Were games better in the good o’l days?

As someone who has gamed for 43yrs now I often wonder (and try to remember) what games were like and how they have changed. I cannot go back and play old games anymore as they lack so many basic quality of life adjustments that I have got used to, that the games seem unnecessarily obtusely difficult, and I often feel I am fighting the controls rather than the games difficulty. I started playing games in 1982 with Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Jnr a basic console that had a (colour!) LCD screen where you moved Donkey Kong Jnr in a set platforming game with the end goal of releasing Donkey Kong himself from the clutches of the evil Mario (yes in this game Mario was the baddy). You had to collect keys along the way all the while climbing vines, dodging birds (if I remember correctly), knocking down coconuts, gliding down umbrellas and floating up on ballons and trying not to fall in the water and eventually opening the three locks to free your dad. Wholesome.

I played this game to death and by todays standards, it was extremely simplistic. I doubt they could make a game like this today as it was repetitive, simple and most of all would not hold people of any age’s attention very long. To me back then this was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. As there really wasn’t any comparison for me this was new, exciting and held my attention as this was all there was, no list of games waiting for my attention.

Fast forward to today, and we have a huge selection of games that don’t just span multiple genres, but also genres within genres. We hear so often the conversations of where this new game fits with in the categories of gaming and people have full blown arguments as to whether this new game is a souls like or a rogue like/lite for example. My 6yr old self would not have cared. In fact, looking forward in time to when I was 18 in 1994, and I still would not have cared. Whether the game was Doom, Street Fighter/Motal Kombat, Star Wars Tie Fighter, System Shock, Warcraft (not the MMO) or a DnD game no one remembers, I could not have cared less what category the game slotted into, and even less what category within that category. I just played the game. Of course this was mostly due to what games were available. I had a PC, no consoles (although my brother maintains we had consoles, but I don’t really remember), so I played what I could. I also grew up in South Africa which up until the 1990s, was under strict sanctions so we got what we got through friend’s family members going overseas and bringing back the newest and hottest games around.

We also had no concept as to whether a game was hard or not, it just was what it was. When Doom came out, we suddenly had mouse controls and later we could look up in a Doom game! Up! In a game! Mind blowing, I know. These games stretched our imagination and world view of gaming not because they were amazing games as such, which they were, but rather because they were new and interesting. There is a strong case for diminishing returns when it comes to game design. Sure, I imagine that companies are less willing to take a chance on something new, and shy away from innovation, but there are reasons for this that we all know and can see. Money. The games industry isn’t that scrappy little industry infested with wierdos making these computer games for another selection of wierdos, but rather a multi-billion-dollar industry, that relies on shareholder to prop it up and, by definition, relies on those self-same investors to get their substantial and often growing bag. We can lament this change but effectively, pretty much all of the games we have played over the last 15-20yrs would not have been made if it wasn’t for these companies and those investors. We have hit an odd dichotomy where we hate investors for what they have done to the industry with their data driven, risk averse game development model, but they have become a necessary evil within the industry that props it up.

Now I already hear people saying ‘what about (insert game here)’ that broke through this molasse of games that were created by corporations and was a breakout hit? The Expedition 33s or Hollow Knight or Balatro or Baldur’s Gate 3 or a myriad of other games that have bucked the trend for so many years. I would agree there are games that break through the wall of corporate, data driven, CEO led, focus group defined games that we all moan about but these are the games still we buy and play I might add. These breakout games stick in our minds and are salient BECAUSE they are an oddity, an anomaly, a variance of the norm or because they stick out like a sore thumb in a range of games that we have all seen before with basic graphics updates and small gameplay tweaks. The wierdos that made Doom, Systemshock and Warcraft (again not the MMO but it too is relevant here), are still around today along with new wierdos that have weird ideas. They just are not seen as viable.

