Decline When did decline start to you?

[DalekFlay]

Oh no, not an interesting platform for action games!

Pre-Doom:

So... now you want action games?

 

[Bruma Hobo]

This discussion inspired me to go research some old PC focused magazines from the 80s and 90s to try and pinpoint the exact moment decline began. I've come to a predictably unpopular conclusion. Decline began with a game that has four letter in the title and starts with a D.

Spoiler

Yep, it's Doom

Yes, I know, it's one of the best games of all time, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't matter. You look at PC gaming coverage prior to Doom and it was legitimately and unironically monocled. It wasn't trying to be elitist or sound smart, it was written by a well educated individual addressing his or her peers. Respect for the readers intelligence and horizontal identification are present in every line.

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

I did read many old PC magazines a couple of years ago and my conclusion was almost the same as yours, but in my opinion the game that opened the floodgates wasn't Doom, it was Wing Commander three years earlier. After its success, many tried to replicate that kind of cinematic and streamlined experience, even with games that weren't fit at all (I'm thinking of Ultima VII right now, but there were many such cases).

 

[Straight elf]

So I performed highly scientific data analysis by summing up the number of points received by all games published in a given year according to the Most Prestigious Codex 2019 Top 100 RPGs poll. Plotted are moving averages of 3 years ending with the year corresponding to the x axis so the chart looks a bit more smooth. Clearly, the late 1990s, early 2000s was the time of MASSIVE INCLINE followed by long time of darkness. There has been a big of incline lately but indeed nothing compared to the good old days.

Also, the first incline period of Gold Box-y games is visible on the chart, followed by a bit of decline before the genre was revitalized by the Fallouts and Buldur's Gates.

 

[DalekFlay]

Goldbox RPGs through to Bloodlines is the golden age.

 

[octavius]

So I performed highly scientific data analysis by summing up the number of points received by all games published in a given year according to the Most Prestigious Codex 2019 Top 100 RPGs poll. Plotted are moving averages of 3 years ending with the year corresponding to the x axis so the chart looks a bit more smooth. Clearly, the late 1990s, early 2000s was the time of MASSIVE INCLINE followed by long time of darkness. There has been a big of incline lately but indeed nothing compared to the good old days.

Also, the first incline period of Gold Box-y games is visible on the chart, followed by a bit of decline before the genre was revitalized by the Fallouts and Buldur's Gates.

Nice curve. But it also shows that much fewer people have played the classic pre Diablo/Fallout/BG CRPGs.

 

[samuraigaiden]

These graphs do prove how much people are graphics whores and are more likely to play and rate highly a garbage game from the past decade than a classic from the 80s and early 90s.

 

[EmperorCruz]

Good morning all!

For me, the decline starts when a game company becomes huge enough to allows the marketing/financial department to be included in the creative design of the game.
It's understandable that money has to flow but making a game around profit, that just don't work in a point of view of a good product, sure it will have sales, shareholders will become richer and happy, but the final customer will be here, making posts and threads about it.

Who loses? Art loses, people who appreciate video games not just an entertainment vessel but as a piece of artwork.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I happened to come across a quote from Steve Jobs about why Xerox didn't become a tech giant despite having pioneered the development of several technological innovations at their Xerox PARC facility - including, for example, the graphical user interface, way before Apple and Microsoft.

While it doesn't directly apply 1x1 to this topic, I found extremely pertinent to this discussion. He poses an interesting question. Who influences success in a company that keeps making the same product over and over and doesn't focus on innovation? Not the product development people, but rather the marketing and sales people.

I time stamped the video to start the exact moment when he talks about it.



You don't have to extrapolate a lot to see how this assessment relates to the business practices of the biggest publishers in the gaming industry. What products make the gaming industry giants successful? They are addicted to a minimal risk strategy. We've reached a point in the gaming industry where innovation is always external to these companies. Nobody at Epic pioneered the battle royale concept, they saw the success of PUBG and reacted. In the past decade, every single new trend in the industry can be traced back to an independent game, a small studio, a mod or something along those lines.

These companies are in a business deeply rooted in technology and innovation, and yet all they seem to care about is monetization models and how to scale profitability.

It's not too surprising that one of the biggest technology trends of gaming in recent years, VR, has yet to produce a single truly compelling software product. The big companies have been breeding an internal environment that stifles innovation for the longest time and it's reached a point they are unable to actually step up to the plate and take those big steps ahead nobody else has the R&D budget to take. VR presents several steep barriers of entry for independent developers and smaller studios, so the likelihood of a runaway indie hit - for the big publishers to promptly ripoff - is low.

