So you've changed the OP. This thread is no longer about PC games of yore, but rather a fundamental shift to multiplayer/social gaming. That is a different issue altogether. I would argue that while multiplayer/social gaming is at the forefront of the current industry, high quality singleplayer experiences are still released regularly in a variety of genres. The gaming population has simply greatly expanded since the mid 90's.
This thread was never supposed to be about nostalgia vs present. It was supposed to be about an absence of gaming left by a fundamental shift in the way games are made/reported on/recommended/etc.
It's about how a different kind of fun seems to be almost entirely absent.
I just wrote a REALLY bad OP because I was sick. I remedied the situation and feel much more clear-headed now. Some bad sentence structure, I think (as well as people skimming the OP) contributed to me failing to communicate the point properly.
Telltale for one.
Flight Sims I'll certainly agree with though. Not that I'm sure flight sims were ever really big. I think there was always a moderate sized amount of interest that has been either flat or shrinking for 20 years.
As for genre hybridisation, if anything we're seeing more of that. With RPG and RTS stuff added into shooters, or shooters hybridised with RPGs. Bigger publishers are playing it safer with the hybrids though.
As I hopefully have clarified in the rewritten OP, Telltale isn't at
all what I'm looking for. Jurassic Park and Back to the Future were... not great. I can't comment on The Walking Dead.
I'm not sure what you mean about hybridization.
With the exception of per-limb injuries versus health regeneration, what does Deus Ex have going on mechanically that DE:HR doesn't?
Basic level design, interactibility, and stealth don't quite feel the same. However, Deus Ex is one of the games I'm only just now getting into--I played Human Revolution first. Playing the original Deus Ex is... almost overwhelming in how guided it
isn't. It's liberating.
You should play more adventure and strategy games.
Strategy games tend to be more along the lines of Total War or Civ than my preference. I'm really, really interested in Omerta though.
Still not quite the thing I want.
The always connected nature of the new SimCity with it's more limited city size to match is basically the antithesis of what the OP stands for... And he specifically called out Skyrim.
As much as I call out Skyrim, I also think it's one of the closest things to what I feel is missing.
Kind of sad, really.
I think games like Human Revolution being more "gamey" compared to their predecessors also has to do with the focus around a controller. The stealth in Human Revolution in particular in many places feels oddly like a direct evolution of Metal Gear Solid 2. This is just a weird theory of mine but bear with me.
Nah, I totally get what you mean. It feels like everything they should have learned from Thief, they chose to learn from Metal Gear Solid instead, which is sad, because MGS is a
bad stealth series. Most stealth games, despite being in third person, tend to borrow from Thief (but not do it as well).
The PC -- the keyboard and mouse interface, is inherently better suited to games that feel like simulations -- software where you just play around with systems. PC games in the classic sense are very close to computer software, just made for the purpose of fun.
This. This is what I'm having a hard time trying to convey.
Contrast this with console games that are classically made to be more like obstacle courses or roller coaster rides. It's more suited to the controller interface, the modern interpretation of which traces its lineage to the earliest Nintendo and arcade games. Super Mario Bros. was fun when you first experience an NES because Nintendo mastered the feeling of fulfillment you get from pressing a button and getting a reaction on your TV. The whole game is an obstacle course built on top of that feeling, and I think that's the core of console gaming as opposed to the "simulation for fun" core of PC gaming. The closest thing to a "simulation game" you typically get on consoles might be a Japanese strategy RPG (which the Japanese typically call "simulation RPGs") like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. Maybe the SNES version of SimCity.
I'm not sure if it's about the limitations of the controller itself. I think it's more about the mindset of the developers. Console developers were basically making toys for kids. Arcade games. PC developers were... well, look at Blue Sky/Looking Glass. That was a bunch of ex-MIT grads making the kind of games that interested
them. That's basically
all Origin Systems did, from Ultima onward.
But yeah, the controller does impose restrictions on play--STALKER would never work on a console.
What I think happened is when all those PC developers moved to consoles, they instinctively made their games more what console games are supposed to be, instead of just reproducing the PC mentality on consoles. Or at least they merged the PC mentality with the core of console gaming philosophy.
I could just be crazy though.
