Video games used to be better - What went wrong?

[Vishera]

15 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I tried Dragon's Dogma demo on ps3, didn't really click with me and also ran horribly (iirc)

 

Dragon's Dogma is pretty much CAPCOM getting their feet wet, just like Ubisoft did with Assassin's Creed.

But in Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen CAPCOM made a lot of improvements, just like Ubisoft did with Assassin's Creed II. 

Though you may not like it based on your reply

 

15 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Fatal Frame is also the most unique,  i mean half the game is in first person and i love it (the way the camera works,  changing film on the fly, evading, etc)

It's a pretty good game, and i see that you really like the Samus outfit

[ewitte]

I've been enjoying both of the Plague Tale games.

[QuantumSingularity]

What happened is that games nowdays are made by the accountants of the studios, not real gamers. Everything is developed in such way to maximize profit. Sometimes stuff is even on the brink of destroying studios, despite them having something awesome as an idea. Case and point - Cyberpunk 2077. Absolutely astonishing game, but the suits demanded it being released before it was ready and it became the joke of the internet, despite being one of the games with the most awesome stories after Horizon Zero Dawn. I never thought i'd say it, but hell... it's even better story and atmosphere-wise than HL 2 - a game i recently thought of as maybe the GOAT.

 

There are still good games that deserve attention, but single player story focus is becoming more and more rare because even all the DLCs don't bring even close to the same profit as multiplayer microtransactions. 

[xAcid9]

38 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I would choose MW3 any day over MWII - Dedicated servers, No MTX, Can be played offline, no season passes and stupid things like that

I heard MWII gunplay is good unlike previous one.

No offline play? I think you can.

 

38 minutes ago, Vishera said:

This genre doesn't really appeal to me but they are different games each with it's pros and cons.

Of course, it's a different game with different look and gameplay but it still a city planner. You want Cities Skyline to copy Anno gameplay and mechanics? Why?

Also Cities Skyline is a better game compare to Anno 2070 imo. 

 

Also i can't wait for Manor Lords, I've played the demo and really liked it. I've been waiting for Banished successor-ish and this game might be it. 

 

 

38 minutes ago, Vishera said:

They completely different!:

The Batman Arkham games are open world super hero Beat Em Up

Dying Light 2 is a survival horror game

Skyrim is a fantasy action-adventure RPG

Dying Light 2 is a better game compare to Arkham City imo.

Open world, survival, beat em up with crafting. Combat feels nicer as well, unlike Arkham series almost QTE-ish combat.

I take Prototype/Prototype 2 any day over Arkham. 

 

Skyrim is on the league of it's own, that's why 10 years later we still have a new release of the same game on different consoles. 

 

 

59 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I didn't say it was the best, it's one of the best!

Skyrim, Batman Arkham City, Bully, Saints Row The Third, Total War Shogun 2, - All of these are very good games.

From that list, Skyrim is the only game that makes my mind blown. I think only Elden Ring is similar level to that nowadays.

 

Current list also have more variations compare to 2011 list. 

Revelation and Arkham is similar genre with similar combat.  

Bully and Saint Rows also similar genre/style. 

 

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

That's a speculation.

Nah, Fifa series will always be in Top5/10 in new release especially when it's the same year as World Cup competition like this year. 

[Mark Kaine]

47 minutes ago, Vishera said:

But in Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen CAPCOM made a lot of improvements, just like Ubisoft did with Assassin's Creed II. 

Though you may not like it based on your reply

 

yeah, it's one of those games i still need to try (i didn't know which version is which, now i know... Arisen is the newer one : p)

 

49 minutes ago, Vishera said:

It's a pretty good game, and i see that you really like the Samus outfit

lol, got me! and yeah, i really like it : D

 

 

[Guest]

You can pretend Arkham city is good, but I won't believe you. 

 

I mean .. both lists have modern warfare two!!

 

 

 

There's good AAA games. Just that most of them are on Nintendo and Sony. 

Dark tide is supposed to be really really good. 

So is dying light.

Sports games existed for like ever, just more people are playing on PC it seems.

 

 

[corrado33]

What changed?

 

The internet/Day one patches

 

The internet enabled game devs to be able to produce shitty games and finish "development" on them as the game is live.

 

This.... ruined gaming.

