Is gaming rubbish at the moment? Will it recover?

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Actually, they sell WAY more copies than you think. Those that develop such games would not be able to do so otherwise; they have to pay the bills, just like everyone else does, after all.

The difference: The big outlets dont cover them. Those not already familiar with that sort of game will never hear about them, big sales or no.

Hell, just Steam alone goes berserk with them at times, as does Youtube and Twitch. "Five Nights at Freddy's", a horror game (and quite possibly the best one I've ever seen) has been very damn popular lately. All over the place.

But you'll never, ever see something like that on the "major" gaming news outlets.... and THAT is why I dont bother with them. Because I would miss out on something that I would otherwise love. And THAT is a tragedy.

Why restrict my possible game selection simply "because mainstream is all that matters"? Or just because the big news guys dont cover it?

Also, nobody said they all had to be difficult games. There's plenty of them that are very easy. It's just that *I* seek out the difficult ones. That's the thing about the sort of games I speak of: If you want it, IT EXISTS. This is impossible to say about the big publishers. You want a real easy platformer? Hundreds of them. Strategy games of the subgenre that CivRev fits into? Let's just say.... it's a popular genre (known as "4X" if you've never heard the genre name; almost NO games of this genre EVER hit consoles. I think CivRev is literally the ONLY one, out of a genre that is HUGE). Hell, for as good as CivRev is Civ 5 is dramatically better. As is a variety of others such as Age of Wonders (I think that's what it's called) or Fallen Enchantress (which has a nice easy learning curve but alot of depth).

FPS games, competetive or otherwise? Ye gods. There must be thousands of the damn things. Not to mention mods for games like BF4 or whatever.


Like I said, I have nothing against "mainstream" games. I play some as well, and I couldnt care less wether a dumb review site thinks a game is good or bad, I'll bloody well decide for myself without their damn input. But I do think it's kinda derpy for people to limit themselves when, if they merely look a bit harder and further than the exceedingly limited major media, they might find stuff they REALLY like. Awhile back, I was like you. Didnt really look hard for games. Ever. Got them from the store, or saw them in reviews.

Eventually though, this wasnt good enough anymore. I was ready to look for something new.... too bad "something new" didnt exist in that form (with very rare exceptions). I wasnt buying games very often at that time because there just wasnt much that was interesting. Due to the usually-ridiculous power of the PCs that I tend to have, graphics also werent able to impress me anymore. It didnt matter how technically epic some game was in terms of that... I wasnt impressed anymore, because I'd seen it all before. I got frustrated at this point. Out of extreme boredom, I went to look into new MMOs, as those at least are massive time sinks, giving me something to do, which the major developers couldnt do for me. I went looking for more MMO betas to do, but instead I stumbled upon a few indie betas. I jumped into those on a whim.... and never looked back. Never will. Of all of the things I've ever done related to gaming, THAT was the single best decision I've ever made. And I've been gaming since the 2600 era, so that says alot.

.....it also means I can buy more of these. I want a game that's gonna give me a good 50 hours of gameplay? It aint gonna cost me 60 freaking dollars like the usual sorts do. Might cost 10. Or be free. Possible price range is very wide. And will typically have DRAMATICALLY more replay value. One thing I always see with the big guys is that players will go through the game once.... and that's it. There's nothing else to do. I dont like that. If I buy something, and like it, I want to be able to and have REASON to keep coming back to it. And I DONT mean just for the multiplayer ones. Something like CivRev is one of the few major ones that gets this aspect right (yet even it is a dumbed down version of the main series). But on consoles in particular, that's the exception, NOT the norm. Which is exactly why I stepped away from them. I want "good" (used here as a blanket term) to not be the exception. I want it to bloody well ALWAYS be the case.

Granted, these days the cost doesnt matter worth a crap to me, be it 10 or 60 or 120, it doesnt really matter anymore. But it still ends up meaning that total spent is dramatically less now, and I buy something every few days or so. And more importantly, there's a constant stream of interesting releases, rather than something POSSIBLY neat once a month or so.

