the bigger publishers/developers as experiments and you still had some measure of technological limitation keeping things from going overboard - like our 80+GB games.

[Anonymous No.5495193]

>>5495187
*too expensive to make

[Anonymous No.5495338]

> the strength of retro game design
No minorities

> and where modern fails
Minorities

[Anonymous No.5495341]

>>5495112
> the strength of retro game design
They're good

>and where modern fails
They're shit

[Anonymous No.5495347]

Developers were limited by hardware, had to be creative to overcome the limitations.
In modern days, there is no limit other than time and budget.

[Anonymous No.5495350]

>>5495347
thnx 4 ur insight, parrot

[Anonymous No.5495351]

>>5495112
The real strength of Retro Game design was that it didn't have any contempt for the player by, ironically, not giving a shit if players won or lost. Retro games would do their own thing. Have their own unique challenges, designs, quirks, and would expect players to figure out how to win on their own. Retro games didn't have that hand holdy mentality that modern games do. If you won, congrats. If not, fuck you, game over, try again.

[Anonymous No.5495353]

>>5495350
Back to CoD you go

[Anonymous No.5495358]

>>5495112
What silly question, there wasn't one overall design philosophy back then or now.

[Anonymous No.5495359]

>>5495350
It's true though, with the current technology, the limitations are very far away. If you have the time to optimize, you can waste a LOT of time in just graphics and performance, making actual game design come in 2nd (or 3rd) plane in terms of importance.
Back then you were very limited, even with things like color palette, so you had to be careful and choose wisely, and devs wouldn't spend that much time with graphics alone, they had to actually think about the game design itself. Nowadays game design isn't that important, just pay the license for some engine and you already have the basics.

[Anonymous No.5495370]

>>5495167
I feel almost the opposite about world maps. Those always felt like tedious filler with mobs for little reason. Even in some modern games where the map is large it feels like a more interesting journey. I'm talking abour non-rpgs with modern games though the only new series I play is Etrian and that's a more traditional dungeon crawl anyways.

[Anonymous No.5495371]

>>5495358
Gamers are not aware of any non-commercial games. Those are exclusively for people who play video games.

[Anonymous No.5495373]

>>5495187
I feel the opposite here too. Big games are bigger than they've ever been but now that digital releases are as common as they are we've seen a surge of small game development as well.

[Anonymous No.5495375]

>>5495370
Overworlds with random encounters every few steps are the worst. More recent jarpigs do it more like Earthbound, and it's better.

[Anonymous No.5495378]

>>5495371
Lol

[Anonymous No.5495380]

>>5495375
I like the way Pokemon did it.

[Anonymous No.5495406]

>>5495112
>the strength of retro game design
Lack of tutorials, for the most part. Also lower quality graphics meant that devs didn't always opt for "realistic" graphics, leading to different artstyles.

[Anonymous No.5495410]

>>5495112

Modern games cater to skill free idiots. That's where the money is.

[Anonymous No.5495412]

>>5495406
Also lack of cinematics. With old games it was pretty much plug and play, you were taken straight into the gameplay very quickly.

[Anonymous No.5495414]

>>5495410
What's an example of a difficult old game?

[Anonymous No.5495419]

Retro arcade games were very different from retro console games, which were also very different from retro PC games. It was almost like different worlds. With modern gaming, arcades are pretty much dead and online gaming is the standard. The line between console and PC is heavily blurred and different genres have risen and fallen out of favor. Of course, modern gaming is actually very vast if you consider indie games. There is such a dearth of incredible stuff out there if you look. I don't really think retro games are better, but generally I like them more.

[Anonymous No.5495432]

>>5495419
OH NO YOU USED A TOTALLY WRONG WORD HOW EMBARRASSING

New games can be just as good, even in the same genres. Look at what the speedrunning crowd is playing for some good examples.

[Anonymous No.5495437]

>>5495406
Most games these days don't opt for realistic graphics though...

[Anonymous No.5495440]

>>5495437
Yep. That's how out of touch retro gamers are. We've been doing the heavily stylized thing since the late 00s, because competent designers understand a video game should be more like an interactive painting, not an interactive movie.

[Anonymous No.5495443]

>>5495112
Japan was at it's peak of game design while the West was in a downward slope after the crash and took a backseat until the early 2000s. Japan focuses on arcadey gameplay while Western games focus on narratives with gameplay second.

