Editorial Felipe Pepe at Gamasutra: Why are we abandoning gaming history?

[Zorba the Hutt]

We're very much close enough to understand how they were entertaining; we're also close enough that most people without nostalgia find them cryptic, badly designed and boring. We'd need much more distance for it to have the novelty value of high weirdness.

And yet the masses have been lapping up shitty games on mobiles with bad UIs and (until recently) terrible graphics. And pixel art is undergoing a bit of a resurgence in popularity.

Some games from the 80s and 90s are boring and badly designed, some aren't. Some are still fun to play now but most people are never exposed to them, never read about them in gaming media and would be put off by stuff like dosbox. Some more awareness, as Felipepepe mentioned, would be a good thing.

 

[dnf]

With games there is obviously the added factor of constant technological progress. Most people probably believe that older games are outdated and therefore only of limited 'merit' (or none at all).

They are right. But there is always the odd individual who tries to convince himself that shooting in a game like Doom is as good as it was in the 90's. Once you get the taste of better stuff, you don't want to go back.

 

[crawlkill]

We're very much close enough to understand how they were entertaining; we're also close enough that most people without nostalgia find them cryptic, badly designed and boring. We'd need much more distance for it to have the novelty value of high weirdness.

And yet the masses have been lapping up shitty games on mobiles with bad UIs and (until recently) terrible graphics.

I've played a lot of mobile games and have never encountered one with anything like as abominable an interface as Wasteland had. Or Ultima Underworld.

 

[Athelas]

orly?

Do you really think a higher resolution is comparable to the jump from 2d to 3d, use of physics, popularization of first-person perspective, etc., all of which happened within the last 10-20 years or so?

 

[crawlkill]

With games there is obviously the added factor of constant technological progress. Most people probably believe that older games are outdated and therefore only of limited 'merit' (or none at all).

But there is always the odd individual who tries to convince himself that shooting in a game like Doom is as good as it was in the 90's. Once you get the taste of better stuff, you don't want to go back.

I don't think Doom and the other id shooters that came after it have tarnished at all (and I played the Quakes, like, a decade after their release). They don't obstruct the player with their primitiveness. I can understand how someone who'd never played a no-mouselook shooter might find Doom eyewatering, but there's nothing really overtly terrible in terms of the way the player interacts with the game. If they do have a feature that's incompatible with modern design, it's that some of their levels are a little too mazey, a little too unintuitive. But that was a conscious choice, not bad design.

 

[Black]

DEAD

 

[felipepepe]

 

[dnf]

With games there is obviously the added factor of constant technological progress. Most people probably believe that older games are outdated and therefore only of limited 'merit' (or none at all).

But there is always the odd individual who tries to convince himself that shooting in a game like Doom is as good as it was in the 90's. Once you get the taste of better stuff, you don't want to go back.

I don't think Doom and the other id shooters that came after it have tarnished at all (and I played the Quakes, like, a decade after their release). They don't obstruct the player with their primitiveness. I can understand how someone who'd never played a no-mouselook shooter might find Doom eyewatering, but there's nothing really overtly terrible in terms of the way the player interacts with the game. If they do have a feature that's incompatible with modern design, it's that some of their levels are a little too mazey, a little too unintuitive. But that was a conscious choice, not bad design.

It's not about not being modern, it's about being mediocre. And the level design is the only thing in their favor.

 

[Tramboi]

I've played a lot of mobile games and have never encountered one with anything like as abominable an interface as Wasteland had. Or Ultima Underworld.

At least theses games invented something. thay had the right to be non-optimal interface-wise.
Yet I agree, their user interface could have been much better, considering objective metrics.

 

[Servo]

orly?

Do you really think a higher resolution is comparable to the jump from 2d to 3d, use of physics, popularization of first-person perspective, etc., all of which happened within the last 10-20 years or so?

I was referring to special effects, actually. Screenshot not a good example.

 

[crawlkill]

It's not about not being modern, it's about being mediocre. And the level design is the only thing in their favor.

That's a pretty strong opinion, considering the vast amount of criticism that modern FPSs get for being linear, brief and repetitive. Personally, I think there are FPSs that do what Doom and company do better than Doom did--who could argue with Half-Life--but I wouldn't say it was a majority, nor are a lot of other candidates springing to mind. Bulletstorm, maybe? It was pretty frenetic.

At least theses games invented something. thay had the right to be non-optimal interface-wise.

It's not a criticism of the games themselves, in their own time. It's a questioning of whether people can really be expected to go back and play them today, when that "oh wow cool this is so novel!" factor is gone.

But you can't simultaneously claim that mobile games have terrible interfaces and then excuse old games theirs for inventing something. Mobile gaming has also had to invent its own interfaces. The really funny thing is how well-suited turn-based RPGs are to the mobile format, to say nothing of how portable-friendly a wealth of ancient RPGs that have never heard the word megabyte could be. If I had Wasteland 1 on my iPad, I might make an honest attempt to get through it. Maybe.

 

[tuluse]

With games there is obviously the added factor of constant technological progress. Most people probably believe that older games are outdated and therefore only of limited 'merit' (or none at all).

Because with movies there is no technological advancement?

