What woke era?
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Lets go back to when we had a game that we could play WITHOUT all this lag, broken features (half working auto-loot), and now lately getting disconnected, but still playing the game and still in the game.
yeah, manā¦ thatās just you.
Right, ok.
Game companies that are beholden to shareholders will always put them before the players.
Larian showed that making the game for the players is the way to do it, sadly they are an anomaly.
If you play enough games across various genres, you can see what developers are making an effort and the ones just trying to turn a profit, Blizz used to be the former but Kotick had other ideas.
I think the soul of gaming is still there but itās always overshadowed by the need to keep shareholders happy.
They were newer back then and you were a kid back then.
Nothing will feel the same as an adult as it did when you were a kid
Iāll agree that online gaming 20 years ago had much less of a min-maxer mentality to it, and that made it hit different than most online communities today.
Though I often see people talk about the quality of games going down in the last ~10 years and I have to wonder if theyāre just buying into the biggest most hyped up AAA live service game, cause thatās not been my experience(even in AAA, funny enough).
Except specifically for online PvP shooters. Live service ruined them, in my opinion. Thankfully we now have the online co-op shooter with games like Helldivers, Deep Rock Galactic, Darktide, etc. I suppose Marvel Rivals is fun enough for what it is for the time being, at least.
Though these days Iām also into cRPGs and horror games and Iāve been doing great with gaming.
Not great. The story is mediocre and so far quite one-sided. The new characters are also mediocre. But otherwise I still find the content pretty entertaining.
I never understood this.
Why not? Iām as excited for Avowed as I was for Icewind Dale 2 as a kid.
Maybe I was not as excitable as a kid, or something. Or maybe Iām more excitable as an adult.
The short of it is that a lot of people lose their childlike sense of wonder and become a fair bit more jaded as an adult.
Though Iām also excited for both Avowed and Outer Worlds 2 from Obsidian, and like half my Steam wishlish is just games not yet out Iām keeping an eye on to hear more about.
Hm. Maybe itās that as a kid I was willing to say āugh this game sucksā sometimes, and other kids werenāt.
In other words Iāve been jaded longer. And now itās a competition, so I win. 
Glitchy and a mess. Feels like they have pushed much more speed and less quality. The amount of things to do and lull in-between is better but the events and style all feels lower quality and rougher than dragonflight.
Yeah as a kid I could easily enjoy most games unless they were really bad. I also like a few movies I had no idea were generally considered terrible until I was much older.
Though I feel like Iām probably still less jaded these days than I was ~10 years ago, so I only win the competition if itās who is the least jaded. If itās the most, I lose.
I also find if people do want gaming like it was in the 90s/early 2000s, the indie sphere provides pretty much exactly that.
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I concur. Actually Iād go as far as to say itās better - way more volume.
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Yeah Iād probably pick todayās indie scene over the more limited 90s.
Some of the best immersive sims Iāve played came out of indies in the last 5 years. The only thing that remains on top of them from 20-25 years ago in my opinion is the OG Deus Ex(which is just on another level from everybody else entirely).
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Games themselves arenāt perfect but Iād say there are just as many or more issues with gamers. See the whole thing with obsession over performance, leaderboards, etc to the point that games have become little more than the graphical trappings of an impractically computationally intense spreadsheet, the compulsion to burn through new games in the shortest timeframe possible, or treating anything thatās not immediately relevant to the main plot as āfillerā that should be ignored. These things were much less prevalent in players 15-20 years ago.
I think my biggest struggle with modern games is RPGs. They feel like theyāve stagnated.
I wonāt earn myself favor with this, but it still makes me angry how much Larian and their fans hyped up āpermutationsā and player choice in BG3 only to put out a game with comparable narrative experience to a mid scope BioWare game - who is singlehandedly responsible for the 3-tone dialogue trees wherein you progress things mean, kind, or sarcastic.
Itās improved since Mass Effectās height, but it feels a lot like people designing RPGs are afraid of players not wanting to read, when the real solution is brevity, not the gutting of depth.
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Coming from the era of Pong and hit or miss Atari 2600 games things are much better now.
Yeah as much as I love BG3, I feel like a lot of the hype came from people who were used to modern RPGs from Bethesda or even CDPR where āplayer choiceā mostly means āyou can make a variety of combat builds, and maybe make a handful of choices in the storyā.
Iād still say the player agency in BG3 doesnāt hold a candle to my favourite RPG of all time, Arcanum. Iām excited to see where Clockwork Revolution from InExile goes just cause itās got one of Arcanumās writers as the director on it.
Iād also say that the player choice in BG3 doesnāt even really top most cRPGs in the last decade with games like Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader, or even Larianās previous Divinity Original Sin games.
What it mostly did that other cRPGs hadnāt done was have a 2023 AAA budget tied to it. Itās nice that they showed the formula can still be successful at the highest level though, and Iām hoping that other big developers learn some stuff from it.
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