[Anonymous No.5495453]

For me it's that with sprites and lower resolution games (even standard definition tv/anime) your brain fills in the gaps and adds detail subconsciously. I mean you're not seeing it there, but you're imagining it there, in that sense it's a little more engaging on the subconscious level, or something. You could make a comparison to minimalistic games nowadays, but they're meant to be that way, so it's not the same sort of effect. Low res throwback games(what few of them that exist) kind of work but they fall into modern gamings biggest failure. That is that even though graphically, games have become more realistic looking, the level of interaction has gone backwards. Everything is simplified and smoothed out and has become automatic rather than more interactive. So many games seem to shallow because even if they're downright photorealistic all I can do is hit buttons to attack and push <direction> harder to run. Thinking, what little of it there was needed before, has been removed from the equation as much as possible as well. So there's this ridiculous disconnect between it's more real now than ever but less and less interactive.

[Anonymous No.5495456]

>>5495112
basically with current gen games, graphics got better but everything else got worse

[Anonymous No.5495462]

>>5495112

>Music

>GamePlay

>Innovation

I love music that was electronically composed specifically for video games.

I liked it when developers focused on making the game fun and innovative. And not giant budgeted marketing campaigns. And games as a service.

[Anonymous No.5495465]

>>5495124

>You're a faggot

[Anonymous No.5495498]

>>5495440
I honestly think most of the people who rage against modern gaming only look at the top 5 or 10 games and think that's all there is. Meanwhile more games covering more genres and playstyles are being released now than ever before.

[Anonymous No.5495505]

>>5495112
>Strength
Less established tropes and ideas so experimentation was extremely common.

>Fails
Same as above. It was definitely a double edged sword.

[Anonymous No.5495514]

>>5495112
simplicity
having super responsive characters allows you to make the game very tight

[Anonymous No.5495515]

>>5495505
There's tons of experimenting going on now. People are mixing genres like mad scientists and creating whole new ones. The desert years were when half the games coming out were some sort of side scrolling action game or platformer.

[Anonymous No.5495530]

>>5495515
It's definitely not as commonplace as it was back then. You mainly see experimentation from shit indies nowadays. You could argue that's essentially the same thing as dev teams back in the day, but it doesn't feel the same.

[Anonymous No.5495573]

>>5495515
... For Consoles.

Oh yea... I'm just swimming in CRPGs in the current year.

[Anonymous No.5495589]

>>5495573
Psssst... the "C" in CRPG doesn't stand for "Console"which generation pf consoles are you even talking about where you were? lol

[Anonymous No.5495642]

>>5495112
>the strength of retro game design

No online multiplayer/DLC. Any human opponents were within IRL beatdown range, which acted as a deterrent for most of the dickish behavior you see in online; companies only had one chance to get it right so they had to do their quality control before launch. Now they just slap together some barely-playable shit to make the arbitrary deadline and burn through your entire data allowance for the month in patches if you happen to live in a Comcast monopoly.

[Anonymous No.5495646]

>>5495642
I enjoy online multiplayer, but hate how so many games don't even include a local multiplayer option now.

[Anonymous No.5495647]

>>5495642
Assuming you're foolish enough to be renting hardware, anything that doesn't need privacy can be connected to the external xfinitiywifi and it won't be metered.

[Anonymous No.5495650]

>>5495647
I enjoy Portal 2 or Rocket League split across two monitors any time I have a cute guy over :-)

[Anonymous No.5495673]

>>5495589
Yea... It stands for Computer. WTF?

[Anonymous No.5495681]

>>5495650
clicked wrong post, was for >>5495646

[Anonymous No.5495687]

>>5495650
That's a good point, I might have to just set up two monitors for playing stuff on the couch together.

[Anonymous No.5496880]

>>5495440
>competent designers understand a video game should be more like an interactive painting, not an interactive movie
deep

[Anonymous No.5496884]

>>5496880
Was the first one diagnosed before they decided to have more? Not that I'm a eugenicist. I'm against all procreation.

[Anonymous No.5496885]

>>5495112
Lack of risk taking in modern game design, mostly due to games costing a shot ton to make

[Anonymous No.5496886]

>>5495118
This but
>savestates
>no savestates

[Anonymous No.5496890]

>>5495515
>People are mixing genres like mad scientists and creating whole new ones.
Tacking on stats/grinding and saying every game has "RPG elements" doesn't count as mixing or creating genres.

[Anonymous No.5496893]

>>5495505
>Same as above.
I don't follow at all.
>Less established tropes and ideas so experimentation was extremely common.
This sounds nothing like the modern industry.

[Anonymous No.5496894]

>>5496886
It's not fun repeating the same boring parts just because a nintendo tape can't hold enough to make the game seem worth $112 without doing that

[Anonymous No.5496896]

>>5495338
Based.