I don't think you're crazy. I think that the merge is exactly what happened, which is precisely why Western gaming is the predominant field of game development now, and Japan's been left in the dust, as it were. The more mature sensibilities that came with PC gaming are fantastic. There's that level of freedom too--the kind of thing that makes Dead Space so much more appealing to me as a gamer (that it's basically a remake of System Shock 2 in some regards helps) than, say, Resident Evil 2. The philosophy of making a game that doesn't fight the player through controls is an
excellent one.
By the way, whatever happened to your search for an "ambitious" console-originated game?
Few, if any, of them were what I wanted. I'm going to be playing some of them (most notably Shenmue), but I need to cash to pick it up.
Must be reflective of the people on your friends list. My friends have good taste in games.
And people being into multiplayer games is nothing new at all. In the late 90's games like quake, UT, and CS were wildly popular. Dota 2 is the CS of the modern gamer. Dota 2 is not a game that casual gamers can play.
Of the 1,612 hours there, I am fairly confident that at least 1,245 of those hours were dedicated to multiplayer play, if not more (because who spends 39 hours in Clash of Heroes SP, aside from me?).
I'm not saying that multiplayer was
less or that it should take less priority, just that it seems it's become an increasing priority to the point where that's
all that many of my friends play. They're just not interested in checking out other games. Even my old CS-playing friends still played other things.
But the genres simply do not receive much recognition by the average consumer these days, compared to the earlier days when you had the likes of Bullfrog, Funcom, Blue Byte Software, Lucasarts, Westwood, (old) Activision, Looking Glass, (old) id Software, etc. being prominently presented on retail shelves to all consumers of gaming. Back then a grandmother could walk into a store and buy Dungeon Keeper for her grandchild, while today she would have to search after it on the Internet, go on esoteric websites like GOG or Steam, sign up for an account, purchase/gift the game to her grandchild, etc. In that sense, these genres are simply esoteric, i.e. "being understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest".
I think we are approaching the topic differently: Me in terms of genre availability and exposure to non-invited consumers, whereas you are approaching it in terms of the genres' sales numbers / amount of backers.
I'd argue that it's not just availability, it's
amount. Earlier in this thread, someone said "one of each of these genres was released." Really? Just
one? In 2014, we're expecting, what, four Infinity-style RPGs to hit? Three? Even that's not quite as much as it used to be.
But still, what about the immersive sims? Are we seeing nearly as many innovative, SP first-person games getting released, for instance? NOPE. In fact, the first person perspective is one of the least-used perspectives out there.
It seems like the more you express your case, the more your case seems to be "I used to like games more than I do now" and the less your case is actually based on any formal shift in terms of what's available and being made. I think the reason why no one seems to be groking what you're actually looking for is because you don't have a clear idea what you're looking for, just that current games aren't giving it to you.
In an effort to come up with a coherent taste for you based on what you've expressed so far, your taste seems limited to:
- Single player games in either of the following two genres:
- RTS including resource management, other types of RTS or other types of strategy games are not acceptable (although you don't like the #1 entry in the genre over the last few years; Starcraft 2)
- First-person games with heavy atmosphere and stealth elements (although you don't like one of the major entries in the genre over the last few years; Amnesia)
- Flight simulators
- High production values only, everything else is not ambitious enough
I rewrote the OP, so I hope it makes more sense.
I have
no fucking clue why you and a couple other people think I want high production values. I said in the original OP that I'd be happy with a low-fi game, and I meant it. I said in a reply somewhere that I'd be content with something that had Thirty Flights of Loving's levels of visuals.
The game I'm working on now for my Capstone class at school is pretty low-fi. It's the
gameplay that I'm interested in. Great graphics are
wonderful, but they're no must.
Fantastic OP, Doc. You mirror a lot of the sentiments I have personally to a great extent.
Also, this point of yours is very pertinent. Dawn of War 2 is basically a DoW without base building. Which is the very antithesis of a RTS. Controlling a few squads to shoot up some enemies across a tiny map does not a RTS make.
I still don't understand why they had to take out/simplify the resource management aspect and base building that the original DoW and its expansions had. I miss constructing those killbots with their quirky shredding animations lol.
I think they wanted to make a different kind of game. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just more Diabloey than I'm interested in.
Although I'd agree level design was made with consoles in mind, the UI is even less friendly to controllers. It's just a bad UI.
Oh? I haven't tried it with a 360. A lot of it just seemed very... well, the text was big, things seemed like they were designed for sticks, etc.