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Games All Downhill Since Pong?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the you-kids-get-off-my-lawn dept.

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.

9 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. No. by Arathon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See: Portal.

    1. Re:No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Now that FPS games have gotten as pretty as they can marketing will have no choice but to focus on game play elements.

    2. Re:No. by General+Wesc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      3.) If you're really so up your own ass as to actually believe Pong is the best game ever, what do you suggest for a future title? How many balls and paddles can you add before you've totally exhaust the third-person-timewaste platform and we're having the same discussion?

      See, that's the thing: we don't evaluate games on the potential for sequels. We evaluate them on how much we enjoy playing the game itself, and for how long they stay enjoyable. I guess.that's why we're not in marketing.

      Personally, I was never a huge fan of Pong, but Aquanoid and the like are essentially Pong and I found them great fun. I think Tetris may have them all beat, though.

  2. Hmm, OK... by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  3. I Completely Agree... by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:I Completely Agree... by Jarjarthejedi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's probably generational. I've played Space Invaders, Pong, and Galaga in their original styles and I found them all terribly boring. Give me a full form FPS or RPG any day. I recognize that a lot of people love those games but for someone whose first real game was Battlefield 1942 those older games are far too simplistic. That ridiculous complexity is one of things I love about games. As long as it's done right it offers you plenty of things to learn how to use which is something I find fun.

      I'm sure you'd have a great time playing Tempest again. I wouldn't enjoy that game much at all, I'd much rather play Age of Empire 3 or Battlefield 2142 or Halo 3. To me those are good games (well, Battlefield loses points for it's awful DRM lagging my computer for 10 minutes after I close it...) and the 'classic' games I nostagize about are Battlefield 1942 and Star Trek Armada 2 (which I still play). Simplicity is probably a great thing in a game, if you grew up with simplicity.

      As Douglas Adams once said, "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." That's really what this article is all about, modern games are against the natural order of gaming for those who grew up with Pong-generation games. To those of us who grew up with modern games they're normal and ordinary and the older games are boring.

      --
      There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
  4. Zero risk committee thinking by Weaselmancer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  5. He's just trolling by rgo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Hey, remember that one film? by doyoulikeworms · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.