gaming Whats the worst gaming era/generation in your views

[Steve Piranha 28,781]

The ones I’ve experienced: I’d pick the WII/PS3/Xbox360 gen as the second worst. Reason being that we’ve started seeing the bad corporative  practices by the second half of the gen. Not to mention the WII, but I’ve already talked a lot of it

andnof course the worst is this one. Thanks to the more heavily corporate hand on the industry, we are swarmed with uninspired games, and the micro transactions and other post purchase ripoffs 

[Cash In 21,513]

I think the easy answer is the period of the video game crash in the 80s. Say what you will about the state of gaming now, but at least the industry isn't going to die anytime soon.

[DixonTheAdversary 1,631]

Our current gen, games from big publishers just feel too same-y and don't really try anything new. Also, microtransactions and lootboxes suck.

Edited June 8, 2021 by DixonTheAdversary

[ExplosionMare 18,007]

On 2021-06-06 at 5:51 PM, TomDaBombMLP said:

The current generation by a mile. I’d love to go back to the eighties when playing arcade games was just fun competition and not toxic.

I feel the same way. I especially wish games weren’t so pay-to-play driven either.

[ZiggWheelsManning 7,368]

I'd say 2nd half of the 90s, the original Sony PlayStation being everywhere and the Nintendo 64 packing decent games, however that was due to SEGA messing up and misfired big time when they disastrously launched the Sega Saturn early in May 1995  

Edited July 7, 2022 by ZiggWheelsManning

[Magic Note 2,738]

While I will say the current generation has its ups and downs, I cannot say anything kindly about the 1982-1985 era of gaming. Atari and several gaming companies learned the hard way why quantity over quality never works. That is, all the gaming consoles and various game ports that were of varying quality. This and several other events culminated to the Great Video Game Crash of 1983.

Nintendo did have several games on the Famicom released around the crash, but none really stuck out. It wasn't until September-October 1985 when things finally turned around for gaming as a whole.

[HereComesTom 2,232]

In some ways, I feel like the current generation is the worst.

I can't speak for the XBox or Playstataion, but the Switch felt like a step backward from the Wii U because it lacked a browser.  Plus I don't like the subscription model for virtual consoles as much as I liked the model where the player is permitted to purchase and download virtual console titles.

And then there's the greed in the industry...someday I'd like to build my own AAA games studio from the ground up, and have a system that provides both stability and a living wage for my employees---seems like it's one or the other in games, these days...

[Steve Piranha 28,781]

I’m not sure to pick when the market crashed. The industry was young back then, and no dedicated consumers as there has been a few days later 

[Sir Hugsalot 8,621]

Lootbox "era". Fortunately it failed to become as big of a pest as for example DLCs was due to low gamer resistance back then, but we still get plenty of infamous examples of really crappy loot box mechanics even today (I look at You, Diablo Immortal). This essentially turned some video games into gambling simulators, only where in gambling You get that tiny chance to leave the casino with more money that You went inside with, in gaming You will always be exposed to physical loss as even those ultra legendary goods are in most cases unsellable and once the game becomes old and is no longer played - they are, quite literally worthless.

It showed what kind of predators started swarming on gaming industry. Business people with no regard for passion, completely ignorant to the market, who went after it specifically for financial gains. Games with loot boxes were tailored in the way that turned the "optional" part in their description into an empty term - You end up with a choice. Pay ridiculous amounts of money, grind 24 hours a day or fall behind and get rekt. I am glad they were met with heavy negative backlash though. It still wasn't perfect, but it's clear that harsh player reaction scared some companies away from trying to implement them. Same goes for NFTs. Ubisoft will forever remain laughing stock for the intense denial they lived in with their idiotic Ubisoft Quartz. 

 

Overall state of gaming market is worrisome. Games are more and more often released in relatively unfinished state and then patched up after the release. Basically customers receive unfinished product. Like a car with just 3 wheels. Predatory strategies employed by likes of EA are like a hydra - destroy one (like ridiculous DLCs of the past) and You'll get another, worse than one before. There's a lot of money at stake and that attracted people who pay no attention to what they're trying to sell, only thinking of financial gains. 

But fortunately indie games are becoming better and better, there are also very competent, independent gaming studios like Larian that keep those secured fortress of much more healthy gaming experience, where You don't have to defend Yourself from predatory schemes done by greedy people, who climbed to the top of the foodchain. So this is one, encouraging thought to this otherwise negative post that I want to finish with.

[baba_booey 4,299]

I mean honestly probably the second gen - largely due to the video game crash, how video games were seen and the oversaturation of different consoles and games, most of which were of poor quality. Probably the first gen too since everything was just Pong consoles, but at the same time both were important to establishing gaming as an industry with it's ups and downs.

I will say though that so far I... haven't been impressed with the ninth gen so far. I feel like we're getting to the point where video game graphics are getting about as good as they're going to get and as a result, it basically just feels like an extension of the eighth gen rather than a step up, but even beyond that neither the PS5 or Series S/X are really impressing me enough to want to go out and buy either of them (and even if I did want to I can't even do so because they're still sold out everywhere lol)

[Vefka 1,499]

I remember generations of average third-person shooters with a yellow filter, uprising of all kinds of weird simulators. But for me the worst gen is the current one. Single player games with microtransactions and loot boxes, but the worst thing is their soullessness. Big studios don't want to experiment and just copy each other, smaller studios who want to experiment are unsuccessfully trying new things. Even indie games are stagnating - tons of similar rouglike games, overuse of pixelated, ps1 and VHS style

[ExplosionMare 18,007]

I feel like the era where FNAF, Bendy, etc. got successful, everyone else was desperate to create their own "cute but creepy" games. I don't have a problem with too many of them as most terrible ones are free anyhow, but I do have an issue with the marketing. These games are for teens and adults, yet I see so many kids with Freddy Fazbears and Huggy Wuggys. All of these types of games have something disturbing about them that are just not suitable for young kids. I find it funny that parents get so worked up about whatever violent games are considered bad yet they don't consider how indie horrors can also be detremental to kids. Just because they have a cute mascot doesn't mean the whole game is cute.