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[butman]

I was on a party last night talking with friends that play games since forever, about how people like us, +30 people, have witnessed the birth and evolution of videogames as a medium and art.
It's like being as the generation that experienced the creation and evolution of photography or cinema for the first time, visual media that have stopped rising in its evolutionary curve for years, only in its first 50 years the changes have been a hit. As happens to us now with every generation that appears. ATARI to the NES/MS, NES/MS to SNES/GEN, and SNES/GEN to N64/PSX/SAT were changes that blowed away our head. Changes that evolved graphically, and also in the playable way.
Now I think that from that point the upward curve related to gameplay has stopped, and how impressive it can bring each generation is a purely a graphic matter.

Sorry if it sound weird, but it was something that i felt and i wanted to share.

Don't you feel the same?
We have already seen everything?
What's next?

 

[anexanhume]

We are the Internet generation as well, and that's probably more historically significant.

 

[Fisty]

Back when I was playing Legend of Zelda in my underoos, if you told me that in my lifetime you could video chat people on cell phones and buy virtual reality headsets that were the real deal, I would never have believed you

 

[~Kinggi~]

I mean i dont personally think of it like that but its nice to know i was able to see most of the evolution of games thus far and enjoy it.

 

[xxracerxx]

We are the Internet generation as well, and that's probably more historically significant.

Yup.

 

[Raiden]

Experiencing Super Mario 64 was mindblowing. It felt out of this world.

 

[GregLombardi]

We have certainly seen the most history of all videogame players. Is it possible to turn that knowledge into power? Maybe.

Not something that comes easily, however.

 

[Captain Tuttle]

We are the Internet generation as well, and that's probably more historically significant.

That and smartphones, either one way more significant than video games

 

[metareferential]

That and smartphones, either one way more significant than video games

We've witnessed the birth of the digital age, that's the point.

 

[dreamcastmaster]

If you were a gamer living through the 90's then you can say you saw the boom. Nothing, will ever ever top that period in time for gaming. A lot of gaffers only can see that period through the lens of one console thier parents brought them and even then will recognise that it was a great time, and not just becuse they were young. For example, imagine now that there was a console as good as the market leaders that was only available if you imported.

 

[balohna]

I used to have this clear timeline in my head of video games that was fairly simple up to about 2005, but with last gen and this gen it has gotten a fair bit more complex. Franchises have died, new ones have been born, indie games have risen up, free to play has become prominent, DLC, etc.

It used to be "this box can play these few hundred boxed retail games", with some exceptions (mostly on PC).

It made me realise this has all just been the tip of the iceberg. Video games will be an inescapable part of culture until forever, even if your favourite franchise or genre goes away.

 

[lethial]

I'd say video games are pretty insignificant historical wise. 30+ gaf has lived through way way way more important shit lol

 

[aggienader]

Trying to explain to my 4 year old son what it was like to not have Netflix, PBS Kids, iPhones, and iPads, and cell phones in general is like my parents telling me how they used to call their friends on those wooden wall phones. They used to only talk to long distance friends once in a blue moon. Had to hand write letters, etc.

I can't wait to one day soon tell my kids that we used to have all four players in the room when we wanted to play a game together. Halo system link parties are so ancient even now.

It's fun trying to explain what life was like before it all, and my kids may never understand it. And that's ok.

FYI, I didn't have high speed internet, cable, and a measly Siemens cell phone the size of my finger until I went to college.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

I like to think that in a few decades when kids are getting history books, memes and all that shit are gonna he at least a page or two to and a brief description on internet culture and shit.

 

[zoukka]

Internet.
Digitalization.
Robotization.

These are some of the most significant things in human history.

 

[Tadpole]

Agree with OP. But no we haven't seen everything. What we have will continue to evolve.

 

[z1ggy]

I'm almost 35 and yeah i've played almost all platforms. And i don´t really like where the industry is heading to.

Right now i feel like we are in a middle 90's ish hardware situation.

 

[Daffy Duck]

Trying to explain to my 4 year old son what it was like to not have Netflix, PBS Kids, iPhones, and iPads, and cell phones in general is like my parents telling me how they used to call their friends on those wooden wall phones. They used to only talk to long distance friends once in a blue moon. Had to hand write letters, etc.

