What probably is happening, is that the companies are trying to please to many people to get enough money. Surely the companies must say to their workers 'Make a game that must have these elements, blah, blah, blah, and blah' and then the creators have to build a game around those, which is really much harder than just starting with a clean slate which good ideas are easliy added.

Tuss

Nobody is claiming all old games were good. King's Quest is a perfect example for that and everybody knows I don't hold back my opinion about bad old games

What I will never be able to agree on is that game quality is the same as it was! You might have a point that it's harder to be original these days. But are companies trying at all? What I see from flipping through the pages of current games magazines is the millionth Doom clone and the 500000th Dune 2 version. Seldomly, they add a Lotus-clone.
Companies might have been greedy back then, but developers weren't - most programmers did it, because they turned their own hobby into a job - it was something they enjoyed themselves! And that is the obvious difference to how it is now if you ask me. Now it's just bored programming slaves trying to earn enough to buy some food. I bet none of these people ever play their own games! It shows.

You mention The Sims again and again, the last game I bought ever for full price (after many years pause). I really enjoy it, it's a good game! I don't like it better than Alter Ego though, I'm playing them both roughly the same time on a regular basis. The Sims are an exception though, it is not even really new anymore ('98? '99?), and it the whole genre is more or less dead. Sure, they're trying to make more and more money with these silly add-ons.
That leads to an inconsistency in your arguments. On the one hand, you're talking about greedy companies. On the other hand, you present these add-ons as proof good games stay in focus (in contrast to the 'non-greedy' release of Alter Ego). Hmm.....

A final note about bugs. Your 'computer life' seems to have been dominated by PCs from very early on, so I won't deny you're right about comparing old PC games with new ones. I can only say that on my Amiga, I didn't even know what 'bug' means

What I'm missing is not King's Quest or Myst (another horrible game which only depends on its graphics), but games where I can feel the 'love' that was put into them. Games where I can be sure they programmers made them to play them themselves, because they're fans of this genre (and not because their boss decided this genre is 'in' at the moment)! Games which don't try to imitate other smash hits, but find their own ways and solutions! All that is missing in new games, that is why I wouldn't even see it differently if 'my' genres would be more popular again - it would always only be unispired crap

(oh, by the way: if you plan to continue this discussion or stay for longer, you should consider registering your username )

Last note got cut off, here is how it finished :-)
If a game is really special now, the company keeps it on the market by creating add-ons and sequels. A great game becomes kind of an institution now, and that isn't a bad thing. The best games from two years ago are still among the best today for that reason. I mean, look at the Sims and how much extra stuff has been written for that. In the past, original games like Alter-Ego (Which was very popular and very The Sims-like) were just dropped once they stopped selling.
I'm not saying 'New games are great, Old games suck'. I wouldn't be here if I felt that way. My angle is I don't think overall game quality has changed much at all. Developers and distributors were greedy then, and they are greedy now. They want our money, and will get away with whatever they can. There were good and bad games from both time periods. At least now we can go online to read opinions and get patches.
I think it's just a difference in the genres we play, too, Cresote. I hated adventure games like 'Kings Quest', 'Myst', and 'Zork'. I don't miss that genre at all. Sports management and RPG's are my thing, and right now they are doing fine. If they began to dry up, my opinion on new releases would probably change.
I rambled a bit here...sorry.

Thats a good point. I hate this trend towards multiplayer. It's going to kill my RPG's :-(. Online gaming sucks. You don't feel any atmosphere because you are the only person over 15 on the server half the time and no-one is remotely in character. I played Everquest once, tell me... is 'Yuck Fou' a medieval sounding name to you? I ran into him and about 10 others just like that.

also, maybe it wasn't fair for me to use a first generation CD game like Megarace as an example of an old game, because all of the early CD-Based games sucked.... Hellcab was another one.

and the point about patches being released right after the game is disgusting, too. Here I am defending new games, forgetting that I NEVER buy games as soon as they come out any more because I don't trust them. Maybe I don't see the bugs because I've become a smarter buyer.

But I only became a smarter buyer due to experiences back in the DOS days, because games were just as buggy back then, and in those days, there were no patches, they gave you a tech number which was worthless so if you bought a buggy game, you either learned to play around it or you were S.O.L.