[Anonymous No.5496904]

>>5495515
>There's tons of experimenting going on now.
I haven't seen that at all. I also have no clue what you have in mind.
>People are mixing genres like mad scientists and creating whole new ones.
If only that were true. I haven't seen it. Almost all the indie darlings are as you say,
>some sort of side scrolling action game or platformer.

[Anonymous No.5496913]

>>5495112
the size obviously. when you can only make a hand full of stages, characters, and mechanics most of the development process is used to refine the experience where as in modern games everything is developed at once isolated from the whole and changes are made in the last minute. its content for the sake of content without a clear sense of direction. look at the way FF evolved when compared to DQ. one wraps the game design around existing technology whilst the latter remains consistent in its essence.

[Anonymous No.5496915]

>>5496884
>Not that I'm a eugenicist

[Anonymous No.5496918]

>>5496890
this

[Anonymous No.5496923]

Have any of you even played what many consider to be the best game of 2018? The detective puzzler with 1-bit graphics?

[Anonymous No.5496926]

>>5495181
I agree.
So, if you'd rather have overworlds than open worlds, do you think the lack of content ceases to be a problem?
If not, then what content would be appropriate to fill otherwise empty stretches of space?

[Anonymous No.5496930]

>>5496884
You will grow out of fatalism eventually, sonny.

[Anonymous No.5496939]

>>5495351

[Anonymous No.5496946]

>>5496913
>the size obviously. when you can only make a hand full of stages, characters, and mechanics most of the development process is used to refine the experience where as in modern games everything is developed at once isolated from the whole and changes are made in the last minute. its content for the sake of content without a clear sense of direction.
I'm with you
>look at the way FF evolved when compared to DQ. one wraps the game design around existing technology whilst the latter remains consistent in its essence.
I don't see how this relates to your point; it's like you're making a different one here

[Anonymous No.5496952]

>>5495440
>We've
pushing buttons on a gamepad is now making games

[Anonymous No.5496982]

I know I'm not unique in saying that modern > retro in most respects, but:

I will say that retro games -- due to their arcade influences -- are much more likely to have a "balls to the wall" option that is more cleverly and elegantly implemented than in modern games (which either won't implement it or will draw too much attention to it). Once high scores stopped being an actual thing in home console games, there was still this tendency to include small....details that made something akin to a "high score" possible -- collecting things, never taking a hit, 1CC'ing, etc. But, importantly, this was all heavily optional -- no achievements, no hidden semi-important items hiding as rewards (or, none that were anything other than rumors), etc. Just a simple feeling of "I've already beaten this game, so I wonder what it'd be like to take it to the extreme..."

In modern games, that feeling is just gone for the most part. Games are either too long for that to happen, or too easy, or too heavily emphasize their hardcoreness, or so on. Perhaps it's not that modern games are "bad" in this regard, but for the most part, I always liked the retro games almost never throw the idea of "you didn't really complete this game, y'know?" or "you didn't *fully* complete this game, y'know?" into your face.

[Anonymous No.5497050]

Arcades. Nearly everything I love about retro game design comes from the arcades, the hardware and their monetisation system. Just that combination of simplicity and great over the top visuals/sound to draw you in, challenging and tense but fair enough gameplay to keep you playing, and additional depth with scoring and loops to keep you coming back if you wish. No dumb unreasonable length, no cutscenes, no filler, just pure play. Same for multiplayer, quick action packed direct 1v1 matches with no bullshit or retarded matchmaking systems. This design mentality carried over to early console games and made them good too.

[Anonymous No.5497051]

fixed camera angles> rotateable camera. it seems like developers just make better dungeon layouts when they're forced to use the former

[Anonymous No.5497073]

>>5495414
wizardry IV

[Anonymous No.5497074]

>>5495498
name me 3 recent rts games that aren't sequels

[Anonymous No.5497080]

>>5497073
Looks way easier than something like Crusader Kings 2

[Anonymous No.5497091]

>>5497080
It looks easier because the game isn't complex like CK2, learning it isn't the hard part, it's just hard really hard to play. Give it a try

[Anonymous No.5497098]

>>5495112
You sound like a kid trying to impress adults. There is no unified "retro" or "contemporary" game design. Older stuff isn't inherently good and newer stuff isn't inherently bad.

I think you might be a bit confused, this is just a board to discuss older games, it's OK to like things without having to turn your taste into a personal statement of you self worth. Liking something isn't a zero sum game where retro games being good is dependent upon newer games being bad.

