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Games All Downhill Since Pong?
In a recent article Nolan Bushnell laments the current state of gaming, stating that modern games are nothing more than a "race to the bottom" resulting in complete and utter trash. In order to combat what he sees as the downward spiral in game quality he continues to work on his new dining experience uWink that features tabletop games and a "reasonably priced meal". RPS weighs in on the subject arguing that, while the unhealthy obsession with Halo 3 might be a bit misplaced, there are plenty of gems to be found amidst the flotsam and jetsam.
This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS!
See: Portal.
What metric is being used here? Fun-per-pixel? Fun-per-Hertz? I guess if you go by that standard, Pong is the best videogame ever.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
As if Pong could possibly be better than Duke Nukem Forever.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Hey, I didn't know that Dvorak was going into the restaurant business. Wow, even his business models are trolls.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It had great team play. It had balanced objects. It had just the right amount of speed.
It had suspension of disbelief.
I so miss it.
I have a similar view - only differing by a generation or so. I'm probably a bit younger than the author. In my very humble opinion, games have gone downhill ever since they moved from 2D to 3D. My all time favorite game is Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES version). Ocarina of time was alright, but the games these days are just a little bit too complicated with way too much stuff going on. They're fine if you want to really get into them, but again, they are too complicated, and they just feel different.
Perhaps it's just a generation thing... you love the games you were brought up with... I'm sure that there are plenty of people who feel that games have gone downhill ever since they started using "advanced" graphics (tiles, images, etc... the stuff you see with Zelda, Donkey Kong, Mario, etc... for the SNES and NES), as opposed to a ball and some paddles...
Bioshock provided me with some of the best game-based entertainment I've had in years. And I've spent many happy hours deathmatching in Quake, going through a number of the Zeldas, thumping bad guys in Crackdown, and even playing Solitaire.
Downhill, huh?
(And yes, I enjoyed Halo 3).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Okay, whose nagging wife created that URL?
Seriously, I am the only one who thinks the games just have gotten better in general? Sure there's lots of recycled crap, but... it's always honestly been that way... infact I actually wonder if it was more common at the time of Atari. It's said that bad games was a factor for the video game crash in the early 80's...
The games Atari made is way overly simplistic for someone who grew up the NES I have to admit. Then, I was never a fan of seemingly endless games...
I'm not really a big gamer and haven't really gone for the FPS stuff much after the first Doom. I've played a few games here and there, but there's one game that I've played off and on for 10 years and can't seem to break the addiction, and that's SubSpace (now known as Continuum). I started playing in '97 when Virgin Interactive had it in beta and while I've gone a few years here and there where I haven't played, I still play it pretty often. I can't really say what it is about it that's so appealing to me, but there isn't another game out there (other than maybe solitaire) that I've continually found engaging like Continuum.
LucasArts adventure games, Silent Hill 1,2 and 3 (4 sucked), Prince of Persia (all of them except the gameboy versions), Castlevania, SuperMetroid and derivates. Lemmings was a gem, too.
Coming from the guy who was part of Atari AND founded Chuck E. Cheeses, it seems Bushnell is stating HIS personal goal/philosophy of gaming.
Has Mr. Bushnell played Wii? The article is pretty vague on what exactly his beef is with modern video games, but Nintendo seems to be aiming to do the same thing he is with his interactive restaurant games (minus the food of course).
"Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing."
I find that it's hard to overstate my satisfaction. We do what we must, because we can.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
All art downhill since first cave drawing.
I mean like, how could we possibly, you know, improve on, like, the idea of art, man?
IMHO, that's the reason why games today for the most part suck.
Games these days are multimillion dollar affairs. And that's even before the movie is released. There is so much money at stake that no sane person would ever risk making a game without a market study and focus groups. Large projects demand it.
And that's the problem - innovation gets lost in that process. Put another way, innovation isn't safe.
Back In The Day(tm), it was just a couple of guys sitting around thinking up wacky ideas. Sometimes they stuck, and sometimes they didn't. If it failed, who cares? It's just a half a dozen guys that are already on the payroll. But if it worked, you could get innovation - and that made the difference. That's why guys my age sit around playing MAME and not giving a crap about Madden 07. How different could is possibly be from Madden 06?
Nolan is a product of the Golden Age. That's why he's disappointed with today's games. Innovation was the thing back then. A half a dozen mad mavericks could easily turn the world upside down with a really great idea.
Sadly, not possible today. That's why despite all the beautifully rendered cut scenes, bazillions of vertexes per second and obscene piles of money thrown at new titles these days the games are just simply missing that magic spark. And just plain fall flat for guys from our time.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
is games that have lived on because they have infinite ways of being played....
ping pong
chess
tennis
sudoko, ect
Was Tac Scan, a really cool vector arcade game. I'm afraid that they have been sliding downhill ever since.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
he forgot tetris... BLASPHEMY what other game do you know is able to etch its self directly into your brain? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect though he is somewhat correct, a lot of the games have been utter garbage lately, although most of the bad games of the past died a quiet death to be forgotten as it should be.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The cake is a lie The cake is a lie The cake is a lie The cake is a lie
Lets review.
New things are not as good as the old stuff back when they weren't as degenerate.
"reasonably priced meals"
Old fashioned entertainment
Isn't this all a little stereotypical Old Fart? i'm waiting for him to start talking about how good 70's cars were compared to today and what great artists "the Captain and tennille" were.
You just gotta look past the titles. Ive been content playing the Forgotten Hope mod for the battlefield 1942 engine for a while now, and it will soon have a version out for Battlefield 2, which will be nice to swap between with something like Project Reality. There are people out there who actually care about gameplay more than what the annoying lowest common denominator wants. Sure the graphics arent quite as good as say Crysis, but it looks good enough, and with 64 players, these games can be intense.
Some BF2 mods for those who havent looked:
WWII as it's meant to be played (coming soon)...
http://forgottenhope.filefront.com/main.php?module=&lang=english&flash=yes&mod=
Intense, team-based, and tactical (available)...
http://www.realitymod.com/
Great fun (available)...
http://www.bfpirates.com/
I find it hard to listen to the ramblings of any old man, even the one who made Pong, who believes that the solution to gaming's ills lies in the serving of a reasonably priced meal.
But I do agree with you that walls should all be broken. We all use wall hack anyway. What's the point with setting up walls besides conning newbies? Down with walls.
I think it's important to note that early generation consoles (i.e Atari 2600) cost nearly the same as those made thirty years later - about $300 MSRP (usually discounted). So in 1982 little Jimmy's mom and dad could easily be asked to spend half their mortgage payment on a new console system, plus games. In 2002 a new Xbox/PS2/GameCube was what? Less than five day's pay at minimum wage.
The relatively high price of the 2600 kept the user base pretty small. We all played them, but I bet most of us went to neighbor kids house to do it. Of course, with the video game crash 1983, a massive console glut was created....so maybe everybody's parents bought them after the crash.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
"Pong" is a little before my time, I've only got about 23 years of experience as an avid gamer. And, in my opinion, this is just bunk.
Back in the good old days? There were fantastic, innovative, fun games, and there was also immense quantities of absolute garbage.
And now? There are fantastic, innovative, fun games, and there is also immense quantities of absolute garbage.
Any claim that games were "better" in the old days is just so much nostalgia and selective memory. Think a bit harder, you'll remember those games you pirated on the C64 that were so bad that you'd spend 2 minutes waiting for the game to load and then only 30 seconds playing it before you tossed the tape back in the case.
Half-life, System shock 2, Metal Gear Solid, Prince of Persia, Chrono Trigger, Metroid Prime, Super Smash Brothers: Melee, Resident Evil 4, Goldeneye 007, Warcraft, Half-life 2, Planetside, Diablo, WiiSports, Metroid Corruption, Deus Ex, Monkey Island, Zelda Ocarina of Time, Grand Theft Auto, Quake II, Katamari Damacy, Super Metroid, Area 51, Baldur's Gate, Super Mario Bros, Civilization II, X-COM UFO defense, DOOM, The Sims, Warcraft II
So, great, he's a father of the industry.
