What makes you feel old about the gaming industry?

[FredWolfLeonardo]

That the Playstation 3 came out in 2006, 13 years ago.

At the time, the console ansolutely blew me away.

Having a wireless controller, being able to play blu-rays and dvds, the graphics of games like Uncharted, all just made it look like the perfect system.

And I guess that for me, it is perfect in a way because I still have mine to this day and regularly play it, not being the least bit bored.

Honestly, the sole reason why I haven't bought something like a ps4 or a switch yet, is because I am so devoted to the ps3, that the new console will be left collecting dust.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

That the Playstation 3 came out in 2006, 13 years ago.

At the time, the console ansolutely blew me away.

Having a wireless controller, being able to play blu-rays and dvds, the graphics of games like Uncharted, all just made it look like the perfect system.

And I guess that for me, it is perfect in a way because I still have mine to this day and regularly play it, not being the least bit bored.

Honestly, the sole reason why I haven't bought something like a ps4 or a switch yet, is because I am so devoted to the ps3, that the new console will be left collecting dust.

And so did the Wii. I believe the 360 came out a year before both?

The PS3 at launch was prohibitively expensive for a lot of people and Sony got A LOT of flack for it. And there also used to be a "PS3 has no games" meme. I guess eventually it must have gotten a price cut. I remember very few people I knew irl getting one before 2008-2009. But tbh, the PS2 was still going strong at the time, unlike the GameCube or the original Xbox which had already been discontinued. The PS2 did not get discontinued until like 2012, if I recall?

The Wii was VERY STRONG in its first couple of years. Then its sales slew down and PS3's began picking up steam.

You mention the PS3, which was indeed very powerful, but the 360 also was the first console to do online gaming right, which made it an innovating machine on that area. The 360 honestly seems like one of the best systems ever. My brother has or had one and he loved it. I feel like the original Xbox and the Xbone are ignored outside of USA, but the 360 had some international success.

You mentioned the PS4. That's a console that still seems rather new to me, but I'll be damned, it's from 2013 already which was 6 years ago already.

Tbh, 2005-2007 being over a decade ago already doesn't phase me so much. It's more how 2010-2013 being 6 to 9 years ago already blows my mind. I turned 20 in 2010, so it's not like I changed much as a person throughout this decade like I did throughout the previous one. So the passage of time in the last 6 to 9 years has been kinda mindblowing for me. It doesn't feel like nearly a decade has passed since 2010. More like 5 years. And Since 2013 I feel like only a couple of years have passed.

[Papenbrook]

The expansion of motion-control mechanics never ceases to amaze me.

To think that such a possibility was out of reach ...

Soon, we will be fully capable of motion gaming, VR gaming, and even holographic gaming.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Papenbrook

The expansion of motion-control mechanics never ceases to amaze me.

To think that such a possibility was out of reach ...

Soon, we will be fully capable of motion gaming, VR gaming, and even holographic gaming.

No, we're going backwards in that regard. It's nice to see stuff like PSVR and Oculus out there, though, but I'm not seeing any big strides in it. It all seems to have plateaued.

Something like Walking Dead Saints and Sinners on PSVR is pretty cool, though. The way how it tracks you loading and cocking a shotgun, then aiming feels really real.

[Sumac]

Amount of games with predatory mechanics, like microtransactions and crazy priced DLC and hilariously large number of retards willing to pay for this crap. And "conveyor belt games", like Call of Duties and Battlefields and FIFAs and NBAs.

As for the motion gaming and VR, I don't see them as "new". Both have been around since the 80s and even though modern technology allowed for some progress in that regard, we are still far away from widespread adoption of both, much less a moment, when VR and motion gaming will completely phase out traditional games.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Sumac

when VR and motion gaming will completely phase out traditional games.

Yeah, this is stuff people would say in 1995, or 2005. "Wow! In 5 years everything will be VR!" But it's all the same. Just better graphics.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Yeah, this is stuff people would say in 1995, or 2005. "Wow! In 5 years everything will be VR!" But it's all the same. Just better graphics.

Yep.

There is yet to be a cheap solution for VR / motion gaming and a supermega killer app, which make people go: "YES, I MUST PLAY IT!!".

