Had an interesting shower thought earlier, and it's been on my mind all day: Will history look poorly on the 2010s?

Here me out. Imagine a Cane and Rinse 30 years from now - maybe Leon will still be at it? - and there's a retrospective of decades:

1980s - the foundations of what makes a good game are laid; basic narratives develop

1990s - the 2D game is refined to a mirror sheen, stories get more complex and compelling, 3D games have their awkward teen years

2000s - 3D games are refined, storytelling evolves into new territory, online gaming enters the console space.

2010s - ... Microtransactions and gambling mechanics are shoehorned in for corporate benefit? Graphics see a minor upgrade (despite much more tech under the hood)? Games are so overly long that playing them for retrospective is discouraged?

I'm not suggesting nothing good came out of this decade - nay, it's been an amazing decade for a whole whack of individual titles.

But taken as a whole, how many times are future historians going to say, "Don't bother playing that one, it takes 80 hours and most of it's boring," or "Playing this game today is a nightmare because microtransactions were shoved in to disrupt the game balance and coax players into paying more?"

I feel like the unique features of this decade that distinguish it from the 2000s are all corporate crap. This "live services" and open world collectathon stuff isn't there for *us*, it's there for the corporations. And it's so bloody prominent. Not to mention the normalization of crunch, the inability to adequately archive some major releases (and live events), and a whole bunch of garbage made with otherwise great game-making tools (unity, etc.).

And for that matter, what about games that are basically broken without patches? How do we discuss those games when the patches are inaccessible? "Assassin's Creed Unity used to be a passable entry in the series, but unfortunately, because the patch data is gone forever, the only version available is an unplayable disaster."

I'm not making any firm conclusions - more just brainstorming on opinions. But what do y'all think?

MOBAs and the impact they have had

Pros: Walking Simulators!
Cons: Walking Simulators!

Games as a service....

There is so much bile towards businesses at times that I can't really relate to, triple-A games are really expensive to make and to provide ongoing support & updates - companies have to try different things to recoup costs and make enough money to grow and fund more games, and line pockets of shareholders etc, some things work some things don't, some things will appeal to gamers, others will put us off. It's not a cuddly bedroom family anymore, it's an industry. But while I don't feel the same, I do understand people missing what appeared to be simpler times.

Anyway...

I'll chuck in the potential rise of the handheld again? Before the Switch arrived, it felt like handhelds were dying. Mobile games were all the rage, with chips more powerful and screens better than your Vitas and your 3DSs, it felt like the traditional handheld might be coming to an end. Then the Switch came and shattered that theory as so many users play in handheld mode primarily.

Also - with the removal of the Wii eshop, the first true realisation that digital stores won't always be there, and gaming preservation is going to be a concern from here on in. I am interested to see where it all goes, particularly with cloud stuff like Stadia further removing you from the "ownership" of games - or the ability to preserve them.

Some thoughts in no order:

The growth of open-world gaming
The sudden rise of battle royale games towards the end of the decade
Streaming cemented as a means to bring a community around a game (whether for fun or for marketing ...)
E-sports becoming firmly established
Day one patches becoming norm
Video games finally nailing the superhero genre
Video game movies STILL sucking
remastered classics for days

It would be nice in 30 years if this is the last decade when the crunch was a standard working practice ...

Crunch isn't specific to videogames, not by any means at all. It's good that it's getting attention in one industry though.

hazeredmist wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2019, 2:40 pm Crunch isn't specific to videogames, not by any means at all.

So very true!
My day job is within the creative industry and this mentality seems built in
But to see the conversation start to spread and to see companies now looking to instigate working practices to remove the need for this to be a standard practice is a welcome gesture. I doubt the idea of crunch will have disappeared in 30 years but at the very least it would be nice for it to only be a last resort rather than an accepted means of getting work done

ReprobateGamer wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2019, 4:00 pm

hazeredmist wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2019, 2:40 pm Crunch isn't specific to videogames, not by any means at all.