It's fun trying to explain what life was like before it all, and my kids may never understand it. And that's ok.

Pretty much this. I have two kids aged 11/8 and even telling them that when j was growing up all I had was a master system and no internet/mobile phone/iPad/laptop/computer is pretty hilarious.

One of my neighbours gave me a word processing machine that I used to just type random stuff out on until it ran out of the special paper it used and then that was that lol.

Then my Aunty gave me an organ to play which I did for all of 5 minutes and that along with playing cops and robbers in he street and football at the school playing field was my weekend/life as a kid.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

I'm almost 35 and yeah i've played almost all platforms. And i don´t really like where the industry is heading to.

Right now i feel like we are in a middle 90's ish hardware situation.

For the most part, I haven't liked console gaming since the ps2. Luckily for me, pc gaming still has enough people making all types of games.

Handheld gaming has actually held up pretty well. I think it is just once budgets gets so high, you have to make games for the lowest common denominator. Handhelds haven't quite got there yet. You can still make cheap ass games for them.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Experiencing Super Mario 64 was mindblowing. It felt out of this world.

The entirety of 1993-2000 was a parade of sea changes. The cost of tech hadn't outpaced the creation of tech.

VR (or rather, the promises of it later) is one of the few times recently that match aspects of that.

 

[Strangelove77]

What about the internet?
Social media?
September 11, 2001?
WWE buying WCW?
Woodstock '99?

 

[qa_engineer]

I'm just happy to be part of the second coming of VR. We finally have the technology to build light headsets with high end displays, fancy laser tracking systems with sub mm accuracy, enough computational horsepower to drive these displays and tracking systems, and programming and design software to create these amazing worlds in virtual space.

This isn't just video games we're talking about.

 

[Aaron D.]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

 

[Lightning Count]

My life is a historical event, in the sense that it has largely been an unmitigated disaster.

 

[Rizific]

Yes, sort of. Seeing what the industry has become now and how it's skewed some people's perception is pretty shocking. Just look at all the overwatch threads.

 

[aggienader]

Pretty much this. I have two kids aged 11/8 and even telling them that when j was growing up all I had was a master system and no internet/mobile phone/iPad/laptop/computer is pretty hilarious.

One of my neighbours gave me a word processing machine that I used to just type random stuff out on until it ran out of the special paper it used and then that was that lol.

Then my Aunty gave me an organ to play which I did for all of 5 minutes and that along with playing cops and robbers in he street and football at the school playing field was my weekend/life as a kid.

Yeah it's quite a trip watching my son operate the iPad more effectively than my mother-in-law. These kids...

 

[Trike]

I have +30 to GAF, I thinked. Lemme check my equipment.

 

[ironcreed]

I simply am amazed at how far we have came technically, and yet I frown on some of the practices that have become common as well. But all in all, it has been a fun ride since the early days of playing the likes of Breakout on the Atari 2600. Talk about a quantum leap and time flying by.

 

[eXistor]

In a way I wish I was a few years older so that I could have consciously lived the Atari days, but being from '81 isn't bad. I've always loved that I've lived through so much of gaming history first-hand.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

Great post.

I'm 42, and sometimes you just have to shake your head at the absurd things gamers fuss about in a DF thread. Or someone will post a screenshot, where someone will say the IQ looks like shit.

They have NO idea.

I can only imagine what the younger generations will see. But I wouldn't trade the experiences I had with the early days of the hobby for anything.

 

[Atlas157]

Gaming can still evolve from a gameplay perspective. VR is a new technology that has a ton of potential.

 

[Mixolydian]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

Posts like this so often go ignored, and will continue to because of the entitlement seen so often on this forum. Regardless, I agree with you, and often find myself in the same boat.

 

[Wilsongt]

I remember when games didn't take 5+ years to make and weren't riddled with glitches that required day zero patches.

 

[Demoskinos]

On one of the Game Over Greggy showsColin Moriarty said something to the effect that our generation meaning all of us 30 somethings are the last generation to know what it was like without the internet and also the first to experience it. That's pretty interesting.

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

Great post.

I'm 42, and sometimes you just have to shake your head at the absurd things gamers fuss about in a DF thread. Or someone will post a screenshot, where someone will say the IQ looks like shit.