VR Chat and Half Life: Alyx seemed like good candidates for being said killer apps, but both quickly fizzled out.

[sdp]

Things that make me feel old about gaming:

-not having the time to play games that are 50+ hours, I don't have time for that because I'm old, when I was a kid I had all the time in the world and would've loved those games.

-Online gaming - To me the newness of online gaming wore off in the early 2010s and I just prefer single player experiences, nothing against online gaming, it's great but I don't have the hours to be able to git gud so I hate when games are only online and have no single player. Granted there's tons of exceptions to this complain as online gaming is awesome, not trying to knock it.

-skins/microtransactions: I feel old when I don't see the point of spending money for skins you can only use in one game. feels like such a waste of money and it is. I don't understand how kids today spend their allowance to get a specific skin on a game. I do like the new formfactor of NFTs and being able to take digital things to ANY game but that's still in its early stage.

In general I tend to be progressive towards the game industry, I love retro gaming but come on I can't wait for consoles to die out they don't make sense anymore, for streaming to be the main way to play things and of course VR. All of these are still unpopular opinions with "hardcore gamers" but there's no changing that trend.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

No, we're going backwards in that regard. It's nice to see stuff like PSVR and Oculus out there, though, but I'm not seeing any big strides in it. It all seems to have plateaued.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Yeah, this is stuff people would say in 1995, or 2005. "Wow! In 5 years everything will be VR!" But it's all the same. Just better graphics.

No big strides? It depends how you want to measure things, the VR craze from 2016 fizzled out when people realized they couldn't do much with a cellphone on a plastic cover and that any other type of VR was too expensive.

Thanks to the Quest we've seen tons of people adopt VR, more people are using VR now than they did during that fad in 2016 or so. Developers are actually making money so we've seen more and more content and we're seeing more cool stuff released. Sure the hardware of the Quest has meant that we don't get super powerful VR games but that's ok the immersion makes up for it and we'll get there soon enough.

I actually feel we're moving away from tech demo games to more fully fleshed out ones and the more adoption there is and the better the profits the more we'll see. Mainstream VR is still 10 years away until the end of the late 2020s I'd guess but that doesn't seem we'll see huge leaps of popularity in the coming years. I'd say VR now is like smart phones before the iphone, not everyone had a blackberry but those who did loved it.

Originally Posted by Sumac

Yep.

There is yet to be a cheap solution for VR / motion gaming and a supermega killer app, which make people go: "YES, I MUST PLAY IT!!".

VR Chat and Half Life: Alyx seemed like good candidates for being said killer apps, but both quickly fizzled out.

There is a cheap solution for VR and it's also the most popular one. Oculus Quest 2 is one of the best VR headsets out there and yet also the cheapest, doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer to play games (though it can if you want PC VR games) and it is only $300, you don't need anything extra.

There killer app everyone mentions is Beat Saber but read up on some amazing new games AAA ones like Aasgard's Wrath and great sports games like Eleven Table Tennis.

There's plenty for everyone no matter the taste. VR gaming is no longer expensive to get into, it's as expensive of an experience as any other current gen console and has enough games/experiences to be worth the price. This definitely wasn't the case just 3 years ago or so before the Oculus Quest 1 changed things.

[IndigoErth]

What makes you feel old about the gaming industry?

Okay, so the first one isn't quite a game in the typical sense, but the early days of trying to teach a bit of coding in school, but in a classroom drawing game-like format, so just go with it.



For those too young, that green triangle was named the "turtle," btw. It existed on computers that looked like these. You might, however, be familiar with their name and logo.





Moving on...

If you're my age, you may have died of this a lot in school.



We didn't use it much, but my parents still had a functioning Atari.



And gotta love that Texas Instruments "computer." I think there were some boring grown up cartridges, but most of the ones we had were little games.



A favorite was Face Maker.



Later I owned the original Nintendo and those accessories. (Was the orange gun more common? Had to dig to find someone's set with the gray gun.)



Sister had the original Sega, but otherwise most games for me have been computer based beyond that so I haven't owned another system, minus the replacement version they made of the first Nintendo.

But going from limited pixels on the screen to 3D worlds played with a friend some weekend evenings... (And lets be honest, WoW itself is no longer at the top graphically anymore either. But my Blood Elf is still a good looking fella.)