The old games that we talk about on these boards are fantastic, but they only represent about 5% of the games that were released. The others either couldn't hold up against newer technology or were outright awful.

and don't forget, back then it was also much easier to come up with an original idea. There are more companies releasing games now, and foreign designers can also hit our market. Therefore, it is much harder for a game to really stand out and that is why it is harder for a game to establish a long term following.

If a game is really special now, the company keeps it on the market by creating add-ons and sequels. A great game becomes kind of an institution now, and that isn't a bad thing. The best games from two years ago are still among the be

You can't use Diablo II for that kind of example, simply because it's mainly a multiplayer game. I can say by experience that you can install the smallest version of the game and have absolutly no problems playing it.

The main problem is more, like NetDanzr said; new games are thought to be multi-playered. The single player option is only meant to be a "practice mode" where you learn the game.

That's why the majority of the new games suck.

Yes, I was really disappointed when I got Mega Race. It stinks horribly. There is no skill needed to drive the car or shoot. The instruction manual is more exciting.

I really hate how new games never get released completely done anymore. Many older games were solid right out of the box, but lately, when I get a new game, I go straight to the internet and *boom* there are already patches for it. Take Diablo 2... How long ago did that come out? They are still patching it, and it's not exactly a complex game.

Well, you're using examples I never liked. Manager sims, I played the original Football Manager a bit, but that's it. Telengard is an RPG, the worst genre ever!

Breakdance and Megarace aren't old games, in fact I consider them the forefathers of today's common standard. Take Megarace for example: it has these extremely cheesy video clips which everybody marvelled about 'back then' because it was something technologically new. The game itself is just a very bad action racer (a genre which for some time after this game accounted for almost 50% of all games!). As soon as the technology moved on and video clips got common (and better), nobody even looked at the game anymore.
And that is exactly how (almost all, I won't deny there might be one or two exceptions every five years) new games are. If I could, I'd name a few of the biggest hits from two years ago now (it's just that I can't remember any of the names...), then you'd see nobody plays those anymore - even the people who considered them the greatest games ever then! 'Our' old games on the other hand still have a following. It may be small, but beats the number of remaining active fans of 'new old' games (let's say anything published between 1996 and 2000) by far!

Yeah, but thats kind of a stereotype. I don't think you are a text-based sports sim guy, but games like Out of the Park and Front office Football are deep, not dependant on graphics, and were unheard of in 1990.

There are a lot of bad new games, mostly caused by the notion that most gamers are 16 and younger, so developers write to that audience. But there are a lot of good ones, too. Dungeon Siege is good. The Sims is good. Out of the Park is good. You just have to be able to spot them.

There were a lot of shallow games in the past, too. Who can forget immortal titles like "Breakdance", and "Megarace"? I was just playing Telengard about 10 minutes ago. I like it a lot, always have, but lets face it, there isn't much to it.

We're shutting down now because of the snow. Hopefully I can continue this debate tomorrow :-)

Yes, they are crap in my opinion. The genres I like have died out completely, games are a lot more buggy, they're all pretty stupid, it's always just about 'cool graphics' which just look like someone has vomited on the screen. Where's the fun in that?

Do new games really suck or are we just less tolerant of problems than we used to be?

I remember having fits trying to get some of my games to work in the early nineties, and even if I could set them to work with my hardware, many of them were flat out buggy. Tech support and patches were nonexistant.

I put up with crap from Daggerfall and the Front Page Sports games series that I would never tolerate now.

Couldn't agree less with that. As you might have read from my previous posts, I don't play any new games for the simple reason I consider them way inferior to old ones. The graphics of new games suck (ugly, no style), and as for sound, I constantly find myself powering up my Amiga and loading a game there just as a 'jukebox'!

That is something I agree on. Not related to buying, because the games I'm interested in aren't for sale anymore, but with the Internet, 'everything' is available, if something doesn't catch my attention immediately, there are always hundreds and thousands other games to try out...

We play old games we know because, lets face it, old games in general look and sound crappy. They aren't intuitive, you have to play around sometimes to get them to work properly, and 99% of the time there is a new game that does the same thing better. Why screw with an old game if you have no attachment to it?

