Is gaming the best it’s ever been?

Yes, but only because of GamePass. :P

Yes. Technical aspect is obvious. While some games don’t live up to their potential the amount of quality games that get released is quite a lot. So many games from the past can now be played on current systems whether they be with backwards compatibility or spruced up remasters and remakes. More options to play games with services like Game Pass that provide excellent value.

It’s hard to say without being nostalgic for the great games I grew up with, however after playing a lot of newer games the last couple years I find I get more satisfaction going back to PS2 or Xbox 360 games. Microtransactions and the whole open world with endless side quests and icon polluted maps seems to be the trend for a lot of games this generation which turn me off.

Nothing yet has beat the 80s for gaming.

The late 90's early-mid 00's was gaming at its peak.

As for current day gaming, I would say we are at something of a low point. Indie devs are thriving, but AAA stuff is mostly design by committee trash.

On the bright side, those indie devs make gaming worth continuing as a hobby.

AAA gaming is in kind of a mess, every game constantly launches broken and AAA publishers haven't really made up their mind if they want a game to be fun, or just drain somebody's bank account so most games are stuck somewhere in the middle.

I'm gonna agree with Maroxad and say that late 90s early mid-00s had not only the best games, but the most innovative ideas as well.

@kvallyx: 90s says hi

Absolutely not. im not going full on warm and saying gaming is dead but its not best ever been.

late 90s and early 00s to 07 was.

nowdays most games are either boring open worrld RPG or movie games.

need more immersive sim and FPS titles.

Insert Bender pic of let me laugh even harder.

gaming fell off after the release of Crysis and Half Life episode 2 in 2007

It's unlikely the late 80s-90s will ever be beat. Just too many classic games from that era. Shit is pretty cool right now, and VR is great, but man, the golden age of gaming, when devs were free to do what they wanted without corporate slugs crawling on them, just can't be beat.

07 was peak after it was ruined until 2016 when Doom released and saved it. then year later Prey and feel like we are slowly going back to old school again.

I think 2003 - 2013 is probably the best 10 year stretch, with 2004 - 2007 being the peak.

Unless indie devs can figure out how to make good 3d games on par with some of the better games of the 6th gen then I don't ever see that era being topped.

The best thing about right now.... is that you can play all the games that came out in previous years. VR is cool too.

Objectively speaking, yes gaming is the best it’s ever been because the only aspect that can be objective is the technical side.

If you are talking subjective? No correct answer for this as everyone has a different opinion.

@SolidGame_basic:

1. 4th Gen
2. 5th Gen
3. 3rd Gen
4. 7th Gen

All better than this gen.

1. 80s

2. 90s

90s were also great. 80s were better IMO.

Yes, I think Atomic Heart was a shot in the right direction:

• Great pacing with story beats, gameplay and puzzles
• Open world sections that are slightly worse than Far Cry even

Not a perfect game by any means, but I can definitely see shots of brilliance in it. I'm now at the hospital, how much longer until I reach the end?

And you can still play them now 🙂

Nope. Hell no.80s and 90s.

Yes. I actually fired up my Super NES just the other day (to see if it worked), and played some Donkey Kong Country on an old tube TV in my garage.

Yes and no

Gameplay wise and graphics of course gaming is at its best. The DLC and scummy business practices though is getting out of hand.

Yes because every game that’s ever been made is available in one form or another. If you mean are games being currently released better than ever, then no.

It is the best it's ever been. However, there are games from the 90s to mid 2000s that put to shame alot of the cookie cutter generic stuff were seeing now. Metroid prime remastered prove this to me. I'm playing through halo reach, and the game has magic that's missing in alot of today's stuff.

With that said, overall, the gaming landscape is just more accessible, more inclusive and with services like gamepass, gaming is simply better than ever before.

VR is a gimmick though.

No, it's a bit shit.

definitely near end.

also its good game but Prey does everything better.

if this game was made by Arkane than imagine how much better it would be.

Metro and STALKER are saving grace today.

Yes, I was also thinking if it were made by Valve, that the game would have more polish.

Now you run through the open world and get attacked by 100s of robots that all infinitely respawn the moment you kill them.

But on the other hand... it feels different than the games we know. And different is good. Boss fights are a high point and so were the opening levels.

Yes.

I think it's easy to look back and say "look how influential these games were" and say "they are better" but, I don't agree with that. There are more creators, games and gamers than ever before and the quality that's out there is better in every level whether we're talking about indie games, or AAA blockbusters.

I'll put it this way ... we're in the middle of a generation where the core labor force grew up with the "golden age" of gaming.

The best is yet to come.

Gaming was on a steady rise from the 80's to about '95. Then took a drop when it went 3D. But from that dip it rose back up until somewhere between 2007 and 2010, when microtransactions and horse armor entered the fray. I would say it has been up and down since then but overall trending down.

No, because diminishing returns on familiar experiences is too present to ignore. Impossible to be playing the same interactive experiences from the same franchises and points of view for 4 solid generations and not want there to be new innovations in gameplay and story telling. Modern gamers prioritize graphics and performance rather than artistic choices and forward thinking gameplay. The AAA scene is as less enticing as it has ever been. Especially with prices going up and innovation going down.

That said, the breadth of choice is a definite win for gaming.... Don't like the less inspired and hand holdy AAA scene? The indie scene has got you covered. Thankfully.

I would love for that to be true, but I'm all out of hope. I need to see it.

I'm just so bored with modern games. I assumed we would be playing the deepest, most immersive, interesting games by now. But we just get more of the same, with better lighting. It's been almost a year since I've played a game, and that probably won't change anytime soon.

I’m enjoying it. But to decide for the entirety of gaming is an absurd thing.

