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mclem · Feb 20, 2015

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
Definitely. It's much easier to go back and play the NES Dragon Warrior games than it is play the Ultima games. Early Western RPGs are rough.

I found Ultima 1 fine, just about. Played through that in the midnineties, but that was the EGA rerelease. Had real issues with 2 and 3, though. I think CGA is where I have a real problem, to at least some extent. (That and, well, 2 is a bit of a mess, really).

4 onwards, I really don't have any complaints about.

mclem · Feb 20, 2015

Sorral said:
For anyone interested: Arena and Daggerfall are free by Bethesda themselves.

Paints a funny picture that none of them at the very least tried them, but are 'hardcore' at the series. I guess they got a different definition in their minds about it.

I'd add a mention of ArenaSetup and DaggerfallSetup, packages using DOSBox to make installation and management a lot simpler. ArenaSetup got me through my Arena playthrough.

Mr. Nice_Guy · Feb 20, 2015

Very interesting quotes, will need to read later.

The same thought occurred to me recently after watching the Jimquisition Peter Molyneux episode and showed how he would tear apart his last game to promote the new one. No other industry generally does that, or at least not to the extent video gaming does.

petran79 · Feb 20, 2015

Not on the actual blog, with which I agree, but from the comments (by Joe Vandam):

Only a minority of modern gaming populations can play pure games like Civilization and alpha centauri, most people are too stupid / don't have the gaming gene to appreciate these games. That's just the reality. The genetics behind how the brain works prevents pure videogames from ever truly going mainstream and selling super millions like publishers and developers want.

This is why the 90's and early gaming generations were a golden age of gameplay, they were on average played by smart technological literate people. Think about early local area network gameplay, dos video drivers, etc, you were making games for an audience with above average intelligence and the games reflect that. When the game industry went mainstream it had to lower the bar to sell units for profits and that's why AAA game quality has declined.

Making mediocre games for stupid people with poor reflexes using hollywood techniques works. It's a formula EA and activision have perfected.

I think the difficult computer games trend would describe the 80s and early 90s:
Computers were expensive and you had to be tech-savy to set-up a computer and good in positive sciences as well.
Perfect audience for adventure games. Because the developers back then, being good at maths, knew all crazy and out of the ordinary ways to make puzzles difficult. In a few words, they knew their audience!

But around the mid-90s this trend began to change.
Because in the 90s you had the scourge of video games, namely FMV games. Roberta Williams was guilty of this as well, though Gabriel Knight 2 was very good. But Phantasmagoria 1 & 2? Mediocre and they had much in common with those modern dumbed down AAA games and easy puzzles. They were very expensive back then too and probably contributed to Sierra's demise to a certain extent

Fuchsdh · Feb 20, 2015

darth_infamous said:
I mentioned this on Twitter when I first read this article but it's one of the pitfalls of comparing games to other mediums like books, music, and movies. Games are in iterative process; the next one will always take the lessons the previous game learned and apply them in new way. This is the primary reason why games are always looking towards the next big thing.

Yep. I think RTS games are the perfect example of this: StarCraft and Age of Empires are exercises in frustration compared to modern versions of those same franchises, thanks to iterations in mechanics (hell, in AoE you could lose a villager behind a building once it was completed.) They are still good games, and were great games for the time, but tech has matured and so have games. I don't think this is entirely hype-driven as the central thesis.

And the "dumbed down games these days!" arguments are not worth talking about. It's like people who claimed TV was making us dumb.

Robert at Zeboyd Games · Feb 20, 2015

I think there are good points to be made in this area, but the RPG Codex, old PC RPGs were the best attitude of the article writer really rubs me the wrong way.

mclem · Feb 20, 2015

petran79 said:
Perfect audience for adventure games. Because the developers back then, being good at maths, knew all crazy and out of the ordinary ways to make puzzles difficult. In a few words, they knew their audience!

I'm not sure maths necessarily helps much with designing puzzles! I suppose there's a basic understanding of networks to put together a solution tree (i.e. ensuring that you don't have a loop such that you need to solve a puzzle to get an item to solve a puzzle to get an item to solve the first puzzle!), but that's pretty trivial stuff. There's also maths-based puzzles themselves, of course, but they're not all that prevalent.

But around the mid-90s this trend began to change.
Because in the 90s you had the scourge of video games, namely FMV games. Roberta Williams was guilty of this as well, though Gabriel Knight 2 was very good. But Phantasmagoria 1 & 2? Mediocre and they had much in common with those modern dumbed down AAA games and easy puzzles. They were very expensive back then too and probably contributed to Sierra's demise to a certain extent

I don't think it's inherently FMV that was the problem, just that FMV was often poorly-applied - more focus on making the movies look good rather than have the gameplay be interesting enough to back it up. I've got quite a bit of respect for the Tex Murphy games, and they were FMV-heavy, too - but they also held together as games.

Shabad · Feb 20, 2015

I think the exemples are fairly bad, and their narrative is somehow broken.

I can't think of many gamers that actually prefer Oblivion or Skyrim over Morrowind, or Fallout 3 over Fallout 1-2, or Uncharted 3 over Uncharted 2, ...

There are instances where the games actually improve from one iteration to the next, and instances where it doesn't. Simple as that.

mclem · Feb 20, 2015

Shabad said:
I think the exemples are fairly bad, and their narrative is somehow broken.

I can't think of many gamers that actually prefer Oblivion or Skyrim over Morrowind, or Fallout 3 over Fallout 1-2, or Uncharted 3 over Uncharted 2, ...

There are instances where the games actually improve from one iteration to the next, and instances where it doesn't. Simple as that.