All of these reasons and more are why I'm always talking about this. Because it's kinda depressing to see people that are into gaming complain how there's "nothing interesting recently" when in actuality there's about a kazillion games made every week. And so far, whenever I HAVE finally convinced some friend or other to just look further.... they do as I do, and dont look back. There's a reason for that.


My core point: It's at least worth the extra effort of LOOKING, rather than just settling for what the major media happens to decide on.



Yeah.

THAT was the other thing that finally did it for me.

Not Tomb Raider in my case. It was Metroid. I freaking LOVED Metroid. The original 3 games are bloody incredible. The very first being my favorite. Imagine my excitement when I heard that finally, after so very many years, a new Metroid game was in the works!

And then it came out. Metroid Prime.

Few game releases have EVER angered me as much as that one did. There are few games that I LOATHE as much as that one, and it's sequels. It used the Metroid license.... but it wasnt Metroid anymore. Metroid was an exploratory platformer. THIS was an FPS. And not a very good one (hell, the damn game AIMS FOR YOU). I cant think of any other game that disappointed me that much.

That, right there, I think was right around the point of the final straw. Or at least the start of it, anyway. My love of Nintendo shattered utterly and became pure dark hatred, and overall I was very disillusioned by the whole thing. I just... argh. Cant do that series anymore. I really cant. Fortunately the "metroidvania" genre is VERY popular and there's tons of games of that exact type done in the original style (and many are very, very good), but.... I still wanted a REAL Metroid game, and just did not get it. Ugh. That though is a whole seperate 10 page rant, so I'll speak no further of it.

^^^^

I can relate with what you wrote , will their ever be a time when these games will go back to form and cater to their core audience? Cause I seriously don't know ?

I don't want to sound anti American I was (rightly) concerned when Edios decided to move production to the USA , and their was Toby
Guard (creator) spouting nonsense about the new (dude ) Tomb Raider , his a sell out and he knows it !
If that was my baby I'd prefer to go without pay and say thanks but no thanks .

I haven't played those games since ps1. they weren't really fun for me. never could beat any of them.

I tried civliaztion on the pc. its way way way way too complicated. small maps, slow game play , boring. I thought it would be like civrev but boy oh boy was I wrong. worst 15 dollars i spent.

maybe on pc they do, but on consoles they don't sell anywhere near as much except for minecraft. I don't like indies cause they are exactly as you think mainstream games are. they are one playthru and you're done. for $10 when I only have like 100 its too much. I stick to games like bf4, gta, watchdogs, fallout, elderscrolls. where I know i'll be playing them for more then 60 hours but years. games like last of us, tombraider, order 1866, etc are one playthru you are done, so i don't buy them.

indie games on the consoles are just over priced one time play thru games. i liked thomas was alone, but its not too replayable. I got it for free along with all my indie games. I would not pay for them. I have yet to find a indie game that is as replayable and fun as fallout, bf4, elderscrolls, or gta. I don't have money to go try a whole bunch of games that i won't end up playing or liking. most don't even allow you to demo it. I had to use a illegal copy of minecraft for a year before I decided it was worth buying.

not saying mainstream is all that matters, just I don't like indie games. they are small low money spent games. they fit a niche but thats about it, and for people who don't like that niche they are a waste of money.

you see stuff from a pc gamer view, I see it from a console side. and console indie games aren't good. they don't sell as much as the big games. and thats cause people don't buy them, doesn't mean they don't make money, they can make money off selling less cause the game cost less to make. the ones that do sell tons become mainstream games.

indie tablet games are ok, most are free. I wouldn't pay $10 for any of them though, they are just good time wasters for when out and about.

the other thing Is I'm just not as into games as I was 3 years ago. I had more friends back then we played together all the time. now I have no one. so games aren't as fun.

THIS, though, is a huge part of my point.

