What exactly did old games have that new ones don't?
Soul.
>>730875683developers in charge of figuring out what players liked to play instead of shareholders and board rooms
fewer cooks in the kitchen
>>73087568370+ page manuals (all in English) to filter brainlets.
They had hardware restrictions to comply with so they actually needed to be thoughtful and intelligent about what they were capable of doing instead of shoving it into some inefficient engine and outsourcing to browns.
>>730875754This. A product created through board room meetings using erroneous metrics that the developers collected to make incorrect assumptions using faulty logic before being passed through the hands of 1500 employees who (deservedly) earn less than 1/2 of the pay of competent engineers in their respective fields will never have the soul of a game made by hand in assembly by one guy who really fucking loves one specific very niche thing and wants to make a bitchin' game about it.
>>730875683Sincerity, soul, call it what you will, they were games first and foremost.
>>730875754How do we heal?
>>730875760This. AAA games were made by small teams back then who were able to iterate on the design during development. They all had direct face-to-face communication with each other and were on the same page as to where the game was headed. Now games are made by massive teams working in separate departments like an assembly line. They all have to conform to what was written in the initial design document because it's too expensive replace assets and difficult to communicate if they need to iterate upon it.
>>730875683Stylized graphics will always be better
>>730875683Talent
>>730875683Gameplay, or at the very least a focus on gameplay.
>>730877046>Now games are made by massive teams working in separate departments like an assembly lineIt's even worse than that with things like support studios or the shit that Ubisoft pulls with their worldwide studios. You got games that are worked on in chunks and then smashed back together and shipped out as a single game. Ubisoft is notorious for that kind of practice which is why their games can feel really disjointed.
>>730875683IIRC this was made by two guys. One did music and the other everything else.
Nerds. Never trust someone with a family, he'll choose them instead of the work.
>>730875683Isometric perspective
>>730875683Made by small teams of passionate programmers that wanted to make fun games that they themselves would want to play.
>>730875683Simplicity in both gameplay and technicality. Even if it was a game full with spreadsheet, the player still know what they want and able to do it.
The actual version of ttd that people like and play is extremely modern and made by A LOT of people. And open source community projects are very modern to begin with. Like ideal openttd is ideally with something like FIRS and Japan GRFs
>>730877751Shut up, I loved original TTD.
>>730877751I prefer the original version, but I like a casual games. Openttd seems to encourage cheese and competitive play
>>730877751People who never played the original game can't even imagine how it's to live without shared orders or having only block signals.
>>730877370TRUE
>>730875683The core philosophy on game design used to be "fun". Now it's "engagement".
>>730875683Games used to be made by people who actually enjoyed games, now it's made by "employees".
>>730878661There are plenty of old "engagement" slop games, it's 99% of what retro farthuffers play
>>730875683Older games relied more on organic fun instead of exploiting psychological hacks.
>>730878803Give me an example
>>730878907Pretty much every rpg ever, most (honestly all) old strategy games are very shallow "just one more turn stuff", pretty much anything you'd describe as "atmospheric" is just theme park garbage
>>730875683hetero white male studios
>>730875683Reminder that """diversity""" has never, and will never, create anything of value.
>>730875754this
>>730879092Those were made with fun in mind, just for a different audience. I don't think you understand what I meant by "engagement".Companies now are more worried about how to keep players IN the game, instead of making it a good experience overall.Tasks with timers, walking stages, insert cutscenes, crafting menues, etc.I mean, gaming was always time wasting, but now your time in the game is valued. Like people walking back and forth at the isles on a supermarket. They don't even need you to enjoy the game, as long as you have a reason to come back.
>>730875683Passion and soul without all the paid subscriptions, paid dlcs and everything else that gets locked behind pay walls now. Devs and studios that were unproven who had a reason to put heart into what they were making.Now, they can shovel out slop with the devs personal politics being the forefront setting of their game. They don't have have make anything good or put effort in or appeal to anybody, because people will buy it regardless.Gta online is a perfect example. It's not geared towards fun and engagement, it's geared towards paid subscriptions and real money purchases. How long did it take them to nerf rdo because nobody was buying gold bars? 1 year, 2 years?