Isn't his point more that the students weren't even interested in finding out?

Students, let us remember, taking a course in game design. Surely you'd hope they'd have some academic interest?

Clear · Feb 20, 2015

The gaming industry isn't the one that still pushes the narrative that "the great crash of 1983" was some global convulsion, and not the localized phenomenon that it actually was.

This is just a single, very well-known example of how virtually the entirety of gaming media is unconcerned with historical accuracy and factual veracity. As someone old-enough to have been around it never fails to disappoint me how relatively shallow the cultural history of videogaming is presented by the media - both specialist and mainstream.

Rather than historical perspective what we usually get is basically nostalgia - something that is notoriously unreliable.

Pudge · Feb 20, 2015

As someone who writes about and plays old games whenever I have the opportunity, it's just a really tall order for anyone who'd like to be a historian in the field. Film is maybe 2 and a half hours long and it's a passive experience. Older games, especially RPGs, could take 20-30 hours minimum. Even older FPS games sometimes reach the 10-15 hour mark. And there are no positions that I know of in higher learning institutions to study older games, so those historians are either going to be working at a publication who ask you to spend time always playing the latest games for review, or a wholly unrelated job to the field that consumes a large chunk of your days. It is unrealistic to expect anyone but the most grizzled veterans in the industry to have played through the entire gaming canon.

That being said, I'm all for preservation and the promotion of older titles. We're a lot better about it in 2015 than we were in 2005. It's a long way to go, but at least now there are very few new games coming out only on consoles and many old titles being rereleased to new tech standards. The PC is an archivists dream.

Orayn · Feb 20, 2015

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I think there are good points to be made in this area, but the RPG Codex, old PC RPGs were the best attitude of the article writer really rubs me the wrong way.

Yeah, there's a slippery slope between "this old stuff is great and should be more appreciated" and "old stuff is the best and everything has been downhill since 198X/199X." It's almost like a kind of Confucian attitude regarding tradition, "degeneration" and the like.

kiguel182 · Feb 20, 2015

While I'm guilty of not playing enough classic games I have to say I completely agree what was said here.

It's one of the biggest problems with the medium without a doubt.

Also, while on PC is easier to access and play the original games it's a shame that on consoles it's so hard to do the same. The fact that PS4 doesn't have the emulator for PS1 and PS2 more than a year after release is shameful and doesn't help this issue at all.

EDIT: This is another reason why remastes are bad. It would be way better to simply port the old games to new platforms with minor clean-ups done to it.

hemtae · Feb 20, 2015

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I think there are good points to be made in this area, but the RPG Codex, old PC RPGs were the best attitude of the article writer really rubs me the wrong way.

Eh? I guess it could be called old, but they like the 1997-2001 Black Isle and offshoots stuff over the 80s and early 90s RPGs.

I also think that a lot of the people here are kinda of missing the point of the article which is not that the average gamer should play through the early stuff, but that gaming critics and developers should be at least aware of them. If not you get kind of what happened with the open world RPGs genre where Bethesda and Piranha Bytes have kind of forgotten what made their old games great but everybody is still looking to them for inspiration/comparison because its all they know.

Hahs · Feb 20, 2015

Shabad said:
I think the exemples are fairly bad, and their narrative is somehow broken.

I can't think of many gamers that actually prefer Oblivion or Skyrim over Morrowind, or Fallout 3 over Fallout 1-2, or Uncharted 3 over Uncharted 2, ...

There are instances where the games actually improve from one iteration to the next, and instances where it doesn't. Simple as that.

Did you read the entire article?

Those initial TES examples were used only to point out that each iteration of a series gets forgotten by the hype of the newer games - the likeability of each successive iteration is beside the point.

Arulan · Feb 20, 2015

hemtae said:
I also think that a lot of the people here are kinda of missing the point of the article which is not that the average gamer should play through the early stuff, but that gaming critics and developers should be at least aware of them. If not you get kind of what happened with the open world RPGs genre where Bethesda and Piranha Bytes have kind of forgotten what made their old games great but everybody is still looking to them for inspiration/comparison because its all they know.

Exactly. Using the transition between Morrowind and Oblivion as an example, why was it completely ignored that the latter now used quest markers? Did anyone question the loss of the incredible detail Morrowind had in its world? Skooma was treated as contraband in Morrowind, and legal shopkeepers would refuse to do business with you if you had any. Why was this design decision forgotten? Morrowind treated "fast-travel" correctly, you could use Silt Striders, the Mages Guild, and a few spells to make traversal a little easier. Why was it allowed to turn into the complete nonsensical garbage that was featured in Oblivion? Why were some of the more interesting spells from Morrowind cut? I could go on. The gaming press, and developer paid little mind to any of this. The enormous loss was wiped under the rug, forever to be ignored, and further repeated in the sequel (Skyrim).

Superballs · Feb 20, 2015

timetokill said:
I want to say this usage of "young form of media" is a copout, but upon reflection I guess it suggests another question -- when other artistic mediums were "young forms of media," did they act the same way about their older media? Did movie critics shit on silent films as soon as talkies came around? Do movie critics today crap on movies shot on film instead of digitally? Moreover, did the studios themselves do it?

I don't recall Lucasfilm saying that the original Star Wars trilogy was outdated when they were peddling The Phantom Menace. But I could be wrong, I didn't follow the marketing for that film. I also don't usually see remakes of films talking about how the original was garbage. I usually hear them say they're "reimagining it" or something that still holds the original in high esteem.

Lucas did sort of allude to it when they were releasing the special edition of that trilogy, what with his talk about his original vision and all that.

