>80s and 90s
>video games are a niche, considered only for nerds and geeks, so the market is limited
>video game companies pay dozens of people to play their games for hours on hours to ensure it's the best it can possibly be before release
>provide free content for games you already bought
>2000s and 2010s
>video games are all the rage, everyone of all age plays them, billion dollar industry
>video game companies sell their games before they're finished and let the consumers discover all the bugs
>charge you for more pieces of the base game later when they get it finished
What the fuck happened to the video game industry?
They stopped pandering to insufferable nerds and geeks who always demanded more and instead went for the easier crowd that would be happy no matter what they gave them. Less listening to complaints and more money making.
>>337172318
I realize you're trolling, but it doesn't even make sense.
The only way you could communicate with the game developers was by mail back then, so barely anyone would have complained about anything. In fact, people had better relations with companies through the mail, where they would often send back neat stuff if you wrote to them.
These days all these little entitled shits just scream at companies through Twitter and demand more.
>>337172104
>80s and 90s
>Half of the games targeted at young adults the other half is targeted to children. (PC games being more mature as always)
>Devs take creative licenses and try to create games which they want to play themselves as adults.
>2003+
>Games targeted to the lowest common denominator (less than 18), instant gratification syndrome all around but empty mechanics.
>Devs have no creative vision or interest in video games that they never played at all, publishers push clone after clone of the same shit.
Capitalism happened, it destroyed small but god tier studios and made a hobby into a bussiness model.
>>337172104
They realized how much money the industry could make and how much people are willing to shell out.
Game developers became more interested in making political statements which left little time to come up with new game concepts.
>>337172104
>video game companies ensure it's the best it can possibly be before release
Your nostalgia glasses are on a little too tight there mate.
The industry's gone to shit in a lot of ways, but it has VASTLY improved in terms of quality control.
>>337172318
>demanded more
More in this sense being, "quality"?
>>337174692
Are you serious? There's more shit clones and remakes and buggy-ass garbage on the shelves now than there ever was. Games release with game-breaking bugs, servers fail for online-only games, and it's one massive shitshow.
When you released a game back then, you couldn't just upload a patch. What went out the door was the final copy until you could do a second run. The only way you could get a patch out to players was to mail out a floppy disk to everyone who registered their game, or through an official BBS that would have cost their parents a long distance phone bill.
>>337172541
You could also communicate with Sierra's hotline and exchange a giant phone bill for solutions for fucktarded puzzles.
>1986
>call software developer for help
>get some guy's wife who worked the phones who was happy to help
>2016
>call software developer for help
>automated system of little use
>live operator goes to someone in India who claims to be named "Michael"
>use online support form instead
>form is broken, only works in a single web browser
>automated response implying that you're an idiot with suggestions
>eventually get someone in India again who can't understand you
>forget it
>>337174945
Also the company's name/loyality was at play, if they ever released some retarded shit the consumer backlash was dangerous if they wanted to stay in business.
Games in the 80s and 90s where kilobytes of
size, now they are dozens of gigabytes. That
happend.
And that's pretty much all because of graphics
and graphics whores. t...thanks.
>>337176330
>implying size matters
>>337176330
No one said they had to devote all those gigabytes to having the next greatest "just like real life!" graphics that look like garbage in a decade. It's their own fault that they want to go with such artstyles for their games. Meanwhile stuff like Katamari Damacy will always be a classic.
>>337176531
do you realize someone has to type all this shit?
>>337176330
Games in the 80s and 90s were written painstakingly in assembly code and crammed into very tight constraints, making a higher chance of bugs.
Games today are made with high-level languages that make it very hard to make a mistake, and you have all the processing power and memory in the world to be sloppy and lazy within.
>>337176330
Basically just this, with graphics being the biggest culprit. The scopes of modern games have raised costs enough that companies have started getting greedy to make every single possible dollar out of every risky gaming venture.
>>337177049
I am pretty sure this is either trolling or complete ignorance. I have never heard of this in my life. Making games was objectively easier the farther you go up, judging by capital and man hours, which is the only way you would ever measure it.
>>337172104
>80s and 80s
>video games are a niche, considered only for nerds and geeks
sup 90s kid, while PC gaming was exclusive to nerds and geeks, console and arcade gaming was pretty popular
>>337177594
>never heard this in my life
Then you're not a programmer.
Most games today are written in languages like C#. These kinds of languages protect you from almost every traditional programming error or crash that plagued games for a long time. It's a very babying environment. The only way you can create game-breaking bugs is simply broken logic of your code.
Now go back to the 80s and 90s, when you had guys like John Carmack writing bare metal assembly code to squeeze every single cycle out of a CPU and to exploit graphics card tricks to accomplish anything, making it very hard to develop, let alone debug, and that's before you even get into making the actual game.
Money and jews hapenned
while the industry has become bloated there is still a solid core of enthusiasts with games that cater to them which will always exist.
>>337174945
>>337176161
>Games release with game-breaking bugs
which are quickly patched, whereas back then if a game shipped with a game-breaking bug the best you could hope for is that you'd find a way around it
>servers fail for online-only games
temporarily, whereas back then you'd be lucky if a game had working multiplayer that didn't involve dragging your friend's rig into your house for LAN.
If you honestly think that final copies of 80s and 90s games didn't have game-breaking bugs or technical problems with absolutely NO solution, not "waah I had to download a patch how traumatizing", but actual game-breaking problems that would NEVER be patched, to say nothing of the shit internet or consoles exploding or PCs not being able to read discs or countless other problems that would completely fuck up your chances of playing a game, well congratulations on finding gog.com and installing an emulator.