>>730879795>Those were made with fun in mindNo they weren't, stop pretending to fit in with people you don't.
passion vs profit
>>730879092You clearly haven't played any strategy games and are just parroting a marketing tagline Civilization uses which they picked up from a reviewer. All game genres from every generation would market how addicting the game was. There were even some point and click adventure games trying to claim they were addicting.
>>730880402>You clearly haven't played any strategy gamesLiterally every old strategy game is for complete retards
>>730880260>Nu-uh
>>730880562Ok
>>730880260Home console gaming blew that arcade marketing scheme. However, arcades were still competing for the "fun" element. You wouldn't spend coins on a game that is boring.Now it doesn't work the same. Media influence makes people play games they don't even enjoy that much. But that doesn't even matter, what matter is that they play enough to gain access to the cash shop, game currency, or whatever model they're using. Cosmetics and other tools to even skip playing are not a minor thing. If the game was made too fun, people would have no reason to spend money.
>>730877017kill jews
>>730881209What in the fuck are you talking about, virtua fighter literally saved unlockable cosmetics to your arcade card and game centers have always been full of gambling. And tons of arcade style games still release. You just don't play them.
>>730881692Yeah, arcades didn't work like home console gaming, I already said that.
>>730877336sounds like it was made by one guy who outsourced one thing then.
>>730875683Old games were made by straight white nerds. New games are made by women and trannies.
>>730881861You're saying cosmetics ruined games but you're demonstrably wrong. Like throwing someone's $3000 awp over a wall in cs2 does not detract from that game and the only reason people are spending money on such bullshit is because they are addicted to the gameplay, otherwise the items would have very little value
>>730882056All of the art and music was outsourced among other things. It literally says so right on his website.
>>730879092you don't know what "engagement" means if you think most RPG have a focus on it. You honestly couldn't have picked a worse genre for your example seeing as most RPGs are meant to be played through once and then moved on from. that's the opposite of engagement game design.
>>730882206Games are supposed to be replayed infinitely anon, every game that isn't replayable is garbage, and this goes doubly so for old games. Games are not stories to consume and throw away, they shouldn't be full of minigames and sidequests unrelated to the core gameplay to string the player along through a shitty story. RPGs are designed like Netflix dramas and they're the primary engine behind why games are so shitty now
>>730882073I didn't say cosmetics ruined games, you retard. I said the FOCUS is put there nowadays, and the way they engage players is by making the gameplay limited in fun.Counter Strike is the very most obvious exception, since they have been forced by the community to keep the exact same gameplay mechanics for decades. Cosmetics were introduced at some point and that's perfectly fine. But check any other game inspired by Counter Strike and how the marketing model is different. Like Valorant. You have to either grind or use real money to get all the classes. You also get daily rewards just for playing their game.
>>730875683good gameplay
>>730875683>What exactly did old games have that new ones don't?Capable developers who's goal was to make a fun game.Still exists, just not in the AAA world.
>>730882435>I said the FOCUS is put there nowadaysSega literally marketed this cosmetic feature in VF4 as "revolutionary" and the biggest and most important thing in the game.>Like Valorant. You have to either grind or use real money to get all the classesNo you don't, you're pretty much guaranteed to get all the agents by the time you unlock competitive and then its just CS but with eye rape
>>730882396so you're saying you support engagement focused game design then?
>>730882643Sure anon, if you like rpgs I like whatever the opposite buzzword of the week of that is
>>730882616>SegaAgain, this one very obvious exception, coming from a company that couldn't catch up with the times and pretty much was kicked out of the home console industry, allegedly for ignoring what was "fun" in the 00s.I can totally understand why you defend this modern marketing scheme now.
>>730882746Why even reply if you don't want to continue the discussion? "games should be played infinitely" is the same logic that is behind engagement focused design. its what leads to shit like daily quests and login bonuses keeping people coming back forever. your weird tangent about minigames and sidequests doesn't really have anything to do with the topic other than just you continuing to show your ignorance about RPGs since minigames aren't a major aspect of them at all, and the idea that games can't be a consumable experience is meant to be enjoyed and then finished fundamentally wrong.