Now, circling back to the original question. If we were to try and define the event that triggered decline, it would have to be directly related to the ascension of marketing and sales people as the de facto leaders of the gaming industry.

At it's earliest, the gaming industry leaders were developers and investors. As cutthroat as somebody like Nolan Bushnell may seem, he was at some point directly involved in the process of making software. Today, almost every one of the giants in the gaming industry is spearheaded by a person who comes from sales and marketing, often having built a career completely unrelated to video games before being picked for the position. When did this change take place -at an industry wide level - and what motivated it? To answer this question is to define the true starting point of decline.

 

[Nutmeg]

I changed my mind.

It wasn't 1986 with Zelda.

It was 1982 with Xevious.

http://shmuplations.com/xevious/

What I wanted to try doing with Xevious was, for the first time, to give a video game a consistent world and setting. Also, within the limitations of the existing hardware, I wanted to create high-quality sprites. Finally, I wanted a story that wouldn’t just be some tacked-on extra, but could actually stand on its own merits.

This “experiment”, if you will, was a totally new way to approach making a game. It was closer to the way anime and movie creators think.

As a result it resonated with the “anime generation,” and Xevious, which had actually been a somewhat contentious title within Namco, ushered in a new wave of video games. A less public result was that after Xevious, the culture of game magazines like Beep also grew rapidly.

Masanobu Endou in 1985.

Horrible.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

 

[mondblut]

1994-95. SSI lost AD&D license, Wizardry and Might & Magic took a long hiatus, Ultima birthed the Pagan abomination, the stream of RPGs from less recognized developers that was flowing freely circa 1990-93 has all but dried up, general gaming became dominated by disgusting trash like FPS and RTS genres, and Windows 95 was just behind the corner to invite even more despicable audience into gaming.

 

[Burning Bridges]

This discussion inspired me to go research some old PC focused magazines from the 80s and 90s to try and pinpoint the exact moment decline began. I've come to a predictably unpopular conclusion. Decline began with a game that has four letter in the title and starts with a D.

Spoiler

Yep, it's Doom

Yes, I know, it's one of the best games of all time, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't matter. You look at PC gaming coverage prior to Doom and it was legitimately and unironically monocled. It wasn't trying to be elitist or sound smart, it was written by a well educated individual addressing his or her peers. Respect for the readers intelligence and horizontal identification are present in every line.

Less than 6 months after the Doom explosion, PC gaming coverage is completely different. It's now talking to teenagers, or morons, or both. Everything starts sounding like PR talk, and if you listen closely to the spaces between each printed word you can actually hear the wheels of the hype machine start to spin faster and faster. Clearly and unequivocally Doom's success ruined PC gaming.

I understand this isn't what any of you want to hear. But trust me, it's the truth.

I did read many old PC magazines a couple of years ago and my conclusion was almost the same as yours, but in my opinion the game that opened the floodgates wasn't Doom, it was Wing Commander three years earlier. After its success, many tried to replicate that kind of cinematic and streamlined experience, even with games that weren't fit at all (I'm thinking of Ultima VII right now, but there were many such cases).

I can still remember how I had bought a soundblaster card for 350 Deutschmark, new speakers and all and wanted to celebrate by playing the game everyone was talking about "Wing Commander"

After 2 hours of watching cinematic bullshit I started wondering "WTF have I just bought?!? Is the whole game just the same canned bullshit with fake 3D graphics???".

Take note that I was comparing it to Elite which I had played not 1, but 2 generations earlier on an 8bit computer.

Fortunately I found a moron who I could sell it to, although at a big loss.

Never touched anything with the name Chris Robert on it again. Those games were popamole long before the term was invented.

 

[Burning Bridges]

And since people mentioned Doom, it has to be said though that the game after it, Quake was massive incline in terms of graphics. It was the first game ever that I could run in ultra high resolutions like 1024*768 (up to that point everything was standard VGA 320x200) and it was a glorious experience.

I would also give a special mention Ultima VIII. People had waited and expected something that would top Ultima VII in every way (VII was quite notable in that you could place objects in the world and the world itself was 100s of times bigger than most Unity games these days).

Out came a shallow action game that only superficially resembled Ultima VII. And people could not understand how it had turned into an arcade game (back in those days popamole was called "arcade")

Tbh I would say there has never been another groundbreaking RPG game after Ultima in the early 90s(VII and Underworld 1-2), and System Shock/Thief in the later stages of the 1990s. Morrowind was still a bit of a revolution in terms of technology but simply too shallow.