So very true!
My day job is within the creative industry and this mentality seems built in
But to see the conversation start to spread and to see companies now looking to instigate working practices to remove the need for this to be a standard practice is a welcome gesture. I doubt the idea of crunch will have disappeared in 30 years but at the very least it would be nice for it to only be a last resort rather than an accepted means of getting work done

Agreed!

hazeredmist wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2019, 8:59 am There is so much bile towards businesses at times that I can't really relate to, triple-A games are really expensive to make and to provide ongoing support & updates - companies have to try different things to recoup costs and make enough money to grow and fund more games, and line pockets of shareholders etc, some things work some things don't, some things will appeal to gamers, others will put us off. It's not a cuddly bedroom family anymore, it's an industry. But while I don't feel the same, I do understand people missing what appeared to be simpler times.

My boss makes a dollar and I make a dime. Don't skip your breaks - shit on company time.

Crowdfunded game development, with decidedly mixed results.

The game you play now isn’t the game you will play then. Will you even be able to play destiny et al in the future?

It may be a minor thing but the rise of the remaster. Some games had straddled gaming generations before 2010 but now it seems like a previous gen game gets re-released every couple of weeks.

If we move into streaming services during the 2020s, all that might seem quaint and an odd curio specific to the decade.

I can pick plenty of fault with each decade you mention, I don’t think this one is any worse than any other I’ve lived through as far as gaming goes.

The 90s were filled with dreadful mascot platformers, many of them based on junk food mascots.

And as for the 80s... does no one now remember the videogame crash?

It’s super easy to put on the rose tints when you’re looking to give the current period a kicking by saying it was all better before. It wasn’t. Just that it was bad in different ways as much as it was good in different ways.

Simonsloth wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2019, 10:34 pm The game you play now isn’t the game you will play then. Will you even be able to play destiny et al in the future?

I'm really interested to find out. I don't know how viable private servers and the like are. I know games like, say, Unreal Tournament 3 are still more or less playable because of bots. Very curious to know how live services will be preserved, if at all. What's the state of something like Everquest nowadays?

2010s may very well be known as the rise of the indie scene. It may have started more in the late 2000s but this decade is where things really picked up. Before you'd never think one could rival that of a AAA game and yet it seems to be happening more and more. Especially with how heavy into microtransactions the AAA industry has gone.

Simonsloth wrote: ↑May 2nd, 2019, 10:34 pm The game you play now isn’t the game you will play then. Will you even be able to play destiny et al in the future?

This is a big thing actually. The first year of Destiny (maligned by people who weren't into Destiny at the time) to me was amazing. I couldn't get enough of it, and my group had the best time playing together, raiding, weekly stuff, daily stuff, the rush of getting exotics... The game is completely different 1-2 years later with the "games as a service" thing, the public events being shaken up, RNG changing etc. The original Ghost actor for another example. We loved Dinklage. Lots of funny quotes. Ripped out and fully replaced with Nolan North - understandably - but yeah, nobody can go back and experience what we did. Ever. Mad when you consider it all.

That’s not a new thing though to this decade though. If you’ve been an MMO player in the last 20 years then ‘you can’t ever play the game as it was at launch’ has always been a thing there.

Ever since we entered the ‘patches are easy’ phase of the internet (for console, that’s around the time of the 360/PS3, a little earlier than that for Steam) it’s been the case that what you play isn’t what’s on the disc. You could reject patches then of course, if you didn’t mind it not letting you play online.

I’m not trying to be defensive here, I do understand all the issues around preservation etc...

But it’s a much older problem than I think some people remember.

What I suspect will be the ultimate thing remembered about this decade is the ‘push for monetisation’.

And I don’t just mean the recent things like lootboxes and season passes, but earlier attempts like the online pass, and the various ways paid DLC have gone.

This is likely the last decade without significant government intervention in what a developer can and can’t do in a game. I’m not sold on whether heavier regulation is good for the health if the industry or not yet, but that’s the way the wind is blowing.

Flabyo wrote: ↑May 3rd, 2019, 11:47 am That’s not a new thing though to this decade though. If you’ve been an MMO player in the last 20 years then ‘you can’t ever play the game as it was at launch’ has always been a thing there.

Ever since we entered the ‘patches are easy’ phase of the internet (for console, that’s around the time of the 360/PS3, a little earlier than that for Steam) it’s been the case that what you play isn’t what’s on the disc. You could reject patches then of course, if you didn’t mind it not letting you play online.

I’m not trying to be defensive here, I do understand all the issues around preservation etc...

But it’s a much older problem than I think some people remember.

Very good point, it definitely precedes 2010s