Ralemont · Feb 20, 2015

hemtae said:
I also think that a lot of the people here are kinda of missing the point of the article which is not that the average gamer should play through the early stuff, but that gaming critics and developers should be at least aware of them. If not you get kind of what happened with the open world RPGs genre where Bethesda and Piranha Bytes have kind of forgotten what made their old games great but everybody is still looking to them for inspiration/comparison because its all they know.

I'm totally on board with the first part of this. The second part implicitly assumes that things were changed for the worse, which is the type of underhanded way of dismissing criticism of older games that I was talking about.

In other words, self-proclaimed experts/enthusiasts/critics not playing older games and passing judgment on them = legit issue.

Self proclaimed etc playing older games and passing judgment on them, preferring the newer stuff = not a legit issue, at least not in regards to what the article claims to be about.

Peltz · Feb 20, 2015

As a gamer who divides his time very evenly amongst all of the generations (aka, I play all of my 20+ consoles fairly evenly), I am actually pretty torn by this article.

Also, as a very devout Nintendo fan, I think that many times, we subscribe far too much importance on the fact that there's an IP that transcends multiple iterations of games rather than look at each individual game in a "series" independently. Often times, the reason why the IP does transcend multiple iterations is because it makes the game more marketable to a prior audience.

But should that bring any less merit to people who jump in on only the latest installment of a franchise and consider themselves fans?

Yes, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Skyrim are all part of the Elders Scrolls IP, but if they weren't would we see as much languishing from classic gamers for "young" people who didn't experience each game and only enjoyed the latest iteration?

What if each ES game simply had it's own name and everything wasn't tied under the same franchise banner? What if the lore in each game had different names and such and only overlapped conceptually and abstractly as opposed to the somewhat succinct way that I assume it does now?

As someone who loves the rich history of our hobby, owns a huge retro collection, and is a bit of an old school purist (e.g. I don't even emulate), I don't really think we should "impose" upon people requirements to play games in which they show no interest, especially in the same manner as some us hardcore people do now.

Information about old games is available to those younger than us if they choose to seek it out. We, as forum posters, are also a huge source of such information. And in a sense, our hobby doesn't need dedicated historians because communities like ours, and many others sort of fill those gaps in piecemeal. I don't really see anything getting "lost".

Mivey · Feb 20, 2015

Peltz said:
Information about old games is available to those younger than us if they choose to seek it out. We, as forum posters, are also a huge source of such information. And in a sense, our hobby doesn't need dedicated historians because communities like ours, and many others sort of fill those gaps in piecemeal. I don't really see anything getting "lost".

So you see no point in studying history at all. The internet will not store your posts for posterity. Some day the servers will be shut off. Our ditigal age is really crap at actually preserving anything for decades or longer.
There sould absolutely be historians dedicated to make this information available easily for all. This need is not something that any internet community could replace.
Furthermore, there is no replacement for hand's on experience. Asking someone on GAF will never be a suitable alternative for just playing the thing itself. No one can objectively tell you what something will feel like for yourself, the same way that someone who has never played these older games cannot judge their design based on third-hand accounts.

I don't want to come off as touchy about this, but your opinion on this is probably what most people think about history in general, in any context. And thats so crushingly sad.

Robert at Zeboyd Games · Feb 20, 2015

I'm all for preserving our gaming history & being well informed about older games. I'm less for saying that people should try to play all the influential old games out there. I think somebody interested in learning about older games would be better served reading a bunch of 5-10 minute articles on a bunch of them, rather than subject themselves to say spending 50 hours trying to beat Ultima IV. I mean, if you want to play Ultima IV, go for it, but there are much better ways for most people to spend their time these days.

Peltz · Feb 20, 2015

Mivey said:
So you see no point in studying history at all. The internet will not store your posts for posterity. Some day the servers will be shut off. Our ditigal age is really crap at actually preserving anything for decades or longer.
There sould absolutely be historians dedicated to make this information available easily for all. This need is not something that any internet community could replace.
Furthermore, there is no replacement for hand's on experience. Asking someone on GAF will never be a suitable alternative for just playing the thing itself. No one can objectively tell you what something will feel like for yourself, the same way that someone who has never played these older games cannot judge their design based on third-hand accounts.

I don't want to come off as touchy about this, but your opinion on this is probably what most people think about history in general, in any context. And thats so crushingly sad.

No, I think cultural history in general and history of videogames (e.g. the gameplay, itself, not the industry) are two very different things. People have the ability to experience old videogames should they choose to do so as you and I do. The same cannot be said for historical events, trends, time periods, and politics which can only be passed on through word of mouth and documentation.

History is important and we'd be lost without historians. But talking from a pure gameplay perspective, I don't really agree that the same is true of videogames. MMORPGs and online-only games perhaps need historians more than other types of games. But the vast majority of influential games are discoverable by anyone with a historical interest.

Peltz · Feb 20, 2015

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I'm all for preserving our gaming history & being well informed about older games. I'm less for saying that people should try to play all the influential old games out there. I think somebody interested in learning about older games would be better served reading a bunch of 5-10 minute articles on a bunch of them, rather than subject themselves to say spending 50 hours trying to beat Ultima IV. I mean, if you want to play Ultima IV, go for it, but there are much better ways for most people to spend their time these days.

I agree. Videogame literacy in the sense of experiencing old games is simply not as important as, say, actual literacy and experiencing old literature.

I'm as passionate about games as they come, but I would never lose respect for someone who didn't play Morrowind in the same way I'd lose respect for someone who didn't read To Kill a Mockingbird. Games are indeed an artform, but they're games nonetheless. And I know my opinion is derogatory in a sense and it will offend many people here. However, it's not my intent to offend so much as it is to just tell you my honest beliefs.

TheMagician · Feb 20, 2015

This is why people think Nintendo's games age better than the others.

They're actually wrong. They were usually just a lot better to begin with.

Peltz · Feb 20, 2015

TheMagician said:
This is why people think Nintendo's games age better than the others.

They're actually wrong. They were usually just a lot better to begin with.

Eh... not all Nintendo games have aged equally.

TGMIII · Feb 20, 2015

Peltz said:
Information about old games is available to those younger than us if they choose to seek it out. We, as forum posters, are also a huge source of such information. And in a sense, our hobby doesn't need dedicated historians because communities like ours, and many others sort of fill those gaps in piecemeal. I don't really see anything getting "lost".

For now but there's nothing to say that it will be around forever or archived anywhere. Large portions of the history of competitive gaming has been lost to dead websiites & forums leaving those who were around to fill in the gaps but it's hard to confirm a lot of this information when it comes from other people than the direct source and many of those people are no longer contactable or the information has been obscured for their own benefit. I don't think it's a safe assumption to just say that nothing will ever get lost.

I would agree with the article that we lack critics but on the other side of the coin how much does the industry, media or consumers care about critical analysis and preservation.

TheGraykid · Feb 20, 2015

Art of the past is interesting to me not just as an artifact, but as a statement by the people who made it at the time they made it. The Breakfast Club isn't just a good movie, it's a window into the eighties, and a reminder that the people of that time weren't too different from me, it's John Hughes circa 1985 speaking from beyond the grave. I can hear his voice. Games don't have that. They're system heavy not voice heavy. Systems can be replaced. Systems can be upgraded. Systems can be made obsolete. These games are being made obsolete. I don't think that's anyone's fault, I just think that's most of the artform. It's kinda sad, but the truth is that most people don't care, and why should they?

Peltz · Feb 20, 2015

awwyeahgurrl said:
For now but there's nothing to say that it will be around forever or archived anywhere. Large portions of the history of competitive gaming has been lost to dead websiites & forums leaving those who were around to fill in the gaps but it's hard to confirm a lot of this information when it comes from other people than the direct source and many of those people are no longer contactable or the information has been obscured for their own benefit. I don't think it's a safe assumption to just say that nothing will ever get lost.

I would agree with the article that we lack critics but on the other side of the coin how much does the industry, media or consumers care about critical analysis and preservation.

In that sense, yes 300 years from now, people likely won't be able to boot up a Famicom Disk System to experience Nazo No Murasamejou in the same way I can from my own home tonight. But I don't really know if there's a solution to something like that, and I do wonder whether that has much to do with the hype-cycle employed by the industry.

I think my bottom line is this: you shouldn't criticize people for not experiencing the same game you experienced. And I really don't think the hype spouted by the industry is to blame for the lack of people experiencing the classics. Places like HG101 exist specifically to inform us about the cool shit we might have missed. And when all else fails, Gamefaqs has a fairly robust list of titles.

The information is out there. People can become well-read on videogames if they are so inclined.

TheMagician · Feb 20, 2015

Peltz said:
Eh... not all Nintendo games have aged equally.

Most have compared to the other games on the market at the time.

SatelliteOfLove · Feb 20, 2015

Mr. Nice_Guy said:
Very interesting quotes, will need to read later.

The same thought occurred to me recently after watching the Jimquisition Peter Molyneux episode and showed how he would tear apart his last game to promote the new one. No other industry generally does that, or at least not to the extent video gaming does.

I thought of him reading this, too; it's like he made a science of the habits of the past.

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I think there are good points to be made in this area, but the RPG Codex, old PC RPGs were the best attitude of the article writer really rubs me the wrong way.

This is a very dangerous fight him and others wage; it's been not too long ago an age where hardcore gaming was in a war with non-hardcore gaming and let's just say numbers won that altercation. The battle cries of the winners were against elitism, and taking what you want, and changing anything to be what you want, (provided it's to something being pushed by the echo chamber), and yet there's all these hardcore gaming-appreciating people falling all over themselves to start this shit again right as we get out of video gaming's Dork Ages. I guess some people just wanna feel right, even if it means losing nearly everything they're fighting for.

hemtae · Feb 21, 2015

Ralemont said:
I'm totally on board with the first part of this. The second part implicitly assumes that things were changed for the worse, which is the type of underhanded way of dismissing criticism of older games that I was talking about.

In other words, self-proclaimed experts/enthusiasts/critics not playing older games and passing judgment on them = legit issue.

Self proclaimed etc playing older games and passing judgment on them, preferring the newer stuff = not a legit issue, at least not in regards to what the article claims to be about.

I'm not saying Gothic II or Morrowind were perfect or better in every way than Risen and Oblivion/Skyrim, just that they contain some useful design lessons that seem to be forgotten in game criticism and even within Bethesda/Piranha Bytes.

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I'm all for preserving our gaming history & being well informed about older games. I'm less for saying that people should try to play all the influential old games out there. I think somebody interested in learning about older games would be better served reading a bunch of 5-10 minute articles on a bunch of them, rather than subject themselves to say spending 50 hours trying to beat Ultima IV. I mean, if you want to play Ultima IV, go for it, but there are much better ways for most people to spend their time these days.

I absolutely think that anybody making their money off of video games (journalist, critic, developer) should plan to play the classics or recognize that it's a hole in their knowledge (especially in the case of Ultima IV since like Arena/Daggerfall, it's free) and not just dismiss it because its allegedly outdated. Also in general, its not required to finish a game to understand how it works or what it did that was historically significant.

