What do "old schoolers" really want of modern gaming?

Some people (especially newer generations) see the old school gamer as a group of grouchy old dudes (or dudettes) who live with nostalgia glasses permanently attached to their eyes. Because of this misconception and after studying how some classic games resonate with gamers more than their modern counterparts, I have decided to post my findings on this case. Get prepared to know what an old school gamer really thinks and what we really want in modern gaming.

This simple and small Chrono Cross town has more substance that many big "open world" worlds.

1) Complex simplicity:

Take the term "complex simplicity" as the base for all the future items on this list. We know that most people think that classic games (90's until mid 00's) are all about complexity with their sophisticated systems and the lack of visual ques, but it is quite the opposite. The truth is that classic games were a lot simpler where it mattered. While games in previous eras had things that made them look complex, in reality they were really relaxing and could be played with an easy going attitude without feeling that the developers are taking you by the hand or pulling your arm through the whole game.

For example, many classic games were very linear, but somehow they were designed to feel like anything but linear. I have been playing some classics like Chrono Cross, Dark Cloud, Blood Omen, Legacy of Kain, Terranigma among some others and while I know for a fact that they are linear games, they feel as deep as any multi-million open world modern production. This happens because old games presented more content with less levels of stress. So instead of raining dull chores on us, we moved through the story in a relaxed way and we welcomed any change of pace that was interesting enough without implying that we had to completely go out of our way or make some change that would completely take us out of the mood we had until that moment. Of course, this is not the only aspect of simplicity that applies in this situation as there are others like...

The Yakuza series is an example where less realism = tons of fun.

2) Less realism, more suspension of disbelief:

I am not stating that the next Call of Duty game needs to have magic on it or anything like that. What I mean with less realism applies to games where suspension of disbelief is more important than making the game similar to the real world in terms of the overall fun factor of the game. For example, weapons that break too quickly, unnecessary hunger and thirst mechanics (unless the game's focus is survival), forcing the player to wait or be idle for no reason other than the developers telling us to and time constraints (not to be mistaken for time limits) are some of the things that really dampens any gaming experience if they are forced fed on us.

Most of the time all we want is to play and enjoy the game world without some heavy chore on our backs. Why? Because that gives us extra time to learn and master other things like the complex systems of old that some people complain about. We prefer to challenge our own minds than have a simple inconvenience for the whole duration of the game. This is more rewarding and fun in many ways and marks the difference between feeling challenged and feeling annoyed.

A salute for the times where Konami was good.

3) Games that can be serious, but are not serious about it.

Everybody likes a nice storyline that we can take seriously for a while, be it because we are emotionally invested in the game or because the plot itself is just too good. What seems to be a turn off for old schoolers are stories that can be serious and good, but take a game flow approach that is even more serious than the storyline itself, thus becoming too rigid for its own good.

Take for example Metal Gear vs Splinter Cell. There was a time where these two franchises were bitter rivals, but in the end Metal Gear came on top, mostly because of one reason. While Metal Gear kept a game flow that relaxed its serious story and made it even more enjoyable than it already was, Splinter Cell (after Pandora's Tomorrow) went for a serious/serious approach and that basically ruined it. The reason why the first 3 Splinter Cell games were so good, was because the player could do all sorts of fun things with the stealth mechanics and that made the game to be a lot more enjoyable. Sadly, later on they decided to remove all that in favor of some straight forward linearity and that broke the game.

Repeat with me: Backtracking is good! 

4)  Freedom without sacrificing substance

Any of you who that are 25 years old or older can remember the times where in the first Resident Evil we walked from what was supposed to be the end of the game back through the garden house and into the mansion in order to get the two Mo-Disks we needed and found out that the place was not safe anymore because new monsters were now prowling in it. That little example is enough to explain what freedom without sacrificing substance means. We could move basically through the whole game world without feeling pushed or forced to proceed and the story and focus of the game was kept intact (no generic stuff or excessive recycling of resources). This is why those games felt like 40 hour experiences even if they had 14 hours of gameplay at best.

Berseria is awesome, but Vesperia was the last handcrafted "Tales of" game.

5) Handcrafted game worlds

Have you ever got the feeling that the world in which you move when playing a game feels a little too structured? Roads go here, walls go there and everything seems sanitized and as organized as a set of Tetris pieces. That is good enough for dungeon crawlers or rogue rpg games where the structure is the game itself, but for games that are trying to make you believe that you are playing in a lush and detailed environment, seen this kind of thing is quite disappointing.

