The 90s was the apex of coolness in gaming, right?

[Zed Duke of Banville]

We can never go back

Spoiler

 

[Zothique]

Less trannies, so yes.

But they were still there in the shadows, tho.

 

[Storyfag]

We can never go back

You don't need to go back. The supermajority of the movies/games/books/ttrpgs produced back then are still available.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

You can totally go back. Make your own stuff inspired by the 90s.

 

[wideman]

2000sands were better in my opinion. The graphics started to get good, there were good cutscenes, gameplay got more complex, and a lot of things came together. Games were made for gamers and as experiments.

90s people were still discovering systems.

 

[The Nameless One]

Yeah I'm not sure.

Then:​

Now:​

 

[Johannes]

Did you get laid at E3, and was it with Chris Avellone?

 

[The Nameless One]

Did you get laid at E3, and was it with Chris Avellone?

If there was anyone to screw back then, t'was Sheena Easton.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

We can never go back

You don't need to go back. The supermajority of the movies/games/books/ttrpgs produced back then are still available.

The problem is that the people are not available.

 

[Darkozric]

Chris Jones and Aarron Conners

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The problem is that the people are not available

There are plenty of people alive right now. They just need to get off their lazy asses and make new games.

The current crop of game IPs are crap and never coming back. Make new games that recapture the magic of the originals.

D&D has the whole OSR movement. Other genres don’t, but you just need to make some.

There’s plenty of creative people who want to make stuff, but many of them seem to be under the mistaken impression that it’s bad to make new things and they have to write fanfic of something that already exists. Teach them how to make new things. Teach them that we need competition for a healthy economy.

 

[Tyranicon]

There are plenty of people alive right now. They just need to get off their lazy asses and make new games.

The current crop of game IPs are crap and never coming back. Make new games that recapture the magic of the originals.

D&D has the whole OSR movement. Other genres don’t, but you just need to make some.

There’s plenty of creative people who want to make stuff, but many of them seem to be under the mistaken impression that it’s bad to make new things and they have to write fanfic of something that already exists. Teach them how to make new things. Teach them that we need competition for a healthy economy.

We tend to overestimate the number of

1. Creative people that exist.
2. The above who are also interested in genres we enjoy.
3. All of the above that can actually produce something good.

This already weeds out a massive number of people, and if you add the various forms of political and ideological filtering, in addition to removing anything that's overly corporatized, it reduces that number to almost nil.

 

[DannyRope]

(...) but many of [the creative people] seem to be under the mistaken impression that it’s bad to make new things and they have to write fanfic of something that already exists.

In addition to the spitting of facts of Tyranicon there, it's not so much that creative people are under the impression that making brand new stuff is bad but that the publishers, the money people, are extremely risk averse. I'm sure a hefty number of creative people are itching to do videogames with their own ideas and original characters (that those games would be any good is another issue entirely). They just don't get the chance, other than in the very DIY indie gamedev scene.

We too tend to overestimate:
4. The power creative people hold in the industry.

 

[Great Deceiver]

People grossly underestimate the universal crisis of competence that the world is going through.

The main reason why games suck now is because people developing games now are entirely incompetent. It's that simple. Society has developed mechanisms to reward subterfuge and other weird shit than competence, and people respond to incentives.

"Creatives" don't mean anything if there are no hypercompetent turboautist to implement their vision on a technical level, and those are very very rare and thoroughly disincentivized from working in the games industry, not the least reason for which being the terrible hours and pay.

The 'publisher bigwigs are too greedy!' line doesn't cut it anymore - in fact, it hasn't for a very long time. 'Legacy' developers of classic games are washed out and fail to realize that they were a part of a perfect storm at the time and recapturing lightning in a bottle is almost impossible - all the proof you'll ever need of this phenomenon is the string of terrible shit supposedly great developers have been putting out for well over 15 years at this point.

 

[DannyRope]

Talented passionate creatives and legacy devs get burnout. Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise American McGee? EA refused to greenlight what would have been the third Alice game, Asylum, because it wouldn't be profitable according to a BS market research, or another equally inane reason, but at the same time refuses to sell the IP to the one guy who's really passionate about the franchise and believe in the project. EA would rather sit on the rights doing nothing with them. Result? American McGee gets so fed up that decides to abandon the videogame industry altogether.

 

[Nutmeg]

EA would rather sit on the rights doing nothing with them

IP laws as they are currently formulated, exist to rob employees from the fruits of their intellectual labor, as well as consumers, and serve only to sustain the parasite class.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

EA would rather sit on the rights doing nothing with them

IP laws as they are currently formulated, exist to rob employees from the fruits of their intellectual labor, as well as consumers, and serve only to sustain the parasite class.

Exactly. That’s why I advocate for copyright reform. Shorten the default term to 14 years, and allow owners to register extensions up to the current terms (depending on country) if they still care after that time.

Originally extensions had to be registered. Under that law, only about 15% of copyrights were extended. Most of the time, the owner didn’t care.

 

[That_Scumbag]

We can never go back

You don't need to go back. The supermajority of the movies/games/books/ttrpgs produced back then are still available.

The problem is that the people are not available.

That is a problem indeed. The older media still existing is undoubtedly a good thing, but it feels less satisfying when you have nobody to share it with. You can still play Front Mission 3 for example, but most people around you talk about Fortnite or D.A. Failguard. A crude and perhaps last ditch solution is to network with people that like retro stuff and set up game nights/days/whatever where you play/watch older stuff. I do that with my buddies and it does give back that sense of camaraderie. It also helps introduce media of older design mindsets to new people.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

That is a problem indeed. The older media still existing is undoubtedly a good thing, but it feels less satisfying when you have nobody to share it with.

If you can’t get the rights, then make spiritual successors

 

[Sergio]

That is a problem indeed. The older media still existing is undoubtedly a good thing, but it feels less satisfying when you have nobody to share it with.

If you can’t get the rights, then make spiritual successors

Too bad this approach doesn't seem to work for JRPGs. When they announced Suikoden successor, Eiyden Chronicles, everyone were happy, when it came out it turned out to be crap. Or when they released Chrono Trigger successor (their words), Sea of Stars, which just caters to crowd who are not even JRPG fans. Whenever I see someone use words like "spiritual successor" or "love letter" when marketing a JRPG game, it just makes me sick.

 

[Ravielsk]

Whenever I see someone use words like "spiritual successor" or "love letter" when marketing a JRPG game, it just makes me sick.

Its a marketing tactic first and foremost. As a dev goal its shooting yourself in the balls with a grenade launcher. Best case scenario it does not explode and you spend weeks crab walking, worst case scenario you go boom.

When you market yourself as a successor to anything that automatically constrains you to whatever that predecessor was. If its a 2D turn based SNES JRPG then you must make another 2D turn based SNES JRPG. Its effectively a straight jacket that ensures you can never really make something truly exceptional because you are selling yourself on the premise of making more of the "same old shit". Otherwise there is no point in even bringing your inspirations up as they will only invite unwelcome comparisons which you will always lose in, because nostalgia is a bitch to compete against.

Plus on top of that to make a "spiritual successor" or a "love letter" you actually have to understand the original in its totality. As in you not only need to know 99 trivia facts about the work you are "spiritually succeeding" but also its place in time and space when it was published. You have to be able to ask yourself and honestly answer whether the thing you are making more of was a success because it was a real good idea that no one reused since, or if it was some kind of a fluke that fundamentally cannot be repeated.

Most of these "love letter" types of games do neither so they only really end up producing superficial copies that mimic one or two good things about their inspirations but are otherwise just flanderizations.

 

[Ravielsk]

Exactly. That’s why I advocate for copyright reform. Shorten the default term to 14 years, and allow owners to register extensions up to the current terms (depending on country) if they still care after that time.

Originally extensions had to be registered. Under that law, only about 15% of copyrights were extended. Most of the time, the owner didn’t care.

Personally I would split it into stages. After first 10 years the IP enters the public domain but the distribution rights remain with the original IP holder. Aka you can freely make your own stuff within the IP(fan sequel, mods, remixes...) but you are not allowed to sell whatever the original product was. That would only become possible after the next 5 years, unless the IP holder files for an extension, but only for the distribution rights not for pulling the IP out of the public domain.

That way if something is selling and people are buying the IP holder can continue to profit off of it but without the chance for copyright hoarding as it all goes into public domain in 10 years either way.

 

[ghardy]

You have to be able to ask yourself and honestly answer whether the thing you are making more of was a success because it was a real good idea that no one reused since, or if it was some kind of a fluke that fundamentally cannot be repeated.

Having watched the latest installments of the Alien franchise, this hits home.

(Romulus was somewhat better than Covenant...)

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Personally I would split it into stages.

This is an idiotic suggestion that would only create more headaches. The system is already terrible as a result of complex rights contracts. We don't need a repeat of that.

Having watched the latest installments of the Alien franchise, this hits home.

The problem here is copyright and its anticompetitive nature. The IP is owned by morons who don't know what to do with it, so they let Ridley Scott vomit all his dumb incoherent History Channel Ancient Aliens nonsense on it. If nobody owned the IP and anyone could make what they wanted with it, then the cream would rise to the top while the crap would sink to the bottom.

We saw this with the Dark Horse comics. DH threw stuff at the wall to see what stuck. Some stories were stupid, some were ridiculous, and some were good. They were able to experiment and react to feedback. Comics were also a lot cheaper to make than movies or video games, so the failures weren't harmful to the brand. Even so, the DH editors still limited what could be done with it. We don't see anything like Nemo Ramjet's suggestion that the aliens, jockeys and bioships are actually different cells and organs of a gigantic organism we've mistakenly divided into separate species.

We can't let a single authority own these IPs and continually mismanage it. We need to remove the copyrights and let the marketplace of ideas compete unfettered. Since reforming copyright doesn't seem to be likely anytime soon, then the only option is to make spiritual successors or new IPs entirely. Wash, rinse, repeat. You don't want that? Then fuck the hell right off, you're not helping anything.

 

[Falksi]

The amount of top quality gaming churned forth in the 90's was fucking incredible. I'd have the 80's down as better for films (but only by a small margin), and both the 80's & 90's on par as peak music too. But gaming was off the charts.

Here's just 2 years of my fave games in the 90's (most of these are the covers for that region/systems release, which should fall in that year, but the odd one may be the wrong cover. Either way though, they're all 90's games obviously)....

1990...

1992...

There'll be more bangers in those years which I haven't played either.

Over 70 games in 2 years which I class as top-tier. I can't name that many in the last 2 decades, nowhere near.