Rose Tinted Glasses.... or were those days better?

DHR

DHR

DHR

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I've just been looking through the best frags thread. It kicked me down memory lane and i started to think about PC gaming between 1995-2000, they were the best years.

So the graphics aren't great but you still cannot beat a good Quake2 CTF match, same goes for a UT deathmatch, Half Life single player anyone? Dare I mention Carmageddon? The original GTA? The Broken Sword series? What about PC Zone being a measly £2.99 :p

I remember buying my first 3dfx card with glee! Now there is a new GFX card release every week, it seems like the market is flooded so much so that its not as fun as it used to be. Even forgetting the consumer related side of things, the community has grown that big now it's as if its too big. I remember being able to log onto the same Quake server and see the same people day in day out..... now there is much less chance of that for your casual player.

* sniff *
 
I think it's more that there were a lot of 'firsts' then. Things that had never been done before and made your jaw drop - mmoprgs, online fps's, 3D graphics accelerators.

You don't get the innovation anymore because the whole industry has become so commercialised. It's hard to get excited when it's not unusual for a new game to be just the 5th re-hash of an idea from 1998.
 
*sighs*

Rose tinted come on man think about it... there are some very good games out at the moment (check out the screenshot thread!)... the thing about it is that the cost of creating games has spiralled due to the consumer (us) wanting better looking games.

This means that there are less companies (software houses) around because they can't afford to create these games, which leaves big companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo to dominate the games market, buy smaller software houses (Microsoft buying Lionhead) and only developing for their own consoles...

I have to say though there are about five or six games that I'm looking forward to this year including assasins creed!

Stelly
 
A lot of the games had new inovations that sadly seem lacking these days as developers are under pressure to create popular franchises rather than unique games due to the high cost especially when creating console games.

I'm hoping that in-game advertising can help change that to encourage more risk taking for game ideas.
 
Its a bit of both i think. Things are definately better now, its just that they're not as original or fresh these days.

A new 8800 is clearly the best, but no subsitute for the experiance of seeing accelerated 3D grahpics for the very first time, even if it was just 640*480 with bilinier filtering. The gap between that and software rendering was vast. Then there was the move form 2D to 3D before that. I was stunned by Wolfenstein 3D. How was it possible??

Games are the same, they're making better quality titles now, but we're stuck with a standard set of genres now, which all follow the usual trends. In the old days developers were more adventurous.

what disapoints me now is that we still get some very poor voice acting, scripting, artistic flair, music and direction. Its long since time that developers matured in those areas.
 
the speed with which hardware is developing is also a major problem with todays games industry.

Ive a book on game development, in which the devs for HL talk about the 2 or 4mb limit the gfx cards had and how they had to overcome that problem with some really clever programming.

Today, the devs cant keep up with the constant change of gfx cards, sound cards etc. Never mind the fact that they should spend some time optimising for it, or have to create a new way of getting around a problem.

With newer gfx cards and users buying more and more ram it leaves room for sloppy development resulting in more and more bugged games.
 
it's the same with many aspects of computing.

i remember having most games on a bunch of floppies. before the net was really in place, i'd get my demos from mags and the information in them was actually worthwhile.

you'll always crave more immersion. i don't feel any better off now with 8800's than we were back then on the brink of 3D engines, or even before that with our 8-bit machines.

not saying developers aren't trying, just when i compare my state of well-being when playing games and what i look forward to doing on a pc, i'm really no more excited or satisfied than i was back then.

infact, i'd happily sit and wait 10 minutes for a game to load of a tape at one point, sometimes watching the damn screen flash-load. maybe it's the lack of responsibility, no time constraints when you're a kid that allows you to do that sort of stuff. i know i couldn't possibly handle it now.
 
I don't know. Looking back on things there was just as much dross about then as there is now. There were new ideas but occasionally badly implemented and more often than not things were just rehashes of old themes.

Going back a bit before PC games, the spectrum had a load of isometric games after Knightlore/Alien8/and so on. Some of them were very bad. Often, games were conversions of arcade titles and some of them fared well (Space Harrier was okay while I thought R-Type was poor). Again, there is a lack of imagination. Platform, Shoot 'em up, exploration and so on were the stape game of then.

Whilst technology improved with the 16 bit platforms, imagination did not. Games had the ability to be faster, more colourful and with better sound but the basic premise was generally the same. Even a cool game like Psygnosis' Barbarian was a platform at heart.

Of course, there were a few exceptions: Dungeon Master and Syndicate for example. But were these anything new? Maybe Syndicate but Dungeon Master was 3D moster maze with better graphics...

Ideas are running out a little, but with games like Spore(?) on the horizon there is still scope.

As for online - the more the merrier. I love big BF2/CS:S servers because there is always somebody worse than me :p
 
at end of the day if really good games made already or long time ago that have brill game play,which is most important factor in my book ,cant really be bettered by better graphics.a lot seems to fall through the cracks at moment as mainly eye candy.probably why a lot of peeps going back to old favourites like cs and cod 1 and similar cause current games are not very good compared to these past masters.gameplay most important then graphics maybe take a leaf out of nintendos book cause they seem to adere to this formula.
 
The first cinema goers got excited about a film about a train coming towards them. Apparently half the audience ducked!

Now we are approaching graphics processing that is photo realistic and easily surpasses the quality of those early pioneering film makers.

And just as those early audiences soon became tired of seeing the same type of film that just shows of the technology so too are games becoming tiring as they too are basically just showing off the technology.

What the game industry needs now something like The Last of the Mohicans (1920, Brown, Tourneur) that used the technology of the time to tell a captivating story rather than using technology for the sake of it. Or wait a couple of more years (until DX10 matures or DX11) and hopefully you might get to play a Speilberg, Tarantino or a Scorsese game.

:D
 
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Players were more 'behaved' as servers were not as abundant as they are today, which meant if you got banned from one or two, you were limited in where you could play, same goes for if everyone thinks you're a nob.
 
Trouble is there are no really original games in existance today. There's a trend to go to graphics over decent gameplay, and far too much stuff just looks pretty & plays like crud.
Look at Alpha Centauri & Civ 2- Both of those far exceed any of the sucessors that have come and gone in the time since they were created. Admittedly, much of this was (IMHO) due to the departure of Brian Reynolds from Firaxis, and what this shows is that all the truly original game designers have departed. Too much of the problem is also due to a resistance to invest in anything other than already proven ideas/ franchises, & this means all the original designs are pushed underground.

-Leezer-
 
dgmug said:
pulp fiction with same type of graphics of the real film argghhh live and dream.probably be in wheel chair by time it happens :D
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Depends on how old you are now.

go back about 6-7 years and you have Playstation 1 type graphics. Go back 17 years and you have Amiga type graphics. Go back 20 years and you have Commodore 64 type graphics, go back further than that and your playing pong.

So in 25 years you have gone from black and white blocks to Crysis. Can you not imagine what games will be like in 10 years if the follow the same trend? Especially with multiple core GPU's and CPU's and massive parallel computing here and present. It's only the software that needs to catch up. Pulp fiction with graphics like the film in 10 years. You bet.
 
the-void said:
Depends on how old you are now.

go back about 6-7 years and you have Playstation 1 type graphics. Go back 17 years and you have Amiga type graphics. Go back 20 years and you have Commodore 64 type graphics, go back further than that and your playing pong.

So in 25 years you have gone from black and white blocks to Crysis. Can you not imagine what games will be like in 10 years if the follow the same trend? Especially with multiple core GPU's and CPU's and massive parallel computing here and present. It's only the software that needs to catch up. Pulp fiction with graphics like the film in 10 years. You bet.
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True , as technology progresses in the day to day viewing it becomes mainstream and plain.

I had a Sinclair ZX81 and was astounded by a game called 3D Monster Maze.

Given another 10/20 years full 3d virtual reality gaming will exist.

Patience :D

Mark
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Players were more 'behaved' as servers were not as abundant as they are today, which meant if you got banned from one or two, you were limited in where you could play, same goes for if everyone thinks you're a nob.
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Probably some truth in that, in the early days of Quake most people were on dialup connections with dodgy routing, and hence couldn't play outside the UK. The number of server providers was fairly limited, with a limited number of clan leagues to play in (UKCL/MCW/Wireplay being the main ones).

Also since most people had metered internet they wouldn't waste so much time being immature. When you are paying by the minute you are less inclined to hang around being a ****.

I don't buy 1995-2000 being the best years though. Yes, there were some good games, but you can still play those games today if you want.

Things seemed good at the time compared to what came before (e.g. 3dfx card) but when judged on merit they are mostly inferior to today's offerings. Even if you feel that gaming was more enjoyable in those days, imagine how much better it could have been with C2D, GF8, broadband etc and devs taking advantage of it.
 
the-void said:
Depends on how old you are now.

go back about 6-7 years and you have Playstation 1 type graphics. Go back 17 years and you have Amiga type graphics. Go back 20 years and you have Commodore 64 type graphics, go back further than that and your playing pong.

So in 25 years you have gone from black and white blocks to Crysis. Can you not imagine what games will be like in 10 years if the follow the same trend? Especially with multiple core GPU's and CPU's and massive parallel computing here and present. It's only the software that needs to catch up. Pulp fiction with graphics like the film in 10 years. You bet.
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I've been gaming since the late 1970's and seeing your post has just pointed something out to me. I'm using my imagination less and less. Those stick/block graphics that I had to imagine where people have been replaced by computer graphics that require little imagination. I have fonder memories of Championship Manager and Championship Manager 2 for instance than Football Manager 2007 (even though FM2007 is the better game) because I had to imagine the game being played out rather than watching blobs move around the screen. Nothing can compete with your imagination and games aren't half so involving when you don't need to use your imagination.

Sure games of yesteryear always seem better than those currently available (some were, some were not) but I think the problem nowadays is that the market is saturated. Years ago you had fewer titles being released and the good games to games released ratio was far higher than it is today. Back then you might have had two good games out of every ten released and now it might be something like one game in every thirty.
 
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