Why is this so disappointing? Because it give us a message that says that the game was made with a cheap approach and that most of what they did was cut corners. This feels bad, especially when the game in question is supposed to be a comeback of a beloved series (Star Ocean I am looking at you) and it kind of insults our intelligence because it implies that we will buy anything as long as it has the name of a franchise we love.

On the other hand when a "detailed" game world feels too structured and generic it really eats away any enthusiasm that we had when we started playing and anybody with a basic knowledge of how videogame logic works will immediately notice when the great big world we were sold on is not that good.

In summary:

All that we old schoolers want can be summarized in these 5 things and they are really not that hard to do. They are feats of game design that have been lost in time and we need to get back. Luckily for us, games like the ones we have been getting on this semester (Jan-May 2017) are getting back to these good practices, so not all hope is lost. Let us thrive for quality and have gaming become what it used to be while in harmony with the latest advances in technology.

High Graphic Expectations and Development Limitations

Technical aspect discussion is something that has been present in almost every console generation since the 90's. At first it was the bit wars (or who's cpu was better), then came the early 3D wars in which gamers were judging the power of a console based on how blocky/blurry or not the models looked. After that came the polygon count wars with the Dreamcast vs PS2 drama and since the middle of the previous generation we have been in the resolution and frames per second war. It is nice to have a technical aspect to discuss (especially if you are a technology enthusiast), but if you over do it and turn it into a petty complaint, then you are causing the gaming community more harm than good.

Let's begin by having a little mental game in order to visualize how a game works inside your preferred machine. Imagine that you and 7 other contestants accepted a million dollar challenge. You are all in a special conference room that that has some kind of limitless temperature regulator built in. You are all surrounded by 100 different objects around you and each of you has a headset on. Now people that are outside the room will begin asking questions about these objects at a rapid pace. Each time any of you gives a right answer the room get a little hotter and if the answer is wrong, ambiguous or not answered fast enough it will get colder. If the temperature gets too low, you lose the challenge (and the money), but if you all try too hard, the room will get too hot and it may become hazardous. The challenge will last 4 hours so you all have to keep it steady until then in order to win.

"Update Game" is where all the magic happens. It is what keeps the game alive.

If we compare this example to how a game works, the room itself is the console and the challenge is the game. The people outside the room asking the questions would represent the game loop, which is programming cycle that is always "asking questions" about each and every element that's in the game at any given time. You and the other contestants who are in the challenge represent the hardware and the objects in the room represent everything that a game has like maps, characters, sounds, commands, etc. You may now be asking yourself what does this example has to do with graphic demands and the answer is simple. In technical aspects,making  a video game is a test of balance. As a developer you have to make a game that looks good, but at the same time make it balanced so it doesn't overwork the machine in which it is been played or cause unintended issues. This is a principle that some gamers need to understand before demanding to have the highest graphical output on every single game.

Graphical evolution in gaming comes with time, not complaints.

Why does these demands hurt our gaming experience?

We need to be aware that everything in computing comes with a price so always having the maximum graphical output means that developers may be sacrificing other features like the size of maps, the variety of things the player can do on the game, chunks of story line content, drawing distance (how far in the distance can you see), the implementation of some game mechanics,etc. Also add to that equation some non-technical aspects like time constraints, market demand, publisher demands, funds, competition,etc. With all these problems in place I think we now have some idea of how hard this process is. To make matters worse, if we make the mistake of giving marketing people the idea that we just want games that look pretty that is what we are going to get, but only by sacrificing game play and innovation. Do we really want that?

We also need to take into account the type of game we are talking about. There are simpler games (like some 2.5D platformers) that run in a perfect 1080p resolution at 60fps even with nice graphics. They work flawlessly, but that doesn't mean that it is an easy thing to do. They managed to do it because the game itself doesn't need that much processing power to run. Now if the game we are talking about is a current-gen open world or sandbox game there is a chance that the "perfection" some of us demand may not be there. Still that doesn't mean that the game is bad, the console is weak or that the developers are been lazy. It is like that because the game makers balanced it all out considering the time, resources and situation they had.

Exhibit A: A game that doesn't need cutting edge graphics to be epic...Tales of Xillia 2.

Wrapping it up

The bottom line is that people who like to judge a game because its graphics weren't next-gen enough for them need to think again because they are not only been unrealistic, but they are also contributing to the development of shorter and less innovative games (especially if marketing people are involved). They should try to get into a new mindset and enjoy games for what they are. This way they give designers and developers a break, so they can create masterpieces instead of finding themselves forced to pop up games from a template as if it all were an assembly line. It is better to have a normal, but great game rather than a pretty one that feels uninspired and bland. I leave with you with that folks, game on.

