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[Alan Wake]

Imagine we had consoles like Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox and Gamecube simultaneously for some time.

 

[Draugoth]

2010s was the final Golden Age.

2000s was the Peak.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

2010s was when the industry went full corporate (apart from indies and exceptions to the rule yadda yadda).

2000s was still the Wild West in some ways. Hard to beat that decade in terms of creativity and lasting impact.

 

[nial]

2he 3DS/PS Vita combo not living up to the DS/PSP combo was sad.

Imagine we had consoles like Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox and Gamecube simultaneously for some time.

The Dreamcast was already gone by the time those launched (except for PS2).

 

[simpatico]

00s were the absolute golden years for the medium and probably always will be. We won't get to see that type of advancement again. 10s were when we started flirting with the hypno-economic currency extraction model we all love so much now. Chock full of bright colored +15 weapon handling FOMO blaster packs and games designed to demand your attention on a daily basis. Developers are literally hiring the same behavioral scientists that work on slot machines in Vegas and gambling apps. Studying the effects of stuff like flashing light patterns mixed with audio cues and whatever other signals they can jam into your brain to pull money out of your wallet. That's just one small example of a very dark, very new corner of the development side of the industry.

 

[diffusionx]

Peaked in 2004-2005 and has been going downhill ever since

 

[Hypereides]

2000s easily. Early 2010s were still good... then it took a turn for the worse mid way. At least if we're talking about AAA.

The 2000s AAA games were brimming with imagination, individuality, personality, originality and creativity. It was almost like actual creators (read: not activists) were given carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they wanted and it worked most of the time. Now? not so much. I honestly think we're looking at the endgame of AAA unless the segment collectively wakes the fuck up and get their shit together.

 

[General Lee]

For a PC gamer like myself, 2000-2007 was the golden era. Crysis marked the very end of that era, and we only got crap ports after that due to rampant piracy making all the devs move to HD consoles instead. It took a long time to fix that, probably most of 2010's. Looking back, I guess Steam's largely to thank for that, and the console architectures converging around AMD hardware and Unreal/Unity. You could argue that this convergence has made all of gaming better overall, but you could also say it homogenized things and as the market has grown its gotten more stale in the AAA space too. Maybe that's more of a 2020's problem. There certainly was plenty of great games sprinkled around 2010's too. So it's very hard for me to say which decade was better overall personally.

 

[dreamcastluvr]

Been gamin' since late 80's and nothing beats the 2000's in quantity and quality.

Gaming was getting even better in the early 2010's until the likes of Anatra Sarkastian started popping up and guilting the studios into firing their "toxic male" devs and hiring activists that possess only a fraction of talent and sought to lecture gamers instead of entertain.

Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of great games from the 2010's and even currently, but I found myself buying less and less of the modern audience games and going back to retro gaming. Especially with how far emulators have advanced, retro gaming has never been better.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

The 2000s were when gaming changed into the entertainment juggernaut hobby it is today. So much amazing tech, new ideas, and rapid iteration on some of the most iconic franchises. Even putting aside my own nostalgia, it was an incredible time for the industry.

 

[Hadoukens]

2012-2016 really wasn't great for gaming. Only after playstation and nintendo's second wind did it get better.

Witcher 3 and Alien isolation are like my favorite games.

Arkham Knight was awesome too.

Also Doom 2016.

"How about no, Scott!" - Dr Evil

 

[deriks]

2000s by far

More experiments, games looking good month by month, and if you want to play a game, you just get a game and put on the thing to play

2010s establish the best quality ever in direction, but basically only safe games are launched and everything has bureaucracy to play