Take Expedition 33 for example. These were 32 devs and a dog in an office in France, who had a game that their boss dreamed about while working at Ubisoft. I will get to Ubisoft in a minute as another discussion. But essentially, these developers had an idea and slowly built up a team of people who were passionate about what they were doing and game development. Some had never made a game before but along the way, they all had to learn new skills purely because if they didn’t do it there was no one who could. But if we are all being honest about it, they took Microsoft’s bag of money. We don’t know how much but they would likely not have been able to finish without that money and they, and other developers who were in a similar situation, have said as much. They don’t credit Microsoft for the game or its design, quite rightly, but I imagine those hundreds of other people adding their skills and talents to their small team that everyone loves bringing up to disparage the work this small team did, were due to support from Microsoft and the added funds they provided. This can be seen by many other development studios that have take money from big corporations in order to finish their game. Money is the driver in the games industry. Games cost money to make and much of the time it isn’t a small investment.

There are of course exceptions to the rule such as Balatro, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress and many other indy titles that have had minimal or solo developers who have bucked the trend, but many of these devs did so on their own time, while working. There is also the unsaid awareness that for every Balatro there are a million other corpses of indy games that didn’t make it, many of which were good but just couldn’t get over the line for a variety of reasons or never reached the audience to make money. This has always been the case. ID Software, Double Fine and Bioware founders all just up and quite their jobs and wasted through their savings on a bold small chance they would be able to do what they wanted to. Many of these companies were doing outsourced work for other companies to pay the bills. It is also worth noting that all of these companies were later bought by corporations, with the owners noting that they did so not for the money personally per say, but rather to have the security to be able to make games without the funding headache. The Noclip Double Fine documentary is fascinating for this as Tim Schafer details the beginning of the company, his departure from LucusArts, the work they did to stay afloat to the funding on Kickstarter and later the development of Fig and finally the acquisition by Microsoft. It mirrors many of the game development companies we all look up to as the bastions of great games. These are, of course, the same companies we lament have lost their way and are a shell of what they were.

Ubisoft is another example of this. Ubisoft being the development house that made games like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rayman and of course Just Dance. But if you look at the development history of Ubisoft, as with many of the big companies that are around today and have been around for years, you will see a huge list of game ports, games for other companies and development teams, work as a support team to other developers, minor credits on a game and games they created but were published (and the IP owned) by other publishing houses long before they became the household name we know and love/hate. Ubisoft was created in 1986 the first Assassin’s Creed game came out in 2007. This is not unusual and was often the norm for these companies to bring in much needed cash in order for them to keep the lights on. Read any biography about a games company whose games you either loved or love, and you will see this pattern, with many being either bought out and subsumed into a bigger corporation or being the corporation that does the subsuming.

I often look at Larian Studios. I have a huge amount of respect for their work as I have played their games long before people knew them for their Divinity Original Sin game and obviously their latest award winning and blockbuster hit Baldur’s Gate 3. They are a passionate, nerdy, wierdo bunch of characters, none more so than Sven the CEO. The man wore a full suit of armour to the fireside chats for Baldur’s Gate for crying out loud! They have created games along the way that have slowly but surely gained a flowing and respect in the industry. Sven seems to treat his staff well and they seem to have fun. The also have a motto of it is done when it is done and engage directly with the fan base to improve their games through early access and direct conversations with the players. All well and good and well worth the praise and adoration they receive. But I am struck by the speeches and awards show acceptance monologues as well as the social media posts and comments that come out of their office. While I don’t disagree with the things Sven or any of their staff say at all, if I could speak to them, I would urge caution. They are on top of the world at the moment, which is justly deserved, but it is a long way down from that lofty perch as many in the past have found. Their deriding of current game development and the smoothing out of games, their conversations about companies firing developers, their overall disdain of the gaming industry is all true and well intentioned, but in my experience all well intentioned developers can suddenly find themselves in a similar position. Larion has 2 development teams I believe working on different games at the moment. One is their own Divinity IP and the other working on something else. They were a scrappy development team that put out a phenomenal game that was universally loved and adored by a myriad of gamers from all walks of life and gaming spaces. The standard they have set is sky high. If history is anything to go on, the fall from grace could be catastrophic. This is not negativity but based on previous companies getting themselves in similar positions. The game industry is fickle. The next game might not have the same appeal that Baldur’s Gate 3 had. The sales may not be as good, or they may not have the same marketing effect that Baldur’s Gate did. The games that follow might just not hit the same as their previous games did as there is now added expectation. People turn on these sorts of companies very quickly as we all love an underdog story but hate them when they are popular. All you have to do is look at the innumerable number of loved game companies and developers and their fall from grace.