There is, but obviously nowhere near the same extent as is the case with video games. The most significant ones were the jump from silent to sound and black-and-white to color, both of which happened more than half a century ago.

If someone writing about movies for a living said black and white movies had no relevance to today and/or proudly declared they never watched one, they'd be laughed out of any respect, and like you said, color movies started about 70 years ago.

 

[tuluse]

FPSs that do what Doom and company do better than Doom did--who could argue with Half-Life

[fuck you made me double post]

 

[Darth Slaughter]

With games there is obviously the added factor of constant technological progress. Most people probably believe that older games are outdated and therefore only of limited 'merit' (or none at all).

Because with movies there is no technological advancement?

There is, but obviously nowhere near the same extent as is the case with video games. The most significant ones were the jump from silent to sound and black-and-white to color, both of which happened more than half a century ago.

The new advancements are the CGI and digital filming, but even these are still subject to standards set half a century ago. Lots of techniques used today are the same as they were a long time ago. But for a long time, the progress in movies were more how the world events would influece in the kind of films made, other than technological.

I agree with the idea that there are obscure films from the 10's and 20's that aren't talked about, which makes me wonder how similar to gaming the movie industry was in its beginnings. But lets say that gaming industry found its period of technological stagnation, maybe we will endure popamole gameplay for the next 60 years. Movies evolvement in between these technological leaps is more in the kinds of stories, genres, subjects used. We don't see many advancements in gaming in neither fronts (tech and reflective of world around) anymore. The most pessmistic prognosis is that the new tech advancement makes things even more popamolish.

Talking about popamole, the article felipepe made is about old games, but even the new shit of today is immediatelly forgotten. The memory span is getting shorter and shorter. Take crysis for example: when they released crysis 2, they said it was an improvement over the 1st, and they even retconned a lot of things that made the 1st one kind of unnecessary for the franchise, just to make it appeal to the console market who would never be able to play the first one in their limited boxes, as if crysis 2 is the first, similarlly with the fallout 3 case of having two entries before and you have to constantly remind people of that.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

If someone writing about movies for a living said black and white movies had no relevance to today and/or proudly declared they never watched one, they'd be laughed out of any respect, and like you said, color movies started about 70 years ago.

And there were many black-and-white movies being made concurrently with color films. Even some directors did some B/W films and Color films close to one another.

 

[Murk]

P gud stuff, props to Felipepepe for putting something big like this together and for getting such attention. 8/8

 

[sser]

I dunno, when you look at gaming in such a spectrum, maybe a another comparison would be a sport like baseball. Originally it was played by a bunch of dudes literally putting the game together on their own, and for years and years nobody gave a shit, but the game slowly advanced. And then boom, huge popularity. Now people know Babe Ruth and shit, but they hardly know anybody older, and the only relation to the older periods in baseball are shit like Casey at the Bat. Gaming's probably going to be the same, but in a much faster way in relation to time as technology shoots forward so quickly. While most have already forgotten games of the 80s and 90s, I'm kinda interested to see if in 50 years anybody remembers shit now. For all we know we're still in that gestation period for games...

 

[Zed]

Tags: CRPG Book Project

Cinema is over a century old, yet it’s expected for any decent critic or self-proclaimed enthusiast to have a knowledge ranging from ancient classics such as Battleship Potemkin and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to recent movies only shown at foreign festivals. If you tried to write about cinema having watched only post-90’s movies and one or two older Disney animations, you would be nothing more than a joke. Renting Citizen Kane once, or the fact that you grew up watching movies, aren't remarkable achievements in a serious industry.

So how can we ask others to respect games as art, when even gamers and industry professionals don’t bother to learn about its history?

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https://twitter.com/felipepepe/status/520726237535543297

FIGHT

 

[Ninjerk]

James Tiberius Kurt

 

[felipepepe]

What TRIGGERED me was someone posting it on a GamerGate article...

Here I don't know... what if Deuce is using it right and actually hates my article?

 

[Zed]

GamerGate articles trigger me regardless of content or comments. TRIg*D!1

Hey, by the way, what do you need for your book now, if someone would like to contribute? Just writing stuff?

 

[felipepepe]

Yup, pretty much. Besides the games on the list, I need a couple of articles on MUDs, MMORPGs and computers of the past (and their emulators)... If you want to take any, or know of anyone that might be knowledgeable on the subject, please say.

 

[Copper]

Richard Bartle?

 

[felipepepe]

Humm... perhaps. I'm a bit weary of asking the pioneers thenselves, they usually left the industry or don't care anymore. Asking the obscessed, sperging fan sometimes is better.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Yup, pretty much. Besides the games on the list, I need a couple of articles on MUDs, MMORPGs and computers of the past (and their emulators)... If you want to take any, or know of anyone that might be knowledgeable on the subject, please say.

Is there the "official" thread about the book? Anyway, I see that Witchhaven is on the list. I'm here thinking if I should sugest Thief the dark project to the list but I thought... "nah... it will fall on that discussion about it's not an RPG". But then I look and... Witchhaven? That game is a shooter! same could be said of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. But anyway... where is ShadowCaster? an rpg from raven software/Origin that used wolf3d engine?