TO

...plus having just tried some VR thing for the first time recently, I'd say that easily makes a person feel old.

Even more-so realizing now that Space Invaders is only a year older than I am, though I don't recall it as a kid. But I'm glad I'm still young enough to see where it goes from here.

[Leo656]

The gray NES Zapper was much more common. The red gun was a later reissue that mostly came with the "deluxe" sets (which I had).

The most common NES kits came with the console, controllers, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge, and the gray Zapper. The "deluxe" kits (it had another name but I can't remember it) had a different cartridge - a 3-in-1 feature Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet - along with the Power Pad floor mat accessory and a red Zapper.

I'm not sure if the red Zapper became a standard pack-in later on, but at least initially it was only released with that specific set while the gray Zapper was the standard and therefore much more prevalent.

[IndigoErth]

Gottcha, so I was definitely given the regular package. Was a gift and no idea that there was any deluxe version or whatnot.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by sdp

There is a cheap solution for VR and it's also the most popular one. Oculus Quest 2 is one of the best VR headsets out there and yet also the cheapest, doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer to play games (though it can if you want PC VR games) and it is only $300, you don't need anything extra.

There killer app everyone mentions is Beat Saber but read up on some amazing new games AAA ones like Aasgard's Wrath and great sports games like Eleven Table Tennis.

There's plenty for everyone no matter the taste. VR gaming is no longer expensive to get into, it's as expensive of an experience as any other current gen console and has enough games/experiences to be worth the price. This definitely wasn't the case just 3 years ago or so before the Oculus Quest 1 changed things.

Once again it is not massively adopted and does not replace regular gaming, so might as well consider it a niche.

It is bigger than few years ago, but it is still a niche nonetheless.

My first console, technically was Atari 2600, but I haven't played it a lot compared to NES, which parents got me just a year or so later. And jump in quality between Atari and NES was so big, that I barely considered playing Atari ever again.

I had blue and white Zapper, but my console was a bootleg NES-clone called Dendy Junior, so I am not sure, if this color pattern was used for real NES zappers or not.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by Sumac

Once again it is not massively adopted and does not replace regular gaming, so might as well consider it a niche.

It is bigger than few years ago, but it is still a niche nonetheless.

Of course it's a niche that wasn't the argument. the Quest has opened VR from a small niche to an exponential growing niche, there's literally millions of VR users now. Wait for other competitors to come out with their sexier devices and boom. VR/AR/XR is here to stay, by 2030 it'll be like smartphones are now.

[Leo656]

At least in America, the Zappers only came in the gray and red/gray models.

I've always been fascinated by all the knockoff consoles all over the world. Crazy stuff. There's tons of 'em. Like you hear so much about big corporations going to great lengths to protect their IP, but I guess it's incredibly conditional. Like if it's a place they have a lot of market share, they'll go after people. If it's in, like, Buttfukkistan, they don't care. Fascinating stuff.

When I was young I had a Coleco-Vision with the Atari 2600 module. When I got an NES, I figured I'd never want to play the old stuff again, so I gave it to my older brother. But I pretty much regretted that immediately, so after a year or so I got it back along with all my games. I still played it often until someone stole it. My wife got me one for Christmas a few years ago but I haven't hooked it up yet. But I'm still glad I have it again.

[Andrew NDB]

Definitely a lot of Oregon Trail. "Computer Lab" was a class in 4th grade (and I think it was like a brand new class at the time) that largely consisted of being taught how to type and... I think one day a week of "OK, you can play Oregon Trail all day today."

[Leo656]

In 4th grade, we had "Computers" class, which was super new and was 100% typing. Rather, memorizing the keyboard. I didn't do great, because I couldn't/wouldn't do that. Then and Now, I type really fast, but I have to look at the keys. The teacher hated that. "When you're a grown-up you're not gonna be allowed to look at your fingers when you're typing!" Like, what? Just like "you're not gonna have a calculator in your pocket all the time," right? So yeah, think I got a C. For not memorizing the keyboard. Dumb.