The Renaissance of Game Play Elements

Have anyone of you gone through one of those moments when you are playing a game and you acknowledge that the game is good, but in the back of your mind you feel like there is something missing? Maybe your sense of exploration is not been satisfied enough, or you feel that certain game mechanics and details you enjoy are missing. This really depends on how were the games on your early days as a gamer because they have a pretty strong influence in your gaming taste and although we sometimes want those cool things to stay there forever, things change. In the case of games, there have been a lot of game play elements that are not been used so much anymore and some us us can't help but notice. Luckily for us, there are some of those things that are making a comeback since the last days of the previous generation and entering in to the current one. This is very exciting considering the over-simplification of game play that went on in the last 8 years or so.

The gaming renaissance is upon us!

The reason for this comeback is something that many gamers thought would eventually happen and after many years it finally did, as modern game play elements ran out of steam. It seems that game developers got aware that following the same trends of previous years would make their games too simplistic, which has become suicide for a gaming franchise. The "less is more" way of thought in game development has reached its peak and it is slowly declining as the game design of old is once again showing up, this time with the face of cutting edge technology.

If you are still wondering which are these game play elements that are making a comeback here a small list of them:

Because in this game, even dog food goes.

• Diversity in design: If we follow the last games that were released on the previous generation and the see the ones that are on the market since the beginning of the current one, we can notice that game worlds are regaining the diversity of design they used to have. We are seen maps that feel like a real place, while the simple "smoke and mirrors - rooms connected with corridors" style has been relegated almost exclusively to dungeon crawler games and the occasional indie production.

• Keeping alive with the use of items: This means a significant decrease of the duck and cover game mechanics. Now don't think that this approach will entirely vanish into thin air because some first person shooters will remain the same, as this was the game play style that gave them success from the beginning. Now the use of items is something that is coming back in those types of FPS that are plot driven. Take for example games like Wolfestein: The New Order and the upcoming reboot of Doom if you need any reference. It is also relevant that some recent new indie FPS games have also gone back to health and armor items as a way of survival in their game worlds.

The hunters will be lacking is everybody wants to be the monster.

• Hard discoveries and secrets: There was a time when a game had tons of things to discover while going through the main story. This kept many of us, looking every where for that easter egg, collectible or stash of useful items. Now I don't mean the type of discovery that you can just find by going into the obvious "secret" room, but the ones that really get you out of your way in order to find them. This game play element resurfaced in the previous generation with the Demon Souls - Dark Souls games, but since then it has been slowly gaining momentum and now, games like Destiny are following this trend by having the players go deep into uncharted territory in order to find those golden treasure chests or even Wolfestein: The New Order, where each map has its own unique secrets to find.

• Crazy first person shooter environments: Sometimes the concept of the game itself is considered a game play element because it is the base in which everything is built upon. First person shooters are still popular, but their concept had started to become stale as game companies kept taking the safe route by using the proven "militarized" concept. Nowadays this has been changing as a bunch of new and fresh first person shooter game ideas have emerged with games like Titanfall, Evolve, Destiny, Dead Island 2 (which apparently will be different than the first one) and even the innocent, but fun looking game Splatoon for the Wii U. It seems like game companies finally decided to give a chance to different things other than the usual "sir, yes sir" military campaign approach. 

• The return of looting: Finding loot is one of the most fun things to do in a game because it gives the player a feeling of reward each time a loot is found. This kind of thing has been absent for a long while and replaced by linear systems like stores or plain old treasure chests, but nowadays the loot fest is coming back and we as gamers will once again have a reason to search everything in the game. Examples of this are: looting unlockables in Watch Dogs like new songs, vehicles and weapons, enemies dropping good stuff in Destiny, looting the environment in Evolve (feeding as the monster or finding tools as the hunters) and so on.

Will Resident Evil be part of this renaissance too? Only time will tell...

Wrapping it up:

There are still some game play elements that are missing, like letting the player backtrack at will instead of dividing the game in sections, complex, but fun systems designed for the creation of items or the setting of equipment and meaningful side-content that doesn't feel generic, just to mention a few. Those may still be missing in action, but it has been so far so good with the ones we have been getting back. It really seems like modern game design is looking to the past in order to move into the future and that is good not only for the old school gamers out there, but for everybody. At this rate (given that the gaming industry doesn't find a new trend to get stuck in) this generation will be full of cool things that will level the field between the old and new, like some sort of renaissance in gaming that paves the way for the return of creativeness over business-like thinking.   

Is the real evolution of gaming sleeping in the past?