 

Back in the day, if a game was bad on release, people just didn't go out and buy it. Nowadays because of the internet (and online gaming), so many people buy games day 1. The ability of companies to update their game so much has literally ruined gaming.

 

Oh and microtransactions. 

[Mark Kaine]

32 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

The internet/Day one patches

 

33 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Oh and microtransactions

i - obviously - feel those are very much connected...

 

as for dlc, there's basically 2 kinds, 1 is an addition, like a story expansion or new modes (both of which can and are sometimes free) also in that category fall, imo, anything like free items, outfits,  etc, that are added later on *for free*. Basically a "thank you for playing" from the developers. 

And 2, paid expansions that somehow should have already been in the game to begin with, new *paid* characters, outfits,  weapons,  skills, etc. (ie. "season passes")

 

The latter is what "destroys gaming"...

 

 

as for patching, yeah, its cheap, lazy, etc, but its also totally understandable that devs would go this route, and is by itself not malicious,  can very well be malicious though and also lead to point #2 above.

 

At least there are still games being made without microtransactions of any kind,  although they become rare and that's especially true for online games.

 

My favorite online games were the early ones,  free to play and any dlc was purely optional or free...

 

That was namely Tekken Revolution (20k hours) and Soulcalibur Lost Swords¹ (10k hours) 

 

Funny enough not very well received for mostly stupid reasons,  because they were both *so much fun* !

 

Also probably served as a lesson for devs at large that "people dont like free stuff". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

 

¹now this game had 1 character (Amy) that became paid later on, but it wasn't a competitive game so i kinda felt it's ok, but of course that pissed off many people (who didn't play at the beginning when it was a free, additional character, ironically) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Avocado Diaboli]

You could play this game endlessly and compare games back to previous generations. Let's take 2004 as an example. That year had the following releases:

• Painkiller
• The Sims 2
• Half-Life 2
• Halo 2
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Silent Hill 4: The Room

And quite a few other noteworthy titles. Would I claim all of these are great games? No, absolutely not, even without the benefit of hindsight. But there was also a ton of crap you probably never heard of, let alone played. Same thing with the example of 2011. And I personally never understood the fascination with Skyrim or the Batman Arkham games and it still bewilders me that they consistently get mentioned as these supposed game-changing releases.

 

If you want good gaming experiences, you can still find them. You might have to look elsewhere than you're used to. But the democratization of game development with cheaper or free art and development tools means that people who enjoyed certain games from genres that are currently considered too risky for big budget development will end up producing something in the same mold. That's why I find it hilarious when people here say games these days are made by accountants and not gamers. Every day, literally hundreds of games get dumped to Steam from gamers trying their hand at game development. Sure, big budget game development has to go for broad appeal to make financial sense. But most games are getting made by gamers these days. But hey, that's what you wanted: You wanted gaming to be no longer a niche, to be mainstream, to not be looked at like you're a weird nerd for liking video games. Well, now everybody likes and plays video games. That means gaming necessarily has to appeal to everybody, not just nerds.

 

And as @LAwLzpointed out, the issue of FOMO (fear of missing out) is something that drives the gaming conversation among gamers. Gaming isn't just a hobby you do anymore to enjoy yourself. You do it to be part of a conversation, to get all the current memes, to have an opinion about the thing that's currently all the rage. Same reason you watch the currently hot Netflix/HBO/Amazon/Hulu/Disney+ show. You don't consume media for its own sake, but for the culture around it. That sucks. Chasing trends, having to be on top of everything and having the feeling of being left behind if you're not are the first signs that you're burning out. I've never done that and I generally play games that I fancy in the moment, not the most current stuff or just the same stuff over and over again on repeat.

[ewitte]

There are occasional titles I like but the normal "game" for me all along has been tweaking and getting things to run fast.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

You do it to be part of a conversation, to get all the current memes, to have an opinion about the thing that's currently all the rage. Same reason you watch the currently hot Netflix/HBO/Amazon/Hulu/Disney+ show. You don't consume media for its own sake, but for the culture around it.

you're probably right but it's really weird to me, i dont play any of these super popular,  basically gacha games (with super rare exceptions, and then probably not for long) and i still have the feeling i get most memes and stuff (which is funny even if or literally because i don't play certain games) I dont have the feeling of missing out by not playing them, i have the feeling of missing out *when* im playing them... (so i obviously don't)

 

And of course,  i do not watch hbo+amazonhulupayoutofyourarsewhathaveyoutrash streaming services ever , i don't have a twit account,  no zuck account,  etc, and have said from the very get go that these "social media" stuffs are utterly toxic and exist only for one reason,  to steal your data. 

