|
Post by Ex on Nov 20, 2019 12:23:02 GMT -5
Being an ardent "retro gamer", I sometimes ask myself if this continued interest in the games of yesteryear is based more in nostalgia, or rather a longing for design ethos that no longer persists.
Of course I understand a game can provide both. But what is the stronger motivator? Is it the warm feeling of seeing graphical fidelity, hearing musical tonality, which you experienced in your childhood?
Or rather did game designers of old have specialist concepts you just don't see anymore? By that I mean, the core playing mechanics of a game. I know indie games often try to capture retro game aesthetics and designs, but do they truly succeed? Is it as good as the real thing? What makes the "real thing" be the "real thing"?
What's the strongest motivator for you, as a retro gaming enthusiast? Nostalgia? Outmoded game design which you still favor? Both? Neither? Something else entirely? I want to know why you still care about crusty old bits, that the vast majority of gamers could not care less about.
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Nov 20, 2019 15:50:28 GMT -5
I'm not sure this has a solid answer. I honestly don't know why retro gaming (at least at its best) still appeals to me so much. Some of it may well be that my tastes in gaming were formed back then, so I gravitate to them now. Some is making up for lost time; I missed out on a lot of games back in the day, so I've been filling in gaps as well as playing newer games.
Really, though, I think some of the best retro games had both a precision and a simplicity about them. Less than layering tons of systems on top of each other, they were all about nailing the feel of a game. Getting the balance right could always be tough, though. Too simple, and the game just doesn't hold appeal. RPGs often suffered from this. By today's standards, Dragon Quest III/IV are simple games, but they nailed things like game balance and pacing, something imitators often missed. Platformers needed to have super tight controls that actually made them fun to play. Beat-'em-ups have to have combat that feels impactful, and just a few frames here or there can break the immersion and render a game unsatisfying.
I watched a video recently, though, talking about why indie games still use pixel art. It detailed how the best simply use it as a style, and produce stunning work. But the real appeal, in my mind, with good pixel art, is that it allows for the player to fill in those imagination gaps. Graphics should look good, of course, but they primarily should be evocative. There's a reason that we often remember older games looking better than they do, or perhaps why we still think certain games look fantastic when others don't see the point.
Just my rambling two cents that perhaps doesn't get at the core of it. I just know I do still love retro games, and I doubt I'll fall out of them if I've been in it this long.
|
|
|
Post by 20thcenturygamer on Nov 20, 2019 18:21:41 GMT -5
Some of it is game mechanics. The willingness to actually set you back in any significant way if you screw up too much is almost entirely confined to so-called "Roguelikes" now. I don't like that. I'm not saying every game has to have limited continues (though many are absolutely better for it), just that making me restart a difficult and lengthy level from scratch is the bare minimum penalty I should face if I'm playing that level poorly. Imagine a designer today looking at the enemy spawns in Ninja Gaiden and saying "Hmm...Too easy. Better set them back further if they die on the last boss." Some of it is down to general presentation stuff. I don't tend to like in-game menus. They're necessary in some cases, but otherwise big immersion breakers. When they must exist, a readily-understood and single-layered (as opposed to nested) menu like the original Legend of Zelda's is best. Some of it is based in aesthetics. I have preference for chiptune music. If you really think about it, video game music as such (that is, music that did not and could not use the same tools as TV and film scores) had a pretty short existence before the CD-ROM era arrived. It's like we lost this entire art form overnight. Give me my blips and beeps. More than anything, I think I miss the scrappy, "use every part of the buffalo" approach that was required at the time. Give your average "indie" developer today 32KB to work with and I doubt they'd come up with anything on the level of Super Mario Bros. Or if they did, it would have unlimited lives, checkpoints every ten steps, and everything would be a hamfisted metaphor for depression and mental illness.
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Nov 20, 2019 18:23:41 GMT -5
More than anything, I think I miss the scrappy, "use every part of the buffalo" approach that was required at the time. Give your average "indie" developer today 32KB to work with and I doubt they'd come up with anything on the level of Super Mario Bros. Or if we did, it would have unlimited lives, checkpoints every ten steps, and everything would be a hamfisted metaphor for depression and mental illness. I'm pretty sure I know exactly what game you're referring to here.