Ever been to uWink, his latest idea? It's godawful. Imagine the most tired, re-tread, uninspired, and dull fare you could get from the unholy collision of an Applebees, California Pizza Kitchen, and PF Chang's. The hook? You get to use a touch screen to order your food! Wow, touch screens! You know, like you use at the airport, your ATM, the occasional gas station, and about 500,000 other places. Plus they've got incredibly dull table games... Oh, and for kicks, the touch sensors on the screen are so comically inaccurate -- so make sure to double check that you're getting what you've ordered.
The decor is kind of like chromey mid-90s meets that bar in Star Trek 3, only people look like they're having a lot less fun. Basically, imagine any "futuristic" concept hacked out by any of a dozen subpar ad agencies or architecture firms around 1997. The Century City food court is 10x more self-consciously "futuristic" in its design and seems less ridiculous.
And the last bit of fun: Anything that's actually edible on the menu will be sold out. Ditto for any beers worth drinking. So enjoy that exotic pepperoni pizza and bud light...
Nope, sorry, give me Mario Kart, Guitar Hero, GTA, Final Fantasy 4, Katamari Damacy, Civilization, X-Com, Star Control, or any other of about six dozen games that are brilliant or brilliantly fun. If I wanted to go someplace and be bored while surrounded by awful overpriced food and where touch screens pass as a killer app, I'd hang out at the airport.
I am not Herbert.
...but there are no games in the past 12 years that even come close to reaching the greatness of Duck Hunt. I'd say Duck Hunt and Pong are 1 and 2, or tied for 1. Shaq Fu is a close third.
Please do not forget Hironobu Sakaguchi's Final Fantasy
most definitely one of the best games of all time.
without a doubt better than Pong.
First person shooters and racing games are getting a little old, how about something new?
I've more or less quit gaming after finishing HL2. Granted I never was a huge gamer but it's the same 'ole shit. Aliens are invading earth, one dude saves us all. It's WWII, some guy single-handedly wins the battle of buldge. Blah, blah, blah.
I guess this is why I still get out of the NES or N64 more than anything. At least "Army Men, Sarges Hero's" was fun. Maybe it's me, but I like comedy and am really tired of the sci-fi, dough-boy, rice-rocket shit. What happened to fun/funny games?
Gone!
I respect Nolan for his GREAT contribution to the gaming industry, but I can't believe he said that current generation games are pure trash.
Come on, the company he founded was a great contributor to the videogame crash. The crash happened many years ago, and a phenomemon like that hasn't repeated ever since; not because there are huge budgets or people buy crap, but because there are very good games in the market. There are games with charismatic characters (Mario), cinematic experiences (Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid), inmersive worlds (Oblivion, Zelda, Half-Life), or plain-ol fun (Wii Sports, Mario Kart, DDR, Guitar Hero, Metal Slug).
Maybe he is ranting against american game publishers like EA, Activision, that like to market the same crap season after season, giving no more entertaining value. Maybe he is too old and don't play complex games. But that is no excuse, because there are also really good indie (or indie like) games, like Every Extend, Geometry Wars, Bejeweled, Clubhouse Games, Pac Mac CE. Games that are WAY more fun than the late 70s titles.
I also been thinking that maybe he doesn't really like videogames, but he likes to make them. It has always happened, just read some interviews to game developers and they'll tell you they don't really play games. Maybe he liked the old games, closer to the heart of the beginnings of videogaming, he was a protagonist in the revolution. Right now, there is nothing, in gaming, that makes him PASSIONATE because he FEELS there hasn't been a real Paradigm Shift(TM) in the way games are made or people interact with them. I hope he is trying to say what I have just written, but the interview is very poorly done to draw any conclusions.
I only have one message to him: Mr. Bushnell, thank you, you're work has made a great impact in our lives, in ways that no one can imagine. I'm glad you are still an active innovator, I love your restaurant idea, but don't treat the gaming industry like that, please look at Wii Sports and Wii Fit and you'll really see gaming is changing for the great benefit of our glorious nation.
PINBALL!!!
I would argue that entertainment in general has gone downhill since pinball became less popular.
because you get old and got repetitive strain injury.
Where it was a bunch of pictures of a horse running? Yeah, that was the best fucking film of all time. It's just been downhill from there.
Computers downhill since ENIAC
Movie at seven.
A recent study showed that if people have to wait for more than 4 s for a website to load they get bored. I had to watch a stupid advertisement for 15 s, or press a link I discovered after 4.5 s. Sorry mates, I won't see your website. This was an even more stupid and offensive way to force advertisements down my throat than those stupid popup advertisemnts you see on some websites.
-- Cheers!
I've been playing video games for about 30 years, and the couple decades I've always heard the hype of "Playing this game is like being in a movie." I've seen try after try, from playable games that looked nothing like movies, to movie-like games (Dragon's Lair, beautifully animated) that were not really playable.
Only recently have we hit that milestone with Heavenly Sword -- good playability, good acting (voice and facial), and art direction that is breathtaking. And most major titles at least have a pretty good script behind them these days.
I'd say the state of video games is doing quite well.
There will always be people who nag about everything being better in the olden days. I didn't read the article because of the stupid advertisement, but if the guy who wrote it really thinks pong was the best game ever made I feel sorry for him. I, for one, am enjoying the torrent of new adventure games that we are experiencing at the moment a lot!
-- Cheers!
OTOH, if games are seen as a way to push technology, then there is not downhill slide. Pac Man and Donkey Kong are not dissimilar to pong, but merely utilize available processor power to animate the character widget. As we move to Prince of Persia or Doom, it is again not much different, in terms of skill level, but we see the increasing use of the platform, often with technologies that are not stable enough for actual production tasks.
That last point might be the real downward slide. In a game, one often pushes the technology to the limit. It might work, it might not. It is a game, so it really does not matter, what matters is the experience of doing something that one would not risk in real work. What one does just for play. So really, what has happened is that games are such big business, that there is no risk. Everyone has to win. The game is exiting, but with no little risk. The FPS is simply donkey kong with pretty graphics, but mellowed by the modern sense of the computer game. The Sims is Sim City, but without the monster. Really, I guess, there is a point. Without risk it is boring.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Person comments about poor state of an industry. Offers own product instead. We will be following this story with regular updates as it happens.
I'm still trying to get ET out of the hole, you insensitive clod!
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Forget First Person Shooters. Pong was the first and best 2D Third Person Omniscient (TPO) game that used (ahem, _only_) the Law of Reflection in its physics engine. Not only were you aware of all the action in the entire game universe simultaneously, but you also knew -- no, FELT -- all the character's motivations from everyone's point of view. As if that weren't enough, the angle of incidence was always equal to the angle of reflection with respect to the surface normals. Poetry.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
All puns aside, Asteroids kept me glued to my Atari for my first-ever all night gaming session. I think that was just before Christmas in 1981. The game was simple and fascinating.
It took until 1995 for another game to keep me glued to a screen in quite the same way. That one was Descent. The innovative use of 3D space and the creepy alien ships jumping you from all angles was terrific. I loved it, but I was jumping at shadows for days after my marathon session.
I played Pong quite a lot when it first came out, too, but it didn't get a death grip on my attention like Asteroids and Descent.
The musicianship and production in popular music has improved a lot, but they have less to say, so it's insipid but highly competent trash. I personally think video games peaked with the RTS games of the late 1990s, but I'm not a competent gamer and I'm sure people here have a better take on it.
However, I can say that while I appreciate the Mars Volta, 1970s prog wipes the floor with them.
Anti-Globalism
Up until a few days ago, I probably would have agreed with TFA. I played my share of console and arcade games as a kid, and a computer game here and there (I even gave WoW a shot, and it admittedly keep me going for a few months), but I just don't generally find games all that engaging. Either they're too simple and I get bored, or they're too frustrating, and I get annoyed and bored. It just feels artificial -- if I want a challenge, there are enough projects on my to-do list to keep me busy for several lifetimes, and if I want escapism, there are a lot of books. I'm not denigrating people who do like games (we all have our hobbies), I just didn't really get the draw.
