Gaming is such a different beast these days

The mistake is going to Harvey Norman for games ^^

Seriously though, JBs has a nice sizeable game section. Heck, even the PC games get half a row of shelfing (and that's more than they get at most EBs these days).

I do remember all the independant game stores in the early 90s, and the rows of adventure games i had never heard of in big boxes. You'd buy a game based off the box and funnily enough, i was rarely dissapointed (discovered the Goblins series this way).

I'm kinda rambling though. To reiterate, Harvey Norman for games, baaaad

lol point taken! Harvey Norman was good for variety, but the prices were consistently through the roof. The trend of the declining floor space devoted to PC Games is happening everywhere. I'm actually surprised JB bother with PC games as they never really seemed to years ago.

But, as you said, even EB Games is mostly about console and portable gaming which I guess is a pretty strong indication at where the industry is and its destination. It's a shame, but, we have no choice to adapt. Man I miss the big boxes and printed manuals.

Harvey Norman was where I first discovered UAKM! And then came back to the exact same store to get Pandora over 2 years later. But in terms of shopping, literally everything I buy is from JB Hi-Fi... they have everything! I visit my local JB close to where I work every second day looking for new goodies. But I only every buy games these days if I had pre-planned. Movies is a different story. You are right though, back in the 90s when we had the big boxes it was great just browsing... now I can't do it with games anymore... to much junk out there!

-Cub. =o)

I feel like the more gaming has changed, the more it stays the same.

To explain, when I first put my copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 into the PS3, it spent 20 minutes installing updates and then installing the game itself. This is a step back in time. I was halfway expecting it to say 'Press Play on Tape' afterwards.

Back in the early mists of... 1993, you had the Super Nintendo. Insert game, switch on, play. In about as much time as it took you to read it. We've taken steps back. Gaming is no longer an instant, out-of-the-box thing.

Weird, eh?

-Fred

I felt that games changed when they released...MLB 2007. The game required a patch to properly play. I didn't think console games would ever need to be patched.

My local EBs, which are now GameStop, only have one of those little shelves that sit out in the middle of the floor for PC games... And they only use one side for the PC games, the other side are usually DVDs or something else...

BestBuy is the place to go around here for PC games, they have 2 very long shelving units for PC games...


That's true Fred, NES, SNES, Atari, they never required loading time, just switch 'em on and play... There were maybe a hand full of games that required a small loading screen, but nothing like today...

A depressing thread.

Something's on the rise though, and it's not merely a tide of potent nostalgia.

We're all here aren't we? These games live on. Several weeks ago I posted here for the first time and had my doubts about whether or not my modern attention span would tolerate the adventure games of my youth.

Guess what? It did. I'm back to enjoying these games almost as much as I used to.

Something's wrong out there, folks. Our current movies are edited too quickly and our games induce motion sickness. Attention spans are being destroyed. There has to be a reaction to this "Bourne Identity Edit" psychosis.

There will be a return to the games of the past and hell, we're already seeing it. Hell, it only took me a few weeks to snap out of it. I may break out the Infocom games next.

Tuco, while I see you line of thinking, the problem isn't with gamers of old... It's with the Newer generation who want nothing but action and don't want to think... So they give 'em what they want, blow it up, smash it, destroy, YAY you win...

While we all or most of use enjoy games of that nature, we also enjoy being pulled into the game world like Tex does for us, but Tex also makes us think... Kids today don't want to think... A lot of the gamers of old feel they don't have time for games, so therefore they have given up gaming altogether...

And we are right back to where we are... Gamers who want games, but there aren't enough of us to be loud enough to make the Big-Wigs of the industry stop and think...

That's where Aaron and Chris come in... They are in the industry to look out for the little guys like us... And because they have a big battle to fight in order to get us what we want, we stand behind them and wait, knowing that they won't let us down...