Also, the old games you used to play are probably the genre that you like, the ones you didn't play back then are not.

Its also about nostalgia. I have a copy of Bards Tale on my class computer. The 18 and 19 year olds who sit next to me can't believe I spend time playing it, because it looks so bad and is so primitive. The only difference between us is that I have fond memories of playing it 15 years ago and they don't.

and don't forget that a lot of old games were bad even back then, just like many new games are bad.

Another thing is, I have extra money now to buy games that I didnt as a kid. For example, I love sports management sims. As a kid I would slowly scrape up sims of this type over time. Now I can just walk out and buy the best one whenever I please. Theres no need to experiment as much now.

Oh... This makes much more sense .

Let me first disagree with you: from time to time, there are some really good new games. For the past 12 months, I can name Capitalism II, Wizardry 8 and Moonbase Commander, for example.

As for your question, I tend to return to the good old games, but I also spend a lot of time trying out new old games. I guess it depends on the type of old games you like to play; for example, no matter how good a game is, the replay value of a good RPG will always be lower than the replay value of a good strategy game. As a primarily RPG player, I can't really afford to stick with the same old favorites all the time. On the other hand, games like Civilization, Colonization, Warlords or Master of Orion never leave my hard drive...

Okay, seeing that the arugement was based on oldgames vs oldgames, I have to say I have not experienced the same problems as you seem to have. I still look through a lot of old games sites, but I don't download every games. If the review catches my interest, I'll give it a go. I have thoroughly liked and still play games such as Transport Tycoon, M1 Tank Platoon, and others this way.

Now those games may not be 'unknown' to you guys, but they were to me at the time.

Tuss

Ok, to elaborate on this a bit more: to me, it is a proven fact new games are crap and that there are no exceptions. That is why I didn't even include them in my thoughts. What I'm comparing is two categories of old games:

1. Old games I've first played several years ago.
2. Old games which probably knew of back then, but I only got the chance to try recently.

My observation is I continue playing and liking games of the first category. Games of the second category however, I don't try that much anymore. Not because I think they'll be crap for sure, but because I always have another game belonging to category #1 I want to play even more.

My questions are the following:
Has anyone else made similar experiences or do you still dig through collections of 'old unknown' games?
What do you think causes this ignorance on the 'old unknown' games?

Well, it seems to me that you were comparing old and new games, and were looking for reasons why you are staying with the old ones .

And as clearly stated there, this thread wasn't meant to be about new games

Of course on the point. All I was saying was that I'm not conservative, I'm pragmatic. The new games suck - plain and simple .

Again, some interesting points, but not exactly on the point

I noticed the same thing Mr Creosote did. I doubt we can slim down the reasons for this into a few universal points, but these are my reasons for sticking more and more with old games:

* The decrease in quality. Simple and plain. You can say whatever you want, games are simply getting worse and worse. The last two new games I played were Lord of the Rings and Civ 3: Play the World. LotR had awesome graphics, but I was done with it in 8 hours. I have yet to finish the 1990 version by Interplay... Play the World doesn't even run without a patch, and after applying the first patch, the PC didn't recognize the CD anymore.
* Multiplayer. More and more games are aimed at a multiplayer audience. For example, while Red Alert 2 is decent, there's no more than 12 hours of gameplay in single player mode. As a single player, I see no reason to buy it then...
* Been there, done that (and better). So far, there was only one original game this year. A single one! And Infogrames, its publisher has never ran any advertising campaign to support it, so most likely you won't even know it exists.
* Nobody to trust. Back in the days, I had a series of game reviewers and friends I trusted. If they said a game was good, I got it. However, they didn't hesitate to tell me when a game was awful. Not anymore: right now, a 50% rating means an awful game, and anything below 80% is considered to be bad. As such, I don't have anybody to trust, and so I buy much fewer new games. I don't even read many new reviews anymore.
* Test of time. After all those years, there's lots of old games that are still playable, in this age of overblown graphics and sound. That means that their design and maybe concept must be better than that in new games, to offset their technological defficiency. Playing those old games is simply much more fun