At least 10 - 15 years ago, one could easily tell that every gamer was really hopeful about what was to come in the future as the end of a great gaming era was near. It is understandable that many people (especially younger gamers) would say that games back then had bad controls, primitive attempts at 3D graphics, awkward animations and similar faults, but on its core it was a very advanced phase in gaming history ruled by game design and story writing, meaning that for 50 dollars those video game aspects brought you some deep and compelling experiences that are still legendary up to this day. The problem is that somewhere along the way, everything that had been built up to that moment was just forgotten and replaced with half-baked practices. Don't get the wrong impression, gaming on this day and age is still great, but calling it an "evolution" is a little off, considering many of the things that were left behind and here are some of them.

Sad situation that happens even to the most famous of designers.

Freedom of design

The backbone of any video game is its design, it is something similar to making the layout of a stage on paper, drawing some platforms, some power ups, enemies and there you go, you have your own stage. Of course game design in the industry is not that simple, but it is as important as it has ever been. What happens with game design nowadays is that it should had stayed as it was, free. Writers and game designers make the hell of a team when they can work their ideas on a hassle-free environment, without somebody telling them that their ideas cannot be used because of some "market issue". For the writer it becomes very hard to come up with focused material if his/her ideas get blocked by the people upstairs. As for the designer itself, the time constraints, market trends and resource limitations have diminished what once was the biggest process in the making of a game and turned it in to an over-simplified version of itself.

 The making of Silent Hill 2

If you watch some "making of" documentaries about some older games, you can see how much creativity the developers poured into their projects when left loose with their creation.  These creative liberties are something that should had kept going in order for a real gaming evolution, as the creative minds would had met modern technology and would had been able to make wonders. There are some occasions in today's industry where games are designed as they should be, but you will have to look around a little in order to find them as it is not longer the rule, but the exception.

Cutscenes vs game play. Which one you prefer?

Freedom to the player

Once upon a time, seen a cutscene or CGI video was something that was seen mostly as a reward. It was that small moment you had when you saw the story line advancing along with some eye candy, all in cinematic fashion. It was the graphic artist moment to shine and we all loved it. The problem right now is that sometimes if feels like some long cutscenes should had been game play instead. At other times a "quick time event" is all that it takes to ruin the game mood and leave you feeling like you should had played through that situation instead of pressing some button combination. 

Things like these take freedom away from the player, making the game shorter and throwing away some of the thrills that would otherwise be challenging and fun. It is as if they sometimes borrow things from the "on-rails" game play style to save some time or just try too hard to make it look like a Hollywood movie. As time passes there should be more game play and not less, that is one important thing in any game that claims to be part of the gaming evolution.

Censorship should not be part of our modern world.

Freedom from cultural limitations and censorship

Cultural limitations have always existed, that cannot be denied, but for some time it seemed as if the line that divide games developed in different countries was blurring. Foreign games were trending in the west as well as American games were doing good in other places in the world regardless of topic or style. This train of cultural diversity in gaming was up and picking speed until censorship got tighter and it made it grind to a crawl. Now every game that is ready to be released suffers intense scrutiny that looks into the smallest of details in order to classify them as "not appropriate" for certain cultures. 

The acceptance of fiction for what it is has become something that the censors refuse to accept and this causes problems when a game tries to get a localization process. Along with censorship, another cultural problem is profiling. Marketing people have created this "rule" that basically profiles each region of the world and embed them to certain types of games and themes. This is also something that was at the verge of dying off, but made a comeback and (sadly for us) it is stronger than ever. It is hard to understand why haven't we parted ways with those things. Many other markets in the world have adapted to globalization, so why haven't the gaming industry done so?

The angry super "hardcore" gamer strikes again...

Freedom from ourselves

The consumer is a great part of what drives an industry and the gaming scene (that's us) is doing a poor job at it, even if it isn't entirely our fault. There was a time when a gamer's only concern was playing games and sharing experiences. At that time social networks weren't as popular, we relied a lot on magazines and word of mouth and all the tools we had as video game fans were simple, but at the same time a gamer was just a gamer, which helped to sustain an industry that was tailor made for us as gamers. Yeah, there were fan boy wars and things like that, but the community was not divided in niches, hardcore, casuals, "gamer wannabes", "real gamers", "dude bro gamers", "geeky gamers", "frikis" (in Spanish), "hipster gamers" and other labels that just seemed to turn it all into a game of factions, which gave game companies an incentive to divide the market as well and just give more attention to the "faction" that seems stronger instead of just the simple task of making games regardless of groups.