It also helps to compare System Shock to Doom, which both appeared and had their fanbase at the same time. One was attempting a simulation, the other a dumbed down labyrinth with corny humor. In a parallel universe this would have been the start of a long development, not an end to it. And games would have blown away all boundaries. As it is they have just stagnated like fastfood.

 

[RayF]

And since people mentioned Doom, it has to be said though that the game after it, Quake was massive incline in terms of graphics. It was the first game ever that I could run in ultra high resolutions like 1024*768 (up to that point everything was standard VGA 320x200) and it was a glorious experience.
.

That was CGA -- even more old-school! I think VGA was 640x400.

 

[Burning Bridges]

No

320x200 x 256 colors is VGA

640x480 is called Super VGA

 

[RayF]

No

320x200 x 256 colors is VGA

640x400 is called Super VGA

I think we're both right. Some games downscaled VGA to a lower CGA resolution for more colors, but CGA was definitely 320x200.

 

[anvi]

EGA

 

[Arrowgrab]

PC beeper sucked compared to SID chip.

 

[Burning Bridges]

No

320x200 x 256 colors is VGA

640x400 is called Super VGA

I think we're both right. Some games downscaled VGA to a lower CGA resolution for more colors, but CGA was definitely 320x200.

Nobody played games like Ultima, Wing Commander or Doom in CGA. CGA was ancient stuff (1981) and only used by people who still had XTs and played text adventures.

By far the most common resolution in the late 80s and early nineties was Mode 13h https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_13h

 

[samuraigaiden]

I remember those days. Back when we had no idea what resolution the game was running at and we didn't care.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

1994-95. SSI lost AD&D license, Wizardry and Might & Magic took a long hiatus, Ultima birthed the Pagan abomination, the stream of RPGs from less recognized developers that was flowing freely circa 1990-93 has all but dried up, general gaming became dominated by disgusting trash like FPS and RTS genres, and Windows 95 was just behind the corner to invite even more despicable audience into gaming.

You forgot the demise of Commodore in 1994.

And since people mentioned Doom, it has to be said though that the game after it, Quake was massive incline in terms of graphics. It was the first game ever that I could run in ultra high resolutions like 1024*768 (up to that point everything was standard VGA 320x200) and it was a glorious experience.
.

That was CGA -- even more old-school! I think VGA was 640x400.

No

320x200 x 256 colors is VGA

640x480 is called Super VGA

The original graphical standard for IBM PCs was CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) in 1981 which offered a 4-color 320x200 mode from a palette of 16 colors. IBM introduced EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adapter) in 1984 which offered a 16-color "low-resolution" 320x200 mode and a 4-color "high-resolution" 640x350 mode, from a palette of 64 colors. VGA (Video Graphics Array) in 1987 was the last graphical standard established by IBM, with a 256-color 320x200 mode and a 16-color 640x480 mode, from a palette of 262,144 colors (18-bit, so 2^18 colors). Each of these graphical standards offered other modes that would not typically be used for games, e.g. CGA had a 2-color 640x200 mode and also 16-color 160x200 and 160x100 modes that had additional limitations.

 

[Burning Bridges]

You forgot the demise of Commodore in 1994.

That was actually a major turning point. I switched to the PC in '92 because new games for the Amiga had dried up, and I was a bit shocked because the PC was in many ways a step back. Later I was surprised how many games were eventually ported to the Amiga though. But they came years too late and also suffered because the Amiga had a much higher resolution but only 8 Mhz. Games that were ported like Indianapolis 500 looked better but stuttered badly. And it was the same story with many of the flight sims at the time. Look how badly Red Baron stuttered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4wmsLytJxU

 

[Black Plague]

Never forget the EGA skin color. We must use any means available to keep it buried.

 

[cosmicray]

Mid 2000s is a safe bet here. 6th generation of console, rise of news blogs, "are games art?" debate.

 

[mondblut]

1994-95. SSI lost AD&D license, Wizardry and Might & Magic took a long hiatus, Ultima birthed the Pagan abomination, the stream of RPGs from less recognized developers that was flowing freely circa 1990-93 has all but dried up, general gaming became dominated by disgusting trash like FPS and RTS genres, and Windows 95 was just behind the corner to invite even more despicable audience into gaming.

You forgot the demise of Commodore in 1994.

Russia was an overwhelmingly ZX Spectrum country, so Commodore did not affect me in any way.

No
640x480 is called Super VGA

Only if it had 256 colors.