You're saying that without ever having looked into this. And no, the indies on the consoles DO NOT count. Tell me: Why do you think I would say that indies are so different from console giants if it were not true? I aint saying all of this just to have something to type. But the difference is that I'm NOT DOING THIS ON CONSOLES. Consoles just dont work very well for this sort of thing. Hell, even Minecraft.... that game would never have gotten huge, and I really do mean never, if it had originated on consoles. It got big because it started on the PC. Hell, the console versions are downright inferior; they're outright MISSING lots of content, they cannot be modded, they cant even create the infinite world size that the game is so known for. There's *alot* of things that that game cannot do on the consoles.... yet it's the biggest indie game there is. No.... not just that. One of the biggest games of any sort, ever. Think about that.

Games like Fallout, Elderscrolls, whatever? I've played them. They're decent enough. But I found others that were just outright BETTER. Again though, I know where to look. If you're just looking in the stereotypical places, you'll never find the sorts of things I'm speaking of.

And hell, if you've been a gamer for any decent period of time, you should know that even within a single genre, not all games are the same. Looking at one set of indies and saying "well no, they really just cant match up" would be the same as if I said I would never ever touch a mainstream game (and pay for it) because it's mainstream. Yet I buy those just fine when I see one that's good; it just doesnt happen nearly as frequently because they release DRAMATICALLY slower due to monstrous production costs.

And again, the idea of the games I speak of that arent just "one playthrough"..... I wouldnt speak of it if it werent true. Hell, think of what Minecraft is. There sure as bloody hell is no "one playthrough only" aspect to that game. That game has a really damn silly amount of replayability. Even moreso on PC. The game is legendary for that fact. .....and it's not alone.

The reason why so many console games.... and this INCLUDES console games that are also indie titles made FOR the consoles.... tend to be one-off games is the manner in which the market perceives things. Most console players these days have gotten used to the sorts of trends pervaded by the big guys. A single, main "campaign" with lots of cutscenes and a relatively linear progression, or things like that. Games like Skyrim (which is not only a port of a PC game, but also a series that originated on PC, by the way) are NOT the norm on consoles, and this then applies to the indies as well; for those guys to survive on consoles, they have to stick to the trends a bit themselves, because making indie games for consoles is WAY more expensive than doing it on PC. There are a variety of additional charges (many of which are downright NASTY.... you dont even wanna know just how much it costs to release a simple PATCH on XBLA). And THAT is a huge part of the problem.

One of the reasons why the sorts of games I speak of can exist on PC is that THERE IS NO COST that the developer doesnt decide on themselves. None. Some of the biggest and best indie titles out there were NOT done by people who were doing such a thing as their job/career. Some such games were done by like, one or two guys just doing it on the side as a hobby, earning NOTHING from it and SPENDING nothing on it. You cant DO that on consoles. It just doesnt work, you NEED to be able to throw funds into it (and quite alot of funds) to produce something on there. But on PC? *ANYONE* can release a game. Anyone. There's no rules. There's no costs. Nothing. When you're the developer in that case, YOU make the rules. YOU decide. And of course if you WANT to spend some money on it? Hire artists, musicians, that sort of thing? You're totally free to do that, and it's probably easier because you're not already paying Microsoft or whoever some damn silly blob of cash to be hosted on their service. Oh, you can use similar services like Steam if you want, but those are A: dramatically less expensive (and I mean REALLY dramatically), and B: totally optional. No developer HAS to host their games there.... which cannot be said of the consoles.

Because of this, an indie dev can make ANYTHING they want. Minecraft, it exists BECAUSE of this fact. If Notch had tried developing it for consoles from the very start.... it would have died. Immediately. It would never have survived even it's earliest iterations, and the entire genre that sprang from it would never have come into existence. This, I guarantee you. That game would have had literally zero chance of success.

Among the normal indie crowd though, that sort of "strange new thing" is totally normal. There's no reason for a developer NOT to try it. Notch had a good idea, he thought it was an idea that could become a decent-selling game, and there was nothing stopping him from giving it a go (whereas the consoles WOULD have stopped him, because of costs and trends and marketing and blahblahblah). So he did, because why not? And you probably know the rest of THAT story.