[Anonymous No.5497108]

>>5497098
There are trends that can be observed and design principles that can be generalized as others have shown in the thread, because believe it or not game design is shaped by hardware and market pressures. You just sound like you haven't thought about this really.

[Anonymous No.5497112]

Retro games are the most distilled forms of their own genre. They don't have all the bells and whistles because they hadn't been invented yet. Old video games are cliche, but I like those cliches.

[Anonymous No.5497114]

>>5497112
At least you admit to being a simpleton.

[Anonymous No.5497120]

>>5497108
not that same guy kid, but he put you in your place.its your zoomer arrogance that keeps you speaking when you should remain silent.

[Anonymous No.5497123]

>>5497120
I'm not the OP either, it's just a dumb post devoid of substance, like a kneejerk reaction to modern game design potentially being criticized

[Anonymous No.5497163]

>>5495118
>>5495124
Why are you even on this board?
Other than your samefagging, you come off as immature and unable to chat/debate.

Which leads me to believe that you are just a annoying zoomer.
Get ye gone.

[Anonymous No.5497167]

>>5497163
>The modern digraph th began to grow in popularity during the 14th century; at the same time, the shape of thorn grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old wynn (Ƿ, ƿ), which had fallen out of use by 1300, and to ancient through modern P, p). In some hands, such as that of the scribe of the unique mid-15th-century manuscript of The Boke of Margery Kempe, it ultimately became indistinguishable from the letter Y. By this stage, th was predominant and the use of thorn was largely restricted to certain common words and abbreviations. In William Caxton's pioneering printed English, it is rare except in an abbreviated the, written with a thorn and a superscript E. This was the longest-lived use, though the substitution of Y for thorn soon became ubiquitous, leading to the common 'ye', as in 'Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that Y existed in the printer's type fonts that were imported from Germany or Italy, while thorn did not.[citation needed] The word was never pronounced with a "y" sound, though, even when so written.[citation needed] The first printing of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used the Y form of thorn with a superscript E in places such as Job 1:9, John 15:1, and Romans 15:29. It also used a similar form with a superscript T, which was an abbreviated that, in places such as 2 Corinthians 13:7. All were replaced in later printings by the or that, respectively.

[Anonymous No.5497174]

>>5497167
Nice copy/paste.

Did you just right click on the first paragraph you found?
Because this is way off topic.

This is not an argument. You just made yourself look even more foolish.
You may as well have just copied and pasted something from Dr. Seuss.

[Anonymous No.5497179]

The incentive to replay games today is far less likely for me than even a game from a decade ago, usually because an average game today has the play time of a 40+ hour RPG, and quite a bit of that can be mundane padding sometimes. Open world aesthetic and quests are a commodity in videogames now. These things used to be locked to specific genres, but now you see it almost everywhere. Who has time for all of this going from one game to the next? I don't care much for them but modern multiplayer games work much better from a re-playability standpoint, you can jump in and out of them on the spot in most cases.

Indie games are a really good deviation from this as well, just make sure you stay away from shovelware...

Re-playability will always be an important factor in measuring the quality of a game for me, because it's what truly makes or breaks a game in my eyes. If you're going to make a 40+ hour game with mundane quests and movie aesthetics then it better have some damn good gameplay at least.

[Anonymous No.5497182]

>>5497174
I'm not arguing. You're not under attack. Strangers don't care about you. Just sharing a fun fact :-)

[Anonymous No.5497197]

I don't like online gaming. I like playing with people, and I liked playing in the arcades with people, but sit me down in front of a console and tell me Im playing someone on the other ass end of the country and I get nothing out of it. It's too impersonal. With face to face competitiveness you had that human element but to just play someone online is such a sterile, faceless and, forgive the meme, "Soulless" experience I just can't bring myself to care. I care about beating my friends, I care about beating that other kid down at the corner market who acted like he was hot shit for spamming Blanka's electricity but I don't care about someone Ill never meat whose name I won't remember as soon as I log off.

So I don't like how much of gaming is dependent and defined by online play.

[Anonymous No.5497201]

>>5497197
I, too, enjoy local multiplayer with my boyfriend.

[Anonymous No.5497203]

>>5495112
Cost and time to make...back in the day, you could pump out a game in a month, so you could just shit out tons of stuff and with that much output, eventually something good would appear even amongst all the shit.

Now everything costs so much and takes so much time, you have to try your best to recoup the cost and no one can try anything new without taking a huge financial risk.

What most people forget is, retro games have already existed for a long time and all the good stuff has been well documented, so everyone compares those games to just whatever is coming out now, not taking into account all the terrible stuff that has been filtered out of the retro scene.