Imru al-Qays · Feb 21, 2015

MrNyarlathotep said:
OT, but this only really applies to English Literature, as it is a very freely evolving language based on usage - a piece of French literature from the 1700s uses the same language as modern French because there is a specific institution dedicated to curating the French language and determining what is and isn't allowed to be 'real' French.

No, it applies to all literature. The Académie française has no authority over how people write prose. French literature from the 1700s is more or less as difficult for French people to understand as English literature from the 1700s is for Anglophones to understand.

There are some languages (like Arabic) where prose style is more conservative, but all languages experience shifts in their linguistic and stylistic norms over time. The presence or absence of a language academy in the style of the Académie has no bearing on the conservativeness of a language's stylistic tradition.

RPGam3r · Feb 21, 2015

"Attacking" past iterations is not exclusive to gaming. It is a common theme in software in general as a way to justify the next iteration.

MrNyarlathotep · Feb 21, 2015

Imru’ al-Qays;153001022 said:
No, it applies to all literature. The Académie française has no authority over how people write prose. French literature from the 1700s is more or less as difficult for French people to understand as English literature from the 1700s is for Anglophones to understand.

No, that's not true. L'Academie explicitly defines (or 'curates' to be precise) the language used. 17th century french has the same words with the same meanings as 20th century french, whereas 17th century English is markedly different, and not in merely stylistic choice but in actual vocabulary.

for example, from John Donnes The Flea:

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

This is archaic in terms of vocabulary, although stylistically does not differ much from modern verse.
The conceit of the poem is also not exactly alien to a modern audience, either.

Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku! · Feb 21, 2015

This happened big time to GTA 4 when GTA 5 came out.

"Hey guys no more of your cousin calling you!"

"Uh didn't you give that game a perfect 10?"

Imru al-Qays · Feb 21, 2015

MrNyarlathotep said:
No, that's not true. L'Academie explicitly defines (or 'curates' to be precise) the language used.

The Académie's recommendations are not legally binding and are quite frequently ignored - see their vain attempts to come up with alternatives to email, parking, and other widespread English borrowings, or the fact that no one seems to understand what the rule for the proper use of the diaeresis is (aigüe or aiguë?). No French author is going to go check the Académie's rulebooks to see if a word he wants to use is in it.

17th century french has the same words with the same meanings as 20th century french,

Insofar as you suggest that this is somehow more true of French than of other languages this is false. I've lived in France and I regularly read documents written in various stages of early modern French for research purposes: words have seen their meanings shift over the centuries to a similar extent in French as in English, and words have fallen out of favor and been replaced by new words with a similar frequency. The Académie's role in directing or preventing linguistic change is nonexistent.

If you really want an example of a literary tradition where the vocabulary has remained static look at Arabic, where the literary register has remained substantively the same since the late 600s. But Arabic, of course, has no national language academy: this is a result of aesthetic and stylistic conservatism, not institutional pressure.

whereas 17th century English is markedly different, and not in merely stylistic choice but in actual vocabulary.

for example, from John Donnes The Flea:

This is archaic in terms of vocabulary, although stylistically does not differ much from modern verse.
The conceit of the poem is also not exactly alien to a modern audience, either.

The only genuinely archaic thing about the vocabulary of this poem is the use of the pronoun thou (and its attendant verb forms). Every word in the poem is readily comprehensible to a modern speaker of the language, even an old-timey word like "maidenhead," which shows up in works of mainstream fiction like A Song of Ice and Fire.

Here's a passage from Racine's Andromaque, written a few decades after "The Flea":

Surtout je redoutais cette mélancolie
Où j'ai vu si longtemps votre âme ensevelie.
Je craignais que le ciel, par un cruel secours,
Ne vous offrît la mort que vous cherchiez toujours.
Mais je vous vois, Seigneur ; et si j'ose le dire, Un destin plus heureux
vous conduit en Epire :
Le pompeux appareil qui suit ici vos pas
N'est point d'un malheureux qui cherche le trépas.

The words ensevelir and trépas are about as unfamiliar to modern French speakers as anything in that passage of Donne you just quoted would be to modern English speakers, and the word appareil clearly doesn't mean the same thing anymore (indeed, if you look up appareil in a dictionary you'll find this definition listed under "archaic").

Mxrz · Feb 21, 2015

Regarding ES: Daggerfall was a buggy mess. Near constant CTDs. Returned my original copy to bestbuy. Morrowind was hated on for dumbing down Daggerfall. Shallow, etc. Oblivion was wrecked twice as hard. Skyrim got off easy in comparison.

I think there's some rose-tinted views on some older games, at least concerning their initial reception. Fallout 1 got some jeers I recall, and now its like the Holy Grail.

akira28 · Feb 21, 2015

I wouldn't trust the industry and I don't trust "gamers". I trust oldheads, OGs, original hardcores, and hobbyists.

altstream, underground, nostalgia, but no trust at all in the mainstream. That's the group completely under the powers of Sauron, the industry, the media hype all of it. Or they're just young as shit and didn't play the old stuff. So I don't listen or follow them. Like. At all.

kyser73 · Feb 21, 2015

I think video games are very comparable with literature, music & film in the way they've developed.

I would imagine the number of people on this board who have read Chaucer, Homer or know much Shakespeare is about on a level with those who've played Jer Set Willy.

Early literature - like early music and early film - is often hard to comprehend and more of a chore to read/watch/listen than enjoyable. What remains that is widely consumed are the best examples of the era - Tallis, Palestrina, the aforementioned writers.