They have NO idea.

I can only imagine what the younger generations will see. But I wouldn't trade the experiences I had with the early days of the hobby for anything.

I'm not as old as you two, but I still remember a time where you would see a screenshot in a gaming magazine and you literally couldn't tell what the fuck was going on.

I think personally that's why I dislike 8 bit pixel art games so much. It kinda offends me that people would purposely make their games look that shitty.


But outside of that, alot of the things that people complain about visually go over my head. Low resolutions, Excess CA, lack of AA and AF, screen tearing...don't get me wrong, I see these things, but it's not that big an issue.

Frame rate stuff on the other hand, that can be annoying.

 

[Canucked]

I love watching this industry grow. I've been through my own "gaming was better when..." phases and have seen and love how this medium is fueled by change and innovation.

I play less now that I'm older but I'm less jaded and enjoy much more.

 

[Shoeless]

I also remember the old Tele-Star and Odyssey consoles back in the 70s, though my first real console was a 2600, with Combat as the standard pack in, and Superman thrown in as a bonus.

It's been quite a ride watching it all develop. I've always been a sci-fi geek as well, so I think ultimately games are going to be headed in the areas that Neuromancer/The Matrix predict, and VR is the first, clunky, step towards that, the equivalent of early, silent black and white cinema.

I love videogames, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if playing on screen the way we do now is no longer the primary medium in about 30 years.

 

[Mendoza]

I'm not as old as you two, but I still remember a time where you would see a screenshot in a gaming magazine and you literally couldn't tell what the fuck was going on.

I think personally that's why I dislike 8 bit pixel art games so much. It kinda offends me that people would purposely make their games look that shitty.

 

[aggienader]

I remember when games didn't take 5+ years to make and weren't riddled with glitches that required day zero patches.

Did you mean zero day one patches? Because I don't remember downloading any patches until the 360/PS3 days.

Back in the day games with serious glitches would have to either have a reprint or just go on ignored.

 

[Shadowplay1979]

Back when I was playing Legend of Zelda in my underoos, if you told me that in my lifetime you could video chat people on cell phones and buy virtual reality headsets that were the real deal, I would never have believed you

People who grew up after the internet became a facet of life have no idea...

I still sometimes watch ustream videos of webcams in other countries, or have twitch or niconico playing while i work simply because i think its fascinating. This kinda of window on the world and technology was the kind of thing i used to talk about with friends about how cool it would be one day to be able to do. To this day i still find it amazing that i can have a little window in the corner of my screen on a live camera somewhere else in the world.

Those who were born in the late 90's really have no idea how much of an impact on the world the internet has really had. When you stop and think about how much it affected not only communication but culture it's pretty mindblowing. You could go on for hours about the significant changes to culture, life and attitudes and the way we interact with eachother.

Thnk about this: there was a time when you went to school, graduated and moved on in life and never saw or heard from most people in school again except perhaps your closest friends. If you moved out of your area and away , sometimes even those friends you would never see again..there was a certain nostalgia in that and that became a part of you, your memories. If you were an artist or writer, those things could become a part of your art or writing. Now we have Facebook, yea you may have people you still dont talk with much but you still know what they named their kids and what they did on Sunday. That alone has changed so much in how we perceive things, having grown up before the internet, i can see the changes but like most people i don't think about it very often. I can only wonder how the most recent generation perceives these things.

And Porn....don't even get me started on how hard it was to come across that as a kid.

 

[Holundrian]

I've had those moments but mostly those aren't limited to games but more technology in general.

If it was about games it isn't even graphics improvement or new hardware but actually something more recent, VR.

VR could be maybe already is an entire new medium to design for.
Like when film started and people didn't know shit about framing your movie properly, camera angles, etc etc and would film pretty mundane stuff like someone destroying a wall.

It feels a bit like that in VR right now, like we're learning a new design language which has something really exciting about it.
(I'm not 30+ though)

 

[Sintoid]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

43 and you nailed it
Congrats

 

[MikeyB]

Sorta, but not a particularly serious one.

My grandma is 98, and she has seen some shit.

She also has seen me play Golden Axe on the Genesis and bowling on the Wii (she liked it).

My late grandfather was more interested in video games, but mostly because he was fascinated how the horrific act of fighting and killing out of duty became popular entertainment. The realism bothered him.