But that was before a few weekends ago, when the S.O. and I were at a friend's house and saw Wii Sports in person for the first time. I'd heard of it, of course, but had never really played it. Overall, I'm not sure it'll go down in the annals of videogames as more significant than Super Mario Brothers, but maybe it should: I saw more non-gamers pick up and have a good time with that game than I've ever seen before, on any system. Lots of people who normally would have just tuned it out as annoying background noise ended up taking a turn. And perhaps more significantly, we weren't the only couple leaving that night and saying "wow, we have got to get one of those" to each other. It's a video game system that doesn't feel like a 'video game' system -- it felt like poor-man's virtual reality. And a week later, despite living with one of the most anti-video-game people I know (and at their insistence, no less), I found myself rearranging the living room furniture so that there's more room to play Wii Tennis.
As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo should let Sony and Microsoft fight over the established market: they're creating a whole new one, or at least bringing a lot of people whose last console system was an NES back into it. The major question for them is whether they're going to be able to continue to produce games that maintain the very high bar for playability and group fun that Wii Sports does (so far, most of the third-party titles we've picked up from Blockbuster have been a bit disappointing). The question of whether the Wiimote is revolutionary or just a novelty will ultimately depend on whether they can get more games that use it effectively and intuitively, instead of just using it to emulate traditional controls or as an addon, rather than the platform's core and distinguishing feature. At least in my opinion, if you play it sitting down, somebody missed the point.
I've played Halo 3, and yes, the graphics are pretty amazing (it's probably the first game I've played where the flamethrower looked borderline convincing). I suspect, based on the hardware, that the Playstation's are even more impressive. But there's nothing there that makes we want to run out and drop half a grand. (When they're selling for $100, I'll buy an XBox3 so I can play through Halo for the plot.)
Wii Sports (and the ensuing sore arm) was pretty much worth $250, just for the sake of watching people whose knee-jerk response to any console system is "I don't do video games" change their minds and start to enjoy themselves within a few seconds of handling the controller.
Games are not dead. I think that the game publishers and the hardware developers just went though a very risk-averse phase where nobody wanted to take chances, and so they ground out basically the same product, to the same audience, over and over. If you liked that product and its evolutionary improvements, it was great. But if you didn't, there could be pretty long dry spells. I'm not sure whether the Wii is the beginning of something different, or just a temporary oasis, but you'd have to be an idiot not to enjoy it either way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
but why get that nit picky? If you can tell me someone besides Rain Man who can tell you every scenario, i'll show you the impossible - you can't live long enough.
A perfect example of this is HL2... I loved Ep2 - but it was really short, and once the game was completed (and very short... did I mention that) I won't ever play it again... I'll of course play the sequels and any mods that pique my interest, but aside from that.... nope
"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."- Douglas Adams
.etc..
Mr. Bushnell has a serious case of retroism. Pong objectively sucks. If you gain any enjoyment out of it I assure you it's purely nostalgia. It was innovative but it's not a terribly good game. By the same token a youngun now would say FF6 sucked, any enjoyment i get out of it is from pure nostalgia. By the same token for my kids kid Halo 3 sucks, any enjoyment my kid gets from...
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
History is always very kind to guys like this. If there is one thing I grow weary of is it's old guys who were successful probably beyond their dreams casually forgetting the number of mediocre/bad games that were around then. Hell, he was probably responsible for many stinkers too.
History keeps notes on one or two titles younger people seem to have heard of, but probably haven't played. The rest, (and there were many) are forgotten.
It's time to hang it up and move onto something really new.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"Old geezer says everything was better before"
Pong, and the old school point a shoot games got boring a log time ago.
I'll take Final Fantasy, except VII, anyday over pong/defender/pack rat anyday
You know that flash based helicopter game. You click the mouse to go up and let go to go down - and then navigate over obstacles that are getting harder and harder. That was a good game.
Another one which I haven't played in a while was this circle game. You had two circles, one within the other. Each one had a small opening and they were both spinning in the oposite directions. So what you had to do is shoot a ball through when the openings align. I payed that one for hours and hours and hours...
Never heard of "Ect". Is there a Windows version?
DUMBEST
QUESTION
EVER
Not only does this phenomenon apply to games, but movies, music, comics, novels, etc never seem to be as good as they were when you were 15-25*.
This rule is applicable to everyone. How many 50 year olds do you hear say, the music in my time was bland, boring and repetitive. It all sounded the same... now this new stuff the kids are listening to, it's new, refreshing, exciting and is nothing like I've heard before.
Nolan Bushnell was in the classic Interplay game Neuromancer, where he's the head monk in the House of Pong, searching for the "Holy Joystick". I used to think it was a funny joke, but apparently it's all too true.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
The favorite games of my life, Morrowind, Diablo 1-2, Final Fantasy 4, Zelda: Ocarina of time, Gabriel Knight 2, have something in common: I remember them as if i were there.
I walked around Vvardenfell and became the Incarnate, I went down the church to fight Diablo, and then I ifought him again to realize the soul stone were part of his plan; I casted meteor in mysidia, I traveled thru the gerudo land to fight Ganon, and I investigated in the castle of "hereinchemistry" about Ludwig of Bavaria.
Final Fantasy 4 cant compare in graphics with Morrowind but I love them both while Oblivion (the next version of Morrowind) has awesome graphics but the story isnt that good as the two before.
At the end, games are a personal experience, for the ones who play it and for the ones who create it. If Mr Bushnell loves pong, good for him, probably it was his first game, and we all love our first game.
I read this thread and I think most comments are just ridiculous. The Commenter in the Article is ridiculous as well. Games today are _amazing_. I noticed that nobody seemed to mention World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it, it appears to be one of the most successful video games _ever_. Now Halo 3 is getting up to that status as well. I personally think the opinions presented here are mostly completely subjective. Games today are really very much approaching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality. I think that the change of games and television and all content is really more fascinating than this lamenting of yesterday. What does it say about our World Culture? Where are we headed? What is the next form of entertainment going to be? Have we been entertained too much so now we're all bored?
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
He's just jealous because he sucks at Halo 3. Dude, you got pwnd, don't take it out on the whole industry.
or else!
One of the ways to tell what's a good game is to look at the collectors price some of them command. The lucasart collection vol. one goes for a hundred and sixty dollars. The system shock series goes for thirty plus.
Now I've asked before and I'll ask again. What is the top 10 available PC games that have replayability either due to a good design or community modability? Note they don't need to be a specific genre.
BTW I'm waiting for Crysis. Modable like Farcry and as playable that advance the state of games. Might give Bioshock a try for the same reasons.
Things that were cool to us when we were young seem better than things now because we can't get as excited about things as adults as we do as children. Children today might find Pong novel, but it isn't something that they will want to go back to again and again like people who were brought up on it. All these articles come off like a bunch of old people sitting around complaining about the youth today. You are now officially old. Move over and let the next generation decide what is fun for themselves.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
The average game quality may not have changed all that much over the years. In fact, it's probably slightly improved. But the issue is not about average game quality; it's about how large of a standard deviation we saw from that average. Let's say that we've got a hypothetical scale where games of the Pong era have an average quality rating of 0 and a sigma (standard deviation) of 2. Negative numbers are bad, positive numbers are good.
:)
About two-thirds of all games will be in the range -2 (really, really blows) to +2 (really, really good). And about one game in twenty will be +4 (Pong, Tetris) or better. And about one game in twenty will be -4 (Custer's Revenge, anyone?) or worse. But the average is a zero.
Now let's say that in the present day average game quality is a 1 on the Pong scale. Wow! We've made an improvement! The average game of today is markedly, measurably better! But the beancounters from Corporate hate that sigma; sigma is something that an engineering process is supposed to reduce, after all. So while games today are markedly better on average, with a sigma of 0.5, only one game in a million will hit the +4 or -4 of Oregon Trail or Custer's Revenge.
So sure. The averages may be the same. But that's not the point. The point is the standard deviations have been killed by Corporate. The mad magician, the innovator, the two guys with a weird idea, those people are out of the system now. And the games industry is suffering for it, despite the fact that the average game quality is improving.
Me, I'll happily accept the existence of Custer's Revenge or Bad Street Brawler if it means I get a Zork or a System Shock 2. You can focus on the average if you like, but me, I like to buy games that sit out on the far-right tail of the normal distribution.
Clearly the best game ever made.