 

... i do watch yt sometimes though (but much much less since they changed the design, cause i see where this is going and its just too ugly to look at)

 

my point is? i think you're right, but i simply don't get the consumerist  behavior of people,  of all age groups seemingly,  current popular social media/ digital services are mostly self-harm and basically nonsense because  alternatives / free alternatives are usually better (and "tv shows", besides getting "canceled" all the time, absolutely pale to what we got last century, and are therefore not worth it)

 

tldr: i rather watch Jennifer Aniston and Mathew Perry demoing windows 95 for an hour (actually  i watched it twice ) than watch the newest, ultra edgy game of thrones "thingy".

 

[QuantumSingularity]

The other thing that happened in the meantime between 2005-ish and now is the rise of consoles. Before them games used to be developed mainly for PC and then ported to consoles with cut down details. Now it's the other way around - most games get priority console developing and later get ported to PC. Fortunately there is a light at the end of the tunnel since this is most likely the last generation of consoles or at least the current concept of them. From the next gen they'll be most likely just pre-built low/mid tier PCs, running some sort of weird android based OS. And 1 by 1 game devs are following the trend. PCs are at the main scene again and that will allow us to get better games. 

[Vishera]

13 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

From the next gen they'll be most likely just pre-built low/mid tier PCs

They already are...

The PS4 is pretty much a low end PC running modified 2x Athlon 5150 APUs, newer PS4 models have Polaris.

The PS5 is using an AMD APU that is equivalent in performance to the Ryzen 7 5700G + RX 5700 XT

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, QuantumSingularity said:

The other thing that happened in the meantime between 2005-ish and now is the rise of consoles. Before them games used to be developed mainly for PC

uh ok, that must be a really narrow time frame, or regional differences.  consoles were *huge* here during the 90s/early2000s ...

 

not at least because of "moar ie better games"   i feel even amiga and atari stuffs was more popular than pc... everyone had a sega or nintendo, the rich kids had both or a neo geo... (and later playstation) literally no one i knew had a "pc" 

 

pcs started to get more popular around ~2000 too, so much is true, but before that? pretty niche,  most people didn't even know what a graphics card is or had the need to own one... (just like me, i thought its silly because my windows 95 pc played all the games i had just fine without some 500 bucks "voodoo magic" stuffs. : D)

 

 

[Vishera]

22 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

uh ok, that must be a really narrow time frame, or regional differences.  consoles were *huge* here during the 90s/early2000s ...

 

not at least because of "moar ie better games"   i feel even amiga and atari stuffs was more popular than pc... everyone had a sega or nintendo, the rich kids had both or a neo geo... (and later playstation) literally no one i knew had a "pc" 

 

pcs started to get more popular around ~2000 too, so much is true, but before that? pretty niche,  most people didn't even know what a graphics card is or had the need to own one... (just like me, i thought its silly because my windows 95 pc played all the games i had just fine without some 500 bucks "voodoo magic" stuffs. : D)

 

 

As matter of fact PC game sales rose significantly thanks to the PC Gaming boom that began in 2017.

And in 2021 PC game sales were equal to consoles - And that lead to many devs and publishers deciding to release their previously console exclusive games to the PC,

Even Sony started releasing it's games to the PC!, Heavy Rain, God of War, Spiderman, Detroit Become Human and more.

Another examples are the Yakuza and Persona games which used to be exclusive titles to Playstation.

(Now those are good games i recommend playing :D)

 

https://www.thegamer.com/pc-console-sales-capcom-equalizing/

 

The PC gaming market has a huge potential for revenue and profit that developers can no longer ignore.

[Mark Kaine]

Ah, i knew pc gaming was on the rise for a while (as stated it really started around 2000 here, suddenly people had "gaming pcs"...) but yeah, i wonder if that recent boom was influenced by ryzen cpus,  i do remember that's when gaming pcs really became affordable.