That school didn't have a ton of money so they didn't have games and stuff. That mostly started in 5th grade at the next school we'd go to, across town. One year they got a grant or something and converted half the library into a computer lab, and THEN like once a week we'd get to play Oregon Trail or whatever other games they had. Like I know they had the original Mario Bros. and some Carmen Sandiego games. I was in the Talented and Gifted program and we spent a LOT of time with Carmen Sandiego, that was always a blast.

I remember a couple years after that, the school got a computer with a CD drive and that was a Big Huge Deal. Like you had to get special permission to even go near it.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I've always been fascinated by all the knockoff consoles all over the world. Crazy stuff. There's tons of 'em. Like you hear so much about big corporations going to great lengths to protect their IP, but I guess it's incredibly conditional. Like if it's a place they have a lot of market share, they'll go after people. If it's in, like, Buttfukkistan, they don't care. Fascinating stuff.

In the 90s Nintendo didn't care about Russia until 2000s, so it was Wild West and Gold Mine for bootleggers.

It has started back in Soviet times, when Soviet institutes somehow acquired schematics of Nintendo's Game & Watch and made bunch of illegal clones of it, sometimes replacing characters with ones from Soviet cartoons.

In the beginning of the 90s people from Moscow State University organized company, which sold NES bootlegs from Taiwan in Russia. And even after their closure, Russia was flooded with Chinese NES bootlegs of NES and Sega Genesis up until 00s.

Originally Posted by Leo656

When I was young I had a Coleco-Vision with the Atari 2600 module. When I got an NES, I figured I'd never want to play the old stuff again, so I gave it to my older brother. But I pretty much regretted that immediately, so after a year or so I got it back along with all my games. I still played it often until someone stole it. My wife got me one for Christmas a few years ago but I haven't hooked it up yet. But I'm still glad I have it again.

I've traded my Atari for a few NES carts.
I kind regret that, but purely out of nostalgia, not, because, I want to play those games, LOL.

[Leo656]

Yeah, I've heard similar about other countries. Nintendo purposely had huge blind spots in several parts of the world. And then in America and other places they were SUPER heavy-handed. I mean forget about bootleg consoles, they were actively trying to put rental shops out of business over here.

It's just weird how they were like that in some places, and in others they were completely hands-off. I guess they just didn't have the endurance or the resources to be such hawks EVERYWHERE and simply settled for being hands-on in the places where they were the most established, namely America and Japan. Like they never had any foothold in huge chunks of South America, but by most accounts they didn't even really bother to. It's like they actively decided there were some places they could do without. Sounds weird on paper, but I mean, it all worked out, so I'unno. It's just fascinating to me. I mean it's interesting how they managed to still, for a time, become the "global leader" in video games at the same time they were ignoring huge chunks of that same globe.

Guys like Prowler and Zarius could speak to how in their neck of the woods, Nintendo was a total non-factor for the most part. Crazy stuff! Over here, we never knew. Y'know, no internet. We just figured all the kids everywhere were jamming on Mario and Duck Hunt. You didn't have a Commodore 64 or a Sega Master System over here unless you were a huge dork. Elsewhere, it was the opposite. And we never knew.
----------

I still get the itch to play those old Atari games from time to time. Thankfully, most of the best have been re-released on so many consoles and plug-and-play systems, so there's not as much reason to actually hook up the old Atari anymore except for the licensed stuff like the original Superman game.

The games are so simple, but also, still addicting in their way. I got one of those Atari Flashback plug-and-plays a few years back as a Christmas gift, and I'm like "Let me just hook this up for a little bit and goof around," and then I lost the whole weekend to it. Like individually, few of them can still hold attention for huge stretches of time, but collectively there's still a lot of fun to be had with that library.

The biggest problem I have with games of that era, is simply that the limitations of the one-button control scheme made many games completely unplayable without an instruction manual unless they were something very simple like Dodge 'Em or Frogger. I mean, there's the internet now, and that helps, but as a kid there were a lot of games I didn't have manuals for and thus just couldn't figure the games out. I had the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" game for YEARS and thought it was broken until a friend of mine told me you had to plug into the second controller port to play it. I'm like "Wow, that's f*cking intuitive, that's totally something you'd know to do without being told." Or like, E.T. has a terrible reputation (I never played it), but more recently lots of people say that a lot of that comes from people over the decades trying to play it without instructions; like supposedly it's not GREAT, but if you know what the hell you're supposed to do it's actually playable at least. Lots of those games from back then are like that, unfortunately.