Cubase wrote:Harvey Norman was where I first discovered UAKM! And then came back to the exact same store to get Pandora over 2 years later. But in terms of shopping, literally everything I buy is from JB Hi-Fi... they have everything! I visit my local JB close to where I work every second day looking for new goodies. But I only every buy games these days if I had pre-planned. Movies is a different story. You are right though, back in the 90s when we had the big boxes it was great just browsing... now I can't do it with games anymore... to much junk out there!

-Cub. =o)

Same here. Games, music, DVDs and Bluray all under one roof at very competitive prices. It will be interesting to see how Cosco compete with JB once they open down on the Docklands in September. Are you guys getting one up in Sydney?

Gamers today are not gamers per se. You don't get to be a gamer for playing Snake on your mobile, or having apps for your iPhone. You get to be a gamer when you spend 8 hours straight playtime to finally kill off Dr. Robotnik. You get to be a gamer when you spend 16 hours straight saving the princess. You get to be a gamer when you know how to take down Super-Macho Man. You get to be a gamer when you blow up the Moonchild. When the princess is in this castle, you're a gamer. When you've blown up all the Robotmasters and Wily's begging for mercy, you're a gamer. When Jackson Cross is sucking space debris, you're a gamer!

I didn't spend years indoors when the sun was shining to have my title as a gamer defiled by this newer generation of Halo-loving, rocketjumping, fraghungry killbunnies who needs Ritalin to stay focused for ten minutes at a time. I stayed focused throughout Day of the Tentacle. All of it! And it doesn't involve a single fragkill. And it's still a thousand times more enjoyable to bowl over ten purples than it is to snipe one blue or red.

I'm part of the generation that wrote down massive amounts of passwords, cheat codes, combos, finishing moves and puzzlesolutions. Pages and pages of the stuff. Remember Castlevania? Where the password could be so complex it could take you five whole minutes just to type it in correctly? And when you had ten of those passwords it filled a small book?

Todays generation of People-Who-Play-Games are not to be considered 'Gamers'. They're merely visiting a world which me and mine rule. Let them be confined to their lesser games of first person fragging where they belong, but should they ever cross the boundary into our domain, cut them down with no quarter.

The sad thing is, this affects us who are Gamers. We don't get any really good games anymore. And when we do, we mark the calendar, and we wait for Tim Schaefer to make another. Or for AC & CJ to get back in the business together. Or for Lucasarts to milk their old licenses for all they're worth and outsource it to Telltale.

It's a sad state of affairs, it is.

-Fred

I'm just sick to death of the Michael Bay style of mentality that a lot of developers seem to have this day. It's staggering to see them pay so much attention to things like spectacle, unlockable bonuses and online play. I have to admit, there does seem to be a slight revolution with online distribution where a lot of the classic games that we all loved are coming back into the fore.

Developers like Telltale and even our own Big Finish are thankfully noticing the flaws of contemporary gaming and are actually doing something about it. Who knows, maybe as the popularity of online distribution inevitably grows adventure gaming will find its place in the world again and will give us a few "virtual" shelves to browse and find ourselves in.

I must admit, the industry has inproved from what it was back in the early 2000s where the adventure genre (at the time) looked well and truly dead. At the moment there seems to be a glimmer of hope, so I haven't lost faith yet. I'm still stoked that Lucasarts are re-issuing their classics to Steam. It actually proves me wrong when I say that they don't care about adventure gaming. While they don't develop them anymore, they at least are coming to terms with what made them great in the 90s. Who knows, maybe it will inspire a new direction to inject some of that flavour into their contemporary works.

For the most part, not all of them, but most of them, I think they are only redistributing these old games to please us elders of the gaming world, nothing more, except maybe the Profit they know they can milk from us because we love these games so...

There aren't many like AC and CJ left in the industry... And when you do have them they are red flagged by politics of the business and made wait for this and wait for that and it takes months and years for them to finally get their game released and that's if they didn't give up on it because of all the red tape they are made cut through with a wooden spoon...

Nobody wants us to have the games that take hours and hours to play anymore... They want to give us a game that we finish in 2 hours and become bored with in 2 to 3 days {if that long}, that way we will run out to buy another game...