[Anonymous No.5497206]

>>5497203
Look at Squaresoft's output of games between, oh say 1997 and 2002. They put out something like 40 fucking games and 4 final fantasy. Because costs where lower too, developers didn't have to be so risk adverse, so a RPG company could try making, MULTIPLE, fighting games.

[Anonymous No.5497242]

>>5497051
what makes a good dungeon layout tho?
just make it as confusing and frustrating a labyrinth as possible?

[Anonymous No.5497246]

>>5497080
it's heavily RNG-based, and the RNG is tilted against you
that's why people claim it's hard
like all RPGs, it's a strategy game, where the goal is management of your units

[Anonymous No.5497252]

>>5497179
>The incentive to replay games today is far less likely
>an average game today has the play time of a 40+ hour RPG, and quite a bit of that can be mundane padding
really good point
>These things used to be locked to specific genres, but now you see it almost everywhere.
Why shouldn't we?
>Who has time for all of this going from one game to the next?
Good point.
However, like I've seen before, the issue seems to be a lack of content in the open world rather than the open world itself, unless we're going to be including emptiness inherently in our conception of 'open world'. But perhaps we just haven't reached the technological checkpoint that allows for open worlds as big as today with the density of content linear games are able to have.
>Re-playability will always be an important factor in measuring the quality of a game for me
>it better have some damn good gameplay at least
example of a retro game that measures up?

[Anonymous No.5497268]

>>5495112
Creativity within constrains. Now they have no constrains and is all visual repetition.

Plus now you have young s o y adults that don't understand basic concepts (libtards) making games, so they are less and less appealing and filled with game breaking bugs.

[Anonymous No.5497270]

>>5495112
Before: Iconic tunes.

Now: Can you remember music from new games?

[Why are capital G Gamers angry(...) No.5497274]

>>5497270
Yes, I can, every day.

[Anonymous No.5497276]

>>5496893
Wow I just noticed the topic was failures of the modern industry, I fucking processed that as strengths and failures of retro design.
Disregard me, I suck cocks.

[Anonymous No.5497278]

>>5497274
disregard name, that was for another post containing a hyperlink

[Anonymous No.5497286]

>>5495112
New designers don't understand clearly the retro mechanics. Games were hard for sure but when millennials create indie 2D platformers now, they either come too hard or too easy. They don't get it.

[Anonymous No.5497291]

>>5497270

I don't remember music, characters or game play from new games. It's all trivial and interchangeable.

[Anonymous No.5497301]

>>5497291
You're just getting older, and may be developing type 3 diabetes. Or maybe it's because they have more than two melodies and variations of a single leitmotif. I remember quite a bit about new games.

[Anonymous No.5497302]

>>5497270
Yeah, seems like most modern AAA titles all use orchestral OSTs which all blend together into one unmemorable whole
either that or it's ambiental mood music with barely any structure (usually used in indie retro styled games)

back when music was 8 bit composers had to make sure their music had memorable structures

[Anonymous No.5497304]

>>5497286
Why understand anything when you can just make a slow plodding cover cover based shooter, with regenerating health and slow walking bits

[Anonymous No.5497310]

>>5497304
Regenerating health is good game design. If you're alive, you should be able to win without reverting to a previous checkpoint.

[Anonymous No.5497317]

>>5497310
No it's not. Health regenerates because the developers think the only way to make challenge is to overwhelm you with enemies. It's a band aid for poor balance.

[Anonymous No.5497324]

>>5497310
Leave /vr/ and never come back.

[Anonymous No.5497330]

>>5497324
It wouldn't be a retro gaming forum if you didn't whinge about new games more than you've ever played old games.

Can you name two you've put 60 hours into?

[Anonymous No.5497337]

>>5497286
That's because the difficulty came more from punishment and required consistency than just mechanical challenge, and millenials/zoomers HATE losing progress or building consistency they just want their quick fix and feel like they're overcoming challenges. That's why you have platformers with no depth, no punishment (if you die you restart from the same screen) just a lot of spikes and near pixel perfect jumps.

[Anonymous No.5497387]

Communities were smaller but diverse, which resulted in a bigger amount of genres of good quality.

As things become popular, you now have to please everybody, reducing to a minimum the most interesting features.

Yes, it's true that indie exists, but only a small bunch of them make quality and innovative games. The rest clones metroid or zelda. They have no power to influence the industry. So we are stuck in a safe space of games that either provides old gameplay with new stories, or games that rehash what others made with a custom skin.

