The last great modern games I’ve played it’s RE4 remake but that mostly thanks to the ground up job done by the groundbreaking original from 2005, so I “disqualify it”
I mean, there have always been bad games. There were bad games for the NES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_games
It’s just that the ones on that list that people remember are the few that someone would still be playing forty years later, the really exceptional ones. Typically, if someone in 2025 is thinking of an older game, they’re thinking about the best of the best from that time period.
I’ve seen arguments that a lot of “the good old days” mindset for many things comes from survivorship bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data.
Survivorship bias is a form of selection bias that can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because multiple failures are overlooked, such as when companies that no longer exist are excluded from analyses of financial performance. It can also lead to the false belief that the successes in a group have some special property, rather than just coincidence as in correlation “proves” causality.
In architecture, for example:
Just as new buildings are being built every day and older structures are constantly torn down, the story of most civil and urban architecture involves a process of constant renewal, renovation, and revolution. Only the most beautiful, useful, and structurally sound buildings survive from one generation to the next. This creates a selection effect where the ugliest and weakest buildings of history have been eradicated (disappearing from public view, leaving the visible impression that all earlier buildings were more beautiful and better built).
Hell, even before the NES, the entire video game industry crashed and nearly died out because there were so many crappy shovelware games that people started to think all games sucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
The video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the Atari shock)[1] was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality.
Pacing. One example:
In GTA Vice City, the first mission was “drive to that place”. The second mission was “beat up that fat guy”. The third mission was “smash those parked cars with a hammer”.
In GTA 5, the tutorial was a bank heist with explosives, automatic weapons, hostages, a shootout with cops, a car chase, and a betrayal by part of your gang. That’s enough story and action for the first 3 acts IMO.Same about Morrowind vs. the newer Elder Scrolls. In Morrowind, the main quest character literally told you “here, take 200 gold and explore the world. Join a guild, or find some freelancer work.” Vs. Oblivion, where a city is literally under siege and you MUST go there (ideally right now) to save it.
You have to save the city! But no rush, just show up whenever you feel like it, it’ll all be there waiting for you.
“Infinite content” games where studios are dedicated to make games that drip feed new content by making you grind for hours and hours.
Stuff like looter shooters, destiny and gacha games. They such wastes of life. Imagine all the good games and experience you could have had, instead of grinding to the powercap
Perhaps you’re right. But have you considered what those who play those games get out of it for themselves?
This entire premise is ridiculous. Games are the best they’ve ever been, there is a massive amount of fantastic titles out there from major developers and indie studios alike. Sure there are some crappy titles and shady ones that nickel and dime you but on a whole this is a great time to be someone who enjoys video games.
My tastes have increasingly narrowed with age as I know what I like most, and the niches I like are pretty detached from what mainstream AAAs chase after. That said, every year I find at least a few new releases that I enjoy. And I don’t think that will ever stop being the case. I ignore the games I don’t care about and play the games I do.
There’s also the fact that I’ve settled into a few games that I really love endlessly grinding, and so it’s hard for other releases to pull my attention away from just playing my favorites some more. I’ve got a backlog of JRPGs, a genre I know I’ve always liked, and yet I hardly make time to finish them anymore…
Well, when you say ‘many modern games’ you’re implying that every game sucks currently and in the last few years. Every year there will always be a lot of shitty games but it’d be discrediting to not acknowledge that there are good stuff released every year.
In the past 5 years I will say some of the best games I’ve played that were released were Blue Fire, Inscryption, Flynn: Son of Crimson, Paint The Town Red, Huntdown, Iron Meat to name a bunch.
One major gripe I have with people who complain about modern gaming, are ones who look to AAA gaming development and expecting creativity and innovation. When, they’ve long dried up on that. We’re not in the PS2/X-Box/GameCube/PS3/360/Wii generations anymore where there were tons of that going on with unique games trying all sorts of things.
The modern gaming climate has shifted into what’s trendy, moreso than before. You’ll have open-world games, but virtually samey quests to do over and over. You’ll have RPGs, but offer nothing but different endings with barely any impact and just grind-fests. You’ll have shooter games that care way too much about meaningless stats and other pointless data to keep track of. You’ll have sports games that remain as more vanilla and dry of an experience than they ever been. (Gone are the days where in the 80s, 90s and 00s you had sports games released but tried adding flavor to them like NBA Street or Mutant League Hockey.)
Games that are released but somehow needing patches after said release. Gaming developers and publishers having to come out and issue apology statements over them or some of them just outright not caring. Studios getting shut down because of unreasonable corporate demands. Studios getting shut down because of acquisitions.
Streamers and YouTubers dramatizing games or whoring themselves up for a cheap handful of views and subscriptions. Out of touch with reality and themselves and abusing their influences.
These are what make modern gaming suck.
Agreed; I blame Pewdiepie, Markiplier & Jacksepticeye & somehow they have the nerve to shit on people calling them out
YTers that actually (& are actually talented) play variety games get crushed by the algorithm
No one with a creative vision
Creative vision isn’t as important to modern game makers as profitability. In app purchases and expansion packs are what they want. So that’s what we get.