I totally agree, I used to play games back on my Amiga 500 and they used to be FUN. Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion, Elite I,... to name a few. The crap they produce nowadays is not worth buying anymore since most games focus on visual effects and totally ignore what makes games great and fun. Most PC games use at least 4.7GB of storage, 4.65GB for the textures, the rest for code...
.... it's like shooting at non moving targets.
.... I was impressed, I have never seen an AI "figure out" what I was planning to do! Unfortunately the game had too many other flaws, serious math errors when adding up numbers in the status window plus a few others.
..... 1GB worth of updates since the release! NUTS!
My latest disappointment in games in Total War2, the game AI is one of the worst I have seen in ages. The AI has the clear advantage (200men vs 1000men) but it retreats to be killed one by one
Then there is Galactic Civilization, the AI is pretty good, I tried to sneak an attack in from the back and the AI contacted me and told me to be careful unless I wanted to start a war
I think the worst thing that has happened to games/software is the invention of the Internet, now games can be sold like certain operating systems, full of bugs or even incomplete since they can be patched later. Plus they are protected selling their crap since returning is almost impossible in the USA due to our ohh so great laws.
Speaking of patches, Total War2 has a 1.3 patch which is 500MB and a 1.2 patch which is 500MB as well. 1.3 requires 1.2
Now I am finally old enough to say "Boy, I sure remember the good old days...."
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
nethack > pong > everything else
The epitome of gaming only came with the release of Space Channel 5.
I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but a lot of those old games that I remember so fondly don't hold up when I dust them off and play them again. In my experience, it's fun and novel for a little while, and then you remember why you stopped playing in the first place, because the novelty eventually wore off and it wasn't interesting enough to keep you playing. Granted, there are some old games I *do* still play, but those are few and far between.
Just because you have fond memories of them doesn't mean they were so much better than today's games. If they were that great you'd still be playing them.
There's plenty of great games out there. They may not all have multimillion dllar budgets, but they are certainly tons of them.
There are plenty of great movies out there. They may not all have multi-million dollar budgets, but they are tons of them out there.
There is plenty of great music out there. They may not all have huge labels producing and marketing them, but there is a lot of great stuff out there.
Nah. This guy is just pining for the days of old when because there were so few video game makers out there, virtually everything good and bad was able to find a space on the shelf. Things have changed, but I would argue that there are more great games, movies, and music then ever before. You just wont necessarily find it at WalMart.
Theodore Sturgeon once said that 90% of everything is crud. (People usually misquote him on that last word.) He's right; most games suck. Now, just like always.
But then you get stuff like Zack & Wiki on Wii, or Geometry Wars on XBox, and you'll note that, in fact, people are still doing cool games.
The problem here is not that there are no good games. Okami was a brilliant, revolutionary, game. All twenty or so people who bought it were utterly bowled over by it, but it came out during the next-gen launch, so it got ignored.
So, if you wanna see good games: Get out there and get Zack & Wiki. (IGN has some pretty solid reviews, and I'm sure other sites do as well.) Get out there and buy Okami for Wii when it shows up. Keep an eye out for sleeper hits, and games that didn't quite fit into a genre, and play them, and if they're any good, tell people about them.
If we bought decent games, people would make more of them. If we buy more copies of Barbie Changes Clothes, But You Never See Her Naked than we do of Grim Fandango or Planescape: Torment, then it is our own damn fault that we get crap games.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Yeah games sure suck, that's for sure, yep, I hate every Zelda, I hate playing RTS games with my friends, I hate playing Mario Party on a friday with people, Portal is stupid. Soul Caliber is no fun, and nor is Street Fighter. I hate Puzzle Bobble/Busta Move. Tony Hawk is a waste of time, and Dance Dance Revolution is just like everything else.
Nolan Bushnell, thanks for inventing video games, but your opinion does not match mine at all, and I'm not sure where you're coming from. Some games suck and some are awesome, recognize.
So he's bashing other games and says his own is (unexpectedly) "special"?
And no, gaming haven't gone downhill. I've personally had a far more fun in Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion, Diablo, Guild Wars than I think I would ever have had in Space Invaders, King Kong, or Pong.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
On the Atari, way back when. Even on the Atari 2600 it wasn't the best game available by a long shot.
Here's what I've played that has been both newer and better:
Deus Ex (even 2)
Baldurs Gate
Civilization
Half Life
Star Control (even 3)
Starcraft
Quake multiplayer
You know, I'll stop here, because the complete list would include nearly every video game I've ever played, whereas the single sentence "Calling Pong the height of gaming is insane" would convey my point just as well. I'd also say nasty things about Nolan Bushnell right now, but it might be more fair to assume he was misquoted, because even someone as biased as the inventor of Pong couldn't possibly say something that stupid.
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop
The predecessor to Portal (Portal was written by the ND guys, Valve hired them on the spot), with all the community-created levels, has the awesome problem-solving puzzle elements of Portal without the Valve graphics. It took a couple students from DigiPen to create the unique concept that was Portal, not some internal Valve guys. I'm glad that a company with the popularity/graphics expertise of Valve could bring it to a wider audience and make it more acceptable to the general gaming public.
Just FAYI.
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
There has been a couple of 0.x releases, clearly labeled "not for production use".
But I wouldn't call it vaporware, as you can download and run the code.
Someone you don't care about has written some vehement diatribe from his own extreme viewpoint, and this gets written up on /. with a sensationalist headline.
Move along people... Nothing to see here!
I have been gaming since the good old pong days, so I personally think i have a good overview.
Pong in itself was not a good game, but it was the first of its kind.
Anyway, the main problem simply is, games are not worse, the junk to gem ratio has been relatively constant over the years. If anyone can remember the atari 2600 days, the console was drowning in cheap packman ripoffs and similar games. Then the later consoles were drowning in cheap 2d shooters and jump and runs, and then later computers were drowning in myriads of shooters until now most of them being just rehashs of castle wolfenstein 3d.
In between there are usually a handful of gems per year. This has been consistent and probably will.
Some periods had more gems, like the early computer games days, where the early EA was a shiny beacon of quality (yes seriously, those guys in the early days had some of the most talented people int he world on contract, like Dani Bunten)
And then the early 90s with Origin driving things seriously forward, but in between, junk, junk, junk, gem, junk, junk, junk!
Well Nintendo is one exception but only because they stick to basic rules in their designs and like to experiment more than others.
Pong just made huge inroads because there was nothing similar for the public, if pong had come out 1-2 years later with another game being the first, it would have been a mild success.
...Being involved with old computers like the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Micro, where most of the games are now easy to get hold of, I can tell you that the rose tinted view of all old games being great is just that - a rose tinted view. People remember the games they like from 'back in the day'. However, most of the games back then were dross. Only a few actually stood out. Nothing has actually changed (well, except the games are much, much more expensive in real terms now).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Oh no! Games haven't gotten as pretty as they could. Look at CG movies for inspiration.
Yeah fuck story and emotional connection. I want to play a slow shitty version of ping pong for hours on end!
Complete bullshit. Pong was a graphics demo. "Wow look an animated dot!" It had little strategy. No replay and is about as aesthetically appealing as a 3 year old's crayon drawing.
- Metroid (the 2D versions, particularly Super Metroid)
- Bomberman (the best being the Saturn version)
- Bejeweled / Diamond Mine
- World of Warcraft
- Speedball 2
- Golden Axe
- Chu Chu Rocket
- Lemmings
- Gods
- Slapfight
- Side Arms
- Populous
- Secret of Monkey Island
- Space Quests 1 to 3
- Ico
I'm sure I could think of more if I tried.Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know another game that likely about 96% of all men have been playing for several years and that they have likely also enjoyed more than Pong. It's called uWank and it involves a single joystick.
There are far too many FPS games. After Wolfenstien and Doom it got old. Yeah, sure the graphics have improved but at the end of the day it's just the same old idea. I think the Nintendo Wii has been the only significant improvement to gaming in the last 10 years. The PS2 only expands on the Megadrive/Genesis by having better graphics and a few extra buttons on the controller. The Wii is the first system to bring a whole new approach to the gaming interface so hats off to them for having some ORIGINALITY. Joypads have been around since the 1980's.