We as the consumers, got led by the marketing people into believing that we were all separated into groups, entirely working to their advantage instead of ours. Before that, they did not had a clear view of the market so that forced them to remain at a high level of quality at all times, but now they can just lay back and do whatever they want, following the easy money because they know what is trending and what is not. It is very unlikely for this to happen, but for a real gaming evolution to occur, we need to go back to been as single unit, gamers. This way we can throw a little fog of war in to the market and recover some of the advantage we had.

If some of these characters have stood the test of time, other things must as well.

Wrapping it up

In conclusion, the real gaming evolution is all about making the gaming industry to be pro gamer again. It is the return of different things that we used to have a long time ago. It is the freedom of the past + the technology of today which equals a leap in gaming that we haven't seen for a long while. Graphics get better, systems become more powerful, but the core of the gaming industry is what needs to take some things from the past in order to really move forward, anything less than that is just a new version of the same thing.

5 reasons why the AAA game obsession is harming the gaming scene

AAA video games are games with a high budget and big production values. They are nice, cause a lot of hype and give the gaming community something to talk about, but they are not the only games in existence. After reading the opinion that the big guy at Sony, Shuhei Yoshida had about the obsession with AAA games, you can pretty much see that game publishers and developers are getting kind of frustrated with the AAA game rush that is happening in the industry these days. Many gamers just want big games to happen overnight and while gaming companies are not entirely innocent about this, trying to rush the gaming industry is causing more harm than good and here are 5 reasons why.

The game is good, but some of its potential was hidden in order to meet the deadlines.

1) The sacrifice of quality over speed.

This one is all about the various game developing processes that are affected by rushed developing cycles. First of all, the creative process gets shortened to an extent that many good ideas that gamers could had enjoyed are lost in the process because there is not enough time to include them. Then the game design process is forced to become "too safe" for its own good, so the main base of the game you will pay 40-60+ dollars for is stripped off any "unnecessary" (unnecessary meaning cool stuff) design practices which almost leave the game with a basic canvas that ends up lacking. Finally the technical process becomes a race to the finish line, increasing the possibility of the game having bugs or technical issues that people will most likely complain about later. When all this happens, at least 25% of what could had made a game great is lost.

Did you knew that up until know they have been using the same engine over and over again?

2) The dreaded "one year" development cycles.

Even when many people seem to hate when a good franchise gets the "one year - one game" treatment, we have to accept that this is a by-product of wanting big games too fast. Publishers are not just there because of the games, they are mostly because of the money and if their marketing specialists see that demand has risen to a point where they can no longer support it by normal means, they will recommend to speed things up, thus the "one year" development cycle. This causes a lot of things like recycling of resources, decrease in innovation and it basically grind creativeness to a halt up to a point where the only thing that changes are the characters and setting, sort of like one of those cheap novels you find in some department stores for a few bucks.

Are we ever gonna get a sequel of this on America?

3) AAA Franchises with a slow development process die off.

When was the last time we saw a revolutionary cutting edge game, with more than 25 hours of game play, featuring new things and nice visuals? We have seen a few exceptions to the rule, but on the broader aspect of things, any franchise that needs to have a slow development development process is marked for death or at least ridiculously delayed. Take for instance many of the games that have vanished. Most of them have some things in common like dynamic game design, detailed game worlds and storylines that go a little deeper than your average "good guy vs bad guy" cliche.

All these things take time, which means that they can't rush them and much less "dissect" them (see point #1) because then the fans will not support it. So what they do is that they ignore those games, but use their names as promotion because they know that fans will love to hear that their favorite franchise is still alive. This is the reason why we haven't seen games like Half Life 3, Beyond Good and Evil or The Last Guardian for a long while. Their development process is slow, so companies never focus on them because they feel like they need to keep an always hungry AAA game crowd happy at all times. Sort of like wanting to offer a professional chef-style dish, but having to settle out with cheap plain burgers because people are asking for food and they want it fast.

This is how the market looks like sometimes and it is our own fault.

4) It causes gaming "droughts".

One of the things that the AAA game obsession has done is kill smaller studios because they are not been supported anymore. Back in the past, smaller studios on the mainstream market (non-indie) were the ones that gave us something to play while the big budget games were developed. It was like going to the game store and seen all these obscure games that had weird release dates and were not advertised that much, later on discovering that they were great under-appreciated gaming experiences. This does not happen anymore because most of those studios have either closed, been absorbed by a bigger company or went "indie" only. For some reason, many gamers decide to wait until the big games are released and pass on anything else.

