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[tha_Chiller]

mass effect doesnt hold a candle against mc kids

..man..i lol'd in the public place

[Dragonmaw]

exploit

TO THE MAX

[tha_Chiller]

It's not just games, but this generation of adults. We're nostalgic because something changed. Look at the media around you today, including not just games but music and films, too. It barely holds a candle to the stuff of previous generations, and this isn't just a sentiment held by new adults who are bitter, but even some kids of this current generation will be the first to tell you that they wish they had been born earlier.

I'm not quite sure why things are held to a much lower, more vapid standard these days, but when I figure it out I'll let you know.

really great answer sir.

[C.A. Sinner]

There are very obvious reasons for these observations. The video game industry has a lot more money and effort invested in it these days. This is why more games seem competent, and it's much more rare to see complete train-wrecks. This is also why the volume of games released has increased to its current fire-hose rate.

this plus better and more marketing resources. publishers probably have a better understanding of which types of games are going sell well with which target group etc. i think that's a natural evolution all creative industries inevitably undergo.

[JDM]

It's not just games, but this generation of adults. We're nostalgic because something changed. Look at the media around you today, including not just games but music and films, too. It barely holds a candle to the stuff of previous generations, and this isn't just a sentiment held by new adults who are bitter, but even some kids of this current generation will be the first to tell you that they wish they had been born earlier.

I'm not quite sure why things are held to a much lower, more vapid standard these days, but when I figure it out I'll let you know.

Pretty sure I would've written this post in 1998, when I was pining for Alfred Hitchcock movies and the Beatles.  And my parents might have written it in 1980, as they pined for John Wayne westerns and Patty Cline music.  And Confucius basically wrote it 2500 years ago as he pined for the sage kings of earlier dynasties.

[Derek]

No, it's more like the difference between one of icycalm's posts and one of yours. I'll let you figure out which one is more charming.

See there you go, I have a cartoony David Caruso muppet head next to my posts and he has a photorealistically rendered next-gen digital image of a kid playing with toys. The definition works again!

Ha, well, I think cartoony/goofy works sometimes, but even realistic images benefit from some exaggeration, looseness, or "painterliness".

Here, I found an example of what I'm talking about:



http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/feb/01/russell-maliphant-rodin-hip-hop

Maliphant points out the extraordinary realism of certain details, the rope of a leg muscle, the tautness of a tendon. Yet he's equally impressed by how the 19th-century French sculptor "amplified the expressiveness" of his figures by enlarging their hands and feet, and exaggerating the twist of a torso.

Hopefully that makes a little more sense. And enlarging things is not the only way to "amplify the expressiveness"... nor do you have to do it to the point of cartoons or use cel-shading, etc. It's probably a little bit different for everything.

[C.A. Sinner]

fun fact: in the early (i think) middle ages, the statues on kings' tombs all had the exact same idealized face. in central europe at least.

[iffi]

It's not just games, but this generation of adults. We're nostalgic because something changed. Look at the media around you today, including not just games but music and films, too. It barely holds a candle to the stuff of previous generations, and this isn't just a sentiment held by new adults who are bitter, but even some kids of this current generation will be the first to tell you that they wish they had been born earlier.

I'm not quite sure why things are held to a much lower, more vapid standard these days, but when I figure it out I'll let you know.

Pretty sure I would've written this post in 1998, when I was pining for Alfred Hitchcock movies and the Beatles.  And my parents might have written it in 1980, as they pined for John Wayne westerns and Patty Cline music.  And Confucius basically wrote it 2500 years ago as he pined for the sage kings of earlier dynasties.

QFT.

[mirosurabu]

Basically, nostalgia is when I engage in an activity for the sake of good memories. Recently I played NBA Live 98. Was it fun? Yes. Was it better than NBA 2k12? No. Same about Winning Eleven 4. Or even games like SMB.

Now as for games getting boring - why is that? The simplest (and thus, the best) explanation is that once you play a lot of games you cease to be representative of general market.

[Manuel Magalhães]

It's not just games, but this generation of adults. We're nostalgic because something changed. Look at the media around you today, including not just games but music and films, too. It barely holds a candle to the stuff of previous generations, and this isn't just a sentiment held by new adults who are bitter, but even some kids of this current generation will be the first to tell you that they wish they had been born earlier.

I'm not quite sure why things are held to a much lower, more vapid standard these days, but when I figure it out I'll let you know.

Pretty sure I would've written this post in 1998, when I was pining for Alfred Hitchcock movies and the Beatles.  And my parents might have written it in 1980, as they pined for John Wayne westerns and Patty Cline music.  And Confucius basically wrote it 2500 years ago as he pined for the sage kings of earlier dynasties.

QFT.

[vinheim3]

we're nostalgic because new gimmicks or combination of game elements were exploited to the max in the past. We were given a sandbox with which to toy around and mess with these gimmicks, and perfect our understanding and exploitation of game elements. This way, we can be the first few to create the "best character" or "best game" or just continue to toy around with the gimmicks for fun or to show off some skill

nowadays, gimmicks and game elements are getting old, and people who come up with fun, new gimmicks aren't exploiting it to the max

if I told you that all these words i just quoted mean basically nothing would you think i'm insane

i think you're insane

but seriously, why? if it's coz I made it sound like "it's the only reason", I meant probably one

[Radix]

None of this shit is actual nostalgia.

[C.A. Sinner]

None of this shit is actual nostalgia.

playing vidgams because you associate them with happy childhood memories isn't nostalgia? 

[Radix]

Nope.

[Paul Eres]

It's not just games, but this generation of adults. We're nostalgic because something changed. Look at the media around you today, including not just games but music and films, too. It barely holds a candle to the stuff of previous generations, and this isn't just a sentiment held by new adults who are bitter, but even some kids of this current generation will be the first to tell you that they wish they had been born earlier.

I'm not quite sure why things are held to a much lower, more vapid standard these days, but when I figure it out I'll let you know.

i agree with phubans here. and i think the "more vapid standard" has to do with the much greater commercialization and commodification of games today vs in the past, as well as large corporations taking over where small companies used to dominate

regarding the first aspect, the game industry in previous decades had nothing like companies like zynga, as an easy example; zynga's admitted, stated goal is to get as many players as possible by cloning the games of other people and making them more polished and casual

regarding the second aspect, consider that about 80-90% of the game industry is owned by about five corporations. this wasn't the case in the 80s* or even 90s. they had big corporations then too, but generally games were made by smaller companies with dozens or hundreds of employees, not corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees. with greater size comes greater focus on the bottom line and less of a focus on the mission

*(unless you go very far back and consider the atari monopoly of the early 80s and late 70s, but even that was a monopoly only on home consoles, not on arcade machines, and in those days the real videogame industry was the arcade machines, which atari didn't have a monopoly over)

anyway, the reason indies are rising in the last half-decade (since 2007 or so) is exactly because the public is so dissatisfied with the games the big corporations create that they look elsewhere. the corporations in turn now seek to make sure they get some or most of the profits of the games made by indies (e.g. through publishing them on places like steam, xbla, etc.)