 

i was sailing just fine on my athlon 64 and vista until then! ~

 

(and yeah, i did play some games on it but i was mostly on playstation... but even then,  pc had always "sharper" graphics,  less motion blur etc)

[corrado33]

6 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

as for patching, yeah, its cheap, lazy, etc, but its also totally understandable that devs would go this route, and is by itself not malicious,  can very well be malicious though and also lead to point #2 above.

Unfortunately I think it's gone more malicious than anything else nowadays. Games are released downright unfinished with the expectation that the underpaid devs will finish it before day 1. Has there been ANY AAA game released recently that WASN'T broken on release? 

Back in the day games were READY on day 1. There may be a few MINOR things to fix here or there, but for the most part you could buy the CDs/DVDs on day 1 and play the entirety of the game and enjoy it. Patches were rare and usually only done for balance or QoL. 

 

Because that pressure isn't there anymore, games aren't even finished before release. It's stupid. I hate it. 

 

FINISH your damn game before releasing it devs. It's not hard. Just finish it or push it back. 

[LAwLz]

14 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Ah, i knew pc gaming was on the rise for a while (as stated it really started around 2000 here, suddenly people had "gaming pcs"...) but yeah, i wonder if that recent boom was influenced by ryzen cpus,  i do remember that's when gaming pcs really became affordable.

 

i was sailing just fine on my athlon 64 and vista until then! ~

 

(and yeah, i did play some games on it but i was mostly on playstation... but even then,  pc had always "sharper" graphics,  less motion blur etc)

I don't think Ryzen had much to do with PC gaming becoming popular.

My first gaming PC, which was midrange at the time (today's equivalence would probably be like an RTX 3050 and a Ryzen 5600X) cost me the equivalence of about 800 dollars. 

 

I don't really think gaming has become more affordable, even if we go back to the launch of Ryzen.

 

I think you might be experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

 

 

Or a more likely explanation is that the pandemic, where people were forced to stay inside all day on top of being given a buttload of cash (and no holiday to spend their money on) caused people to game more. 

I am fairly sure that Microsoft even said that the pandemic was the reason for why their gaming business has been doing so well the last couple of years. It's not too far fetched to assume PC gaming got a similar upswing as for example Xbox got.

[Vishera]

43 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think Ryzen had much to do with PC gaming becoming popular.

My first gaming PC, which was midrange at the time (today's equivalence would probably be like an RTX 3050 and a Ryzen 5600X) cost me the equivalence of about 800 dollars. 

 

I don't really think gaming has become more affordable, even if we go back to the launch of Ryzen.

 

I think you might be experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

 

 

Or a more likely explanation is that the pandemic, where people were forced to stay inside all day on top of being given a buttload of cash (and no holiday to spend their money on) caused people to game more. 

I am fairly sure that Microsoft even said that the pandemic was the reason for why their gaming business has been doing so well the last couple of years. It's not too far fetched to assume PC gaming got a similar upswing as for example Xbox got.

The current PC gaming boom started in 2017, That's one if the reasons The Verge decided to do a guide on how to build a PC.

The boom began with the rising popularity of Twitch streaming and Fortnite in 2017.

[QuantumSingularity]

21 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

uh ok, that must be a really narrow time frame, or regional differences.  consoles were *huge* here during the 90s/early2000s ...

 

not at least because of "moar ie better games"   i feel even amiga and atari stuffs was more popular than pc... everyone had a sega or nintendo, the rich kids had both or a neo geo... (and later playstation) literally no one i knew had a "pc" 

 

pcs started to get more popular around ~2000 too, so much is true, but before that? pretty niche,  most people didn't even know what a graphics card is or had the need to own one... (just like me, i thought its silly because my windows 95 pc played all the games i had just fine without some 500 bucks "voodoo magic" stuffs. : D)

 

 

Yes in the late 80s to mid 90s, consoles were HUGELY more popular than PCs and we are talking stuff like Atari, SNES, Sega Mega Drive 2 and so on. But by the end of the 90s and with the rise of the internet, PCs become the go-to place. That was also helped by games like Quake, Half - Life and NFS which were noticeably better than their console counterparts + the added benefit of Multiplayer, which the consoles back then lacked. I graduated from high school in 2006 and up until that point the narrative was basically this "consoles are a good fun for kids". Once you were in your teen years, PC was the way to go and no one even questioned that. PS1 and PS2 were basically dead in the demographic of 12 and over. There were still very few grown ups who would occasionally play on them, but it's was like 0.00001%. No one played NFSU 2 on PS2 because it was looking like a blurry mess compared even to the low PC settings.