|
|
|
Post by anayo on Nov 20, 2019 19:00:10 GMT -5
I have a friend who likes modern games. He insists on playing on a PC with the most lavish CPUs and graphics cards with elaborate water cooling. He has no enthusiasm for vintage gaming. The only exception I've seen him make for this is Playstation era RPGs such as Final Fantasy VII, which he grew up with. But even then, the unflattering appearance of those games' visuals on modern LCD displays ruins them for him. He doesn't enjoy the game if it doesn't look good. This friend also likes D&D. He told me he had a personal dream to hold a D&D game where everyone had to wear costumes and hold authentic props and do everything in character. He emphasized it would be important for everyone to stay in character and be very serious. "I want this to be serious." he told me, "No silliness or comic relief." One day it occurred to me that there was a connection between my friend's preferences for digital gaming and analog gaming. I realized this meant that my friend and I were both trying to get very different things from gaming. This also probably accounted for some communication differences he and I had in the past where we were using the same words but meant different things. This is because my friend cares more about role playing. He wants to feel as though he is inside of the world of the game in the skin of the hero. This accounts for why his idea of the perfect game is something along the lines of Mass Effect, with lots of exposition and dialog, and why lavish graphics matter so much to him.
I am not indifferent to well told stories, but my background doesn't dispose me to see video gaming as a place to turn for this. I have dabbled in amateur fiction writing since my teens. It is highly unlikely I'll be remembered for that and it doesn't make me some subject matter authority by any stretch of the imagination. I see it like having a musical instrument in my room which I will play sometimes. But practicing this craft has changed the way I view storytelling and it doesn't cast a very flattering light on video game writing. When writing a story, it's important to make a character's dialog sound as though it is coming from the mouth of that character. When a character speaks, you should unconsciously think, "Ah, right, that's exactly the sort of thing he would say." I feel as though every line of dialog ought to be kind of like its own Shibboleth. Games rarely do this. Characters in modern games speak, but the point of what they're saying is often just to proclaim the next objective, ie. "We really need to move or something bad will happen!" The assumption seems to be that if they speak enthusiastically or loudly enough, then that must mean the player has a reason to care about them. But I rarely learn anything new about them. I also find character arcs in most games to be problematic. A character arc is when a character experiences personal growth. It's why people warm up to Han Solo. At first, he's a selfish jerk. By the end of a New Hope, he finds it within himself to risk his neck for the rebellion. Stuff like that is endearing. In video games, character arcs are usually "Shepherd starts off as strong man with a deep voice and a gun. In the end, he is a strong man with a deep voice and a gun."
All of the production values in service of video game world building really appeal to people like my friend, who want to role play. For me, it has very little to offer, because I would go so far as to argue that there is a western linguistic limitation that causes people to conflate role playing with story telling. Since I'm not really into role playing and video games are mostly bad at storytelling, I really like it when games have their own logic which makes sense within the TV screen but would be totally bonkers in real life. I'm talking about wooden crates bursting into lethal explosions to kill Russian soldiers in 007 Goldeneye, or breaking brick walls in Castlevania to reveal cooked turkeys which restore your health, or making enemies wander off in the screen in Ninja Gaiden, unloading them from the scene and causing them to disappear so you don't even have to fight them. Old games just seemed to do that stuff more often and I am drawn to that.
|
|
|
Post by Xeogred on Nov 20, 2019 20:34:02 GMT -5
We've had similar discussions before and my usual answer is that, I never stopped playing retro games and consoles that I grew up playing. My interest has consistently stayed strong in old platforms I loved, as I continued to play new titles on old systems and still have an amazing time. There's also the fact that in the earliest generations, everything was purely 2D, which admittedly has been a bit popularized again with the rise of the indie scene, but it's still different from the new stuff and like an entire massive genre worth compared to all the 3D games today.
The simplicity to the old and their mechanics, the console limitations (often beneficial to design), the evolving sprite work and aesthetics in general that I still love. Chiptunes are still something I frequently discover as well, even when I haven't played the game, I can jam out to some awesome chiptunes and OST's.
A new thing just hit me though, following this line of thought. There is something I truly admire about limitations and smaller more personable teams behind a project. There has been a trend in my adult life: I got heavily into 80's metal and that continues with older metal/rock. I have always loved older movies and still have far more interest in them than the new, and after the metal deluge I got heavily into 1980's and older anime that is still a big passion of mine as well. So I am convinced that in some dark alternate timeline, if I grew up and somehow side stepped gaming throughout all of my childhood but slipped into it recently here in the 7th-8th+ generation, there is a 99.99999% chance that I probably would have dived into classic gaming on my own eventually. Gaming has an edge over other mediums though, in that it's an active form of entertainment and you're doing something, often challenging in the case of older games. So it engages me more than most and is why it's consistently been my #1 hobby all my life. In general, I'm a bit of an introvert and can be happy on my own, gaming works very well with that.