The problem for so many is that they have NO idea A: where to look, or B: that the places to look in even exist. The games you speak of and the way you speak of them prove that to me here. I could list hundreds... and I really do mean hundreds.... of games in my possession that live up to the things I've stated in this conversation. I dont buy a game unless I'm damn sure that it lives up to my very restrictive standards. Again, I didnt mention all of that stuff just to have something to type. Yet I have HUNDREDS of these. I wouldnt own them at all if they didnt live up to the ideas I've spouted at you earlier. Which means that yes... not only do those games exist, but they exist in really extreme numbers. Just as you said in the quote up there, I personally really, REALLY dont like games that are going to offer me only one playthrough. I want it to offer hundreds of hours, hundreds of REASONS to keep coming back. So my thoughts on THAT are the same as yours. Yet again, consider what I just said about having hundreds of games that meet that standard. I aint making that one up.

You said it yourself: Just looking in the normal places where you did, you found next to nothing. Which is part of my point: That it's worth looking PAST those, which you havent done. It's worth accepting the idea that no, those ARENT the only places to look, and arent even the BEST places to look (or sometimes even good at all). Because indeed, just looking in the traditional spots doesnt cut it anymore. You really WONT find things like those I speak of by only looking where you did. 10, 20 years ago? Yeah, it'd have worked then. Go to the local game store, and bam, you've got everything around you. It's amazing though, that the gaming community has had such trouble moving AWAY from that ancient idea in this, the age of the internet. This isnt 10 or 20 years ago. Things are different now, and it's those differences that produced games like Minecraft and about a billionty others.

Just because you havent found one that lives up to what I speak of, doesnt mean they dont exist.... particularly when you only look in a place that has almost none of them at all. Logical, yes?

^^^^

You are almost inspiring me to become a pc gamer , than I to can look down on the lowly console gamers to ! (kidding)

Not kidding sometimes as a core gamer I believe I should be a pc gamer . The flight sims turn me on big time .

Far Cry 2 is one of my all-time favorites; I would probably be playing it right now if If I had not played it so much already. That game gets more hate than it deserves.

never said its the only place to look, but do note. I am not a pc gamer and never will be. there are millions and millions like me. we like gaming on consoles. also it could be you like indie games and I just don't. we could be talking about the same game which you might replay over and over, but I can't make it thru 2 levels. for example some people have replayied mario thousands of time and love it each time. I've never been pass the 3rd level.

I'm really surprised ubisoft made such a game kudos to them , just wish all their games reached that bar , a few of their franchises could be awsome if they tweaked their games/ made them not so accesable , the way most develeprs are going you would think old school core gamers are to busy with mortages and family for video games , where out their and we have money for you !

In fact Far Cry 2 has a special place in my heart, it got me in to shooters previously I thought the genre was for pee pee poo poo heads .

Oh, I know. I have nothing against the consoles really, though they're damn near useless to me (particularly at the rate I buy games: If I want a new game *now*, yet the consoles arent going to produce one for a month yet, that just BUGS me. PC, there are a great many new games every day/week, whichever).

I did used to think like you do though: That I'd never be a PC gamer. This, though, was only because I'd never REALLY given it a go. And then I did, and.... well, I'll just say, I outright dumped the consoles nearly instantly. The stupid things usually sit in a corner. The PS3 is only used for fighting games, the Xbox isnt even a machine from this region, it's a Japanese unit, me having sold off the other one I had, and is used only for import shmups. And the Wii, well.... I absolutely despised the accursed thing well before I dove into PC gaming, so that got sold off long before. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

But yeah, as comparing the two goes, there was just too much good stuff on there VS what the consoles and their small selection of games were offering. And THAT is why I'm always harping on about this. If people are allowing their interests to completely stagnate, never expanding them, they stand an extreme chance of missing out on ALOT of stuff they otherwise might like. There are a couple of games that I consider to be my absolute favorites that I've ever played.... and again, I've been playing games since the 80s, and I have a MASSIVE collection.... but I would NEVER have found them had I stuck to just one type of gaming device. And THAT would be a complete tragedy. To think, I almost missed out on them.