Oh come on.. you're not telling me that "rock, paper, scissors" is better than halo 3?!
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
While not exactly brand new, I still argue that the plot lines from Final Fantasy 10 and FEAR are extremely well thought out and is something to make you think a bit (not as much in FEAR, but at least a bit).
First, it depends on what you're looking for in a game - if you want a great story, but you've only ever played sports games and never picked up an RPG, you can't at all say that all new games suck if you aren't even looking enough or at all in the right genre.
Just because when you bought whatever console you bought (or if you bought into PC gaming) happened to have shitty games the majority of its life span (or entire life span) doesn't mean that _ALL_ new games suck. Some consoles are better for certain game genres than others. Personally, I suggest a PS2 - sports, shooters, RPG's, and a few puzzle/party games here and there. If the only thing you want is party games, go with something from Nintendo. If you like chatting with other people (read: squeaky 14 year olds) and playing games online, get an Xbox.
As a note on the 2 games I listed, if you disagree, in Final Fantasy 10, go talk the "Maechen" (the old scholar researching the world) in every area throughout the game and see why certain parties in the game are extremely hypocritical. As for FEAR, pick up every answering machine and laptop intel you can to help understand just how sick the plot is. That or just have somebody who's done that spoil it for you...
Well, actually on a school trip (town I lived in was far to consevative for anything fun). So do I think pong is the greatest game ever?
If you are mentally retarded, yes.
Sure the game is simple, but is that enough? While a simple slice of bread with cheese might be an enjoyable meal, you sure as hell wouldn't want to live on it for the rest of your life. Variety is the spice of life.
Pong has no variation, until time immortal you will have the same paddle that moves at the same speed and a ball that bounces at the same angle at ever increasing speed. At a given point the speed becomes so great that it becomes impossible to move the paddle fast enough and you loose.
Call me silly but I want a little more from my games. GRANTED, an awfull lot of modern games sadly don't. Take MMO's.You do damage, the enemy moves damage, sooner or later you come across an enemy that does more damage then you, and you need to level up. Then you move on a bit, till you find another monster that does more damage then you, forcing you to level up again.
At no point does the actual battle change, just the numbers involved.
FPS are often the same, you have a pistol, you kill small monsters, you find a shotgun, you kill slightly bigger monsters. It is rare indeed to find a FPS were weapons is a choice of tactics. Were you are not just fighting the same battle over and over again.
A prime example might be Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation, they even made it part of the story.Time and time again you are a single unit, sent to a battle field with far too few resources and have to build the exact same base, while taking care of first a few scouts, then a few light units and then slowly moving up to the occasional air dropped assault party.
I wouldn't say that games are in a downward spiral, more a flatline. BUT there are exceptions, what they are I leave up to your individual tastes, but if pong is your greatest game ever, I seriously suspect your IQ can't be that high. It is like saying Peek-A-Boo is the greatest non-computer game.
I don't think it is generations, I think it has to do how well you deal with complexity in live. There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that push the shiny red button,and those that don't even see it and complain loudly that it is all so complex.
The first group wants to be pushed, wants to see new things, wants change, wants improvements. The second group has trouble enough with what little they already know and wishes everything to stay the same because it is easier.
Both are "right" if you can even say that, but both groups will ALWAYS be in each others hairs. Yes age does tend to move you into the second group because even if you were once all excited about everything new, living will tend to wear that down as you realize things don't really change and well, what you got is good enough and GET OF MY DAMN LAWN syndrome sets in.
Celebrating pong is the ultimate end result. You are an old codger, senile and ridiculed. DOn't worry, it will happen to all of us.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
- 80-90% of the games are based on some movie or TV show. I immediately ignore those because they obviously think that it takes the name to sell the game. If the game is good, it doesn't need to be named "Harry Potter" or something similar.
- Of the remaining games, there is one auto racing game, which I think I could enjoy, and the rest are shoot-em-up, beat-em-up games, which I hate. (not because of the violence, but because in order to make the game somewhat interesting, they are overly complicated, and too complicated for the casual game player)
Are there ANY other games, other than those mentioned above, that make use of advanced graphics, or should I just stick with the old classics such as Pac-Man? If I bought a video game console, it looks like I would be paying $600 for a single auto racing game, and that's it. Why has the advancement of the graphics technology brought all the games down to one type of game with different graphics stuck on it?If I could find 4 or 5 good games, with advanced graphics, that do not involve beating up or killing everything in sight, I would go out and buy a game console right now. Do they exist?
Otherwise I may as well just stick with the simple, low tech, free games I have on Linux.
Several people list their favorite games, as if that is a sign of the games greatness. There will be people who list shit as their favorite appertizer, doesn't mean it is a great food.
This story is about that Pong was the "perfect" game and that modern games by their increasing complexity are less then it. It therefore is off little point to argue that you like a modern game. That is NOT the argument. IF you listed those games as being superior to pong and then argued why you would have a point.
It is possible to like something that is less then something else. Redheads are best, but it is possible to love a brunette or care about a raven-haired beauty. (Blondes? Meh)
Is pong the greatest? Not in my world view, I don't like that type of game, I prefer more options, more choice, more sense of being able to improve myself rather then just having to move faster then a computer can move a ball around the screen.
Because lets be honest, the original pong was tennis. Oh, yeah, that is original. Putting a real life game into a video format, that is the pinical of creativity. Except it wasn't tennis, you can run all around the court, if you play against a wall in REAL tennis the ball speed doesn't increase to supersonic no matter how long you play. It is a very very simple version of tennis.
This is the greatest game ever? No. Pong is like those earliest movies, like the one showing a train rushing towards the camera, it may have awed us back then, but we have moved on. We expect more now.
It is possible to look at something, say "that was a great product" and then add, "for its time" and finish with "good thing we now know better". The T-ford (this is slashdot, got to have a car anology) was great car for the age and certainly had huge impact on the world, but nobody in his right mind would call it the greatest car ever OR insist that all cars since have been on a downwards slide.
I think the problem is because we want to make list in our minds to order things, and it just don't work that way. There is no greatest game. Not a single product in any category that stands alone at the top. The closest you could come is an unordered list of games that had a great impact on the industry or on those who played it. In gaming that last part is already a big killer, I don't do consoles, so anyone with a greatest game on a console will just draw a big blank look from me. Who is Zelda?
I can't deny that Final Fantasy has had a huge impact, but having played a few of them for a bit on handhelds I sure as hell wouldn't list them as great games (Grow up and get a real western game you console kiddie) because they don't appeal to me.
Same offcourse might go in reverse for someone else (Who is April Ryan?)
Pong was one of the first, that is about it. Greatest? No, not in my book. If you truly think it is the greatest explain to me why and do it without simply bashing everything else.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's good to read that I'm not the only one that thought that was a fantastic game, despite all the bugs and crashes. I actually still play it from time to time :) Trying to find my adamantite places and enough extra spellbooks for crusade was always fun :)
And I'd love to see a sequel with less bugs and some graphics improvements but the same sort of total configurability. Multiplayer by default would also be good. The fact it's turn based for the most part is brilliant.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I hope his games are more original than his catch-phrase.
There are simple 2d games which are very entertaining (table top ms pacman, donkey kong, table top tehkan world cup, legend of zelda, tetris etc), and there are complex 3d games which are equally very entertaining (microsoft's flight simulator, deus ex I and II, etc). There are complex 2d games which are very entertaining (starcraft, civ etc) and there are simple 3d games which are very entertaining as well (Doom III, Half Life 1 and 2, etc).
Personally, the most entertaining game I have ever played is GTA San Andreas. It gave me a chance to do things I couldn't in real life, as in mountain biking, motocross interstate racing, sky diving from skyscrapers, being chased by police, motocross jumping, truck driving, and many other things that it is not possible or probable to do in real life. It also had a every entertaining plot.
Is GTA SA uphill or downhill from pong? do I have to spell it? for me, it's tremendous progress. It's a whole livin' breathin' world. It's the closest to a Star Trek holodeck I have ever played...
Random guy says he doesn't like new games and Pong is the best thang evaaar. This makes headlines? Most gamers I know, including myself, like new games and find pong boring. I won't play pong for 50 hours. I will play Team Fortress 2 for 50 hours.
