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Author Topic: Fickle with gaming?  (Read 6322 times)

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Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Fickle with gaming?
« on: January 06, 2013, 03:21:52 AM »
There are exceptions, but by and large yes. Games just cost too damn much to make now; it makes most companies far too leery of taking any kind of risk by doing things differently, so you get a market almost completely flooded with imitations of the last blockbuster title, or if they're feeling really wild, imitations of the next previous blockbuster title with elements of the last blockbuster title sprinkled in. (And it doesn't help that nearly all the major developers are owned by megacorporate media conglomerates these days.) Even a lot of the exceptions are just that with more tweaking than usual done until something somewhat more interesting pops out.

Of course, you had that back in the day, too, but with much lower sums of money at risk per title, developers were a lot freer to follow their muse on interesting projects while the same-old paid the bills for it. Not anymore, sadly...

(I was hopeful that low-budget commercial indie gaming would prove to be the way out of this spiral of inanity, but it devolved pretty quickly into the nadir of the Internet Hipster Buzzword Mashup-A-Thon "creative" process. I blame the iPhone.)
Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
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"\'Legacy code\' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrup
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Fickle with gaming?
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2013, 07:19:38 PM »
Quote from: Kesa;721543
Out of curiosity what modern games do you think deserve to be considered classics? And why?
Morrowind. A crystallizing moment for the sandbox genre, reminding everybody that as good as GTA III was, that didn't mean that sandboxes had to be limited to urban crime sims. A huge, beautiful world, with a highly distinctive look that sets it apart from traditional "medieval Europe, but with dragons" fantasy settings, but small enough that the dev team were able to lavish detail and make every region, town, and dungeon feel unique. A gorgeous soundtrack that never gets old. A complex, intriguing plot, but one that you can pursue entirely at your leisure, instead of being dragged through twenty-minute cutscenes between spurts of gameplay like so many other fantasy RPGs, with plenty of other things to do instead if you want a break; and backing it up, a rich mythology in the form of a vast selection of well-written in-game literature. And best of all, a comprehensive editor suite included right there with the game, so that its player community has been able to create huge amounts of extra content, upgrade the graphics well past the awkward PS1-era models included with the original game, and generally keep it polished - maybe not quite to present-day standards, but definitely far better than other games from 2002 have ever got.

Even its own sequels haven't really equalled it, in my opinion.
Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/MT-32/D-10, Oberheim Matrix-6, Yamaha DX7/FB-01, Korg MS-20 Mini, Ensoniq Mirage/SQ-80, Sequential Circuits Prophet-600, Hohner String Performer

"\'Legacy code\' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrup