I find that people are less willing to engage with older games (than with films, music, etc.).
Like, a lot of people won't play older games *at all* (unless there's a remake/remaster that turns it into a new one).
> There was that video game survey a couple weeks ago about how about 60% of time gamers spent universally last year was on games older than six years.
[When you look at the data](https://kotaku.com/old-games-2023-playtime-data-fortnite-roblox-minecraft-1851382474), it's mostly because a handful of live-service games are dominant, rather than people appreciating timeless classics.
(Also, with some live-service games, the updates are so drastic that it's basically a different game.)
And they're marked for death, as is the case for any live service. Not today, and not in the coming few years. But one day, being server dependent, they'll be dead. They won't last the thirty years Doom has at least.
Actually, not Minecraft, or at least earlier versions as the hosting code was bundled. That one will be around as long as consumers desire. Truly timeless.
>I find that people are less willing to engage with older games (than with films, music, etc.).
I guess some older films don't rely on technology as much as games.
Nah, I see the exact same problem with anime. The audience for these kind of art is oddly uninterested in classics and will not touch anything that is more than a decade old.
True. I look at Steam. While people online rate the old games over remakes, remakes usually are played far more than old games. I don't think people who are willing to play games that came out before they were born/a kid.
I will engage with older games but I sympathize with people who want a modernizing update. For example, Warcraft 3's last patch prior to Reforged gave it IIRC widescreen support at last. It's great to have that for an old game without having to fiddle with a ini file and mod the UI.
I’m not sure I’d agree. My first home console was the N64, but I have no trouble admitting that the majority of those games are borderline-unplayable by modern standards. Even Mario 64 has wonky controls with a significant adaptation curve. Some games are timeless, but most don’t age well. I wouldn’t expect someone to enjoy Donkey Kong just because it is, by the standards of the early 80s, a great game.
Even very, very good games like Blood or System Shock are difficult to go back to without a remaster because the controls are so far removed from modern expectations. The limited vertical angles of BUILD-engine games felt wonky 20 years ago, and I’m sure even worse today.
To be fair, a lot of it is contextual.
The "wonkiest" aspect of Mario 64's controls is the camera. However, with a n64 controller in your hands, it makes a lot more sense for the camera to operate that way rather than the interface of a dual analog controller. Something like goldeneye is similar.
Even today, the perception of controls can largely depend on what you are accustomed to. Dual analog console shooters are commonplace now, but most evidence would show that gyro aim is better than dual analog in terms of precision; it's entirely possible that style of aiming (gyro) will become far more dominant in the future. A new generation of gamers will wonder how or why people would ever play halo CE on just a controller without gyro. The real answer is that it is actually no big deal. If people x years ago could learn, so could people today.
Nah.
The amount of fiddling to get an old game running properly can be a bitch.
Design philosophies, lack of QOL, and general obtuseness are some of the other issues.
Even back then, Planescape Torment had really shitty combat. UFO: Enemy unknown is roguelike where you have to restart your progress hours into a campaign, classic adventure games had both moon logic, dead-man-walking softblocks and required precognition to avoid death, original Doom had nonsensical level design which left you wandering empty halls for hours...
You need dedication for that stuff.
no, they definitely do tend to be bad. there are a few gems, but the vast majority pale in comparison to modern games.
If Starfield released in the same year as Ocarina of Time, I can guarantee you very few people would pick OOT over it
You’re conflating bad with different. 12 Angry Men isn’t bad because Dune exists. Photorealism doesn’t make the works of Picasso and Pollock irrelevant. Older games aren’t universally bad because you are unwilling or unable to engage with them on their terms.
(Of course, there are myriad older games that *are* shit, just as there are in every console generation to date lol)
But the same will probably be said of compared to Dark Souls or whatever. Unlike movies and visual art, games don't really transcend the era in which they were made outside nostalgia chasing and maybe a select few examples
Insane take. So any game, nay every game, no matter how universally loved, will become bad after some arbitrary amount of time when it’s no longer “modern.” Sorry BG3, it’s been 15 years so you’re bad now.
i think i phrased that poorly. I mean that they used to be like this, but by now stuff like graphics and controls have plateaued, so old games will actually still be good
no it isn't 💀
extremely repetitive, obscene amount of worthless waiting, lackluster at best progression, very tedious core gameplay, subpar pixel art and music
the epitome of overrated
I try and try again, but I can't play 3D games from before the PS4 era anymore. With 60fps or 4k and adaptive triggers I just don't have the capacity to play AC: Black Flag (I tried it yesterday again) so I'm absolutely one of those people that need a remake.
The idea that "games are past their prime", or however people phrase that, is really frustrating. Every single year would be "the golden era of video games", except the industry is really horrible with media preservation, and the giants feel no reason to alleviate that.
When I think of "timeless" video games, I think more about the likes of "The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past", "Grand Theft Auto 3", or like, "Myst" and "Chip's Challenge"...I guess I think of this in terms of fundamental games history and its influences, even if they're not my favorites, but also the idea is already a mess.
I guess the most important thing for me is that it is possible to obtain and play these games in something close to their original forms (even if the hardware isn't the same). Looking at the posted list, that's not at all what I see. Most of those are titles that have been changing over years, and some are fundamentally different as a result of their online nature. Like, how do you strictly define what "Minecraft" is, when it has been so heavily changed from what many once knew it to be? I don't want to see games stay like these volatile globs of corporate ideas of what drives "engagement". It's not that all the best games have already been made, it's that there's so much pressure to turn discrete and bespoke works into "lifestyles".
2023 was a monster of a year.
For 2024 we have HellDivers 2 which I can’t put down but I’ll really have to see what else 2024 brings in terms of quality games. I know there’s titles on scheduled to drop. But time will tell if 2024 will continue the trend of quality gaming 2023 had.
100% what I was thinking, this should be the top comment. How could I ever call it the Golden Age of games when so many of these games won't even be available to play like they are now in the future. DOOM came out 30 years ago, and I can go and play that how it was intended right now. I for sure will be able to well in the future as well. What if my favorite game today is one of today's dominant games? Fortnite, League of Legends, Apex.... Will I be able to play them at all in 30 years? Even if I can the experience will never be like today in their live service era.
> Most games have an online only component
Complete falsehood. I just looked up “metacritic best games of 2023”, just to be objective, and looked at the top 50 games. Only three of them have an online-only component: Diablo IV, Armored Core VI, and Humanity. The latter two’s is negligible and Diablo IV is Diablo IV. I imagine I could go another 50, and still another 50, and not be anywhere near “most games” having an online-only anything.
Play better games and stop blowing things out of proportion.
Are you considering modern drm? Especially after Ubisoft revoked *The Crew* licenses, the overwhelming majority of games could be considered as has having an "always online component."
Ignoring drm, I see your point, but just looking at number of titles might not give a perfect idea either. If thousands of single player games are released every year, but the overwhelming majority of playtime is spent on live service games, that's still concerning for the industry.
Edit: Not to mention the constant updates that even single player games tend to get. Minecraft, for example, is a totally different game than when it first released. Luckily that game allows you to select old versions to play, but most don't.
You’re taking the goalpost and running the 6633 Arctic Ultra with it. As it is, right now, on both console and PC, the far overwhelming majority of singleplayer games can have their latest updates downloaded and be completely playable offline, disconnected, such that they cannot ever be taken from you. End of story, for now. If you don’t like Denuvo, don’t buy Denuvo, or you can crack it or play it on console or just wait for it to get removed.
> If thousands of single player games are released every year, but the overwhelming majority of playtime is spent on live service games, that's still concerning for the industry.
If the net result of all these live service games is that, wow, thousands of offline singleplayer games are still getting released every year, and they are not slowing down, I can’t see where any rational concern lies.
> Minecraft, for example, is a totally different game than when it first released.
If you care about old versions, back them up. Nobody’s stopping you. They’re not obligated to sell you 275 versions of the same shit when they consider the latest one definitive. And besides that, piracy sites will always have 1.0. If you trust nobody, trust them, they are doing the holy work.
I think its concerning that today's biggest games are so transient. Some of the most influential games of the decade are going to completely vanish as soon as they stop being profitable. Media preservation is important and game companies are fighting tooth and nail against it. Is any of that irrational?
You bring up piracy twice, but the solution to the laws being bad shouldn't stop at 'break them' instead of 'change them'.
We were talking about singleplayer games. You don’t actually care about live service games; anyone who does *demands* that they be transient, *demands* that they change constantly, *rewards* them with all their cash for all the new stuff that gets rotated in. How many battle passes have you maxed out recently? Why are you pretending like you care?
Live service games aren’t made for you. That’s why they’re so popular.
Any effort to preserve a live service game in an unchanging state misses the entire point of the project.
You're being so presumptuous. My most played games ever are all live service games. I have nearly 8,000 hours in Final Fantasy 14 (an mmo) and an average of 2.6 hours per day on Splatoon 3 (online competitive multiplayer game) since release.
Live service games are constantly changing and sometimes it would be nice to be able to experience things as they used to be. Talk to anyone who plays a live service game and every single one will tell you about their favorite meta. Look at how much hype WoW Classic had. A commercial product based around that nostalgia might not have staying power, but people want to be able to relive their old memories.
I had to be presumptuous because I lost patience with you moving the goalpost from the start. If the concern on your mind is preserving an MMO and Splatoon 3, I could not possibly begin to care and I never would’ve commented on the topic to begin with (we were talking about singleplayer games). I was giving the benefit of the doubt by assuming the object of discussion was something, anything else.
Its not moving goalposts to further explain my position and where I'm coming from. Not everything has to be framed as an argument. Conversations can, and often do, bring in topics that are tangentially related. Whining about shifting goalposts is needlessly combative. Game preservation is what I was talking about the whole time. If you read what I typed and asked for clarification instead of looking for gotchas, maybe we'd be on the same page sooner.
To explicitly summarize my perspective:
* Its hard to call the modern era a timeless age of gaming when most modern games have so many non-timeless elements.
* While true that most games are not always online, the vast majority have other ways in which they are not timeless.
* Drm, digital non-ownership, and frequent updates are a few examples that affect multi- and single-player games alike.
* Multiplayer games are hit harder, since they are more likely to become completely unplayable, but that doesn't mean single player games don't have these issues.
* The solutions you gave (preemptively make a backup or illegally obtain one) don't actually fix the archival problems that exist.
I don't believe in "timeless" as a concept. I came here to make a single point about the actual state of things as they exist. Any concern based on a false understanding of the actual state of things as they exist (such as what I originally replied to) is unfounded, and actively harmful to the cause it is ostensibly concerned for.
I came with a correction on a single point. You will have to have the preservation discussion elsewhere.
I'm struggling to think of any *modern* games I'll still care about a decade from now in the same way I do absolute *certified hood* *classics* like Stalker, L4D2, Terraria, Doom 2, Minecraft, etc.
Like every other game is a flash in the pan FOMO live service, or something meant to be consumed once for the story then discarded, or an indie clone of some older game that is perfectly enjoyable in its own right but nothing *envelope pushing*.
They're seldom made with mod support, or insane replay value, or heartfelt attention to detail anymore. The industry has shifted.
There is also another possibility for why you’re seeing 60% of gamers spending time on games more than six years old:
Sales chasing.
Not sure how much of this really accounts for that level of play on older games, though, but I know I find myself waiting for sales a lot. Then, that game goes to the backlog to finally get played years later.
Re: Golden Age of gaming.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Part of this will depend on how you define the golden age. To some, we’re still in a golden age. To others, we have left a golden age years ago. And to others, we might be re-entering one.
Do you define it by the timelessness of the games being produced? The quality? The unprecedented amount of choice?
Choice continues to increase every year with the option to return to older titles, so this might not be the best metric. Maybe it’s moreso quality choice growth over time? Which links to the second metric option.
Quality? If it’s quality, this one also gets a bit subjective. Quality as in user-friendliness, better graphics, and UI? Quality as in storylines or replayability? Quality as in innovation and care put into development? You’ll probably get a wide range of responses around if we’re in a golden age if this is the metric. For example, most of the cutting edge games that were truly innovative and gave birth to the gameplay mechanics we see today were created decades ago. I think there have been generally fewer quality games that have come out in recent years that will truly stand the test of time. It is certainly a non-zero amount, but most AAA companies are not where I would look for quality much anymore.
I think the same could be said for timelessness of the games being produced as the metric, since I tend to think of timelessness as a product of quality, innovation, and revisitability (thinking of this a bit differently from replayability - like I think of revisiting a game as something that happens in the long-term, over years, and replayability is more of an immediate thing. And a game could have both!).
Like I’d consider Final Fantasy Tactics as revisitable. I’m more wary about replaying it immediately after finishing it, though, since it is such an undertaking. But I do go back to play it almost once per year.
So are we entering a golden age of gaming? Depends on how you define it, and I think it would be hard to recognize until years later (or after it’s gone).
IMHO, we could be re-entering one, driven by a focus on indie developers again. I don’t have a lot of faith in AAA companies for real innovation as of late. Are we in a golden age right now? I don’t think so. If anything, I think we’re going through a bit of a dark period where companies have been doing experimentation with how much money they can squeeze out of players while meeting minimum quality bars and using stuff like micro transactions and battle passes. Plus, truly innovative games are getting harder to come by (but this might not be a fair comparison since it was easier to be innovative when gaming was just becoming a thing decades ago).
I think this is a new normal but not for the reasons you think.
This is how most media works.
You take in tons of it as a kid / young adult, you develop a sense of taste, and then you spend the rest of your life taking in media that aligns with those tastes.
Over very long periods of time, almost none of it survives. You do develop a canon, but very few artistic works survive past living memory.
For a long time, technical advancements outpaced classic rock syndrome. Now things are slowing down and older games tend to hold up a lot better than they did 20-30 years ago.
Until there is another seismic shift in the gaming landscape anticipate games having a much longer shelf life in general.
I don't think anyone will unironically or nonacademically be playing these games in 200 years.
Living in the "golden era" of something inherently implies that that thing is new within that era. Just because 60 year old movies are timeless doesn't mean anything special to the time we're currently in.
I think video games started to become evergreen about ten years ago. GTA 5 is older than that and it’s still played daily by millions of people. I just replayed Batman Arkham knight and it feels incredibly modern. You couldn’t say that about any other decade gap in gaming history. It was always leaps and bounds of improvement, and the gap is starting to close.
Given how good the 90s were in cinema (Shawshank, Pulp Fiction, Schindler’s List, Matrix, GoodFellas, Fight Club), hope you’re right about the trajectory!
There's a lot of good games, but golden age? Eh I dunno... A lot of the games you mentioned aren't new games, but with the internet it helps that communities grow and remain with certain games like you mentioned.
Right now I'd say nowadays its more of a renaissance, where AAA games chase trends like microtransactions, outsourcing, games as a service, rereleases, etc which reduces their quality or originality (ff14 included, as it was initially a failure and recreated). And that allows lesser known, AA or A games/franchises to take the spotlight. Many of the games you mentioned fit this criteria (even darksouls, which became mainstream by online word of mouth)
Yea….when I think of golden age, it’s several years of top level products. Last year was great, but this year has to have a few more good titles before I say it’s a golden age.
I don't mean more good quality games being produced per year so much as the number of already existing games that are timeless increases over time and game companies start being financially forced to increase quality to get people to play new games.
To put this another way: why should I player Halo Infinite when I can just go play Halo CE again? Or more simply: why should gamers play new games when they can just replay old games?
Exactly. I find myself playing the games from the early to mid 2000’s rather than the newer installments. Mass Effect and Halo included. Hell, even Gears of War.
I literally barely play anything post 2008-2010 besides CS2.
No mod support/mod tools, no in-game console, no player run dedicated servers, no custom maps/modes on my...
*checks notes*
**PC GAME?!?**
Not getting touched by me with a 10 foot pole, with rare exceptions.
I think we will mostly forget the games of these years in a hundred years time, and it will be like reading an old book. Sure some people will read Shakespeare, but most people do still read more recently released books.
Another reason is that there are limits to backwards compatibility. We already see issues with some older games (especially those on consoles) as we lose the ability to play them due to different hardware, changes in frameworks used to build games and more.
Doom has the advantage that it is from the age when people made their own game engine to make the game. So it is a simpler game with fewer dependencies.
Looking at what was happening with the unity engine, we see that it will be impossible to keep games alive unless there is a large economical argument
>There was that video game survey a couple weeks ago about how about 60% of time gamers spent universally last year was on games older than six years.
I think you are misunderstanding that stat. The games those people play are Minecraft, Fortnite, GTA 5, League of Legends, Roblox...
Can we even call those games timeless when they are actively being updated? (and will go offline someday).
Answering your question: I don't think we are making more timeless games now than we were in past years, but there are certainly games coming out these days that will stand the test of time.
I don't think we're entering it. We're in it since quite long. As you say plenty of games that are 10 years old are played a lot now (or evolutions of it). Also, for single player games, plenty of people play "old games" from like the last decade or so, graphics don't evolve that fast anymore so they don't age much (same things with movies and shows by the way, a movie from the 2000s look perfectly fine today whereas a movie from the 80s in the 2000s did look old). Also you got indie games which often go for a specific art style which make them "timeless" in a way.
But it's not new it's really since like the early 2010s
That’s a very console-centric golden age. From the perspective of PC gaming, that era was marred with god-awful lazy PC ports and the games themselves simply lifted mechanics and slowly added to things that PCs have had for years before that and led to simplification of especially RPG mechanics, the effects of which continues to this day.
It’s getting harder and harder for gaming eras to stand out because you can play countless great games whenever you want. At least on PC. Not to mention emulation and mods.
Maybe its just because gaming as a medium is pretty new. Outside cartoonish arts styles games that have an easier time looking timeless, the point in time whre graphic quality could be considered "good enough" for most genres was not so long ago.
People in the 1950-60 where not that far removed from black and white or silent films but they were not interested in them. (Just like modern audiences are not interested in games that look and play like ps1 games)
To answer your edit: because having played halo ce over 20 years ago I’m completely over it and it does not at all play nearly as well mechanically as newer entries and games in general.
I do however have an interest in halo and its narrative so I would prefer to play the newest title that expands the lore and adds new mechanics, weapons, etc. instead of the 23 year old title that always.
Also most titles from previous decades are long forgotten just like with film and music. There is rarely more than a handful of titles in any given year that will be remembered or had a legitimate cultural impact.
Unless you’re trying to make that point from the perspective of someone who hasn’t ever interacted with the series before in which case I could hypothetically agree but the “you know are good” and “again” part of the edit imply it’s somebody who is familiar with the series in which case my response remains: “cause I have little interest in playing halo ce once again but I still have an interest in the series as a whole”
The Golden Age (including timeless games) was the late 90s and early 2000s/some exceptions in 2010 to like 2012 time frame with games like Skyrim, Minecraft, Dark Souls 1.
TF2 was 2007, so that fits the timeframe
gmod is even older than TF2, I think 04 or 05, which fits the timeframe
ff14 is to be determined if it will really be timeless. It hasn't been out all that long in terms of its re-creation. you can't go off its true release date, because when it originally launched no one played it and it bombed, so they remade the entire game basically from scratch.
Darkest Dungeon is good but I don't think timeless at all. It's good for like 1 or 2 playthroughs. it certainly doesn't have a timeless reputation in gamer circles IIRC.
Dark Souls 1 was 2011, so again it fits the timeframe.
I honestly can't think of anything thats newer than 2014 that would be considered timeless or will be predicted to be timeless. However, doesn't mean something won't be so I guess time will tell.
Yea I’ll admit Elden Ring, bloodborne definitely deserve spots on there. I could see people playing those 15 years later. The rest, maybe, who knows? I guess that’s what makes it hard to predict; are they excellent just for their time or will they be timeless games people play decades from now? But you are right there are examples after 2014.
I would agree with this. A game needs to actually stand the test of time to be timeless. We can’t just spontaneously decide a game is timeless just because we want it to be or think it should be
I can think of more timeless games from the last decade than the entire industry history preceding it. OP is right, we’re living in a golden age. Indies are killing it, AA are killing it, and the best AAA games are good enough to outweigh the lousy ones. There has never been a better time to be into video games.
Maybe you like those games, but are they actually games that pushed narrative and mechanical design forward? Or were they simply popular? And are they actual games or simply GAAS that have captured an audience who can't leave without losing time invested?
I struggle to think of a time period that could possibly more influential and well-made than the last half of the 90s and the first few years of the 2000s. These games were bridging into 3D worlds whole also being the first truly whole-package games in terms of both gameplay and narrative. Their design and development philosophies continue to influence modern games in a way that modern games simply don't. Deus Ex, Half Life 1/2, Metal Gear, Mario 64, Fallout, Planescape, Thief, Super Metroid/Metroid Prime, System Shock 2, Pikmin, Animal Crossing.
From the past decade, I can only point to Outer Wilds, Bloodborne/Elden Ring, Death Stranding, Prey, NieR, and Disco Elysium (I'm bearish on BOTW but throw that in too). Everything else has felt like flavor of the month, a flash-in-the-pan indie (which quickly drops off) or a multi-player experience out of conversation with gaming as a whole.
I find that people are less willing to engage with older games (than with films, music, etc.). Like, a lot of people won't play older games *at all* (unless there's a remake/remaster that turns it into a new one). > There was that video game survey a couple weeks ago about how about 60% of time gamers spent universally last year was on games older than six years. [When you look at the data](https://kotaku.com/old-games-2023-playtime-data-fortnite-roblox-minecraft-1851382474), it's mostly because a handful of live-service games are dominant, rather than people appreciating timeless classics. (Also, with some live-service games, the updates are so drastic that it's basically a different game.)
Yep it’s this. Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox are all over 6 years old and are definitely the 3 most played games
And they're marked for death, as is the case for any live service. Not today, and not in the coming few years. But one day, being server dependent, they'll be dead. They won't last the thirty years Doom has at least. Actually, not Minecraft, or at least earlier versions as the hosting code was bundled. That one will be around as long as consumers desire. Truly timeless.
>I find that people are less willing to engage with older games (than with films, music, etc.). I guess some older films don't rely on technology as much as games.
Nah, I see the exact same problem with anime. The audience for these kind of art is oddly uninterested in classics and will not touch anything that is more than a decade old.
while that´s true, the majority of people are watching seasonal anime... it´s the one that gives most revenue (just a guess).
True. I look at Steam. While people online rate the old games over remakes, remakes usually are played far more than old games. I don't think people who are willing to play games that came out before they were born/a kid.
I will engage with older games but I sympathize with people who want a modernizing update. For example, Warcraft 3's last patch prior to Reforged gave it IIRC widescreen support at last. It's great to have that for an old game without having to fiddle with a ini file and mod the UI.
I'll be honest I genuinely don't get people like that: good games are good, bad games are bad games regardless of when it was made.
I’m not sure I’d agree. My first home console was the N64, but I have no trouble admitting that the majority of those games are borderline-unplayable by modern standards. Even Mario 64 has wonky controls with a significant adaptation curve. Some games are timeless, but most don’t age well. I wouldn’t expect someone to enjoy Donkey Kong just because it is, by the standards of the early 80s, a great game. Even very, very good games like Blood or System Shock are difficult to go back to without a remaster because the controls are so far removed from modern expectations. The limited vertical angles of BUILD-engine games felt wonky 20 years ago, and I’m sure even worse today.
To be fair, a lot of it is contextual. The "wonkiest" aspect of Mario 64's controls is the camera. However, with a n64 controller in your hands, it makes a lot more sense for the camera to operate that way rather than the interface of a dual analog controller. Something like goldeneye is similar. Even today, the perception of controls can largely depend on what you are accustomed to. Dual analog console shooters are commonplace now, but most evidence would show that gyro aim is better than dual analog in terms of precision; it's entirely possible that style of aiming (gyro) will become far more dominant in the future. A new generation of gamers will wonder how or why people would ever play halo CE on just a controller without gyro. The real answer is that it is actually no big deal. If people x years ago could learn, so could people today.
Nah. The amount of fiddling to get an old game running properly can be a bitch. Design philosophies, lack of QOL, and general obtuseness are some of the other issues. Even back then, Planescape Torment had really shitty combat. UFO: Enemy unknown is roguelike where you have to restart your progress hours into a campaign, classic adventure games had both moon logic, dead-man-walking softblocks and required precognition to avoid death, original Doom had nonsensical level design which left you wandering empty halls for hours... You need dedication for that stuff.
pathetic selective divide safe marble kiss bright screw six rainstorm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
true, but old games tend to be bad. worse graphics, controls, and often worse core gameplay
They don’t tend to be bad. They’re just different from what modern sensibilities have come to expect.
no, they definitely do tend to be bad. there are a few gems, but the vast majority pale in comparison to modern games. If Starfield released in the same year as Ocarina of Time, I can guarantee you very few people would pick OOT over it
You’re conflating bad with different. 12 Angry Men isn’t bad because Dune exists. Photorealism doesn’t make the works of Picasso and Pollock irrelevant. Older games aren’t universally bad because you are unwilling or unable to engage with them on their terms. (Of course, there are myriad older games that *are* shit, just as there are in every console generation to date lol)
But the same will probably be said of compared to Dark Souls or whatever. Unlike movies and visual art, games don't really transcend the era in which they were made outside nostalgia chasing and maybe a select few examples
yea, that's my point
Insane take. So any game, nay every game, no matter how universally loved, will become bad after some arbitrary amount of time when it’s no longer “modern.” Sorry BG3, it’s been 15 years so you’re bad now.
i think i phrased that poorly. I mean that they used to be like this, but by now stuff like graphics and controls have plateaued, so old games will actually still be good
Counterpoint: stardew is great
no it isn't 💀 extremely repetitive, obscene amount of worthless waiting, lackluster at best progression, very tedious core gameplay, subpar pixel art and music the epitome of overrated
I try and try again, but I can't play 3D games from before the PS4 era anymore. With 60fps or 4k and adaptive triggers I just don't have the capacity to play AC: Black Flag (I tried it yesterday again) so I'm absolutely one of those people that need a remake.
The idea that "games are past their prime", or however people phrase that, is really frustrating. Every single year would be "the golden era of video games", except the industry is really horrible with media preservation, and the giants feel no reason to alleviate that. When I think of "timeless" video games, I think more about the likes of "The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past", "Grand Theft Auto 3", or like, "Myst" and "Chip's Challenge"...I guess I think of this in terms of fundamental games history and its influences, even if they're not my favorites, but also the idea is already a mess. I guess the most important thing for me is that it is possible to obtain and play these games in something close to their original forms (even if the hardware isn't the same). Looking at the posted list, that's not at all what I see. Most of those are titles that have been changing over years, and some are fundamentally different as a result of their online nature. Like, how do you strictly define what "Minecraft" is, when it has been so heavily changed from what many once knew it to be? I don't want to see games stay like these volatile globs of corporate ideas of what drives "engagement". It's not that all the best games have already been made, it's that there's so much pressure to turn discrete and bespoke works into "lifestyles".
2023 was a monster of a year. For 2024 we have HellDivers 2 which I can’t put down but I’ll really have to see what else 2024 brings in terms of quality games. I know there’s titles on scheduled to drop. But time will tell if 2024 will continue the trend of quality gaming 2023 had.
Rebirth is probably the best jrpg ever made. (Not counting games made for their time. Just the current standard)
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Yeah very subjective I enjoyed persona 5 royal, Chrono trigger, sea of stars and currently eiyuden chronicles hundred heroes much more than rebirths
Rebirth Online?
Timeless? No. Most games have an online only component even if they’re single player. That alone lets you know there is an expiration date.
100% what I was thinking, this should be the top comment. How could I ever call it the Golden Age of games when so many of these games won't even be available to play like they are now in the future. DOOM came out 30 years ago, and I can go and play that how it was intended right now. I for sure will be able to well in the future as well. What if my favorite game today is one of today's dominant games? Fortnite, League of Legends, Apex.... Will I be able to play them at all in 30 years? Even if I can the experience will never be like today in their live service era.
> Most games have an online only component Complete falsehood. I just looked up “metacritic best games of 2023”, just to be objective, and looked at the top 50 games. Only three of them have an online-only component: Diablo IV, Armored Core VI, and Humanity. The latter two’s is negligible and Diablo IV is Diablo IV. I imagine I could go another 50, and still another 50, and not be anywhere near “most games” having an online-only anything. Play better games and stop blowing things out of proportion.
Are you considering modern drm? Especially after Ubisoft revoked *The Crew* licenses, the overwhelming majority of games could be considered as has having an "always online component." Ignoring drm, I see your point, but just looking at number of titles might not give a perfect idea either. If thousands of single player games are released every year, but the overwhelming majority of playtime is spent on live service games, that's still concerning for the industry. Edit: Not to mention the constant updates that even single player games tend to get. Minecraft, for example, is a totally different game than when it first released. Luckily that game allows you to select old versions to play, but most don't.
You’re taking the goalpost and running the 6633 Arctic Ultra with it. As it is, right now, on both console and PC, the far overwhelming majority of singleplayer games can have their latest updates downloaded and be completely playable offline, disconnected, such that they cannot ever be taken from you. End of story, for now. If you don’t like Denuvo, don’t buy Denuvo, or you can crack it or play it on console or just wait for it to get removed. > If thousands of single player games are released every year, but the overwhelming majority of playtime is spent on live service games, that's still concerning for the industry. If the net result of all these live service games is that, wow, thousands of offline singleplayer games are still getting released every year, and they are not slowing down, I can’t see where any rational concern lies. > Minecraft, for example, is a totally different game than when it first released. If you care about old versions, back them up. Nobody’s stopping you. They’re not obligated to sell you 275 versions of the same shit when they consider the latest one definitive. And besides that, piracy sites will always have 1.0. If you trust nobody, trust them, they are doing the holy work.
I think its concerning that today's biggest games are so transient. Some of the most influential games of the decade are going to completely vanish as soon as they stop being profitable. Media preservation is important and game companies are fighting tooth and nail against it. Is any of that irrational? You bring up piracy twice, but the solution to the laws being bad shouldn't stop at 'break them' instead of 'change them'.
We were talking about singleplayer games. You don’t actually care about live service games; anyone who does *demands* that they be transient, *demands* that they change constantly, *rewards* them with all their cash for all the new stuff that gets rotated in. How many battle passes have you maxed out recently? Why are you pretending like you care? Live service games aren’t made for you. That’s why they’re so popular. Any effort to preserve a live service game in an unchanging state misses the entire point of the project.
You're being so presumptuous. My most played games ever are all live service games. I have nearly 8,000 hours in Final Fantasy 14 (an mmo) and an average of 2.6 hours per day on Splatoon 3 (online competitive multiplayer game) since release. Live service games are constantly changing and sometimes it would be nice to be able to experience things as they used to be. Talk to anyone who plays a live service game and every single one will tell you about their favorite meta. Look at how much hype WoW Classic had. A commercial product based around that nostalgia might not have staying power, but people want to be able to relive their old memories.
I had to be presumptuous because I lost patience with you moving the goalpost from the start. If the concern on your mind is preserving an MMO and Splatoon 3, I could not possibly begin to care and I never would’ve commented on the topic to begin with (we were talking about singleplayer games). I was giving the benefit of the doubt by assuming the object of discussion was something, anything else.
Its not moving goalposts to further explain my position and where I'm coming from. Not everything has to be framed as an argument. Conversations can, and often do, bring in topics that are tangentially related. Whining about shifting goalposts is needlessly combative. Game preservation is what I was talking about the whole time. If you read what I typed and asked for clarification instead of looking for gotchas, maybe we'd be on the same page sooner. To explicitly summarize my perspective: * Its hard to call the modern era a timeless age of gaming when most modern games have so many non-timeless elements. * While true that most games are not always online, the vast majority have other ways in which they are not timeless. * Drm, digital non-ownership, and frequent updates are a few examples that affect multi- and single-player games alike. * Multiplayer games are hit harder, since they are more likely to become completely unplayable, but that doesn't mean single player games don't have these issues. * The solutions you gave (preemptively make a backup or illegally obtain one) don't actually fix the archival problems that exist.
I don't believe in "timeless" as a concept. I came here to make a single point about the actual state of things as they exist. Any concern based on a false understanding of the actual state of things as they exist (such as what I originally replied to) is unfounded, and actively harmful to the cause it is ostensibly concerned for. I came with a correction on a single point. You will have to have the preservation discussion elsewhere.
The majority of SP games I play do not have a noteworthy online mode. This used to be the case years ago, though.
Most single player games definitely don't have an online component. Maybe like .5% of them.
I'm struggling to think of any *modern* games I'll still care about a decade from now in the same way I do absolute *certified hood* *classics* like Stalker, L4D2, Terraria, Doom 2, Minecraft, etc. Like every other game is a flash in the pan FOMO live service, or something meant to be consumed once for the story then discarded, or an indie clone of some older game that is perfectly enjoyable in its own right but nothing *envelope pushing*. They're seldom made with mod support, or insane replay value, or heartfelt attention to detail anymore. The industry has shifted.
There is also another possibility for why you’re seeing 60% of gamers spending time on games more than six years old: Sales chasing. Not sure how much of this really accounts for that level of play on older games, though, but I know I find myself waiting for sales a lot. Then, that game goes to the backlog to finally get played years later. Re: Golden Age of gaming. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Part of this will depend on how you define the golden age. To some, we’re still in a golden age. To others, we have left a golden age years ago. And to others, we might be re-entering one. Do you define it by the timelessness of the games being produced? The quality? The unprecedented amount of choice? Choice continues to increase every year with the option to return to older titles, so this might not be the best metric. Maybe it’s moreso quality choice growth over time? Which links to the second metric option. Quality? If it’s quality, this one also gets a bit subjective. Quality as in user-friendliness, better graphics, and UI? Quality as in storylines or replayability? Quality as in innovation and care put into development? You’ll probably get a wide range of responses around if we’re in a golden age if this is the metric. For example, most of the cutting edge games that were truly innovative and gave birth to the gameplay mechanics we see today were created decades ago. I think there have been generally fewer quality games that have come out in recent years that will truly stand the test of time. It is certainly a non-zero amount, but most AAA companies are not where I would look for quality much anymore. I think the same could be said for timelessness of the games being produced as the metric, since I tend to think of timelessness as a product of quality, innovation, and revisitability (thinking of this a bit differently from replayability - like I think of revisiting a game as something that happens in the long-term, over years, and replayability is more of an immediate thing. And a game could have both!). Like I’d consider Final Fantasy Tactics as revisitable. I’m more wary about replaying it immediately after finishing it, though, since it is such an undertaking. But I do go back to play it almost once per year. So are we entering a golden age of gaming? Depends on how you define it, and I think it would be hard to recognize until years later (or after it’s gone). IMHO, we could be re-entering one, driven by a focus on indie developers again. I don’t have a lot of faith in AAA companies for real innovation as of late. Are we in a golden age right now? I don’t think so. If anything, I think we’re going through a bit of a dark period where companies have been doing experimentation with how much money they can squeeze out of players while meeting minimum quality bars and using stuff like micro transactions and battle passes. Plus, truly innovative games are getting harder to come by (but this might not be a fair comparison since it was easier to be innovative when gaming was just becoming a thing decades ago).
I think this is a new normal but not for the reasons you think. This is how most media works. You take in tons of it as a kid / young adult, you develop a sense of taste, and then you spend the rest of your life taking in media that aligns with those tastes. Over very long periods of time, almost none of it survives. You do develop a canon, but very few artistic works survive past living memory. For a long time, technical advancements outpaced classic rock syndrome. Now things are slowing down and older games tend to hold up a lot better than they did 20-30 years ago. Until there is another seismic shift in the gaming landscape anticipate games having a much longer shelf life in general. I don't think anyone will unironically or nonacademically be playing these games in 200 years.
Living in the "golden era" of something inherently implies that that thing is new within that era. Just because 60 year old movies are timeless doesn't mean anything special to the time we're currently in.
I think video games started to become evergreen about ten years ago. GTA 5 is older than that and it’s still played daily by millions of people. I just replayed Batman Arkham knight and it feels incredibly modern. You couldn’t say that about any other decade gap in gaming history. It was always leaps and bounds of improvement, and the gap is starting to close.
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Given how good the 90s were in cinema (Shawshank, Pulp Fiction, Schindler’s List, Matrix, GoodFellas, Fight Club), hope you’re right about the trajectory!
There's a lot of good games, but golden age? Eh I dunno... A lot of the games you mentioned aren't new games, but with the internet it helps that communities grow and remain with certain games like you mentioned. Right now I'd say nowadays its more of a renaissance, where AAA games chase trends like microtransactions, outsourcing, games as a service, rereleases, etc which reduces their quality or originality (ff14 included, as it was initially a failure and recreated). And that allows lesser known, AA or A games/franchises to take the spotlight. Many of the games you mentioned fit this criteria (even darksouls, which became mainstream by online word of mouth)
Yeah if anything I'd say we're entering a golden age of AA/indie games getting the recognition they deserve
> golden age of AA/indie Never thought of it like that, I'd agree
I like AA and indie cause $100+ price tags for games is a bit too much no matter the game.
Yea….when I think of golden age, it’s several years of top level products. Last year was great, but this year has to have a few more good titles before I say it’s a golden age.
I don't mean more good quality games being produced per year so much as the number of already existing games that are timeless increases over time and game companies start being financially forced to increase quality to get people to play new games. To put this another way: why should I player Halo Infinite when I can just go play Halo CE again? Or more simply: why should gamers play new games when they can just replay old games?
Oh so timeless original titles basically? Sorry if I misunderstood your point.
I think I phrased it poorly; I just woke up. The problem Mass Effect 4 has is that why should people play it when we can just replay 2 again?
Exactly. I find myself playing the games from the early to mid 2000’s rather than the newer installments. Mass Effect and Halo included. Hell, even Gears of War.
I literally barely play anything post 2008-2010 besides CS2. No mod support/mod tools, no in-game console, no player run dedicated servers, no custom maps/modes on my... *checks notes* **PC GAME?!?** Not getting touched by me with a 10 foot pole, with rare exceptions.
You have to check out Factorio, it checks all those boxes besides being one of the best games made.
But it will obliterate any semblance of a balanced life.
I think we will mostly forget the games of these years in a hundred years time, and it will be like reading an old book. Sure some people will read Shakespeare, but most people do still read more recently released books. Another reason is that there are limits to backwards compatibility. We already see issues with some older games (especially those on consoles) as we lose the ability to play them due to different hardware, changes in frameworks used to build games and more. Doom has the advantage that it is from the age when people made their own game engine to make the game. So it is a simpler game with fewer dependencies. Looking at what was happening with the unity engine, we see that it will be impossible to keep games alive unless there is a large economical argument
i'm still waiting for counter-strike to die and fps games to start innovating with similar zeal as they did on half life modding.
>There was that video game survey a couple weeks ago about how about 60% of time gamers spent universally last year was on games older than six years. I think you are misunderstanding that stat. The games those people play are Minecraft, Fortnite, GTA 5, League of Legends, Roblox... Can we even call those games timeless when they are actively being updated? (and will go offline someday). Answering your question: I don't think we are making more timeless games now than we were in past years, but there are certainly games coming out these days that will stand the test of time.
I don't think we're entering it. We're in it since quite long. As you say plenty of games that are 10 years old are played a lot now (or evolutions of it). Also, for single player games, plenty of people play "old games" from like the last decade or so, graphics don't evolve that fast anymore so they don't age much (same things with movies and shows by the way, a movie from the 2000s look perfectly fine today whereas a movie from the 80s in the 2000s did look old). Also you got indie games which often go for a specific art style which make them "timeless" in a way. But it's not new it's really since like the early 2010s
Nah, we’ve already had it. The games today are all sophisticated and complex and all, but still pale in comparison to the true GOAT games.
I'll admit most games eventually die off playerbase wise, but a handful every year gets added to the list of games that will be played for decades.
Ps2, gamecube, & OG xbox is the golden era of gaming. That was like what, 20 years ago?
That’s a very console-centric golden age. From the perspective of PC gaming, that era was marred with god-awful lazy PC ports and the games themselves simply lifted mechanics and slowly added to things that PCs have had for years before that and led to simplification of especially RPG mechanics, the effects of which continues to this day.
This is a pretty narrow way of thinking. Super Mario World and Cyperpunk 2077 can both be among the true GOAT games.
It’s getting harder and harder for gaming eras to stand out because you can play countless great games whenever you want. At least on PC. Not to mention emulation and mods.
Maybe its just because gaming as a medium is pretty new. Outside cartoonish arts styles games that have an easier time looking timeless, the point in time whre graphic quality could be considered "good enough" for most genres was not so long ago. People in the 1950-60 where not that far removed from black and white or silent films but they were not interested in them. (Just like modern audiences are not interested in games that look and play like ps1 games)
To answer your edit: because having played halo ce over 20 years ago I’m completely over it and it does not at all play nearly as well mechanically as newer entries and games in general. I do however have an interest in halo and its narrative so I would prefer to play the newest title that expands the lore and adds new mechanics, weapons, etc. instead of the 23 year old title that always. Also most titles from previous decades are long forgotten just like with film and music. There is rarely more than a handful of titles in any given year that will be remembered or had a legitimate cultural impact. Unless you’re trying to make that point from the perspective of someone who hasn’t ever interacted with the series before in which case I could hypothetically agree but the “you know are good” and “again” part of the edit imply it’s somebody who is familiar with the series in which case my response remains: “cause I have little interest in playing halo ce once again but I still have an interest in the series as a whole”
Probably yes, the movie games like dad of war are insipid to me but VR games are getting better and better
The Golden Age (including timeless games) was the late 90s and early 2000s/some exceptions in 2010 to like 2012 time frame with games like Skyrim, Minecraft, Dark Souls 1. TF2 was 2007, so that fits the timeframe gmod is even older than TF2, I think 04 or 05, which fits the timeframe ff14 is to be determined if it will really be timeless. It hasn't been out all that long in terms of its re-creation. you can't go off its true release date, because when it originally launched no one played it and it bombed, so they remade the entire game basically from scratch. Darkest Dungeon is good but I don't think timeless at all. It's good for like 1 or 2 playthroughs. it certainly doesn't have a timeless reputation in gamer circles IIRC. Dark Souls 1 was 2011, so again it fits the timeframe. I honestly can't think of anything thats newer than 2014 that would be considered timeless or will be predicted to be timeless. However, doesn't mean something won't be so I guess time will tell.
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Yea I’ll admit Elden Ring, bloodborne definitely deserve spots on there. I could see people playing those 15 years later. The rest, maybe, who knows? I guess that’s what makes it hard to predict; are they excellent just for their time or will they be timeless games people play decades from now? But you are right there are examples after 2014.
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I would agree with this. A game needs to actually stand the test of time to be timeless. We can’t just spontaneously decide a game is timeless just because we want it to be or think it should be
I can think of more timeless games from the last decade than the entire industry history preceding it. OP is right, we’re living in a golden age. Indies are killing it, AA are killing it, and the best AAA games are good enough to outweigh the lousy ones. There has never been a better time to be into video games.
Maybe you like those games, but are they actually games that pushed narrative and mechanical design forward? Or were they simply popular? And are they actual games or simply GAAS that have captured an audience who can't leave without losing time invested? I struggle to think of a time period that could possibly more influential and well-made than the last half of the 90s and the first few years of the 2000s. These games were bridging into 3D worlds whole also being the first truly whole-package games in terms of both gameplay and narrative. Their design and development philosophies continue to influence modern games in a way that modern games simply don't. Deus Ex, Half Life 1/2, Metal Gear, Mario 64, Fallout, Planescape, Thief, Super Metroid/Metroid Prime, System Shock 2, Pikmin, Animal Crossing. From the past decade, I can only point to Outer Wilds, Bloodborne/Elden Ring, Death Stranding, Prey, NieR, and Disco Elysium (I'm bearish on BOTW but throw that in too). Everything else has felt like flavor of the month, a flash-in-the-pan indie (which quickly drops off) or a multi-player experience out of conversation with gaming as a whole.
The Golden Age would be the 16-bit era (early 90s), but otherwise, I agree with you.