Different State of Gaming

[JOCool]

In my latest article of Game Informer there is an interview with Brian Fargo who was a producer of the original Wasteland back in the Apple/Commodore days (and the Bards Tale I & II series) and as as you may have heard he and many of those original developers are teaming up to work on Wasteland 2, as another recent Kickstarter event was profoundly successful (their goal was 900k and they raised more than 3 mil).

Anyway, the articles' interview had a part that really resonated with me and here it is verbatim:

GI: What was the situation and the culture like at Interplay back then that made creating a game like Wasteland possible?

BF: We have to give some credit to Electronic Arts also. Things are so different now... the speed of being a developer today, there are a lot of things that are really broken. I miss some of those times. I could have a deep philosophical conversation with Bing Gordon or Trip Hawkins. There were people there who cared about the totality of the project. And maybe that's because things weren't as expensive. But there was a deeper since of the art form of it all and how we could sit around and talk about these things without having every conversation go to production and money. So having them behind it right away was very important.

I guess this struck me because I can totally understand where he is coming from even as a gamer and comparing my experiencing from back then to now. Don't get me wrong, there are still some really good gaming experiences and, to a certain extent, some of the "art form" aspect of gaming is coming back with Indie developers and small teams that care more about the product than the money, but I can't help feeling that something is also missing in games today or as Brian put it, "...there are a lot of things that are really broken."

Yes I know I'm dating myself, having played and loved all those cheesy-good-games back in the day like Wasteland and the Bard's Tale series, but I am still a gamer today and probably play even more overall because there are so many different platforms to play on now. I just don't feel like a game has captured that same magic for me as it did in those days and even if it does for a bit, it losses steam and I think that has to do with how games are made these days. I'm not talking about all games, some Indie's or even games like Grim Dawn may have a passionate team and community, but most games are presented to the big wigs early on with concept and prototype, funding is requested, contracts and schedules are established, more people are thrown at the project, so much money is spent, and the original passion/focus/goal starts to fall by the wayside.

Anyway, I guess this rant isn't really about the state of gaming and more about the state of game development. I know in the end its about making a profit to continue doing what you love to do and that is making games, I just miss the "spark" that used to exist. Obviously this is all just one mans opinion and the reason why it is just in the Rants section of the forums.

Happy Gaming!
~J

[Beaston]

Thank you JoCool.

That was an interesting read.

I am 23 and I have played games from as little as 4 upto current day. Up until the age of 16 I never owned a PC. So I had a lot of backtracking to do. Playing alot of the old classics and must say that I enjoyed every minute of it, Baldurs Gate, Diablo etc...

I never looked back at Console games, I knew straight away the PC was for more superior back then... but now sadly the roles have reversed. Consoles take priority over PC gaming. Games have been dumbed down to suit the majortiy of players today, 12 year old kids All the PC gets are nasty console ports... Dev's will go where the money is.

So that is recognisable for me and many others,

but also I wonder if it is a case of Nostalgia and the fact that we are more aged and we remember the "Good ol'days" playing games, picking them up playing them whether we liked them or not, simply because it was all we had available at the time. Instead now we just mostly criticise them and compare them to others and cant enjoy a title anymore... Not to mention nearly every game in the world is available at the click of a button (pirating), maybe there is a lack of appreciation from our side?

Anyway, rant done. Thoughts?

[eNTi]

games back in the days were a revolution. our minds exploded with endorphins through the extreme sense of progress and new experiences. getting totally immersed in simple text adventures was our daily heroine... and now... we've got used to it. we've been there we've seen it all and we foresee most evolutionary steps, because they're just natural. only when games like minecraft happen to break out of the schemes we all know so well the spark is ignited again for some time. it just last much shorter these days. our expectations for a game sky rocket and this makes it nigh impossible to feel anything but loss, when reality hits. what we really need ... and it seems this is needed in shorter and shorter time spans, is another paradigm shift. something only the most brilliant of minds that think out of the box can imagine to be real and actually make it happen. we look into the past for this feeling of experiencing something grand and new instead of trying to find it in the future. that's why i think that most of the "back to the roots"-movements are doomed to fail.

[Capn Tucker]

I don't think the "Back to Our Roots" movements are a bad idea. There are a whole lot of us out there who still enjoy and want to play complex, PC only games. A whole lot of us who despise the fact that the only PC titles the high and mighty publishers deign to give us now are crappy ports of dumbed-down console games.
IMO the indie studios are a chance for us all to have decent PC games again, plain and simple..