I would say no because it's become such an expensive hobby. Creativity is also discouraged, because practically all games nowadays are shooters or open world games. Back in the SNES days, there was more creativity. Developers didn't have such huge budgets, so there was more incentive to do something different. Most of the creative games these days are indie games; games like Archvale, Limbo and OlliOlli World.

I also miss game rentals. Sometimes I want to play a game, but don't want to buy it.

In technical terms, yeah. But that goes for every generation. Each generation is more technically refined than the generation before it.

But in creative terms, no. In the last five years, there's been very little that's new. The exception would be VR, which looks promising. It's mostly gimmicky now, but Resident Evil 4 VR showcased AAA potential for VR.

You can play anything including back catalogue of stuff that existed before.

In that respect yea.

New AAA games? Mostly bore the shit out of me compared to the 90s and early 2000s. Those are the games play most now over new games.

Yes, specially PC gaming. PC gaming has never been as diverse as it's today. Full of a massive amounts of games of all types.

Of course it is. We have more games available now than ever before, including retro games. There is a bigger emphasis on competent emulation and back compat. As someone who mostly plays games 6th gen or earlier, it's far easier than it was a decade ago.

Unfortunately no but it could be.

The foundations are there as the hardware we have today is unreal. You got online and the ability to patch things with massive multiplayers etc but it just takes far too long to make a decent game these days.

There is starfield about 6 years in development. You cant enjoy gaming when we have to wait that long for a game never mind a sequel

It's the worse it's been, especially for multiplayer gaming thanks to microtransactions. We're still playing the same 5 online games for 10 years now simply because why waste $100 million developing a new entry for 4 years when we could sell weapon skins and emote dances for $20 a pop in the old game?

Yes, thanks to independent developers and smaller studios. Single-handedly keeping me interested in gaming.

With some rare exceptions, AAA development is absolute dogshit for the most part. And I keep giving them chances against my better judgement! That's the worst part.

Honestly if it was solely the big studios we had to rely on, I'd have given up by now and moved on to a different hobby.

I feel like for most people, the best era of gaming is whenever they start really getting into the hobby.

Nothing will beat your first experiences with a good game in its respective genre. I'd say the early 2000's was the best because thats when I started buying more games and seeing what gaming could offer. People who'd already been gaming for 20 years were probably a lot less impressed with the same games that blew my tits off as a teenager.

I suspect young people getting into gaming in the last few years will look back on this as the 'golden era' once they get older.

I will give everyone an example of how awesome gaming is today.

Not long ago, if you wanted to play a jrpg, you only had a limited number of the most popular franchises, the translations were terrible, the platform selection was limited and God help you if you wanted to read or listen to the game in any language but English.

Currently, i use jrpgs to learn Japanese and already a significant amount of them are available fully in it's original language (and probably 9 other languages as well). Less famous and less well known franchises are also available, remastered versions of older games are easily purchasable in most platforms and even if you want to play the game in English, the translations are way better.

And forget about jrpgs if you want, you also get to play games from any corner of the world, all available in many languages, in most platforms and at affordable prices.

Isn't current gaming amazing?

Also: REGIONAL PRICING. (This item alone makes gaming in non developed countries 1000000 times better than before)

Technically yes. Fun no.

No but it's still very good and I'm overall optimistic for the future. Late 90's had so much genre innovation; the early 2000s had so much variety in the AAA space for example this 2001 slide:

Nostalgia always plays a role, but I have been gaming since the Atari days and the turn of the century games of the late 90s and early 2000s were indeed the best. There were so many new types of games and IPs created. Developers and publishers were taking risks back then and pushing boundaries and upping the quality. Both PC and consoles were exciting back then. Nintendo was even competing with Sony and MS in terms of power and production values. Now they just do their own thing on weak ass hardware rehashing the same old IPs with few games that excite core gamers.

The focus on monetization and chasing trends has ruined most AAA games. Mobile games have poisoned the well with their micro-transactions and predatory practices. It is not about making the best game anymore, it is about building a vessel to milk the shit out of your customers. Thank God for indie devs though. They are the ones who are still pure of heart. They are able to work on passions projects and just focus on making a good game. The tools available are better than ever now too.

My favorite times were the late 80s through the early 00s. Like up through 2005. Admittedly a lot of it being youth/nostalgia. But can't deny some of the concrete reasons. The constant creation and evolution of new game types. The rapid technical jumps. The weird experiments from even the biggest names in the biz. Gaming always felt exciting and fresh. Arcades were a biggie to me too, nothing can replace that.

Also the type of games that were the "big games". Felt like the industry was catering to players like me. What I wanted from gaming and what the industry started serving definitely started to split in gen 7. Is what it is, gaming got huge, the stuff I find appealing isn't what brings in the big bucks. I still find plenty to enjoy, just crazy how much a lot of AAA has stagnated or even regressed in gameplay.

Definitely some objectively good things these days though. Can access games easier than ever. No matter how old, niche, weird, just about any game is a few clicks away. Even a lot of older mp games now have good online functionality and it's easier than ever to find their active communities. And regardless of the most banal AAA offerings or shitty practices, there's still some good coming out of the bigger budget stuff. No way AAA alone would sustain me on this hobby, but we have indies and AA putting out some great stuff. Either filling in the blanks on game types that AAA long abandoned, or more importantly, being the ones to push creativity forward.

Damn, getting into novel post territory.

tldr, good time, not my favorite time.

Technology wise, yes, everything from the beginning of gaming up until now is playable. There are some intricate games that have some very deep mechanics that provide a lot of fun.

Experience wise is different.

Being alive and experiencing very simple games, to 2d games with "more" colors, and from then on to 3d games. Experiencing what was only available at that time. It was all you knew and then each new generation completed changed. It was a very special time that can never be replicated.

It's all subjective, but I've never liked gaming less.

**** modern day gaming. It haz zero Charm.