Fallout
Fallout 2
Guitar Hero series
Half-life
Diablo 2
Unreal Tournament
Wii Sports
All of these games offer great replay value, and some of the best multiplayer I've ever experienced. I could probably think of more games if I took the time.
Or-
How many people died playing pong? How often do we hear about people dying during marathon game sessions these days? I rest my case.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Let me see if I can scrape up some things present in modern games that pong doesn't have... hmmm...
Well, there's beautiful graphics, ex: Bioshock
Immersive environment and gameplay, ex: Half-life 2 et al.
Unique game play elements, ex: Eternal Darkness
Great story telling, ex: Beyond Good and Evil
Fun games for all ages, ex: Mario Party, Mario Kart
Intensity of emotional response (ie fear), ex: Resident Evil
Hmm.. oh yeah, and more in-game activities to do than just bounce a ball off a little stick, ex: Legend of Zelda (Ocarina or Twilight).
Yeah, I'd say that modern games are going uphill since pong. But, to each his own I guess.
I don't know about 'since pong', but in my view PC gaming (in terms of game play, vision & originality) has been in a massive decline, in pretty much every genre, since the late 90's. The decline seemed to kick in when the bubble burst and the 'by gamers, for gamers' mantra of most development studios turned into 'by talentless suits, for $$$'... I've got many ties to the industry and many of the veterans I know have walked, not out of boredom, but out of despair. The whole concept of 'niche gaming' has gone out the window, every game now has to have mass market appeal and appeal to the lowest common denominator. Originality is frowned upon, games are designed by committee. In the past team members would share ideas, junior artists would contribute gameplay ideas and so on, now it's 'shut up and work'.
Gaming journals are bought out by the large publishers/devs, shills populate all the big forums (like SA) creating a distortion field, promoting the notion that 'gaming is getting better' - and it's working. People (at large) now only care about graphics, games are rated on how demanding they are (the more it thrashes your PC, the more next gen it must be!).
I'm a big fan of RPG games. The decline has been felt massively in this sector. Instead of great games full of choice/consequence, interesting dialogue and meaningful stats/combat (Like Planescape, Fallout, Daggerfall, BG2) we have been inundated with dull action-adventures (like Oblivion) masquerading as RPGs. There is some light on the horizon in the form of Obsidian (and smaller indie devs, like Iron Tower Studios), but the media is making sure they don't get the credit they deserve. Mask-of-the-Betrayer (for example) felt very old school, yet sadly got average(ish) scores. In one review it was ailed as "the best RPG in a decade", yet the reviewer only gave it 7/10 because; "it had limited mass market appeal". Niche gaming is now a flaw?
Pong was the bottom. It's been a race to the top! Seriously, Half Life 2 is so far superior to Pong - this guy is wrong.
He seems to be confusing the amount of good games per year with the ratio of good games to bad ones per year.
While the odds of getting a good game through picking one at random is diminishing quickly, the number of good games is still constant (or rising). You just have to be more picky.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
What an incredibly narrow minded view for an entire industry that covers people of all ages and tastes. Though I give him credit for thinking of new ideas, I don't think he should criticize the tastes of others. Sure, there's some junk out there, but there's also an awful lot of gems mixed among garbage.
It's been all downhill since Hunt the Wumpus.
Maybe Pong seems a lot lot lot funner when one is smoking crack. I dunno how else to explain this dude's assertion.
Every heard the saying, the family that plays together stays together?
That was a title of a magazine article back in 2002 (I can't remember for the life of me the magazine... Fast Company?). It detailed a few families that played online games together. Google that phrase... there are plenty of instances of families playing World of Warcraft, for instance. My wife and I (our children are 2 and 7 months) play Everquest together when the children are in bed. On our server there are a few families that play together - the most notable is a full group of five players that are all the same race (Froglock) and have similar sounding names. They always group together, and are very funny to be in the same zone in as they like to joke around.
I also play Warcraft III and Starcraft with my younger brother (11 years removed) who still lives at home with my parents, 900 miles away. It's a good time to bond with him despite the fact that I moved on to college when he was 6 years old.
So, in short, no, I don't think video games are enforcing isolation on family members - if anything, they are giving family members that are othewise distant and wouldn't get a chance to interact, an opportunity to do something together, even if they are nearly 1000 miles apart, as if they were sitting around a game board in the living room.
Pong has great replay value yes,but today its niche is overtaken by arcade flash games
and whatever is invented 20 years ago can be replicated in flash.
Today game have more content,and use the graphics which pong cannot exploit to have better gaming expirience.
A 8bit pong game and 3d,lightmapped pong with full physical 3d models would be the same concept game.This concept has it time,like tetris.The fad is over.
If anyone wanted to play pong he would goto miniclip or download an old ROM.
Replay value=Does not means people will spend their lives to play some crappy but addictive game(although some do).
In meantime,the replay value and novelty ceases to be dominant and it becomes another old game.The pong just doesn't suffer as badly as other games because of simplicity.
I'm not a huge gamer, but I've done a lot of gaming in my life. I remember Temple of Apshai on the TRS-80, for example, "AE" from Broderbund...my dad actually OWNED a Pong game in the late 70's that he placed into stores.
The game "quality" is a nebulous idea; it can't be said that FPS' are technically less quality, with all the new rendering techniques, but the PLOT of such games is simple, the same cookie-cutter of killing that's actually no different from UT, Quake, Duke Nukem, or others.
BUT I HAVE TO SAY: "Little Big Planet" is a gem.
I don't own a PS3, and I don't expect I will for a decade, by which time I'll be able to get one at a yard sale, but that is one cool little game. No badguys, no explosions except for some popping of lemons, it embodies something very forgotten, probably by all of us: simple fun.
Remember the days of kindergarten when all you had to do was exchange names and ask 'do you want to play'? Remember as a small child where a simple walk through the neighbor's house was an adventure? This game has managed to capture that, with scenes made up from places all over. Ideas from 'opensource'-style groups to creating a long, seemingly never ending road, and it's just you and 4-5 people from all over the world, stumbling along, learning, and having fun. There's something essential about this game. It's a reminder that fun-with-guns only goes so far, ever.
I don't expect it'll go very far, I don't suppose Halo 4 will involve a guns-free mode, nor do I expect anyone on Slashdot to agree, but I think what "Mr Atari" is talking about is found in this game....'simple fun'.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
... with the endless supply of Quake/Doom/Wolfenstein3d clones? I didn't read TFA, but on the basis of the fact that the past several years have been flooded with FPS games, with very few significant games of any other genre released, I would agree that we've gone downhill.
For comparison, look at the variety of games that were available for the Atari 2600 or even the Colecovision. Hell, even the 8 bit consoles had a wide variety of gaming genres available. But the most technologically advanced consoles out now (xbox360 and PS3) are largely flooded with only two genres of games - sports and FPS. Hell, if you exclude the wii, the most innovative controller to come out for console games in the past several years is the guitar for guitar hero - and its not really that innovative when you look at it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As good as your post (and D.A. quote) was, I think a more balanced view can be had.
Family interaction is very important. We built a fire pit in our backyard this past summer precisely for this reason. Other than (well moderated) chat rooms, it is difficult to be social online. Communicate online? Yes. Extensive real-time conversation in a meaningful way? Not really.
I'm from the pinball era. Pong was watchable, Breakout was a revolution and for me Arkanoid is the best yet. But I'm not limited to just one type of game. The Super Collapse series, for example, is very social, very extensive in terms of levels, etc., and very challenging. So there can be 2007-era video games that get it right for everyone (in our household, anyway).
The questing & doom-type games today are just an extension of D&D. I never liked D&D when I was first shown it on a 110cps line printer and I've never come close to liking it since. So it is not generational, but rather what type of geerhead you are.
My father taught me sports, and I've never lost an interest in them. So I like interaction, kinetics, the real or virtual bounce of the ball. Two years back my son found a still-functioning demo CD of 3D Ultra Pinball Thrillride. After we tired of the 3M point limit we found a copy of it on Amazon and I've loved it ever since. [My best score is over 300B without milking, so this is not just a matter of nostalgia.]