Then in 2007 the PS3 launched here in Europe and i got my first hand experience with the change of narrative. Had my first real job at a local tech market and for the first like 6 months, till the middle of the year it was bought exclusively by parents for their children. Then all of a sudden people like me in their early 20s (i just turned 20 at that time) started purchasing them not necessarily to play games on them, but because they were the cheapest way to get into Blu-Ray, which we all believed was the next big thing. And when you have that BR player which plays games as well on that expensive new flat TV you have, why not throw in some games. And so, step by step people were lured back to consoles. Yes, the games were with noticeably worse quality, but they were much easier to setup and play on big screen than the PC and required no maintenance. We would still have those hardcore PC gamers like me who refused to go the peasant way, but for the developers the uprise was undeniable. They refocused their efforts into developing consoles first and then porting to PC and to this day it is a very clear difference. And then add XBOX Live, PSN and other stuff that got people used to the fact they have to pay constantly for gaming, and bam - microtransactiones. Studios basically got license to print money and there was no more need to even try. 

[boxybox]

i think like with pretty much everything, with how shameful some of the practices have become, i.e hiring lawyers to see what kind of legal gambling can be sold to children, hiring psychologists to hit the sweet spot with mechanics to keep us paying with limited bp's n other mtx garbage in full priced games, releasing unfinished messes that take years to patch up and so on, the list of absolute garbage that's being introduced to gaming could go on forever

 

while some of these are not new practices for other industries it feels relatively new in comparison with gaming, and it's easy to get a lil bit of negative bias against the entire gaming industry as a whole because of it. sprinkle in a lil nostalgia, some rose tinted glasses and it's easier to say gaming was better back then. admittedly, triple A titles are absolutely slacking lately because it's becoming an worringly common trend to sell you 1/3rd of a game at full price and call it finished, maybe promise to fix it later or some egregious pubs/devs will even try to sell you the remainder.. and the absolute mental amount of bargain bin titles that take up way too much space on digital storefronts can be super frustrating.

 

i really couldn't be happier with how things are turning out as a whole, i.e the emulation scenes, the accessibility of absolute vast amounts of knowledge and guides for various things like building a PC, how to XYZ, hell, accessibility in general. or that it's it's never been easier to use a game engine to make your own game, the versatility modders can bring to the table with things like homebrew on consoles, the absolute incredible indie titles and small or even one-man teams that we can find and be exposed to. VR, while still kinda gimmicky in it's current form is still something i'm excited to potentially grow and become less clunky and full of seams. for all the faults though, i don't think it's all doom and gloom.

[Mark Kaine]

52 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

the added benefit of Multiplayer

regarding everything you said, i don't necessarily disagree,  ie, i can see a situation where that is "reality" but my experience was different,  yes, around 2000 pcs became more popular,  but there always was a huge divide regarding the software... sure there was multiplatform stuff as you mentioned,  but consoles typically had the better exclusives (that's how they "survived") and until... ~2010 or so i knew way more people with consoles than pc, but its true many had both...

 

thing is as said, software development maybe was always done on pc (the actual programming) but there was still a huge divide in exclusive titles, etc.

 

And what i quoted above is an excellent example how different people can perceive things differently...

 

between 2000 and 2014 (roughly) i was playing *a lot* of multiplayer games, almost exclusively on playstation,  and precisely because of how easy it was to set up (and at a time where it was at least initially true, there were a lot less cheaters on consoles,  which changed later on, to be  sure)

 

ie. ps2 had a modem, and it worked just fine   hence i cant really agree that multiplayer was an advantage somewhere else... i played online so much on consoles (and still find the experience somewhat better tbh, for some reason Steam is *very* laggy for me most of the time, or the games im playing just have horrible netcode...)

 

ps: indeed,  consoles went downhill for me with the ps4, overall a huge disappointment,  and with paid multiplayer it was just not worth it for me anymore, also reason why xbox never really clicked with me... paying just to play online simply seems absurd...

[mapegl]

I am gaming since the mid 90s and I have to say that a lot of things have gotten way better.