Fred nailed it with the writing of passwords and everything... I have 2 notebooks that are completely full packed up with my NES and SNES games of MegaMan Passwords, Castlevania, the sequences for this or that...

It has just gotten to be to much of a Rush... They rush us Adults by making us chase the dollar, so we work harder and faster to please... Now they are going to rush the children with what should be entertainment... And they make cheat codes so easy to get nowadays... So god forbid they reach a spot that is too hard for 3 minutes... Ahh Just put the God Code in and blast through it... You know, I don't want to look for Ammo, just put the Infinite Ammo Code in... Etc. Etc. Etc...

I think you guys are getting a bit off track here. This 'what it means to be a gamer' speech is the same kind of talk that bred the whole casual/hardcore monikers (which i despise with a fiery passion). If you play and enjoy video games, you are a gamer. It is that simple. You can enjoy older games, or games from specific genres, but from the iPhone user, to the Wii Sports mom, to the Call of Duty 4 eleven year old, to the older gentlemen playing Under a Killing Moon, we're all gamers.

And yeah, gaming has changed, but it hasn't gotten any better or worse really. The talk of the youth only wanting action and violence... well yeah, they're teenagers. That's why rock music, science fiction, slasher movies and everything else society believes has threatened the youth has been popular amongst them.

Gaming has evolved. A lot of early games were more difficult as gaming's roots was in the arcade, and developers wanted everyone to pop in another quarter. To combat this system on the home console, they included passwords and save states. Games have moved away from that from about generation 4 i'd say (the SNES / Genesis era). Not only to make experiences more enjoyable (like Lucasarts removing death from their adventure games), but because games were getting longer too (especially when looking at the RPGs of the 90s). Funnily enough, time wise, games are becoming shorter again. I think this has to do with wanting more people to actually complete games, and the fact multiplayer is so popular that many developers sink more of their time into that.

Ok, so that last paragraph has a lot of holes, but i hope i got some of what i was trying to say across. I think the biggest thing that has changed in gaming is now it's like the movie industry. There are these huge blockbusters full of action that everyone goes out and experiences, while there are niche or arthouse groups that sit on the fringes enjoying the games that won't appeal to the mainstream crowd. Like film, a lot of what happens in these independent or offbeat games can influence the big blockbusters over time.

Oh and now that retro gaming is more accesible than ever thanks to downloadable services and websites on consoles and PC, these great titles from the past can be experienced by the gamers of today (or revisited by the gamers of today of yesterday). Like the independant games, the designs and presentation of some of gaming's past can influence gaming's present and future more easily.

My point was never about who gets to be a gamer and who doesn't. It's about us who grew up as Gamers in the 80's and 90's are getting screwed by the new generation of so-called gamers, because it's so much more profitable to make a good enough game, than it is to invest time and effort into making an incredible game. Games sell, even if they're crap.

I mean, Crazy Frog Racing got a sequel. You don't need to be psychic or have telepathic powers to know that game, by our collective standard, blows chow all over the industry and is an affront to all that is good in gaming. There are some things that just shouldn't be.

To compare it to films - imagine if Hollywood Big Business decided to get behind the cheapest, most crap films there were instead of the good stuff. No Godfather films. No Lord of The Rings. You get the point. All you get shoved in your face is films like Shark Attack, Trolls, Plan 9 From Outer Space (okay I'm exagerating the point now but you know what I mean).

You get fed CRAP. And you're supposed to think that's as good as it's gonna get. When you could be watching Pulp Fiction. Or The Good The Bad And The Ugly. Or The Godfather. Or Lord of the Rings.

This is what's happening with games, now. You get spoonfed stuff like the game version of the newest Pixar-flick, no matter how poorly it translates to game form, and it sucks. When you COULD and SHOULD be reaching for the goddamned STARS, and be playing some honest-to-goodness Tex-frickin'-Murphy!

I have spoken.

-Fred