I agree with Bushnell that games have gone downhill. Just like modern versions of Windows have. Just like modern versions of most software have (e.g. Office, anti-virus, etc.) The reason is quite simple -- how do you improve on something that is at an optimum level? You don't. You have to break it or cripple it in some way with every change you make. Your only chance at something equally good is something new. But that is rarely as profitable as a sequel (movies), or an all classic rock all the time format (radio/music).
I come here for the love
I just got a Wii and have been reliving my youth through buying old NES games to play, and I find this article a propos in the extreme. Mainly because I can't disagree more, and I'm a little surprised that someone can be this myopic. I gleefully shelled out about $100 for WiiPoints and started grabbing up games I used to love when I was 10. Ninja Gaiden! Legend of Kage! Excitebike! Whee! Minutes after playing, I found that most of the games I loved just didn't quite cut it anymore. Here's why:
1. Many games today are cookie-cutter versions of other games, but this was even more true in the past. Sure, Call of Duty and Medal of Honor are pretty similar (WW2 FPS) and, especially in the case of MoH are guilty of tweaking the original game and releasing the change as a new entry in the series, but this is not a phenomenon particular to recent times. Gradius, anyone? How many platform jumpers got released in the '80s and early '90s?
2. Games in the past were as complex as they needed to be, and as they could be. Sure, there was Qbert, but there was also Zork. Looking further, there was Final Fantasy, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, various military sims (GATO, for example). If games have become more complex, it's because modern hardware allows it, not because back-in-the-day designers weren't willing.
3. Pong was a great game in it's day because the control was effective and the gameplay was fun. People developed video games beyond Pong because after awhile Pong gets pretty dull. Good games throughout history succeed in part because of accurate and non-frustrating controls, not necessarily because of simplicity. Next time you get tired or disillusioned with modern games, play Half-Life 2, then play the first Metroid. Seriously. Control in video games, certain genres excepted, has improved leaps and bounds over games in the "good ol' days."
4. Games in the Pong era were meant to accomplish something different than modern games. You'll never find a table-top version of Metal Gear Solid. It's not meant to be played in ten minutes bursts while you're eating pizza and drinking beer. A solid majority of games today are judged on plot. Plot! Think about that for a minute. What was the plot of Dig-Dug? Can you imagine the guys who made Donkey Kong sitting around a table thinking about character development? Pacing? Games today are like interactive movies more than time-wasting distractions. Sure they still exist, because there's always a market for Solitaire, Tetris, parlor games, etc., but they no longer comprise the entirety of the market.
I am lucky to be one of that generation who grew up knowing the gamut of games, from the Atari 2600 to the PC and the Wii. I've felt that same nostalgia for "old-school" games, and that has its place. At the same time, I am under no illusions about the state of video game development. Pong was fun, but I'll hold on to my copy of Half-Life 2, thank you very much.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
The movie industry continues to crank out pretty-but-stupid after pretty-but-stupid movie. The "hey-day" of special effects has come, and then come again. Visual art is not something that is ever going to reach an absolute apex; just look at the successful games out there that do *not* use as-real-as-possible graphics; World of Warcraft, for instance.
Gameplay is, unfortunately, a far more expensive investment than graphics, with less return. It's hard to market as well; what can you say in a few words about gameplay that isn't an anecdote that everyone has already heard a dozen times ("Best gameplay in years! - PC Gamer Magazine") or simply marketing copy that we disbelieve by force of experience ("Unlimited replay value!")? On the other hand, screenshots - remember, pictures say a thousand words - are easy and can genuinely distinguish you from the competition.
I think the upshot is that 90% of games will continue to have no redeeming value, and 10% will either do the graphics so right or have the gameplay elements we crave. The 90% is the price we pay to the industry gods.
[Ego]out
Just my drop in the list of games that were great in my opinion:
- Invaders
- Defender of the Crown
- Paganizu
- Flightsimulator (4, 2000, 2003)
- Lemmings
- SimCity (&2000/3000)
- Civilization (I, II, CtP, CtP2)
- Myst, Riven
- Quake
- Halflife
- Dune 2
- Warcraft (1, 2, 3)
- Commnd & Conquer (&RedAlert)
- Battlefield 1942
- World of Warcraft
Just some games I enjoyed a lot.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Fuck the other alleged aspect, games are fun, the other so called aspects are bullshit.
The Bullshit about no social interaction, or other crap can also be said about people who sit around doing sudoku or crossword puzzels. He bemoans social interaction of bored gamers, I've seen a lot of ripping good conversations in Chess and Go, NOT! Ever actually try and talk to someone while their playing a VG, especially an old school VG like Pong or Defender? Its doesn't happen. People only talk while handing out before or after they play their games. They might as well be sitting at a bar drinking.
The only games that actually require conversation and social interaction are old school pen and paper RPGs.
Remember when we were all having fun with Portal, and Nolan said 'Pong is the best game ever, ever.', and we were like, 'No Way', and then he was like, 'I'm going to murder you'. That was great.
Prices from Creative Computing October 1982:
Missile Command - $28 - Atari 400/800
Zork I or II - $40 - IBM PC
Castle Wolfenstein - $24 - Apple II [character graphics]
Wizardry - $45 - Apple II
I'll give you a hint on what it was.
Pong.
Yes, it was pong over and over and over again in the early primordial stages of video games. EVERY company had a "me too" pong product. If it wasn't called pong, it was deceptively named "handball", or "raquetball", or "table tennis". Exception: computer space.
I'll take video games of today instead of the heyday of Pong, thanks.
This is as bad as posting an article saying "Windows has only gotten worse since it was first released". The only reason the comment section hasn't turned into a bloody flame war is because right now it's a portal love fest.
"Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'good bye' and you were like 'no way' and then I was all 'we pretended we were going to murder you.' That was great."
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Nolan Bushnell is complaining that games haven't been good since... well, since the last time Nolan Bushnell made a buck selling games. But of course he has the Next Big Thing that we didn't realize we've all been longing for, and if he could only scrape together some more venture capital...
Before there was John Romero, there was Nolan Bushnell.
Just kidding.
But seriously, I'm a big critic of some of the ruts that gaming is stuck in, but old Nolan needs some Zoloft or something. I think he's just looking for attention.
Noes ways! That was Rockstar's Table Tennis. That was just, like, last year, or something!
As if people would play a silly game like that in real life! Pffft!
For example: Katamari Damashii
(For those who haven't really played Pong - yes, it's kind of stupid, but it can be surprisingly fun against a human opponent. So don't knock it.)
Bow-ties are cool.
I hope he learned a lesson with ChuckE. That thing would have been 100 times its size had he spent the time to create a decent pizza menu. My kids always wanted to go there, but I resisted most of the time because the pizza had all the taste of a piece of cardboard. If the meal had been better, the chain would have taken off, instead of damned near closing.
When it comes to video games the best ones were, amazingly on 8 bit platforms.
All simple to understand and highly playable . Playable being the key word, something which seems to have left games behind with the advent of 3D graphics. Now its all show and flash graphics, but no gameplay. What is the point?
Maybe I'm an old fogey at the grand age of 42. Many of our customers are game developers and sometimes we talk to them about this subject. Unsurprisingly most of their older developers, at a similar age to me, have similar opinions about this (that is 2D good, 3D less so).
I think when you get to decent 3D immersive gaming then 3D may take off (in terms of being as good as say Defender, or Robotron). We'll have to wait and see on that one.
I used to feel the same about RPGs, but the fact is a well-designed game like Final Fantasy pretty much hand-holds you through it. YEAH, looking at gameplay half-way through the game looks complicated but does that mean you can't learn? If a KID can learn it, then so can an adult. Fact is, you just don't want to even try it. You are judging from a brief observation. YOU are the problem, not so-called "complicated" games.
In a recent interview on with the german magazine "Der Spiegel" he just talked about parts of the industry he doesn't like. Namely excessive violence like GTA and uninspired sequels like the Madden games. He actually likes to play modern games like DDR or Guitar Hero.
interview in german: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/spielzeug/0,1518,512371,00.html
> there are plenty of gems to be found amidst the flotsam and jetsam
Yeah, and you can find excellent arthouse films amidst the Jim Carrey movies and ominpresent remakes. What's your point?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This from the man that published "E.T."?