 

To me, it has never been this good. We have some really nice AAA titles as well as a great indie scene nowadays, where I feel that in the past the choices were a bit more limited. It seemed like you either got something from a big publisher or it was going to be trash (obviously with exceptions). This is so not true today where the choices are massive.

 

What bothers me is that big studios try to milk us with crap. My best example is battlefield. I absolutely loved 1942 and played it so much. We even had our own dedicated LAN server once. After that I bought every single bf game and even though bf3 had massive issues in the beginning, they fixed them and it became a great game. Heck, even BFV got fixed in the end. However, the latest one is truly a nail in the coffin of a franchise. I don't want to start the discussion here, but the general gist is that it has failed and they abandoned it.

 

And that is why I also sometimes wonder if gaming used to be better. Because my nostalgia makes me want to have my old beloved games with the same feeling, but on my shiny newer PC. However, the games have changed so much that a CoD nowadays feels nothing like the original games, which I actually also loved. 

 

 

 

 

[QuantumSingularity]

Well it's both a mix of nostalgia and something called "passion" from the studios. 15-20 years ago of course studios cared about profit and publishers wanted to win more money, but the way to make those, was through hard work, dedication and passion. From script and story writers through level designers to programmers, everyone just wanted to put out the most astonishing game that has come yet. Games weren't just a microtransaction platform masked as a game. That's also the reason why games came out slower than they are today. Gaming as an industry wasn't nearly as profitable as it is today. We couldn't even imagine that gaming would be a viable source of income back then. Sure there were tournaments with some price money, but it was purely for fun and not for profit by streaming, vlogging or selling w/e it is game related. Once you change the shift from pure fun to occupation then it's not the same fun anymore. Sure we get some good games from time to time, but just take a look at what this whole situation did with Cyberpunk 2077. A game that is astonishing at it's core. One of the very few in the last decade which focused on the PC platform instead of the consoles and one that was controlled by suits and investors caring about their money instead of the people with the real passion for the product. There are clear signs that not only some things couldn't be finished in time, but things that got removed as well, so they can be re-introduced later. Almost every game in the last 5-6-7-8 years, with minor exceptions, feels unfinished just because studios leave stuff out to earn more by introducing it later.

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, mapegl said:

I am gaming since the mid 90s and I have to say that a lot of things have gotten way better.

 

to me the 90s and early 2000s had a huge advantage,  rental stores. you could literally play anything you want for literally peanuts (2 bucks/day?)

 

not sure about pc, but for consoles that was certainly true.

 

otherwise what was really better,  then or today,  is a matter of taste... we still get great games,  but I feel the real classics were more plentiful back then.

wipeout,  tekken,  f-zero, goldeneye, tie fighter, resident evil, doom, gow, halo, gran turismo, legend of zelda, dino crisis, chrono trigger, sonic, giana sisters, street fighter, silent hill, super mario, super metroid, metal gear solid, snatcher, ninja gaiden, burnout , monkey island, shadow of the beast, tetris, mario cart, mega man, medal of honor,  pac man, pong (lol), thps... the list is basically endless... i don't really think we get lots of equivalent stuff with long-lasting  effects anymore,  and that's also because publishers don't want to risk it anymore and rather bring out lots of samey stuff (that's also seen by the unification of controls,  that are often very similar,  even throughout genres)

 

so yes, we still get great stuff but for me its far and between, and often sequels of old classics (which isnt necessarily bad, but its a bit too much imo, and shows a lack of new ideas and risk taking)

 

Ultimately, a matter of taste,  no doubt.

 

Edit: 

2 hours ago, mapegl said:

What bothers me is that big studios try to milk us with crap.

what's funny to me, when they bring out "remakes" or "remasters" of old games, its often something I've never played, or just tried somewhere,  so i usually see if i can get the original for less somewhere and play that instead... huge reason why i love emulation... and how i found some of my favorite games, such a fatal frame 2 crimson butterfly, or dino crisis ~

 

This is also to say, im often simply not interested in what studios put out nowadays (the nth sequel to a game i may or may not like, etc)

 

but it still inspires me to try out new things, ironically. 

 

(currently im really trying to get a msx emulator going, but its so niche, and there isnt much documentation,  i had no luck so far...)