This created a sort of black hole in the market where all these small studios got sucked in and now we suffer gaming droughts because of it. Let's face it, there are too few small gaming studios in the big market and the ones that are still there are not releasing games like they used to because they have no incentive to make great productions anymore because too many people are just sitting on their consoles waiting for the next new AAA game and not giving anything else a chance.

With Igarashi out of Konami we will not see something like this anymore.

5) It saps motivation out of the game companies.

This is a chain reaction that happens when the publishers lay the smack down on their developing teams based on the market (now frivolous) demands. This takes a toll in not only the programmers, but the game designers, writers, musicians and all of the creative team as they struggle to meet the deadlines while leaving precious ideas dead on the table because they don't have enough time/resources to do it. This is in the case that the project becomes a reality and doesn't get canned like it has happened to many games out there. In the end, the motivation to create becomes scarce and many of the most famous developers just give up and become figure heads or just leave the company (which is good for them, but means that the franchise they worked on for so long is either dead or will never be the same).

The best thing to do is to relax, play and have fun.

Wrapping it up

The gaming industry is going too fast for its own good and this must stop if we really want gaming to be become better instead of a re-hash fest. We must re-learn that good games take time and give a chance to all those "not so famous" games out there, be them in the indie scene or in the mainstream market. We need to stop waiting exclusively for the big games and just play and have fun with what we have. There used to be a time when gaming was based entirely on playing and not on trends or the next big thing so it would be healthy for the gaming scene if we return to that line of thinking, especially if we want our favorite franchises to survive and game developers to keep their creative freedom. This can be achieved and it is all up to you.

What was old is new again, but for the wrong reasons.

Old school and new school gaming, two terms that since the end of 32-64 bit era have been at war. One of them roots for perfection while the other goes for change and the broader market. Almost every time a discussion is started about this topic, sparks fly and we hear or read words like casuals, hardcore gamers, people "stuck in the past", whiners, non-gamers, new gaming industry crash and so on. Today on The Gamertologist we will see how old school really came back, but not in the way must of us expected. We are going to look into the ideas and design of games of previous eras and compare them to these times so we can see how we have been slowly going back without us even noticing. Old school did came back, but as a mummy rather than a full revival and here are the reasons why.

Watch a speed run and you will see how short these levels really were.

1) Shorter games

Taking rpgs and the eternal "go for the high score" atari games out of the equation, most old school games were short at nature. We have from the classic 8 worlds to as minimum as 3. There were some exceptions, but the vast majority of old school games balanced length with difficulty. If you were really good, you could basically finish that 50 dollar game in a day, a thing that would be even easier if you went at it with a friend on multi-player (except for Battletoads), but the average gamer just had to take their time figuring out how to beat the stages and defeat the bosses. A little later on, games from the 90's to the early 00's were longer and shared the difficulty of their predecessors making them feel even longer while also having a lot of secrets and a level design based on exploration which made those secrets to be pretty hard to find. If you remember a time where you spent more than an hour searching the same room over and over you know what I mean.

Then came modern games which began emulating the short duration of the games of old, but severely toned down the difficulty and implemented level designs based on action and short thrills (cinematics, quick time events) rather than exploration. This happened because publishers began demanding games to be developed faster than before, while also getting the mistaken idea that gamers wanted shorter/easier games. Nowadays, many of the big AAA franchises are been forcefully taken into the "A game per year" cycle, which sacrifices a lot of things in order to make it up to the deadline.

It was reddish purple Friday on the Shadow Warrior's schedule...

2) Recycling of resources

On old school games, this was something that we basically accepted. We saw characters walk, run and jump through stages that featured the same buildings and objects over and over. At the time, we just didn't care, because the graphics of that era were so simple that we just filled the blank spots with our own imagination. One of those repeated buildings could pretty much be anything we wanted as long as we were using our heads to offset the lack of material coming from the recycled sprites, textures and color palettes that filled the levels.

On the case of modern games we can see this, but not often at the graphical level. The recycling of resources on modern games comes in the form of user interaction. Its the moment when you feel that you have done the same deed many times before and little by little it becomes monotonous. At this point we try to use our imagination to keep us interested, but because the graphics are so good, our ability to make stuff up and "imagine monotony away" becomes very limited so our interest for the game begins to fade away fast. Some of these modern games manage to carry us from the beginning to the end credits on the shoulders of a good story, but many of them don't have that and that is where they completely fail. Of course this doesn't apply to games that ARE supposed to be repetitive like competitive first person shooters, mmorpgs and some action rpg/adventure and dungeon crawlers which are based on character growth rather than passing through the storyline.

Yep as simple as that (well not really, but you get the point).