Just compare a crpg of the eighties with one released nowdays. The crpg crowd knew what they wanted and crpgs had a clear direction. There was space for innovations, but also incentive. Indies could make interesting games as they aren't kept back by resources ('make sure your game looks good while everything else suffer) or expectations.

[Anonymous No.5497390]

I miss level design.

It seems like all the most popular modern games, both AAA and indie have moved towards either open world or procedural generation. A few great developers still understand the art of level design (Arkane, From Software), but even the likes of Nintendo have been moving towards aimless open worlds over tightly crafted experiences. Indie devs also fall back on procedural generation and rogue-like elements because it's an easy excuse to do less work.

[Anonymous No.5497420]

>>5497390
It has to be learned and mastered. I learned that the hard way with my game project. I'm not good at mapping, but I'm good at creating prefabs and coding a generator that will build stuff for me instead. I'm not going to 10 years of map building just to get one game done.

[Anonymous No.5497727]

>>5496894
It's fun repeating the same exciting parts until you've achieved utter mastery of them.
And then playing them some more to revel in your mastery.

[Anonymous No.5497737]

>>5497727
Just makes me feel like a loser for having squandered that much time on it. I also don't competitive online for this reason. Winning is failure. You're playing the wrong game if you're not losing.

[Anonymous No.5497754]

>>5497330
Not him, but Shinobi III and Castlevania Bloodlines

[Anonymous No.5497821]

>>5497420
zoom zoom

[Anonymous No.5497928]

>>5497182
Oh my my, yikes hey hey!
You put your words out to play!
Not armed for an attack, just having fun,
Boys like you take it in the bum!

[Anonymous No.5497939]

>>5497928
Yep

[Anonymous No.5497954]

>>5495112
Things feel overproduced. Up until 5th gen it wasn't a rarity to have maybe just a dozen people working on a game. You had one guy for every specific job giving whatever he designed in that game a personal note. Nowadays games are like modern Hollywood movies. They all have that nice Hans Zimmer soundtrack but you couldn't possibly distinguish one from the other.

[Anonymous No.5497992]

>>5497954
There are way more small team developed games now than in 5th or 6th gen.

[Anonymous No.5498026]

>>5495187
This. There aren't really any mid-sized studios anymore, there's only really massive ones. You have AAA and indie, with nothing in between. When a video game project becomes very big then leadership problems become very common, and you also have publishers that really really do not like risks, so essentially you get mediocre-at-bet games due to leadership mismanagement and no new concepts(as far as AAA). These massive companies really should learn that a bunch of smaller projects will make them more money and be less risky than a few big ones.

Indie is the only thing worth giving a shit about at this point. Unfortunately most indie games that come out do not suit my tastes and tend to be more exploration or story focused rather than pure action. Although something good does come out every once in a while.

There's also just the issue that video games are obviously much more popular nowadays meaning more casuals, meaning more people that don't care about aforementioned pure action and are well... casual. This isn't really a "problem", but it leads to less games to my taste coming out.

tl;dr Video games as a medium have become too big.

[Anonymous No.5498082]

>>5495170
>What do they accomplish though?
They got you between major locations efficiently so you could get on with the game.

Modern games in general have a problem where length in general is considered a virtue so you have to wade through endless padding and bullshit so the marketing team could boast about an "epic 60+ hour journey."

[Anonymous No.5498136]

>>5498026
Used to be a game would get marketed to their niche and if it hit ONE million sales it was considered a special accomplishment. Now everything is for everyone and games are a failure if they only hit 2 mil.

[Anonymous No.5498137]

>>5495589
The C is for Computer, to differentiate it from the streamlined jarpigs typically found on consoles.

[Anonymous No.5498191]

>>5498026
As I mentioned in my post, you should maybe try handheld gaming. There are still a lot of relatively big companies willing to release titles on those platforms. Hell, Etrian Odyssey is a series with 9 games and none of the best-seller sold 390 thousand.

[Anonymous No.5498195]

>>5498191
>and the best-seller sold 390 thousand

[babbage's gramps No.5498204]

Density

[Anonymous No.5498285]

>>5497276
you were still on track with the strengths tho

[Anonymous No.5498313]

>>5497268
>>5497286
That makes me wonder: how did Gen Xers and Boomers make good games without having had hardly any experience playing them themselves, nor universities? How did they learn game design so fast and so fully?

[Anonymous No.5498332]

>>5498313
They had plenty of experience and information to draw from back then it was just localized, you had older programmers or whatever pass on their information to newcomers and they all practiced together. If you read interviews of arcade devs for example they were also arcade players and kept very close attention to what the competition was doing. Most of the principles of good game design also come from well explored psychology concepts, traditional games and other sourced (John Romero read books about Disney attractions) they are nothing new.