It might just be in our superior DNA.
So yeah, the small personable garage based talent making art, the aesthetics of the look and sounds, the simplicity and masterful execution on their design, tasting history, these core values seem to apply to many avenues/hobbies for me.
I think most other people would just rather flip on the TV and be spoon fed what they're supposed to like without ever trying to dive and find things they're truly passionate about.
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Nov 21, 2019 13:05:49 GMT -5
There actually is something about the creative process that can be positively impacted by limitations. A lot of people, when it comes to creating things, don't know when to stop. The impulse to keep cramming things in proves an intense siren's call. However, if you have to start making crucial calls on what to keep in simply because of limitations, it can often provide a tighter, more satisfying experience.
I think you can find that in today's environment, too. While there are certainly those companies that rush games out the door to be fixed later, sometimes that impetus to actually ship a product helps a team pare the scope down to something more acceptable. I think that constant tension actually helped someone like Hideo Kojima (I love most of his stuff, by the way), who would otherwise keep doing wacky, off-beat stuff and never ship an actual game. Movie directors have to make hard cuts all the time, and often, the theatrical release ends up better for it.
Something I remember from years ago when I took a creative writing class was our first assignment, where we were given an article/piece, and we had to construct a poem from only the words in that poem. The one I constructed from that exercise actually ended up being the best one I wrote that year (9/11 impacted that class heavily, so there was quite the shift after that). The limitations actually made me better.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Nov 25, 2019 16:26:58 GMT -5
I want to thank all of you for your thoughtful replies, I very much enjoyed reading and contemplating your responses. The "limitations breed creativity" concept was brought up a few times. I remember back in 2013 a TED talk by Phil Hansen. I didn't agree with everything he said, but one statement stuck with me; "We need to first be limited in order to become limitless." ( reference ) I absolutely believe that the limitations of the 8 and 16-bit generations, brought out limitless creativity from the best designers of that era. Metaphorically speaking; If you gave a bunch of kids the exact same 20 Lego pieces per kid, and that's all they had to work with, only the truly talented kids would make something interesting. The quality sculptures would be obvious and memorable. In the same way, video games used to be quite harder to make then they are now. This attracted different kinds of developers then what we see today (especially in the indie space). You do not even have to know how to program a single line of code to make a video game today. On the surface this may seem like a good thing, but today's signal-to-noise ratio in the gaming landscape might beg to differ. I will try to describe why I play "retro" games more often than modern ones. I am going to use large sweeping generalizations. There are always exceptions, of course. But the spirit of what I'm saying is cumulative. My thoughts...
There was a period of time where games were happy just being games. I'd say that period of time started to erode in the late '00s. Certainly fading noticeably after the '10s. I enjoy unpretentious games. I don't need or prefer a game to "subtly" (ham-fistedly) try to sway me on sociopolitical agendas. That has been a growing trend in video games (AAA and indie), and I'd daresay has become rampant. I won't go into specifics, and I won't go into politics, so I'll just say I play video games for lots of reasons - none of them are to be informed on "wokeness". Retro games were happy just being games, unconcerned with an ulterior motive of proselytization. I admire that aspect about old video games. I prefer for video games to be challenging. Modern games generally tend to be very easy. Sometimes to the point of being patronizing. Now I understand that I've been playing video games for going on four decades now, so perhaps my skillset is above average, but still... games should legitimately challenge the player to put in effort to beat them. Overcoming adversary builds self reliance. Self reliance breeds self respect, an admirable quality of any person's character. We do not grow as human beings if we do challenge ourselves. Difficult video games can be one piece of that challenge yourself pie. I wish more modern players would acquire a taste for challenge pie, because it's pretty damned delicious. And maybe they would, if less modern video games were concerned with making every player feel like a winner with no real effort involved. I admire old graphics. This is less out of nostalgia, and more as an appreciation of the art style invoked as the result of limited technology. Whereas many modern games go for as realistic a look as possible, yesteryear games lacked the technology to do so, and instead focused on stylish abstraction. Just as one can have a preference for various art styles in the realm of static paintings, so can one have in the realm of dynamic pixels. It took genuine skill to make nice looking graphics from limited resolutions and strangled color palettes. Every pixel mattered, and as a result, I admire every pixel. I would even go so far as to say I have admiration for 32-bit polygons with low texture resolutions, because they appear as a form of cubism to me. I think if modern players took the time to learn to appreciate archaic graphics, they'd see them less as crusty interpretations and more as classical art styles.