>>730883078>this one very obvious exceptionBoy sure seems like there's a lot of those
>>730883237The reason rpgs often have crappy minigames is because they are designed in such a way that no one will never have to suffer through them again. This means rpgs are full of "lows". A game designed to be played hundreds of times doesn't have "lows". If a shmup has a single bad stage it is unplayable. It is a design philosophy that completely respects your time, instead of being a "good enough" movie to be consumed and thrown away.
>>730875854Haven't thought about that sketch in years
>>730878907anything that came out on an arcade machine
Back then, devs didn't really care if you understood how to play or not, there would be a booklet that explained basic controls and if you're lucky, a guide on the internet that usually was wrong.Nowadays, they have to factor in that half the audience of steam is illiterate and that they give up in 5 seconds if something requires any reading at all.
>>730875854>>730876942>>730877046>cost inefficient>longer dev cycles and more crunchSounds like a pain in the ass for corporations where it bleeds them dry and gives very little in returns. It's mind boggling that they're content with making products that take almost a decade to be released, with the off chance of it bombing and making zero in returns like Concord. When did corporations go full fucking retard to the point that they're physically killing themselves due to it? It can't be because of shareholders wanting to burn money to tank whole industries just for the sheer thrill of it.
>>730887238I'm assuming it's a Hollywood thing where it's all in the name of attracting bigger investors by inflating dollar amounts. Because if your billion dollar game does make a profit, it's a very juicy profit that gets lots of very rich people to invest in your company going forward. Those people then ask you to do it again. That keeps going until the bubble pops when it's no longer feasible to keep making bigger and bigger blockbusters.
>>730877017Make your own game that you think would be fun to play without regard for profit.Not you specifically but just a general "you."
>>730875683Not just soul but they were easily able to load up quickly, play for a short or long amount of time and then log off.Too many games take too long to get into, needing hours to get into the good parts that only last a short time for the effort and then it's over.
>>730877370Thanks.I'm the rare extroverted engineer, but I had me a giggle.
>>730875683Colors other than gray and purple
>>730875683Anon, there are tons over tons of shitty old games. Greats old game like Transport Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Sim City 2000 and so on are still remembered and adored to this very day, because they are good. They are timeless classics made by extraordinarily talented people.
>>730887238Corporations don't have goals of their own, individuals within them do. I bet tons of middle managers and other corpo types literally got promoted for their "good" work on concord while it was being developed, that's how the corpo game is played, inflate the project, make short term good looking decisions, get promoted and transfer as far away as possible before it falls apart.The bigger any organisation is the more that kind of institutional rot sets in and the less anyone ends up actually working in the organisation's favour, and game companies have gotten very fucking big.
>>730875683I still remember when the HDD in our first x86 PC died, I would boot from a Win98 boot floppy disk which created a 2MB virtual drive to where I would unzip the demo of this game from another floppy and play it.Felt like a hacker.
>>730875683>As of 2024, Chris Sawyer, the creator of the RollerCoaster Tycoon game series, has ridden around 770 different roller coasters.
>>730877180This. TF2 and Overwatch realized this and became a massive success but everyone else still goes for max realism for some reason
>>730875683i liked the original Transport Tycoon where you start in 1930 and actually have a good chunk of the game where you're using steam engines and small airports etcin TTD when you start in 1950 it feels almost pointless making a small airport since you're only a few years away from getting jumbo jetsalso if i remember they changed a bunch of the vehicle names in TTD for some reason
>>730893197>They are timeless classics made by extraordinarily talented people.but where are the timeless modern classics? it's much easier to make games and much more people are doing it so mathematically in theory there should be more great games.
>>730875754
>>730893197Yeah but the point is there are zero good new games
>>730875683they actually challenged the player instead of facilitating a generic experience where all the potentially frustrating parts are ironed out