The reason gaming seems different is that the period we've gone from primitive gaming mechanics & represetation hasn't been attenuated over decades, centuries and in the case of literature millenia to the kind of accessible, mass consumed products of today.

Those who bemoan the 'degeneration' of games from being played by 'people of above average intelligence' remind me of the critics who bemoaned the music hall & penny dreadful in the C19th for opening up theatre, music & literature to the 'lower orders' - these days it's the mass market that takes this kind of kicking from self-appointed cultural guardians, whom history shows are always on the wrong side of the trends that lead to expansion of the potential creative base of any medium.

While there is inevitably more dross & mediocrity the chance of brilliance and innovation increases the wider the pool of creative people you can draw from.

MrNyarlathotep · Feb 21, 2015

Imru al-Qays;153008246 said:
The Académie's recommendations are not legally binding and are quite frequently ignored - see their vain attempts to come up with alternatives to email, parking, and other widespread English borrowings, or the fact that no one seems to understand what the rule for the proper use of the diaeresis is (aigüe or aiguë?). No French author is going to go check the Académie's rulebooks to see if a word he wants to use is in it.

I think you're applying relatively contemporary standards of things like widespread literacy and post-printing press availability of authorship to diminish the power they have historically held; state censorship was the norm well into the 19th century.
The excerpt I posted also makes use of various obsolete conjugations of verbs and sentence structures in a way that the French comparison does not, with the formal and informal tu and vous conjugations both still existing.

kyser73 said:
Those who bemoan the 'degeneration' of games from being played by 'people of above average intelligence' remind me of the critics who bemoaned the music hall & penny dreadful in the C19th for opening up theatre, music & literature to the 'lower orders'

Shakespeare was also decried by contemporaries as lowest common denominator (and there's dick jokes aplenty in his work), and Dickens was basically at the same level we hold bloggers at nowadays.

thepotatoman · Feb 21, 2015

I played about 5 hours of daggerfall after being inspired by Giant Bomb's random pc game feature on it, but I still can't really say I actually played it like it was meant to be played. I got a general feel for what it was, but no more than I might get a feel for what a book is by reading the first couple chapters.

I never really got to the point where I cared about my character's stats, or explored enough to get a real sense for the world and what distinguished the different parts of the world, and I'll never know what later game dungeons, enemies, and quests look like. The 40+ hours that game needs just isn't very feasible to spend on a game like that.

Old games like that really take up a ton of time. Most books can be finished in 10 hours. The Lord of the Rings trilogy on average is completed in 25 hours. Hell, Don Quixote only takes 21 hours to read, and the only people that ever read that all the way through are people that were forced too, and a very small number of literary history nerds that did it for fun. And Daggerfall and Arena are no Don Quixotes regarding their place in gaming history.

Now, if people don't take the <10 hours necessary to beat even one classic Mario game, I'd be concerned.

Imru al-Qays · Feb 21, 2015

MrNyarlathotep said:
I think you're applying relatively contemporary standards of things like widespread literacy and post-printing press availability of authorship to diminish the power they have historically held; state censorship was the norm well into the 19th century.

I do not believe that the Kingdom or Republic of France has ever in its history censored a work of literature for reasons of incorrect grammar or spelling.

The excerpt I posted also makes use of various obsolete conjugations of verbs and sentence structures in a way that the French comparison does not, with the formal and informal tu and vous conjugations both still existing.

The "various obsolete conjugations" in the excerpt you posted consist exclusively of conjugations for thou and a solitary subjunctive (woo, indistinguishable from an infinitive and utterly marginal). English is the only European language to have abandoned usage of the second person singular pronoun (and its attendant conjugations) - this is an accident of historical linguistics that has absolutely nothing to do with the presence or absence of a language-regulating body.

French has its own archaic verbal forms, which would be regularly apparent if I had quoted that poem in its original orthography. The replacement of s by the circumflex, for instance, as well as the transition from -oi to -ai in various verb forms (including the entire imperfect and conditional paradigms, as well as several conjugations of the simple past) reflect real shifts in pronunciation that occurred over the course of the history of modern written French. These shifts in pronunciation were accepted by the Académie française not only well after they occurred in the spoken language, often by centuries, but also well after they had been adopted by sundry private citizens, printing houses, and the like. The Académie française did not stop spelling its own name as "Académie françoise" until 1835.

As for obsolete sentence structures, here's a strophe of Malherbe (1608):

Quel astre malheureux ma fortune a bâtie ?
À quelles dures lois m'a le Ciel attaché,
Que l'extrême regret ne m'ait point empêché
De me laisser résoudre à cette départie ?

Eusis · Feb 21, 2015

Imru al-Qays;152805695 said:
Gaming sees a similar, albeit much more rapid, shift in norms and conventions. For people who entered gaming after Daggerfall learning how to appreciate Daggerfall involves learning an entirely new ludic "language." That's a pretty heavy lift. That's not to say that specialists shouldn't be willing to undertake it, in the same way that cinephiles are willing to watch silent films or all of us are willing to go back to Shakespeare. But because gaming is such a young medium you don't have to go nearly as far back in time for the norms and conventions to begin to seem unfamiliar: a cinephile can watch any movie shot in the last half century or more with little difficulty, a reader can read any book written since probably the mid-1800s with little difficulty, but a gamer will run up against obstacles playing games as little as five or ten years older than when he first started playing games.