Modern video games often try to be movies first and video games second. I'm talking about AAA games in general. The moment to moment gameplay suffers, and the depth of applicable skill suffers, because the gameplay itself is marginalized to accommodate the core focus on cinematics. I understand this is not so much the case with 2D indie games. However I have found that often indie games mimicking classic game designs are poor interpretations of the real thing. They may capture some aspect of the graphical styling, a bit of the action feel, and yet the soul just isn't there. I have not played or seen an indie game for example, that comes close to capturing the perfection of Bionic Commando (NES) or Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I would rather play the real deal, than a facsimile. As to modern AAA games - anytime a video game takes control away from the player, it is no longer a video game at that moment. If I want to watch a movie, I will watch a movie. Older video games were built from the gameplay up, rather than the plot down. It is this focus on moment-to-moment gameplay first and foremost, that I admire about classic games. After decades of collecting video games, my backlog library is considerable. I've got sealed games that go back 25 years at this point, that I bought as a kid. Due to real life circumstances and the sheer amount of games released on any given platform, there's just tons of titles I've not played yet. I enjoy going back and experiencing new-to-me games I've collected from years past. Because of having a considerable library, with plenty of untapped experiences, I do not find myself gravitated towards constantly keeping up with modern gaming. I am not motivated by ever-prettier pixels or the hype-train. As such I do not own a PS4, One, or Switch at this time. The newest systems I have are a 3DS, Vita, and Wii U. I could not buy another video game for ten years, and still not run out of new (to me) stuff to play during that decade. Not by a mile.
I play video games for a few reasons, one of those reasons is to get away from people. Introvert as I am. So many modern games are focused on online multiplayer, in addition to incorporating social media directly into the experience... I could not care less about that stuff. Honestly I hate it. I also do not like "forever games", such as the insanely popular MMO-Battle Royale genre. No, I do not want an unending experience. And I do not want to pay micro-transactions for content that should already be there. I do not want to socialize while I level up. When I play a video game, I want to leave my world and escape into its world. I do not want the real world, or real people, leaking into my sacrosanct meditative experience. I want that fourth wall to remain unbroken. I want to be able to finish the game, see its credits, and have closure on the experience. Retro video games are designed just as such, and I relish them for it.
In closing I'll say that older video games tend to be leaner and meaner. I mean that in a few ways. The gameplay and control was leaner - meaning it was more focused. You usually only had a few buttons / mechanical interactions to utilize, so you were up and playing fast. Game design was simpler, but not to a fault. Limited movesets rather lead to higher polish - the level and enemy designs were strongly and carefully crafted to allow the player to exploit their interactions to their full potential. Memory was limited, so story aspects had to expel the cruft and just get to the point. (No sitting through agonizingly long cutscenes in 8 and 16-bit games.) Meaner touches on the difficulty aspect as I described earlier. Older video games tended to actually respect the player's intelligence. Kid gloves were rare, and were frowned upon in general. (You aren't gonna get a white Tanooki suit for being terrible at Super Mario World.) In short, older video games being leaner and meaner meant they got to the point quicker, focused on what actually mattered (core gameplay), and challenged the player to improve their skills.
|
|
|
Post by toei on Nov 25, 2019 16:35:36 GMT -5
I wonder whether the creativity of older games has to do with the technological limits, or if it was simply because the medium was new and developers had no choice but to be creative? Developers had to get inspiration from life or non-video-gaming mediums if they wanted to stand out; the current generation gets most of its inspiration from older games, which means that they may be more polished, but they're also less creative. It's like Miyazaki's point about his being inspired by life and art VS newer animators being otaku whose only inspiration comes from anime. That's also why I'm not in a hurry to get into indie games; a very large proportion of them are blatant, open rip-offs of older games and it's just kind of sad. I don't need to play some glorified fan game.
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Dec 4, 2019 17:24:39 GMT -5
toei: You make a good point. Some of it probably was technical limits, and part of it was likely that game design was evolving incredibly rapidly at that point. There weren't a whole lot of examples of what to do and not to do, so often it was just throwing things against a wall to see what stuck. Not taking away anything from some of the geniuses that made some amazing games, but I have to believe that much success in the early days was also rather serendipitous.
|
|