[Anonymous No.5498334]

>>5497317
this
I wonder how many of them could explain the concept of "resource management" accurately to even a toddler

[Anonymous No.5498350]

>>5497337

[Anonymous No.5498380]

>>5497387
>Communities were smaller but diverse, which resulted in a bigger amount of genres of good quality.
I think that's looking back with rose-tinted glasses.
In the 90's arcade space, for example, you had only shooting games (though of different perspectives and mechanics, from run n guns to House of the Dead to shoot-em-ups [shmups]), beat-em-ups, fighting games, and racing games. Most games that came out stuck to one of those formulas and only deviated a little.
The '90s stagnated relative to the '80s, just like the 2010s stagnated from the 2000s.

[Anonymous No.5498385]

>>5497390
>Indie devs also fall back on procedural generation and rogue-like elements because it's an easy excuse to do less work.
Having spoken to a '98 kid who wanted to make his own roguelike, I think that they favor procedural generation more because it adds replayability and more challenge in not knowing what to exxpect, than because it causes less work to need doing.

[Anonymous No.5498397]

>>5498380
That's still a lot more variety than we have these days.

[Anonymous No.5498407]

>>5497727
I even did this while playing Itagaki's Ninja Gaiden II. I used no non-weapon items whatsoever, and if I died, let myself just go all the way back to the checkpoint. Sometimes I'd even intentionally skip savepoints if I felt I was doing a bad job and didn't really deserve to continue living anyway.

The game seemed design like an early 90's home console game, where the focus is on keeping yourself alive through skill and taking down enemies any way you can while preserving your life, which I appreciated in theory.

However, with Obliteration Techniques and Ultimate Techniques, and all the invulnerability the game showers you with, I felt the game provided way too many "I win" options that bypassed actually overcoming its challenges by your own force of will; they seemed like concessions to the casual, modern audience, impatient with actually gitting gud.

[Anonymous No.5499295]

>>5497928
jesus fuck, i felt almost physical pain reading this.

[Anonymous No.5499391]

>>5495412
I think this one really needs to be emphasized more. A lot of games you got quickly to the action.

[Anonymous No.5499394]

>>5499391
Even more story heavy games like RPGs had a more brisk pace about them.

[Kenshin No.5499560]

Older games were challenging because of unpredictability, enough to warrant saying they have their own kind of emergent design. Whereas in modern games everything is scripted. It might seem like systemic design but it's an illusion created by the developers. Older games were the real deal. Just you against a virtual world trying to stifle you from executing its mechanics to the fullest extent of your ability. Modern games expect you to win. From the foundational level they're insured against potential game-ending situations by way of exploring of the game's mechanics because developers care too much about optics these days, because that's what people care about these days. As video games were commoditized the industry became a giant trend-chasing centipede kowtowing to the circuitous predetermined path to homogenization and complacency like the games themselves. Gaming has no identity. Only Nintendo occasionally ventures away and creates a game or new genre that hearkens to these old values, like ARMS.

[Anonymous No.5500134]

>>5499560
>Nintendo

Nintendo makes rail road experiences. They're only second to being Disneyland levels of railroading. Breath of the Wild is the biggest example of this. For a game that uses open world as its moniker, it's a very linear experience made to make the player make sure to have certain feelings ever x amount of units they walk in the world.

[Anonymous No.5500138]

>>5495112
>the strength of retro game design
Games were made by small teams and out of passion
>where modern fails
Games are made for shareholders profits

[Anonymous No.5500164]

>>5497302
>>5497291
>>5497270
>he doesn't remember nier: automata's soundtrack

[Anonymous No.5500174]

>>5498137
Yeah, which is why him crying about not getting enough CRPGs on current consoles is so funny.

[Anonymous No.5500181]

>>5498026
>There aren't really any mid-sized studios anymore, there's only really massive ones.

This isn't true at all. During 6th gen it was certainly a problem, but now there are loads and loads of small developers making and releasing games. There are more independent game devs now, making and releasing more games than there ever has been.

[Anonymous No.5500198]

>>5500181
>but now there are loads and loads of small developers making and releasing games
The small developers are NOT mid sized studios. Most small devs are either sponsored indie fanatics out of vancouver or seattle, or offshoot teams of bigger publishers. Now, if you bring in the mobile industry, then you'd be right, but mobile games don't count.