I think this is sort of an interesting case because it also shows the difference between older PC games versus newer ones, as well as what happened to them when they shifted to consoles and perhaps how console games themselves have aged. I'd wager a good chunk of it is how obtuse some older cRPGs really are (not sure how Daggerfall really aged, but it seems to lean towards that end to me), whereas I imagine it's console contemporaries Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Suikoden (Game Player even gave console RPG of the year to that and PC RPG of the year to Daggerfall as I recall!) are way, way easier for younger people to get into just because of their relative simplicity and at a minimum the more restrained user interface.

Of course, I'm hardly unbiased given that I was primarily a console gamer then and the PC games I did play were mainly either FPSes like Doom or LucasArts point and clicks. Still, I do think due to how genres and platforms/control interfaces evolved over time there will be some games far, far more accessible for a longer period of time than others.

peakish · Feb 21, 2015

Great article. I don't think any comparison to movies or literature is perfect, but experts of those fields definitely have a respect for its history that's not as common in games writing. It does exist though. I haven't played the original Chaos, but this preview by Dan Whitehead on the "remake" that's coming out soon at least to me reads as highly respectful of the original, while pointing out some perceived flaws in the context of how the new game tries to tackle them. It doesn't take cheap potshots about "outdated" design. These last years there has also been a sort-of revival in looking at the original Doom not as being outdated, but rather fundamentally different in its approach to level design and tempo compared to how the genre plays today (although I still wince anytime Painkiller or Serious Sam are referred to as "Doom-likes").

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I'm all for preserving our gaming history & being well informed about older games. I'm less for saying that people should try to play all the influential old games out there. I think somebody interested in learning about older games would be better served reading a bunch of 5-10 minute articles on a bunch of them, rather than subject themselves to say spending 50 hours trying to beat Ultima IV. I mean, if you want to play Ultima IV, go for it, but there are much better ways for most people to spend their time these days.

I don't know if I really agree with this. There's a profound difference between reading about the highlights of a game and by yourself seeing how the different elements work together. Kind of like the difference between watching a supercut of a movie and the movie itself. One focuses on showcasing a few elements, the other lets you see how they actually work together in the movie.

I only got to the article after this edit was added, which I like a lot:

[EDIT] PS: As clarification, I'm not trying to arrogantly set a minimum knowledge level for gamers, journalists or designers. Our history is already vast, it's impossible to know everything. However, while perhaps not all book critics will read Hamlet, or not all movie critics will watch City Lights, they know that they should try it sometime, that it could be interesting. There's an unspoken pressure to know the classics.That is healthy, pursue of knowledge should definitely be promoted.

The history of games contains a lot of interesting examples that may or may not have worked out design-wise. I really believe that it is important to not demand, but promote (as Felipe puts it) working through classics to get a good view of this. I'm not an expert on old CRPG's, but one game that pops to mind is Betrayal at Krondor which breaks up the general walking-combat flow with some interesting puzzles. They are clumsy, not explained in an intuitive way, somewhat immersion breaking since they apparently stretch over entire landscapes to block your progress, but they are very interesting to see in a pretty much open world RPG. They brought something to the game which I don't think is easy to get across in text.

By the way, regarding King's Quest which was brought up in the article. I grew up on the Lucasarts games, so when I first played King's Quest 1 a few years ago it made for an interesting comparison. I understand why games moved away from the text parser interfaces, but there was something fun about the relative freedom that these parsers seemed to give you in comparison to how simplified the LA games, with only a few verbs available, and more modern games, which basically only have look/use. I didn't love the game enough to immediately jump into the sequels after beating it, but I really had a lot of fun with it. While perhaps not bringing the parser back would be a great fit for modern games, I think the ideas and freedom which it presents could be an interesting target for developers to look at.

Refreshment.01 · Feb 21, 2015

Fugu said:
I think this is completely wrong.

Let's look at Pac-Man, where the input interface is so basic that the only modern games that would match its input simplicity would, by definition, be labeled as retro. But you can't "improve" on Pac-Man's controls; it wouldn't be a better game if you had full analog motion or the ability to do backflips. Yes, a game like Pac-Man wouldn't exist today because the technological limitations necessary to ferment Pac-Man are no longer in place (though the popularization of different budget levels makes this point at least somewhat moot) but many classic games are classics because they represent a high point in what they set out to do.

Why do you present a point that by your definition is wrong? We are getting many type of simple games such as Pacman, not only because of budget reasons but also due to technological, market and demographic reasons. The "exploratory" games we have today could experience a sort of renaissance when VR becomes more common place, as its a good type of game because it offers a simplicity that could work rather well to introduce people to the more intense VR experience. So there's a point in which technological advance encourages simplicity.

I also agree with Duckroll's broader point in that the way that we interact with games on a basic level really hasn't changed much. Maybe the biggest change was the introduction of the mouse but that's not exactly ubiquitous and it's been around for thirty years now.

But it has. Also you are missing the point by concentrating in a single aspect of my argument. Is not only the advances of input devices but also general user interface design or even stuff like difficulty curves and how psychological analysis plays a bigger role in game design.

You claim the biggest change was the introduction of the mouse? Do we exist in the same plane of reality? Touch interfaces, motion controls, HMDs.

Like i said. Biggest mistake we make when comparing videogame medium to the others is when we forget to consider what distinguish it in the first place: The interactivity.