3) Simplistic game design

When we talk about game design on old school games we talk about levels that consisted of a one direction progress, meaning go left to right, going up to a certain point if the game has a top down or isometric view, screens that automatically moved, forcing the player to go with it or even games that moved "on rails" like some famous shooters like Virtua Cop or Time Crisis. Also we knew that most of the stuff that was put in a level was either put there to further our advancement (platforms, switches) or just as part of the scenery. Later on in the middle of the 90's, game design became more complex with game worlds full of places to explore, secrets to find while rewarding our curiosity with story elements. This advancement in game design lasted until halfway through the 00's when game companies decided to go back to the simple style of the 80's.

So modern games went down a couple notches in game design and began having levels that look beautiful, but lack the stuff that made games famous in the mid 90's. They took the action and simplicity of the 80's, but left behind the deep environments of the middle of  90's to mid 00's time span. This doesn't mean that all modern games are like that, but too many of them go for the cheap design path and that is kind of going backwards don't you think?

Gaming is a business, but that doesn't mean that it has to be one sided.

To wrap things up

In summary the mainstream aspect of modern games revived some of the old school game characteristics, but only on its cheapest aspects like shorter gameplay, recycling of resources and simplistic game design. So if you are an old schooler that says that old school gameplay must come back, think again because it is already there, just not what you expected to see.

If you want a real old school styled modern FPS, try Wolfestein: The New Order.

There is still hope:

Even though the last generation (Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii) spent almost their entire lifespans using the cheapest stuff they found about old school gameplay in order to save money and develop fast and pretty looking games, they began fixing things up in these last two years and the trend has continued on the new generation with games that feature the nice graphics and effects of today with the GOOD parts of the old school style minus the cheap stuff with the indie scene serving them as an example of how to do things right. So let's hope that this trend continues to live on and we get to experience those super advanced games many of us had dreamed of, with the modern advances of today and the fun and interesting styles of old.

Bonus stage!

If you are one of those old schoolers, looking for some recent (as of May 30, 2014) modern (but old school) good experiences you can check out these games:

Wolfestein: The New Order 

Child of Light

Transistor

Killer is Dead (Re-released on Steam)

Mario Kart 8

                               

Has the gaming industry forgotten about millennials?

Some weird topic that just popped into my head and I thought was good enough to start the blog. it begins with a simple question, Has the gaming industry forgotten about  the so called millennials? Take into account that this comes from a "millennial" point of view since I was born in 1984, so let's go ahead and dig deep into this idea.

One of the great rpg franchises that deserve to come back.

The end of the millennial:

First of all, it would be a good thing to define what a "millennial" is. As they say, a millennial (or generation Y) is a person born in the time span from 1980 to the early 2000's. It is the generation that ranges from the styles of the 80's, the easy going abundance of the 90's and the shock of the early 2000's. From a gaming perspective, millennials have been there from the very beginning of gaming as an industry up to the point where everything changed. As a generation we are criticized for many things, most of that criticism coming without any facts, but if there is one thing in which we never faltered it is our taste for gaming.

It is not as exaggerated as path-cutscene-path, but it doesn't even come close to the designs of old.

Change for the sake of change:

When we talk about change, we mean the ways in which the industry has managed to change from one business model to another. At one point, some people used to say that the video game industry was immune to the effects of the economical crisis and we as gamers were totally believing it, because quality standards were still high regardless of the monetary turmoil. So imagine what a shock it was to see it all change and basically leave hanging a whole generation that grew accustomed to a gaming style that nowadays is called "niche", "core" or worst of all "not feasible". It can't be denied that great games have been released in these newer generations, but the change in style is very noticeable. Let's start by comparing these two styles as past and present and see which characteristics make them differ.

Past:

• Complex game design based on exploration.
• Vast use of various types of resources (graphic, sound and user interaction).
• Strong emphasis on story line.
• Gameplay over graphics.
• Games made to make you think hard in order to progress or develop skills over time.
• Medium to high learning curve.
• Product was almost every time a full game.
• Development cycles ranging from 2-4 years at minimum.
• Fiction topped reality in game content.

Present:

• Simple game design based on presentation.
• Recycling of game resources.
• Strong emphasis on making the player addicted to the game.
• Graphics over gameplay.
• Games made in a way that it doesn't annoy or frustrate gamers in any way (a.k.a easier difficulties).
• Low learning curve.
• Semi-complete product followed by tons of updates and downloadable content.
• Development trend of making games in 1 year.
• Reality tops fiction as visual artists make visual material closer to real life.

Every gaming company has their own Warios, screwing things up for the rest of us.