[Anonymous No.5500704]

>>5500198
I don't know man, I think you like to complain. Growing up in the 80's and liking games I never imagined they'd get as big or be as awesome as they are now. Your attitudes are surreal to me.

[Anonymous No.5501950]

>>5499295
good

[Anonymous No.5501993]

>>5501950
At least you admit you're trolling

[Anonymous No.5503620]

>>5500704
>big or as awesome now

There's are hundreds of concepts and gameplay that were suppose to exist today with the increase in hardware and manpower, and instead, we ended up with more DLC and microtransactions created to rape our wallets.

[Anonymous No.5503725]

>>5503620
I have zero problem with either of those. If the game is good and the extra content seems worthwhile I'm happy to pay for it. If it's not, I just as easily don't and either ignore it or move on to something else. I think it's almost always a net posiyltive. Just like of magically some cool.Comix Zone DLC somehow appeared I'd be all over it.

[Anonymous No.5503756]

>>5495112
runs on my toaster
doesn't run on my toaster

[Anonymous No.5503987]

Retro games actually felt like you were playing a game that you could lose at and not an interactive cinematic experience.

[Anonymous No.5504475]

>>5503620
>There's are hundreds of concepts and gameplay that were suppose to exist today with the increase in hardware and manpower
examples?

[Anonymous No.5504487]

>>5495118
i love how the first reply in any thread is almost invariably some simple minded kneejerk zoomer reaction most likely implemented to get yous. have sex

[Anonymous No.5504519]

>>5495112
Ambition. The ambition of modern AAA games is to secure X% of the annual videogame expenditure by satisfying the standard criteria.

The ambition of early games was to create something amazing. And they didn't really know what would make their game amazing... there wasn't really a standard, so they went all out and packed as much cool shit into games as they could.

[Anonymous No.5504632]

>>5504519
I'd argue there is still not a standard. If devs wanted to, they could make a game right now of their wildest dreams. Unfortunately, I believe this is the catch 22 of our industry. We have had so many companies go bankrupt for failing to meet sales that it has scared the industry from ever making a risky product again.

[Anonymous No.5505473]

>>5504632
>>5504519

There are risky projects, they're just not the AAA projects. But that's pretty well always been the case.

[Princess Sevenleaf !IT2uZpX.Ic No.5505776]

>>5495112
Consistency and focus on creating a memorable experience. Retro games usually set out to do one thing and do it very well.

vs.

"Variety of gameplay" seen in modern games, which usually means every AAA game ends up being a sandbox open world action-adventure-racing-shooter with RPG elements.

>>5498082
Also, this.

Sevenleaf's Rule of Five: The ideal length for a non-RPG video game is about five hours. That's the maximum length a game can be without feeling repetitive. Prove me wrong, /vr/.

[Anonymous No.5505854]

>>5505776
>Prove me wrong
you're not a princess, you're a man because you have a penis

[Anonymous No.5505858]

>>5495112
I don't know if I'm in the minority, but with modern games I love how much they emphasize on story. Games like God of War or Persona get me hyped when I have some kind of investment in the characters or world. But sometimes it gets in the way. Sometimes I just want to play a video game where I can get right to the gameplay and never be interrupted, ever, and thats why I love retro games so much. Usually I'll play a lot of retro vidya, then once every few months or so I'll find a modern big budget video game to sink my teeth into.

[Anonymous No.5505882]

Retro games appeal to the part of me who likes toys. Modern games appeal to the part of me who likes slot machines.

[Anonymous No.5506014]

>>5495112
Limited technology forces developers to be creative to make a decent product, and it's shows in how much quote-unquote soul there is in great retro titles. The more work and craft put into something, the more it resonates with you. This is why knock-offs always feel shitty.
Modern games mostly lack this. There's no real limitations to force creativity and skill. Also, modern devs never had to learn on shitty-ass 1970s-80s/90s hardware. They learned on handholding systems being taught by college professors more interested in making political statements than actually crafting software(except in Japan).

Now you might think this is nostalgia talking, but I must point out that I never really got into games until I could afford them once the PS/N64/Saturn era started. PS1-PS2 years are my prime years. Yet and still however, I can definitely sense a difference in overall quality and workmanship in the average retro game vs. the average modern. Not to say retro doesn't have tons of complete shit, mind you. And that's not to say modern doesn't have gems.

[Anonymous No.5506087]

>>5506014
>There's no real limitations to force creativity and skill.

There are still many limitations but it's largely beside the point because limitation is only one factor of many that influences creativity. I like tons of old games, but the amount of creativity in modern games, especially small or independent ones is one of the reasons I like them so much.