.....not to mention, again, the frequency of releases. One thing I see with friends of mine CONSTANTLY, is complaints about "Well, we were really into this game over here, but we've finished it now. There's nothing interesting to buy, not until 2 months from now when such-and-such comes out, so we're kinda bored". And I compare this to the bit where I may have bought 4 or 5 games within the last week or so, and am probably looking forward to multiple releases within the next week or two. I used to get just as bored as they do during the lulls in releases, but that has ended COMPLETELY now. It has not happened even once since that point.

And like I said before: It's not all about difficulty. *I* search for difficult games, because easy ones put me to sleep. No challenge, no interest. If you wanted otherwise though, there are just as many really easy games as there are difficult ones. Or games that have really simple mechanics, compared to something complex like the Civ series. Like I said before: If you want it, it exists. But you have to truly search for them and know where to look,, and chances are, it's not on a console (though there are exceptions).



Flight sims are actually a good example of why I do this.

I'm interested in alot of different genres. Lots of them.

Some of my favorites though are these:

Shmups (particularly bullet-hell types)
Roguelikes
City builders (like SimCity, or Anno)
Diablo-style loot-based RPGs
Dungeon crawler RPGs (games like Wizardry)
Turn-based strategy
4X (stuff like Civ, the 4 X's standing for "explore", "expand", "exploit", and "exterminate")
MMOs
TCGs (and I DONT mean the Magic: Planeswalker series. I mean real, proper ones with actual trading and full deckbuilding and proper expansions. I love Magic: The Gathering, but THAT series is a bloody travesty).
Sandbox (not stuff like GTA, I mean games inspired by Minecraft).
Simulators

And various others. That's not counting competetive multiplayer games like League of Legends or a variety of others.

With a few very, VERY rare exceptions, these genres are either mostly nonexistent, or ENTIRELY nonexistent on consoles. Again: That's ENTIRE GENRES that literally dont exist whatsoever on those. And there's ALOT of them. Some very rare exceptions include Diablo 3 itself (but NONE of the rest of that genre, except for Fate), and something like CivRev (the only 4X game on consoles).


All in all, I'm not saying that people should just drop the consoles entirely in favor of PC. *I* did that, but that's just me; and that was the previous generation. The current generation actually has a few games I do want. I may pick up a Wii U, for example, for Monster Hunter, the new Smash Bros, and the Mario games. There's not ALOT of games on a machine like that that I want.... it's a quite small number... but it's enough to make it worth the cost. I already did get a 3DS recently, though that hadnt been a truly intended purchase.... but it's still nice for the couple of games I have for it right now.

In actuality, as much as I like PC gaming, I really just use whatever device happens to have stuff I want on it; the PC simply has by far the most gigantic number of those. I'm big into gaming on iOS devices as well (iPad for me). And I have PILES of ancient consoles and games just all over the place. Atari 2600 and NES being my favorites, and games for those are just.... all over the desk/room since I'm not very organized, and they get used frequently. An Atari 7800 unit sits right next to this keyboard, currently with a copy of Congo Bongo in it, which I've been playing (shouting at) lately.

....and would you believe I'm actually NOT fond of the PCs themselves? Damn things are batshit insane half the time. Windows itself seems to have been created by taking a squadron of blindfolded, extremely drunken monkeys, and having them bash their faces into keyboards until an OS just happened to be generated from it. And of course you get viruses and all sorts of things.... my own PC is very well protected, and I know what I'm doing with it, but I develop a bit of a hate for the things because of everyone ELSE'S PCs around here, as I am usually the one doing all of the fixing and problem solving.... and there's alot of it to do, and it gets OLD. Wheras my iPad is a much simpler device and often seems incapable of problems of that nature.

I've tried pc I bought this laptop for games. I just don't like pc gaming. and the games that would interst me. day z. I can't afford a computer good enough to run. so the only pc games I play are minecraft, and games from the 90s like ageof empires2(though lost disk and can't play and resfuse to buy the game a 3rd time) empires dawn of the modern age. the newer pc games aren't fun to me. I have very few money to waste and I got civ and it sucked. so I won't be risking money on rome total war, sim city.