Change for the sake of money:

Each of the reasons why these two styles are complete opposites come from the same principle which is cheap production costs and maximum profits. Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that gaming in within itself is a business, but if we had to describe these two styles with a phrase, the past one would be "Make a kickass game so it sells well" while in the present it would be something like "Make a game that sells and somehow convince people that it is badass".

This is where millennials exit the scene as the ones who were dropped out as the prime customers of the gaming industry. Millennials lived through the many gaming eras that came to pass starting from the early Atari days and if one thing is to be expected from seen how gaming evolved through time is for games to get better; meaning longer, more challenging and more engaging. Millenials are a generation of gamers that have big expectations about gaming productions and will never forget the growth that the industry had, taking big leaps into better gaming experiences. This kind of thinking did not sounded so well to publishers and company investors because it meant more expenses and high risks.

This is when the people in business suits made the change and took power out of the artists hands and gave it to their "market analysts" or "mechandising people". The result of all this is the refusal to evolve and the embrace of a system that began simplifying games to a point that they mostly resemble a bad game from the 8 bit era, but with nice graphics. All this just because it is cheaper, faster and low risk. It is quite ironic for them to keep treating games like simple toys while at the same time saying that gaming has become a full fledged entertainment media with something for everyone. It just doesn't make sense.

Broken down Zero = how our gaming intelligence is treated.

This way of thinking prevented millennials from passing the torch to the newer generation as the new kids were lead to believe that the game development style from the past was too long, boring and passé while the one of the present was cutting edge and cool. People who still prefer the gaming style of the past are labelled as "hipsters" or called "people who still dwell on the past". Companies became rigid, most of the time ignoring what gamers want and using "modern gaming" as an excuse to give us less for our buck. Then as an excuse to get millennials even farther from having any influence, they began to release HD Remakes of famous games of the past just so they don't sell well and use that as an excuse to say "You see? Those games don't sell well any more. There is no reason to make new ones or follow that style of gameplay..."

The stale paradigm theory:

I have the little theory about how things should had been compared to how they are now. If we look into how the gaming industry was evolving, it would seem that people born in the mid 80's would have the industry at their feet from a content perspective. People who became gamers at that time would grow at the same pace as the industry does. So when they were kids the content of games would be mostly directed toward kids, then when going through their pre-teenage and teenage years the content would still be directed at them, then in early adulthood they would still be the poster children of the industry because now they would be the ones with money to spend and have the bigger enthusiasm toward games.

I apologize for the crappy style point chart he he. Just wanted to show the theory in some visual way.

If you see the small chart above, you can see that the emphasis in gaming content grew as people grew if you were a gamer in the 80's. Proof of this come in the games that were smashing successes at the time for each point on the time spans. In the 80's you could picture Mario, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Loony Tunes games, etc. As soon as the 90's came, more serious and beat them up/fighting/violent games became the norm, and at that time it captivated pre-teens and teens quite nicely. After that it all turned into a cinematic experience with a ton of JRPGs, survival horror and action games, now directed towards the teen-early adults age range. After that when the new millennium came, games became even more serious and adults were able to experience great experiences while still giving good stuff to the teens. 

Now after that, as gaming became entertainment media, it should had kept on the early adults/adults zone but instead it went back to the teens and got stuck there (with the occasional treat to adults over 40 which are points off the chart). Why did this happen? Because those age ranges meant cheaper development and lower risk. Please have in mind that this is just a theory.

Where could all the good stuff be? (btw Child of Light IS good stuff)

To wrap things up:

My conclusion is that millennials were taken out of the gaming scene as the biggest gaming market, because we grew accustomed to excellence and excellence costs more money, money they do not want to spend. So they trained newer generations to love watered down experiences and phased out everything that would resemble the gaming industry standard that lived up for almost 30 years. Don't get me wrong, I am not implying that we should still have games that look and feel exactly like in the past. What would be healthy for the industry is to mix up both old and new, past and present styles of development and come up with games that can show how much we have technically evolved, but without degrading the overall experience.

Currently, that mix between old and new is something that is mostly been done by indie developers, but big time companies are taking the hint like Square Enix, that have learned their lesson with Bravely Default, the people at Capcom who already promised that Resident Evil 7 will return to its "survival horror roots", after seen the franchise's value plunge drastically after Operation Racoon City and Resident Evil 6 or even games like Call of Duty or Titan Fall with new gameplay interactions that resemble the crazy first person shooter experiences of the past. The millennials may be out of the scene, but big chunks of our gaming taste are washing ashore and it is a matter of time until game companies are forced to do something about it.  

There is still hope my friends...