I never had an Atari 5200 or 7800, since Nintendo was dominant by then so both of those Atari consoles became a complete non-factor. But I still always wanted them, and I do plan to get them someday. Lots of those games are still pretty cheap, too, or at least affordable.

I suppose I was one of the earliest "retro gamers" before it had a name. I was like the only kid at my school who had an NES but still played the Atari all the time too. Like every single kid had an NES, but few of them ever looked backwards. Believe it or not, though, I had quite a few friends who'd never even seen Atari games before they came over to my house but were still pretty captivated by them, I guess because they were "quaint" or whatever. So that was pretty cool. I mean most kids immediately dismiss anything that's "old"; not sure why I was wired differently right from the jump, but obviously I wasn't the only one. It was definitely a bit unusual at the time, though.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Yeah, I've heard similar about other countries. Nintendo purposely had huge blind spots in several parts of the world. And then in America and other places they were SUPER heavy-handed. I mean forget about bootleg consoles, they were actively trying to put rental shops out of business over here.

It's just weird how they were like that in some places, and in others they were completely hands-off. I guess they just didn't have the endurance or the resources to be such hawks EVERYWHERE and simply settled for being hands-on in the places where they were the most established, namely America and Japan. Like they never had any foothold in huge chunks of South America, but by most accounts they didn't even really bother to. It's like they actively decided there were some places they could do without. Sounds weird on paper, but I mean, it all worked out, so I'unno. It's just fascinating to me. I mean it's interesting how they managed to still, for a time, become the "global leader" in video games at the same time they were ignoring huge chunks of that same globe.

Guys like Prowler and Zarius could speak to how in their neck of the woods, Nintendo was a total non-factor for the most part. Crazy stuff! Over here, we never knew. Y'know, no internet. We just figured all the kids everywhere were jamming on Mario and Duck Hunt. You didn't have a Commodore 64 or a Sega Master System over here unless you were a huge dork. Elsewhere, it was the opposite. And we never knew.

The reason for this was that young Russian market was a horrible mess, mostly controlled by gangsters and corrupted bureaucrats - no-one sane (or without huge amount of money for bribes) wanted to deal with that stinky pile of crap.

Nevertheless, around 1994, I think, Nintendo entered Russian market in a particular fashion - they made a deal with the biggest company in the country, which sold bootleg NES-clones (aforementioned Dendy), essentially legalizing company, which pirated their consoles and games!! This was done in exchange for said company to stop marketing Sega consoles and games in Russia.

My Atari 2600 (probably a bootleg) had "pre-installed" games - about 12 of them, I think. You could switch between them with the reset button and none of the games had title screens or credits, so I don't know some of their names even now. Gladly all of them were extremely simple, from racing games to shmups, so I didn't need manuals for them.

The real problem were ever-breaking joysticks. They had metal plates inside, which were constantly breaking from usage. Father asked his friend to make bunch of spare plates and I still have some in his tool box.

Thanks to the general technological lag and Iron Curtain, Russia was lagging behind when it came to many things, including video games. People with PCs could enjoy some of the newest game, due to the rampant piracy, but those who wanted new consoles were out of luck - pirates were quick on uptake, but not quick enough, so when the whole world was playing Sega Genesis and SNES, Russians just started playing NES. Lag was more or less gone by the end of the 90s, thanks to the pirates, who produced bootleg Sony PlayStations and disks for it like crazy.

However, it also meant that less pirated consoles and official stuff never existed in the country, outside of rare imports. So some consoles were virtually unknown: most people didn't had SNES or never heard about Saturn or N64.

[neatoman]

Bioshock, a game I don't think of as being that old, already seems like relic even in it's remastered form. At the time it was released, Rapture really felt like this large city but now the levels feel really small and few, it comes across more like a small village than a city. The pre-rendered cutscenes are a method that just isn't used anymore because in-game visuals usually look more than good enough, nowdays a pre-rendered cutscene just looks like compressed mess. Hearing the same exact voices coming out of the mouths of the same few character models is grating. Even though Atlas, Tenenbaum, Langford and Steinman are plot important character, they still aren't given unique models.