Seriously, games aren't going downhill. They're becoming more immersive.
Technology is helping. Unlike movies.
You can turn any bad story into a game that's fun. Just look at flow, or the sims, or any number of the addictive flash games on the web.
For some of us, games are about fun. For others, games are about money.
These are the silly rantings of an old man who has become obsolete and obscure.
Thanks for the games and the memories Nolan, but we're not interested in what happened "in your day".
How can any sane person not think "portal" is a masterpiece? It's like Mario Bros. You have really only two functions: move and create portals. Unlike Mario Bros. however, it's fun and new and fresh. I ate the cake.
They're using their grammar skills there.
To add some perspective to this I would recommend reading this edited extract from the book "The Backroom Boys" called Masters of their universe about the development of Elite. It is a pretty decent explanation of how the battle with mediocrity already existed in the early days of PCs, but also how outstanding efforts burst through from time to time and perhaps do enough to rescue their generation? You certainly don't have go all the way back to pong to find outstanding games.
I actually think video games have gotten a lot better. Some people complain that video games "waste your life away". I believe that newer video games are better on that point. They are so complex that in playing them your metal skills are challenged and you refine skills like problem solving, multitasking, ect. Older games are more simplistic. They tell you exactly what to do. The only skills that you work on are your reflexes. They are simplistic, so you gain nothing by playing them. It is more of a "waste" of your life.
I worked for Nolan Bushnell in the mid-90s at one of his failed, post-Atari ventures. The guy clings to his success with Pong like it was the tattered old teddy bear that he can't go to bed without. He'd come in blustering about this or that allegedly brilliant idea, and yet it would always fall flat on the ground like buttered-side-down toast. He's a one-hit wonder who's been desperately scratching for his second big hit for close to 30 years now.
"The Tetris effect is the ability of any activity to which people devote sufficient time and attention to begin to dominate their thoughts, mental images, and dreams."
Nothing to do with Tetris at all, apart from the name.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
They never have been. However, I would dare to say the "games industry" IS on a race to the bottom - and has been for many years now. Any sort of entertainment in pursuit of mainstream acceptance must race to the bottom. The mainstream is the lowest common denominator.
"But the issue is not about average game quality; it's about how large of a standard deviation we saw from that average. Let's say that we've got a hypothetical scale where games of the Pong era have an average quality rating of 0 and a sigma (standard deviation) of 2. Negative numbers are bad, positive numbers are good."
No it isn't, and it's not about mathematical masturbation either.
In all seriousness, stop trying so fucking hard, it's really embarrassing for you.
I've been gaming since the beginning. When I was a kid I had a Magnavox Odyssey (which predated Atari's Pong by several years), then a 2600, then Vic-20, C64, Amiga, NES, etc.
To me, it's always been the case that 90% of games are garbage, and I don't think that percentage is particularly growing or shrinking. Robotron and Space Invaders and Tempest and Qix were brilliant games in their day, but I also remember a lot of games back then that were horrifically bad. The graphics and online play of today's games make for an experience that is much more immersive than the older games: Pole Position never felt like driving in the way that PGR does. I think another good development has been that older people now play games -- presumably because we grew up with them -- which has led to more complex, engaging games than there used to be.
The only two negative trends I've seen are:
I think there will always be great games (like Portal) that buck the trends and do something really interesting, creative, and fun.
I think everyone has a game that for nostalgic / "those were the days" reasons consider to be much better than todays games. I believe that you will get different answers from different age groups. Only those people without fun/good memories like new games, and those who have fun and good memories from games often try to re-experience this.
Now these points of data make a wonderful line
and we're out of beta, we're releasing on time
Yeah, it's worth updating those prices for inflation between 1982 and 2006:
Missile Command - $28 $59.89.
Zork I or II - $40 $85.55.
Castle Wolfenstein - $24 $51.33.
Wizardry - $45 $96.25.
Da Blog
well... haha funperpixel :D ...Pong was the greatest.
i think it should be judged by the mass populations opinion.
at the time that was the greatest game on earth.
the only one mind you.
but can anyone truly say that about halo 3?
you can't honestly believe that halo 3 has the entire worlds opinion that its the greatest game.
because there are varying opinions...
and on that note. dear god someone kill halo 3.
halo 2 & 3 have just been riding off the success of the original... with lesser game play the james bond for the N64.... but improved graphics... dear god kill that game.
I don't think so. Yes, some are absolutely worthless crap, but that's to be expected since almost anyone can write a game now days. Comparing any modern game to pong is like comparing a Bugatti Veyron (world's fastest production car) to a Model T Ford - light years apart.
Today we have extremely good Artificial Intelligence and adaptive game play: if you are getting through the obstacles too easily, the game starts making them hard for you. The graphics are simply awesome on some games - almost lifelike. And the new graphics engines that allow you to interact with your environment make game play so much more fun and challenging than bouncing a square light back and forth on the screen.
Using Pong as a milestone in gaming is obscene. No one is going to argue that Pong was an innovation. Ahead of its time? No, nothing is "ahead of its time". Things happen when they happen because that is when they were supposed to happen. Maybe not everyone can see the reason for such and such, but some one does see it as viable, gets a better idea and moves on. So, everything has a time and place. It may only be a stepping stone to higher ground, but it happens for a purpose. Okay, unhealthy obsessions? Yes, some games are very addictive. And what causes an addiction? Something that makes you feel good or something that you really enjoy. If a game makes you feel good and you enjoy it, what's the harm? Playing for 48 hours straight is the harm. But just like a good whiskey, moderation is the key. Playing a few hours a night or reading instead of watching mindless TV IMHO is better for me. My mind is very active in a game and I am constantly being challenged. You don't get that with the dumb shows on primetime TV today. After a few rounds on a good server, I'll sit down and relax by watching the History, Discovery, or Military Channels.
So, in my opinion, grab the Half-Life 2 series (HL2, Episode One and Episode Two) or Call of Duty: United Offensive and prepare to get you butt kicked, but you'll love it.
Looks at pong. ok
Looks at Wii Tennis. Mmmm, definitely better experience.
Looks at 3D maze. ok
Looks at Halo 3. Definitely better experience.
Looks at Rakathu (for those who even played that early text-only adventure game). ok.
Looks at Myst IV. Definitely better experience.
Because a game is "simpler" does NOT necessarily make it better. More accessible perhaps, better, not by a long shot. Look at board games. They have the same "problem".
You can play the original Risk, easy, simple to learn.
Or you can play Twilight Imperium 3rd edition. A LOT more complex than Risk.
Any person who played both will almost all choose to play Twilight if provided with a choice. It offers a much more rewarding experience with tactical options going beyond simple reinforcements and attacks by including diplomacy, politics, bureaucracy and technology mechanics.
It's the same if you compare Chess and Checkers. Checkers is easier to learn than Chess. Chess is nonetheless regarded as the better game.
This is another case of what i call "nostalgia syndrome". As in: "The games i've played during my time were better than the games you are playing now". There are tons of those.
1) Guy has a product that more or less competes with video games in their current form.
...
2) Guy says modern games are crap.
3)
4) Profit.
I think you all can fill number 3.
It's more than that. For most people at the time, pong was the first video game they had ever seen or heard about. New and shiny! Hand-held controllers! See it on TV! It was exciting because it opened up a new era for gaming. It wasn't so much that the playability of the game but the groundbreaking nature of it. I didn't actually play it that much but I did think it was the coolest thing ever. Until the Atari 2600 came about, that is, and pretty much defined console gaming for the next decade or two.
bp
Best. Game. EVAR.
I guess this discussion only covers computer games although I spend as much or more time playing go (on the computer) as I do playing computer games. There's a simple game that generates very deep strategy. As for computer games, I think they've basically gone downhill since myth. Also noteworthy is that despite fancy graphics I've spent more time playing nethack than I have all other computer games combined.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
I met Mr Bushnell. He said Diablo II looked cute, and that his grandson played it.
::))
What about...nethack/SpaceInvaders/SpaceWar(PrePong)/Doom/Marathon?
Shoudn't we be arguing about best of breed? ( Hmm... I do like that comment about Portal