Home video game consoles have numbered generations.
NES was the third.
We’re currently in the 9th generation.
Each generation lasts roughly about 6 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_video_game_console_generations
Is your favorite generation the one from when you first played games? Or is that unrelated and coincidental?
Is there a correlation with strength of a generation and society’s financial state (2009 recession’s effect on the 7th gen)?
I’m an aspiring developer and trying to answer the age old question of: Are games getting worse? In what aspects yes or no?
They absolutely are getting better audio&video fidelity, but that doesn’t mean much to, at least me, if the music is less memorable, the bugs are all patched, everything is over-monetized games as a service, all the assets are generic, and it’s all hyper-derivative remakes of remakes. I get that “fun is fun”, but once you’ve played so many games, you look back at games from 2001 and wonder why the only innovations we have are mantling, $20 hats, and Microsoft is buying everything.
There are absolutely good games right now, on the way to par with number of good games of most previous generations. So why does it still feel like everybody I talk to, regardless of age, feels like there’s an itch that hasn’t been scratched in ages? And, why is this a contentious issue? Surely, there’s a measurable way to debate seemingly subjective opinion of where we are.
Game devs: We see you guys working your asses off with very little appreciation. This isn’t about you guys, as much as it’s about risks (or lack of) that the industry takes as a whole.
I think games generally are improving, but AAA games mostly feel stagnant. It’s easy to look back at the best games of previous years, but gloss over the sea of low-effort licensed games and failed experiments. Games are more expensive than ever to make now, and that means there’s too much money involved to take big risks and gamble on experimental stuff. Big games by big publishers are forced to play it safe. The average experience has improved if you just picked a random game off the shelf 20 years ago vs now, but you don’t get as many of those spiked high points either.
Indie games are better than ever though. It’s so much easier now for indie devs to create and share games with the public, and that risk-taking mentality is still strong. The price creep of AAA games isn’t a thing, no season passes or battle passes or microtransactions, just games made by passionate players who wanted to scratch a certain itch missing in the market like you say.