This is just false. There are many games that have good/great creative vision that come out. It’s just that like ‘never before,’ there is a tsunami of video games that come out every month. Finding these video games with good/great creative vision is tremendously hard unless you have a filter system in place. (And even then…) Are they all video games that we would likely pay for, no. There are a lot of half baked games that come out. I’m talking about video games from a single first time video game developer, 10 person dev team companies, 100 person dev team companies, all the way to 1000+ person video game projects made by AAA publishers/developers. And of course everything in between. Making a video game is easier to do nowadays, for sure. But to make a video game that captures all of the “creative vision” you speak of… very difficult to do so.
Some of the best video games to come out this decade have come from video game developers who were solo or small teams.
Only Factorio is awesome among these
So a lack of creative vision isn’t a bad thing?
That isn’t what I was making a point of. I was doing my best to convey that it’s a more complex analysis than, ‘The new games I see, seem so soulless or bland. So that must mean they didn’t have a creative vision when creating their video game(s).’
I have an interest and in a way, a hobby of learning about the video game industry, with a strong emphasis on what developer teams and individuals do to make these games. The short answer as to why these games don’t hit their creative mark(s) is often the following:
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Because there wasn’t a strong understanding as to what the game was going to be about or function like, from the beginning or continually.
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Management didn’t do a good job or weren’t able to maintain development in the right direction or for the right things needed for the project. (The number of times I’ve read or heard about people or teams working on a character, level, game feature, etc, and then leaders/management decides to put something else in or cut it entirely… is staggering. We’re talking days, weeks, or months spent, then it’s removed or changed.)
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Misjugement(s) of what and how much each ‘resource’ (time, people, expertise, money) would be needed to complete each milestone, stage, and final polish of the video game.
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Game feature creep - The more you have on your list of things you want in the game, the more ‘resources’ you will need to complete it. When you don’t have enough of any or all of the ‘resources,’ you have to start cutting things from the final video game form.
That being said, there are more reasons why video games come out janky, half baked or lacking creative vision. Just remember, there is always two sides to a story.
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Lack of innovation, which has kind of always been a thing. When something does innovate, everybody else starts copying it. From Doom, to Diablo, to Minecraft to GTA.
There’s also just a general lack of feeling to a lot of big budget bullshit. Technically stable, polished gameplay, great aesthetics; but there’s no heart. No passion. Everyone involved was just there for the paycheck. It’s routine. I don’t really know how else to put it, but it’s the difference between art and simply a product.
I think also because it’s become impossible for a major game to be someone’s passion project. They’re designed by committee out of necessity. The level of organising required creates processes and structure and stultifyies individual flair.
Gamers are responsible for this too. The amount of moaning and pouting if things aren’t perfect…
Technically stable, polished gameplay, great aesthetics; but there’s no heart. No passion. Everyone involved was just there for the paycheck. It’s routine.
This is an almost perfect description of modern cinema as well.
Modern games dont suck. Modern AAA games that only care about making God look poor suck. The aggressive monetization and season passes suck. Shit, some of the newer games are good games under all that.
Try Caves of Qud, Cassette Beasts, Nuclear Nightmare, Hellpoint, or any myriad of other indie games. They’re just as good as they’ve always been.
Nintendo games are good. 🤷♂️
You can’t have this discussion “aside from corporate greed”.
That said, most older games also sucked. It’s Sturgeon’s Law. You just remember the good ones you played for hours and gloss the bad ones you dropped after five minutes or never played because they got 1-star reviews.
Movie games & heavy-focus on graphics & not optimizing your games for potato PC
What do you mean with movie games?
90% cutscenes
What games are that much cut scenes?
Try every (mostly) sony games, they’re the trendsetters
I don’t know what games you’ve been playing but I can’t remember an overt amount of cutscenes in any but the most story and character driven games and, in my humble opinion, there aren’t enough of those.
U don’t remember ? Or you don’t want to remember
I’m playing “Stray” right now. I think it’s awesome. (It is from 2022 btw)
Modern games rule. UFO 50, Path of Achra, Balatro, and Halls of Torment are all bangers that came out last year.
Now modern AAA games do suck because they have to make profit and expansion that competes with general index funds from the stock market rather than competing with other video games.
Go check out some of the lower budget weirdo games, you might find something you like.
I don’t like indie games
You say that as if indie is a singular genre. There are so many different kinds of indie games doing so many different things, I can’t believe anyone who would write them all off and claim they can’t find anything to enjoy ever.
Get wrecked, Indie games are the best You can always expect innovation & passion there
I’m curious to learn more as I believe people hit the downvote too soon, before knowing why.
How would you define an indie game, and what indie games have you played before? What kinds of video games do you enjoy to play?
elaborate.
IMO, if You ignore indie games, You lose the right to complain, that modern games suck. You should ask, why do AAA games suck.
Almost every old game was an indie game by today’s standards
I no longer play older games either
So it’s not that “modern games suck” either?
At this point I think you gotta look inward to figure out what it is that you even want.
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