Just look at the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series and Bioware as a company as well. These were beloved games that over time soured until their most recent games being derided as slop and unfinished, losing the feeling of the originals and dumbing down of both the narrative and tone of the game as well as the mechanics. Various complaints about the game including excessive inclusiveness, changing of the graphics including making then cartoony and removing the visceral style that was there before. The amount of times I heard of Dragon Age that ‘this is not my Dragon Age’ was echoed by Mass Effect. The conclusion of the Mass Effect trilogy was a major letdown to the fans who had followed it from the beginning. Their choices that were supposed to matter all the way through in the end meant nothing. This was never going to happen. The choices mattering through one game, sure, two games, maybe, but 3 long, story driven, narrative heavy, multiple choice-based games? Never. This was an unrealistic expectation that the developers should never have promised. They had an idea, and I am sure they wanted to pull it off, but over the 5yrs of development (crazy short amount of time when you think about it) they must have had so many changes. The first two games were Xbox 360 titles and as such published by Microsoft with EA coming in for the final instalment.

Quality of life (QoL) changes have made games better and worse all at the same time. A mini or full map adds to the game and a journal makes it easier to keep those 20 quests and story beats in order. The highlighted bit on the map telling you where to go ensures busy people who don’t have time to wander aimlessly, have a guiding star to get to the area they need to be in order to complete the quest or speak to the NPC or kill the boss/mini-boss and so on. Has it gone to far? Do we need 60hr game? Do we need 200 mini quests in a game? Do we need a marker on the map that takes us directly to where we need to go in a pain-by-numbers kind of way? DO we need yellow paint to direct us to where we can climb up or slide under? Probably not. I feel there could be less handholding but once again the game is made for many different types of people, and they need to please as many as possible in order to get the sales they need in order to make the next game viable. Games have recently come out with no map, less handholding, more defined and curated story and mechanics and these games have been hailed for their attention to detail and respect of players time and energies. As I have said before they stand out because they are different not necessarily because they are better. It is worth noting that many of these self-same games later added maps and other QoL additions.

This all leads into the conversation about old games being better. I really don’t think they were. They were simpler so didn’t have as many sharp edges and if they did, we forgave them. There was no patching so if there was a bug it became a feature, often to be exploited by speed runners and to be chuckled at by gamers or avoided as the case may be. We forgive the older games their foibles and difficulty spikes and incoherent controls because that is just how games were back then. There were less options out there. The expectations on newer games are increasingly higher because of game engine advances, quality of life developments and graphic enhancements which we all say we don’t want but complain if they are not there. Graphic glitches in older games were funny, but now they are a reason to belittle a game and complain the developers just don’t care anymore and are not good at their jobs. We complain that team sizes are too big, and development takes too long but shake our heads when developers are let go to slim down a team or they put out the game early and it isn’t up to our standards (all valid complaints just so I am clear.) We complain that Call of Duty and similar games, microtransactions and DLC are the focus of companies, but ignore the fact that this is where the money is and therefore is often the reason we get great games.

Older games were simpler. They catered for a smaller group of people that played anything because that is what they had. They did not need to sell 5-10mil copies just to get back development costs. They did not need the game to make a profit but rather to get back money so they could make the next game. They did not need teams of 100s in order to develop the game as there weren’t that many things needed to make the game. No artists that created art in hundreds of different formats, nobody to build the art and to add it to framework for 3D modelling, no background art development with flowing water and moving trees, no group of people who create a narrative in order to fill 60hrs of game with main mission and multiple interesting side content, no groups of game directors that run multiple departments, no collective of QA testers to test the game to breaking point in order to have the game come out with as minimal amount of bugs and glitches as possible, no squadron of programmers needed in order to write millions of lines of coded needed just to get the game to run, no specialists to ensure all departments are running efficiently, no HR, no lawyers to ensure the company isn’t stepping on any infringement or corporate illegal practices (like for instance using Nintendo’s belatedly applied for patenting of a throwing device to catch creatures as an example off the top of my head), no CEO or head of studio who spends no time creating the game they want to but rather running the expensive company they have in front of them and so on. ID software was 7 people to create Doom. A game that blew people away and did things that had never been done before, Doom 2 increased by 1 to 8 and had someone else for audio. Id Software now has 150-200 people who worked on Doom Eternal as well as additional support from other ID Software, ZeniMax and Microsoft staff. Super Mario Bros in 1985 had a similar 5-7 people compared to the 100-200 developers need for Super Mario Odyssey in 2017 and Wonder in 2023.