That comparison with books about how language or styles can also pose a barrier to newcomers or veterans when revisting the classics, the same way we see in video games is just superficially apt. The point is a videogame can have the type of barriers we see in written media as well as other ones inherent to them that come with the interactivity trait. Ironically enough for our argument, videogames suffer quite alot of that language barrier since the mayority of game development (specially in the early days) took place in very specialized places. As an EXAMPLE, not an universal law: XD

We should remember that there's a lot of gaming going on in underdeveloped countries where there aren't (or there isn't enforcement) of localization laws, so the user have to surpass the language barrier as well as potential interactivity ones.

petran79 · Feb 21, 2015

I remember that Daggerfall back then was a notorious and buggy mess, requiring constant patches made available by computer game magazines. Still, it was an impressive and atmospheric game back then. 3D graphics had not jumped to realism yet.
So while today it is certainly easy to play the game as it was originally created, even with the bugs present, it will not be possible to live the framework.
FMV adventure games, Capcom and SNK arcades, Flying Corps, C&C: Red Alert, Legacy of Kain, Duke Nukem 3D, Crusader: No Regret, Creatures etc
Not counting out console games too.

The aesthetic impression of those games are mutually exclusive with Daggerfall, perhaps in an even more important way than gameplay. That impression belongs to that time frame and can not be replicated. Unfortunately complex and difficult games face an even greater challenge because they target a smaller number of players. But it is exactly those games that need the most support. While Nintendo platformers are easier and more accessible, not ignoring the amazing job Nintendo does with preserving their titles.

mclem said:
I'm not sure maths necessarily helps much with designing puzzles! I suppose there's a basic understanding of networks to put together a solution tree (i.e. ensuring that you don't have a loop such that you need to solve a puzzle to get an item to solve a puzzle to get an item to solve the first puzzle!), but that's pretty trivial stuff. There's also maths-based puzzles themselves, of course, but they're not all that prevalent.

I don't think it's inherently FMV that was the problem, just that FMV was often poorly-applied - more focus on making the movies look good rather than have the gameplay be interesting enough to back it up. I've got quite a bit of respect for the Tex Murphy games, and they were FMV-heavy, too - but they also held together as games.

Sorry, I forgot that this was from an interview by Leisure Suit Larry designer, Al Lowe. Cant remember the link though, since he had so many interviews. His point was that back then games made by 80s computer nerds, were targeting 80s computer nerds!

Regarding FMV, it is not a coincidence that the best and most prolific titles were available on MS-DOS and Windows 9x systems, along with mediocre ones as well. But at that time it felt very awkward that adventure games with very difficult puzzles like Ripper, hired actors like Christopher Walken or games like Toonstruck used the best voice actors in the industry. There was nothing equivalent on consoles back then! Just bad dubs of Resident Evil....Sure those names were hype and one would buy the games for that reason alone. But regarding actual gameplay? Puzzles were too difficult for the majority of gamers without a walkthrough!

Mman235 · Feb 21, 2015

TheGraykid said:
Art of the past is interesting to me not just as an artifact, but as a statement by the people who made it at the time they made it. The Breakfast Club isn't just a good movie, it's a window into the eighties, and a reminder that the people of that time weren't too different from me, it's John Hughes circa 1985 speaking from beyond the grave. I can hear his voice. Games don't have that. They're system heavy not voice heavy. Systems can be replaced. Systems can be upgraded. Systems can be made obsolete. These games are being made obsolete. I don't think that's anyone's fault, I just think that's most of the artform. It's kinda sad, but the truth is that most people don't care, and why should they?

Games are a look into a creator's vision as much as any other medium, at least until recent years where there's so many people working on games that gets lost, but other mediums are running into those same problems anyway (like film and it's giant blockbusters made by hundreds of people).

This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyOF2RsO3ck shows one great example by going into how Doom is a very direct look into what the creators of the game were interested in when they made it, and this applies to many games made my small-knit teams (or individuals).

Robert at Zeboyd Games · Feb 21, 2015

peakish said:
I don't know if I really agree with this. There's a profound difference between reading about the highlights of a game and by yourself seeing how the different elements work together. Kind of like the difference between watching a supercut of a movie and the movie itself. One focuses on showcasing a few elements, the other lets you see how they actually work together in the movie.

I don't disagree; I'm just saying there's better ways to spend your time then playing a bunch of ancient, outdated games.

For example, if you want to learn about Wizardry, I'd say you're better off reading the HG101 article on the series, then playing a modern descendent like Etrian Odyssey IV. Then, if you want to go further, play one of the better games in the series like Wizardry 8. I'd say this course of action would teach you more about video games and be drastically more enjoyable while also spending less time than spending hundreds of hours playing through the entire Wizardry series. Some games have aged better than others.

Bl@de · Feb 21, 2015

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
I don't disagree; I'm just saying there's better ways to spend your time then playing a bunch of ancient, outdated games.

For example, if you want to learn about Wizardry, I'd say you're better off reading the HG101 article on the series, then playing a modern descendent like Etrian Odyssey IV. Then, if you want to go further, play one of the better games in the series like Wizardry 8. I'd say this course of action would teach you more about video games and be drastically more enjoyable while also spending less time than spending hundreds of hours playing through the entire Wizardry series. Some games have aged better than others.

Playing the whole series would be very hard, especially because of the early titles having wireframe graphics and being mostly unavailable on modern systems (I think it was Apple2 and other plattforms). Your way is how I revisited the franchise after only playing Wizardry 8 as a kid (remains in my top 3 rpgs of all time to this day with gothic 2 and morrowind). I then went on and got 6-8 on GOG. A great ressource for older titles. Heck there is even an automapping mod for 6 if you don't want to get out pen and paper. But of course for students of gamedesign I would want them to know more than just Skyrim and Halo. Kind of sad...

LouisaFerre · Feb 21, 2015

I get that some games have aspects that age badly, especially when it comes to some things like early 3D controls, but if you can't appreciate them or regard them as inherently lacking in entertainment or artistic merit, I'm very inclined to regard you as a philistine.

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