My main point though is that you've tried only the tiniest fraction of it. And only one genre out of like 50 (and it sounds like you picked exactly the wrong game for you).

It'd be like me picking up a console, grabbing exactly ONE generic FPS, and saying "Well, I tried consoles. This is all there is to them, eh? I'll not bother with them, then, because clearly there isnt anything more than this." But you know as well as I do that the very idea is ridiculous.

I was originally a PC gamer. I cut my teeth on old 90's games like Lands of Lore, MechWarrior II, and Doom that my father taught me how to play. Eventually my brother and I took up so much time on the computer (which Dad needed for work) that my parents decided to buy us an NES instead, and I've been mostly a console gamer ever since.

There's nothing wrong with PCs of course, and I still play a few favorites on mine. But even most of those I now have for the PS1 (Mech2, Civilization II, Dune 2000, Doom). A console gives you something to identify with, an idea to commit to. In the last ten years I've committed to gaming's past, especially Sega, to get my thrills. Traditional arcade-to-home console gaming was arguably born and died not with Atari, but Sega.

Is gaming rubbish? I couldn't say for sure. PC gaming seems to be doing great and there are plenty of cool-looking titles out for the new systems. I can say that, good or bad, gaming is headed in a direction that I don't support. There's too much emphasis on graphics, mainstream accessibility, the same old series, and keeping up with the Joneses. I didn't get into video games for any of those things. I got into them for fun on a low budget. The 6th generation was the last one that fulfilled that need. The newest machine I actively play--the PlayStation 2--had a DVD player (still the only one I've owned besides my computer) and an amazing library of games that I could explore for years, and have. There was no need (and no money) to buy any system newer than that, so I never did.

Yeah, I think the graphics obsession was one of the other major reasons why I got into PC gaming. Because I was bloody TIRED OF IT.

Now granted, that's not to say that EVERY game that comes out on consoles is obsessed with graphics. Because there ARE exceptions, particularly when you're looking in places like the various downloadable game stores like PSN or whatever. But those games are few and far between, as they still need a strong publisher behind them, and publishers haaaaaaaaaaaaate risks. And right now, anything not super pretty is a risk.

That being not even a remote problem on PC, devs there can make whatever in the bloody hell they want; heck, you still get games being done in ASCII these days, if you remember what that is from way back when (maybe not, if you got started on games during the Doom era). And I dont mean just Dwarf Fortress, either. There are few forms of graphics.... okay, NO forms of graphics.... more ancient than ASCII. Which also means that people with weaker machines still have lots and lots of games to pick from, though it's dependant on wether or not they get off their butts and actually look for them.

But on console? No. And it aint changing. Probably ever. More likely, the problem will only continue to get worse and worse.... and eventually, even for those that are currently entranced by the shiny, shiny graphics, well, that shiny, shiny bubble will eventually burst for them, at which point they might notice some of the shallowness of gameplay that many games were using those graphics to cover up.

Sad, really. I remember when a game being good meant that the game was just GOOD, not that it was so shiny it blew the processor out the back of the machine. Nowadays a game can be called "a timeless classic" because of it's damn CUTSCENES.

Ugh.

Really, if I hadnt already ran far, far away from the consoles long ago, I'd probably do so as soon as I saw a game get major accolades for a reason like THAT. As it is, that particular thing happening is VERY common these days. To the point where, when friends of mine tell me "Oh yeah, this game here is like, super good, you should try it", my instant assumption without exception is "Ah. So, this game they're rambling about: Utterly terrible, never touch it. Got it." A shame, really, to think it's gotten so bad that I do that automatically.

graphics is one of the major calls of the pc are better then consoles. before it was pc can do 1080p while the consoles just do 720P
now its meh, so what your ps4 does 1080p my pc does 4k. or meh pc has way better graphics . why do pc games spend so much time watching and reading console stuff then commenting about how great the pc master race is?