Game development was never easy, and I don’t want to give the impression that I think it was. It is just more complex now. That many people developing a game with that many complex systems and development tools, with that many inputs and that many end users means they need to extract as much as possible in order to make the sales they need. Doom sold 1mil copies (an outlandish amount) whereas the latest Dooms have sold 5mil for the 2016 reboot, 5-6mil copies of eternal and The Dark Ages had 3mil players in the first week (I know there is a conversation about players vs sales and Game Pass here).

There are also hardware limitations which still exist, but not to the same extent. The Atari joystick had a stick and a button. The Nintendo and other consoles of a similar design had D-pad and 2 buttons. Modern controllers have 2 analogue sticks, a D-Pad, 4 face buttons, a start and options button, 4 shoulder triggers and newer fancier controllers have up to 4 other buttons on the back of the handles. There follows on that you can have a huge set of other inputs when you start combining these as well. And let’s not even get into keyboard and mouse where the change from arrow key control to WASD movement, F-keys inputs as well as TAB, Shift, CTR and Alt, Spacebar, E, F and a myriad of other keys. Include the addition of mouse inputs as well with mouses having not just the 2 buttons of the old mouse but now 3 main buttons on the top and multiple other side buttons, the options are endless. Rudimentary controllers alone made games simpler to make and although it required ingenious design to allow gameplay that limitation added to the simplicity.

I have seen numerous people in different places that bemoan the changes that have happened in gaming. Interestingly many of these people are younger people in their 20s. They have gone back and played classic games and have ‘seen the light’ as to what gaming could be. They wonder why games are like they are. They feel we lost something along the way. I cannot go back to old games as I have said. They are all fantastic, but I just feel like I am fighting the game the whole time. I love remakes of older games with modern controls and QOLs. Modern remakes often outsell newer IPs but that is driven by nostalgia and generally lower prices. I am glad many people are experiencing the games I grew up with, but the nostalgia goggles people view old games with creates and unfair comparison to newer games. These games were able to push the boundary because the boundary hadn’t been set or was closer in. They were creating tech that didn’t exist. This does still happen but by pure diminishing returns, it will always be more infrequent. People are also creatures of habit and gravitate towards what they know. The volume of people gaming now is astounding to me as someone who was into gaming when it wasn’t cool and was generally looked down upon. There were roughly 10-50mil people playing games in the 19080s (including arcades and home consoles) there are now 3.5billion active gamers worldwide around 40% of the world’s population game regularly.

As with many other industries gaming has grown exponentially. This has brought in many people who have different levels of enjoyment and engagement. Speak to anyone about music and the deeper they are into music the more they moan about it. The average person listen to Taylor Swift on the radio does not rate her music in comparison to the Grateful Dead or Bowie or some deep unknown Prog Rock band that came out in the 2020s long after Prog Rock was a thing. They just enjoy the song. Whereas the deep dive music lover moans that music has lost its soul. That it is a shell of its old self depreciated by corporations and money. That technological advances have dumbed down the music industry and have benefited and hamstrung musicians in equal measure. That musicians and all the people who are needed to create an album are untalented and don’t know what music is supposed to be about. They tell stories about music that was created on a shoestring budget in a dingy recording studio on their own time while working three jobs and that that world defining song was created through grit, determination and pure force of will and therefore it stood the test of time because that is what makes music. Sound familiar?