 

[Jack The Nipper]

For games growing up from nes to now is the best period.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I'm not sure 30 is the clear delineator. Video games started well more than 30 years ago, the NES was 31 years ago, 3D gaming around 20 years ago, connected gaming emerges as mainstream a little later and solidified around 12-13 years ago, mobile and mass accessibility of gaming around 8 years ago, VR this year... Also probably worth noting that for 2 billion people, more of them than there are of us, gaming came online as modernization and the growth of the middle class enabled it over the last 10-15 years. For them, gaming is probably an innate part of the modernization process more generally rather than a separate event that happened.

I think it is an open question where history will define the "beginning" and "evolution" of gaming. I guess what I'm saying is that YouTube Mega Millionaire Kids have reaction videos about how "Retro" Gears of War is, and while my whole skin shudders when I hear that, I don't think their story is any less real than my own and what I think of as gaming's formative years.

I am glad that I am old enough to have been around for a lot of cool stuff in gaming, and to have person memories of some of the early foundational moments, designers, and games. I am still a little jealous that whole words of gaming--like non-PC European computers in the 80s, pre-Atari consoles in the west, early mechanical pinball and games--are basically mysteries to me because I wasn't around and exposed to them in my formative years. I hope history preserves those memories.

 

[Chastten]

Our generation has seen a lot of stuff, but I'm not sure if gaming is really the biggest leap we witnessed.

When growing up our primary school had 1 stand alone PC without a mouse and with a black&white screen. In the last 3 years or so everyone was allowed to take test practice for math on it 2-3 times a year. Going from there to where we are now is, to me, a much bigger change then going from NES to PS4.

 

[Melchiah]

Trying to explain to my 4 year old son what it was like to not have Netflix, PBS Kids, iPhones, and iPads, and cell phones in general is like my parents telling me how they used to call their friends on those wooden wall phones. They used to only talk to long distance friends once in a blue moon. Had to hand write letters, etc.

I fondly remember the early 90's, when I used to write letters to people all over the world, from Malaysia to South America. It was nice to receive 5-10 letters a week, but it was costly and time-consuming to answer them. They also felt more personal than e-mails, but I do prefer the ease of what we have now.

I'm almost 35 and yeah i've played almost all platforms. And i don´t really like where the industry is heading to.

Right now i feel like we are in a middle 90's ish hardware situation.

I'm 41, and it's been amazing to witness the progress from Pong and C64 to current systems. The games are so much better in every way than they were back then, and I actually have more interest to play and complete them now.



EDIT:

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

Good post, especially the bolded part.

 

[whiterabbit]

Absolutely. I'm almost 30 (29) and I like playing retro games because they feel like historical classics.

 

[Weltall Zero]

I've been thinking this as far back as the early 90's. There's a sequence during Back to the Future 2 (1989) where a "retro" bar in 2015 (meant to emulate precisely the 80s) has an 80's arcade game, and when Marty shows the local kids how to play, they leave disappointed saying "you have to use your hands?". At that moment I realized I was part of a generation that went from the early 8-bit micros, to 8-bit consoles, to 16-bit consoles, and future generations wouldn't have experienced these leaps.

I also realized that more people seemed to be getting into the hobby (little did I know; this was before Sony and the PSX!), meaning that, at least here in Spain, very few people, even among my generation had that experience.

Being one of the very few people (along with a handful of my friends) that even knew what Final Fantasy was (the SNES ones were never released in Spain officially, we imported them), it was frankly surreal when years later FFVII became a relative mainstream hit and you could overhear random people talking about it during commutes.

 

[RoyaleDuke]

It's funny you bring this up since a lot of my friends(steam friends) who also pretty much grew up with video games and the birth of the digital age.

Honestly, I think about more now that I am getting older and it absolutely marvels me when I consider it. Then I think about some of the older generations that are still around, and how they must feel! I mean imagine seeing technology evolve over the last 60-80 years, and being an old man or woman today and seeing how much the world has changed.

I think history and time are fascinating concepts, I mean another thing that really puts things into perspective is the fact that your smartphone is several orders of magnitudes stronger than the entire warehouse of computers that NASA used to send astronauts to the moon.

Think about that for a second.